November 2025: Matt Recommends

It appears I was far less impressed with November's offerings than I was with October's. Some albums I just didn't go back to. Not that they aren't good but, I dunno, November felt off and they didn't fit my mood. Perhaps I will be more receptive to new releases from the likes of Yawning Man, Kauan, and Kadavar in December. Plus five more I either didn't get to or can't remember anything about! I do have a couple of recommendations though. Both based in Toronto, both cool in different ways, and both loud!

Verona Florrist - Verona Florrist: This is an October release but I listened to it so much in November that my brain thought that's when it came out. Aaaaand I saw them live at the end of November so I had them on the brain! They were really cool live by the way. Super tight. It was while watching them that the thought sprang to me, "they sound like an electric wizard smashing pumpkins in a dead meadow". Some sludge, some doom, some grunge, some tenderness, and psych sensibility. Hopefully I can grab some merch next time. I would have but I donated all my available funds to the homeless assistance fundraiser the show was part of. Silent auction winner though. Heck yeah. The real winners are people that listen to this album repeatedly.



Danko Jones - Leo Rising: I'll talk with guys at work about how certain metal bands got boring because they haven't changed. What I should be talking about is how Danko fuckin' Jones never gets boring and doesn't need to change! Leo Rising is the energetic power trio's latest refinement to their well-polished formula for kickass hard rock! Punchy riffs, sharp hooks, and swagger for days! They've rocked so consistently for decades and it doesn't feel like they're slowing down. I love it when my summers get even hotter from tunes like "What You Need" and the absolute banger "Everyday is Saturday Night" but I'll take some fire music to keep my blood warm all winter just fine. The temperature outside is falling but the volume on the stereo is rising.



If you're interested, November's playlist:

2023: My Favourites

Man, the evolution continues. Or is it a de-evolution? Not society. That's totally fucked. I mean my music listening habits. Long gone are the days of knowing every sub-genre. Or trying to anyway. I really, really feel most at home when I'm enjoying stoner rock and metal, doom, stoner doom, sludge, psych, heavy psych, more and more prog, shit like that. I think I listened to one black metal album all year? ('Blackbraid II') Thrash? Probably just Slayer (more or less) thanks to the Talkin' Slayer podcast by D.X. Ferris. As for death metal well, most of that input was in the live setting. Anyhoo.

Once I got down to it putting together this year's list wasn't so hard. I value my time to the point of not wasting any of it if the tunes don't resonate. That made that long list shorter and the cuts easier to make. There are no consequences. Go with your gut. Music is transcendence. Music is prayer. Music is salvation.

Following last year's format here are the 40(ish) releases that gave me the most feelings in 2023.

Favourites of 2023 Spotify Playlist Song Version

Favourites of 2023 Spotify Full Version

FULLY ENLIGHTENED BEINGS (pure beings devoid of faults)

Hippie Death Cult - 'Helichrysm' (Heavy Psych Sounds)
Baroness - 'Stone' (Abraxas Hymns)
REZN and Vinnum Sabbathi - 'Silent Future' (Blues Funeral Recordings)
Royal Thunder - 'Rebuilding the Mountain' (Spinefarm Records)
Melt - 'Replica of Man' (self-released)
Acid King - 'Beyond Vision' (Blues Funeral Recordings)
Dozer - 'Drifting in the Endless Void' (Blues Funeral Recordings)
Blood Ceremony - 'The Old Ways Remain' (Rise Above Records)
Mutoid Man - 'Mutants' (Sargent House)
Psychic Trash - 'Psychic Trash' (Riding Easy Records)

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

Miss Mellow - 'Miss Mellow' (self-released)
Frankie & the Witch Fingers - 'Data Doom' (The Reverberation Appreciation Society/Greenway Records)
Giant Lungs - 'Giant Lungs' (Transporta Records)
Iron Buddha - 'Raze/Repose' (self-released)
Goat - 'Medicine' and 'Levitation Sessions' (Rocket Recordings and The Reverberation Appreciation Society)
Mizmor - 'Prosaic' (Profound Lore Records)
Choose the Juice - 'Meteoria' (self/Artemis Kaiser)
Dopelord - 'Songs for Satan' (Blues Funeral Recordings)
Night Verses - 'Every Sound Has a Color in the Valley of Night: Part 1' (Equal Vision Records)
Astral Hand - 'Lords of Data' (Romanus Records)

DESIRE REALM GODS (enjoyment and satisfaction of desires)

Bongzilla - 'Dab City' (Heavy Psych Sounds Records)
Dead Feathers - 'Full Circle' (Ripple Music)
Dead Quiet - 'IV' (Artoffact Records)
Snakes Don't Belong in Alaska - 'Sounds of a Forming Planet' (Catacomb Family Records)
Swamp Ritual - 'Vol. III' (self-released)
Domkraft - 'Sonic Moons' (Magnetic Eye Records)
Sâver - 'From Ember and Rust (Pelagic Records)
Danko Jones - 'Electric Sounds' (Sonic Unyon Records)
Green Yeti - 'Necropolitan' (self-released)
Gozu - 'Remedy' (Metal Blade Records)

PRECIOUS HUMAN LIVES

Crown Lands - 'Fearless' (Universal)
Black Rainbows - 'Superskull' (Heavy Psych Sounds Records)
Auralayer - 'Thousand Petals' (King Volume Records)
Uncle Acid & the Deadbeats - 'Slaughter on First Avenue' (Rise Above Records)
Restless Spirit - 'Afterimage' (Magnetic Eye Records)
Howling Giant - 'Glass Future' (Magnetic Eye Records)
Sonic Demon - 'Veterans of the Psychic War' (Majestic Mountain Records)
Warp - 'Bound by Gravity' (Nasoni Records)
Moon Coven - 'Sun King' (Ripple Music)
REZN - 'Solace' (self-released)

FAVOURITE EPs OF 2023 (some of the above were technically EPs too but whatever)

The Budos Band - 'Frontier's Edge' (Diamond West Records)
Stöner - 'Boogie to Baja' (Heavy Psych Sounds Records)
Olde Grale - 'Blood of Fools' (Salt of the Earth Records)
Uncle Woe - 'Well' (Owlripper Records)
Ufomammut - 'Crookhead' (Supernatural Cat)

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!

