As always, rock was a guitar-led extravaganza in 2023 with artists drawing from an ever-widening musical well. These are the 25 best rock albums of the year.
Los Prisioneros evolved from a politicized youthful New Wave sound to a synthpop-infused dynamic that would propel the trio to post-Pinochet stardom.
Bikini Kill’s biting 1993 opus Pussy Whipped was the centerpiece of the riot grrrl movement, an uninhibited, game-changing punk album by dissident young women.
The Gaslight Anthem’s first album in almost ten years, History Books, is a concise ten-track that aims to recapture the sound of their most successful outings.
Gold Dime’s No More Blue Skies can be loud, fast, and urgent but will also disarm you and create a deeply unsettling atmosphere. It’s well worth the wait.
Few other bands have impacted rock like Guns N’ Roses with their incendiary sound and timeless songbook that continues to resonate 30-plus years later.
The musical style of Jeff Rosenstock’s HELLMODE takes you back to the carefree days when being politically correct wasn’t the brunt of our anxiety.
On Where Were You? the Leeds of 1978-1989 sounds like the times, but not a particular place. In that sense, it’s true indie music.
Music may be the glue of every NYC underground scene This Must Be the Place covers, but Jesse Rifkin’s primary interest is in the community held together by that glue.
A rollicking experience from start to finish, Tomorrow Never Comes shows once again why punk rockers Rancid are so fondly regarded. Here’s to them!
With eight records across a 27-year discography, each of Sum 41’s albums have ranged widely in style from pop-punk to thrash metal.
Ramones’ Ramones uses reduction as a means to end, to bring rock back to its roots, whereas Devo’s Q: Are We Not Men? uses reduction as the end itself to mirror society’s decline.
