2022: My Favourites

Well, here we are again. 2022 was actually a decent year personally. There are always big things hanging overhead but at least not many fell. I drifted further and further from the more extreme forms of metal. I mean, most of what I'm going to list below isn't even metal. Most of it can be heavy but there's almost no death, black, grind, noise or whatever. 

I've even sort of reinvented myself in terms internet presentation. "MetalMatt Hinch" doesn't really exist. I dropped Twitter a while ago, I changed my IG handle, lastfm account, and other associations with that handle. It's just me now. And these are 40 albums that really turned my crank in 2022 tiered into the four higher states of being. Enjoy!

FULLY ENLIGHTENED BEINGS (pure beings devoid of faults)

Clutch - Sunrise on Slaughter Beach (Weathermaker)

Stöner - ...totally (Heavy Psych Sounds)

Brant Bjork - Bougainvillea Suite (Heavy Psych Sounds)

16 - Into Dust (Relapse)

Elder - Innate Passage (Armageddon Shop)

Dead Meadow - Force Form Free (Blues Funeral)

Colour Haze - Sacred (Elektrohash)

King Buffalo - Regenerator (self-released)

Mammoth Volume - The Cursed Who Perform The Larvagod Rites (Blues Funeral)

MWWB - The Harvest (New Heavy Sounds)

GODS OF THE FORM AND FORMLESS REALMS (aeons of refined bliss)

Black Space Riders - We Have Been Here Before (self-released)

Marc Urselli's Steppendoom - Steppendoom (Magnetic Eye Records)

Baardvader - Foolish Fires (Baardvader Records)

Freedom Hawk - Take All That You Can (Ripple Music)

Soulfly - Totem (Nuclear Blast)

Gypsybyrd - Visions (self-released)

Wo Fat - The Singularity (Ripple)

Ufomammut - Fenice (Neurot)

Fuzz Meadows - Orange Sunshine (self-released)

Dhidalah - Sensoria (Guruguru Brain)

DESIRE REALM GODS (enjoyment and satisfaction of desires)

Witchfinder - Forgotten Mansion (Mrs. Red Sound)

Megadeth - The Sick, The Dying... And The Dead! (Universal)

Blackbraid - I (self-released)

Ian Blurton's Future Now - Second Skin (Pajama Party)

Druids - Shadow Work (Pelagic)

Nebula - Transmission From Mothership Earth (Heavy Psych Sounds)

10,000 Years - III (Death Valley Records)

Uncle Woe - Pennyfold Haberdashery & Abbatoir Deluxe (Red Spade)

Cult of Luna - The Long Road North (Metal Blade)

Gnome - King (Polder Records)

PRECIOUS HUMAN LIVES

Earthless - Night Parade of One Hundred Demons (Nuclear Blast)

Pike vs The Automaton- Pike vs The Automaton (MNRK)

Crowbar - Zero and Below (MNRK)

Somali Yacht Club - The Space (Season of Mist)

Lazer Beam - Man In The House/Lost in Oblivion (LCF)

Cancer Bats - Psychic Jailbreak (New Damage)

My Sleeping Karma - Atma (Napalm Records)

Messa - Close (Svart)

Mizmor - Wit's End/Myopia (split with Thou) (Gilead Media)

Sons of Arrakis - Volume 1 (self-released)

Tell me what I missed!