Here were the best releases I discovered in 2023, from best to least-best:
Kostnatění - Úpal
Chapel Of Disease - ...And As We Have Seen The Storm, We Have Embraced The Eye
Parannoul - To See The Next Part Of The Dream
Sadness / abriction - sadness // abriction
An Abstract Illusion - Illuminate The Path
Della Zyr - Nebulous You
There were also some really good albums from The Ocean and death's dynamic shroud that released that year, but since I was already anticipating those albums and heard them as soon as they came out, they weren't really "discoveries" per se.
The most significant discovery for me that year was probably the Korean shoegaze scene, as I heard those
Della Zyr and
Parannoul albums very early in the year and loved both of them. I then went on to explore their discographies further and found much more to enjoy from there. That Parannoul album is now easily my favorite album of 2021, a year which I previously had no album I could confidently place as my album of the year. And while it's not Korean, that
Sadness / abriction album is very much in the same genre and I probably wouldn't have checked it out prior to getting into those previously-mentioned albums and wanting more of that sound.
A similar thing happened with that
Chapel Of Disease album, which is one of the best metal albums I've heard in recent memory and is now easily my favorite album from 2018. I'm still a bit salty I didn't discover that album slightly sooner, as if I had I would have sent them for twosuitsluke's last roulette round and I might have actually won.
Lastly, that
Kostnatění album was a RYM discovery and it's honestly probably the best album I've discovered in the past few years - enough to break into the pretty exclusive group of albums I have rated higher than 4 stars. It's just an incredibly awesome metal album in a style of black metal that I previously thought I didn't even enjoy, so I'm very much looking forward to any future releases from that project.