2020: My Favourites

It goes without saying 2020 was fucked. But between all the flaming garbage I think I made big personal strides in really discovering what mattered to me. And well, here are the albums from 2020 that mattered to me. Top 20 and Next 20, in alphabetical order, because numbered rankings are pointless.

All these albums are available on Spotify and/or Bandcamp. You know how the internet works.

TOP 20

16 - Dream Squasher (Relapse)
The Atomic Bitchwax - Scorpio (Tee Pee)
Bantha Rider - Binary Sunset Massacre (Bantha DIY, Piranha Music, AimDownSight)
Black Rainbows - Cosmic Ritual Supertrip (Heavy Psych Sounds)
Brant Bjork - Brant Bjork (Heavy Psych Sounds)
Dead Quiet - Truth and Ruin (Artofact)
Electric Hydra - Electric Hydra (Majestic Mountain, Tee Pee)
Gypsybyrd - Eyes of the Sun (Cosmic Stone)
Hymn - Breach Us (Fysisk Format)
Killer Be Killed - Reluctant Hero (Nuclear Blast)
Khruangbin - Mordechai (Dead Oceans, Night Time Stories)
Local H - Lifers (Antifragile)
Moths & Locusts - Exoplanets (NoiseAgonyMayhem)
Oranssi Pazuzu - Mestarin kynsi (Nuclear Blast)
Psychlona - Venus Skytrip (Ripple)
Sevendust - Blood and Stone (Rise)
Sons of Otis - Isolation (Totem Cat)
Somnus Throne - Somnus Throne (Burning World)
Turtle Skull - Monoliths (Art As Catharsis)
Yawning Man - Live at Giant Rock (Heavy Psych Sounds)

NEXT 20

Acid Mammoth - Under Acid Hoof (Heavy Psych Sounds)
Big Scenic Nowhere - Vision Beyond Horizon (Satin) and Lavendar Blues (Satin)
Body Count - Carnivore (Century Media)
The Budos Band - Long in the Tooth (Daptone)
Deftones - Ohms (Reprise)
Elder - Omens (Armageddon Shop)
Dirt Woman - The Glass Cliff (Grimoire)
Goatriders - The Magician's Keep (self)
Huanastone - Third Stone from the Sun (Argonauta)
IAH - III (self)
Lowrider - Refractions (Blues Funeral)
Lucifer - III (Century Media)
The Pilgrim - ...From The Earth To The Sky And Back (Heavy Psych Sounds)
Pink Cigs - Pink Cigs (Harvest Studios)
The Re-Stoned - Thunders of the Deep (Qiasum Music)
Sepultura - Quadra (Nuclear Blast) 
Spirit Adrift - Enlightened in Eternity (20 Buck Spin)
Thomas V. Jӓger - A Solitary Plan (RidingEasy)
Tombs - Monarchy of Shadows (Season of Mist) and Under Sullen Skies (Season of Mist)
Yatra - Blood of the Night (STB) and All is Lost (Grimoire)

Special Note: Laat maar, ik verhuis naar het bos by Beaten To Death was available on vinyl only in 2020 and I didn't get a copy. The digital mix is being released as 4 EPs in 2021. The first three are crankable as usual.

We Hunt Buffalo - Head Smashed In

We Hunt Buffalo return with Head Smashed In, their second album for Fuzzorama Records. It’s one of those albums that’s deceptively dense. On the surface it seems pretty straightforward but there’s some stuff going on in the back you might not pick up on at first. Vocally at least. Speaking of vocals, “Angler Must Die” has the clean vocals present throughout but there’s also some screaming that comes right out of left field.

We Hunt Buffalo also drop down into some heavier moments than I wasn't expecting. This is basically fuzz-laden hard rock so that added crunch comes in pretty handy. Ya know, a little extra flavour. It’s not that there’s a lack of riffs though. There’s lots of that to go around but you gotta season the meat, right? (or in my case, marinade the tofu)

Head Smashed In is a relatively “safe” spin. There’s great tone, sweet solos, and the parts where they aren’t pushing full ahead are sprinkled in appropriately. Some songs have great muscular energy and some…. not so much. Personally, I find their softer songs and/or parts lacking. Dynamics are fine, but they just don’t play to their strengths as well in my opinion. Personal preference.

They do craft good songs though. No awkward transitions, no overstayed welcomes, nothing sticking out like a wart. Psych atmosphere has its place as well as a subtle Southern feel at times. It’s consistent too. “Heavy Low” sucks you in to start and “Anxious Children” as the penultimate track grabs your attention again just in case. It’s got a sweet main riff, cool atmosphere and the bass just rules on this one.

Inoffensive, solid, riff-centric hard rock when you’re going to get here, equally suited to dedicated listening or background tunes. You definitely won’t smash your head in! I hope. Go ahead and crank the fuzz!