Listmania: Metal Noise Top #5 Underground Metal Bands to Watch in 2023!

Unlike our Most Anticipated Releases of 2023 category, this final entry in Listmania Awards Season is dedicated to Underground Metal bands who may or may not have a record lined up for the coming year. It’s about bands who we recommend you keep your eyes and ears peeled for news, shows and material from to help keep your carcass warm in winter and cool in summer. As ever we’ll keep it short and sweet at just five; so here we go!

Female fronted Cinematic DJent outfit Vanitas blew our tiny minds with their debut EP in 2022. Formed from the ashes of Verb The Noun and Aramantus they take inspiration from vast-spanning JRPG soundtracks and the raw energy of modern metal riffs and also joined forces with Jacob Collins of Recall The Remains for a cover of “The Rumbling” by SiM. The evidence speaks for itself. We expect the Birmingham natives to grow at a phenomenal rate in the new year!

In 2022 State College Pennsylvania based Metalcore merchants Befell gave us sophomore EP “Grave Of The Condemned King” as well as a trio of new singles as bassist Jon Perini continues to establish himself in the outfit. They have the fire and ambition to make it big and the tunes simply keep coming at a restless and relentless pace, each one offering a rip roaring solo as they love nothing more than the smell of burning fretboards.

GAIA have been promising a Lovecraftian influenced Progressive Metal meets cosmic horror album since… as long as we can remember and gave us a pair of new singles in 2021 that certainly whet the appetite. Hell, “The Crawling Chaos“, a song inspired by the Outer God, Nyarlathotep has even had a tour named after it that will see them rip up the road with the likes of Gutlocker in the new year. We have our fingers and toes crossed that 2023 is the year that we will finally see that promise come to life.

They may have released their sophomore EP “Forever Nothing” via Prank Monkey Records in 2022 but with births and marriages in the camp it turned out to be a very quiet year with just a handful of live shows for the Post-Hardcore institution that is Weaponry. Maybe that’s the problem. They’ve been too quiet and it’s always the quiet ones you need to watch because when your back is turned, they’re putting their fingers in pies, setting off flares in the living room and shooting empty beer cans with BB guns.

In the early summer of 2022 Thirteen Goats unveiled an album titled “Servants of the Outer Dark” which is quite simply a love letter to old school Florida Death Metal and 80’s Thrash frontloaded with an evil tongue-in-cheek sense of humour. While it got some attention, we always had the feeling it didn’t quite get the attention it deserves and that can only mean one thing. Our ear drums are going to bleed when the band return fired up with either live shows or a new record for 2023. You have been warned.