Doom Charts

It’s been a massive run of lists filled with Personal Favorites, and there’s one more before we put up the Top 100 tomorrow. It’s from our very own math magician, tallymaster, Remi VL! Keeping score of everything the Doom Charts does as well as his own reading, watching and listening habits, Remi is here to prove what Count Dracula always knew: I love counting! But you probably already knew that if you ever visited his crazy Remi Posts Too Many Links: A Music Discussion Group on Facebook. Go below and check out his stats and his favorite 25 albums!

We’re honored to present another list of Favorite Albums of 2023 by one of the Doom Charts Contributors… There are many as you might know; and many already posted their list of Favorite Albums of 2023 on their own sites or the sites they write for. Some of those lists will be published here as well. And for all the others we advise you to check out all of their personal sites… Cause it might just contain your next very favorite album!

2023 Favorites – Remi VL

Another year, another few hundred albums were listened to, another attempt in trying to narrow down some of the best in stoner, psych, punk, prog, whatever else has a good riff and some occasional hooks!

A few years into helping manage this ship we call the Doom Charts, and I really want to thank everyone who has helped make this possible, from the contributors to the readers, to all the killer bands who keep the heavy underground alive and well, albeit maybe going gray a bit.

Being well past 32, the average age when it is said your tastes lock in and you stop trying to find new things, I can at least say that the latter is not true. From movies, to books, to TV shows, and especially music, I never want to just look back and say, “that’s it, I’m going with just revisiting all of this and never finding anything new”.

2023 was a “down” year for total listens, getting in only 489 new albums listened (out of nearly 1000 albums on my “to check out” list) and rated versus 504 in 2022. Both are down from the peak covid years, hitting over 1000 listens in both 2020 and 2021. That being said, I listened to more total tracks than the three two previous years, so I obviously spend more time on the albums I liked, and maybe a little more time with some old favourites. Less podcasts helped. Did anyone else hit a podcast saturation this year?

I’m a big fan of last.fm, a music tracking website that I love to use to track everything from my Spotify plays (automated) to the records I listen to (not so automated). A few top 10s from there!

Top 10 bands by play count: King Gizzard, Haken, Melvins, Motorpsycho, Clutch, Queens of the Stone Age, Rush, Kambodsja, Green Lung, Dozer

Top 10 albums by play count: KG – Live at Red Rocks, Haken – Fauna, KG – PetroDragonic Apocalypse, Kambodsja – Resilient, Witch Ripper – The Flight and the Fall, Leonov – Procession, Bad Nerves – Bad Nerves, Howling Giant – Glass Future, Sam Fender – Seventeen Going Under, Shotmaker – A Moment in Time: 1993-1996

Should give you a good idea what my top will look like? I’ve copied the list below as I’ve pasted on various socials for consistency, although I’ve already tweaked a bit in my head and found a few late minute stragglers who might creep in there. I’m happy with this list but let’s bring on 2024!

25. Frankie and the Witch Fingers – Data Doom
(prog rock, heavy psych)

24. Vokonis – Exist Within Light EP
(progressive sludge)

23. Dead Quiet – IV
(sludge, progressive stoner)

22. Kadabra – Umbra
(heavy psych, stoner rock )

21. Filth is Eternal – Find Out
(hardcore, d-beat)

20. Crown Lands – Fearless
(progressive hard rock)

19. The Ocean – Holocene
(prog metal, post-metal)

18. Motorpsycho – Yay!
(progressive rock)

17. Radiant Knife – Pressure
(progressive sludge)

16. Psychic Trash – Psychic Trash
(noise-rock, sludge)

15. King Father Baboon – Planting Gallows
(mellow psych, stoner rock)

14. High Priest – Invocation
(stoner rock, heavy rock)