The importance of a good album cover can never be overlooked or overstated.
Striking imagery that conveys the tone and/or ties in with the conceptual theme behind an album's body of music is perhaps just as important as the music itself.
These were my personal favourite album covers of 2023 (in no particular order) keeping this criteria in mind :
Humanity's Last Breath - "Ashen" (Eye of SAROS / Adrian Baxter)
Blindfolded and Led to the Woods - "Rejecting Obliteration" (Eliran Kantor)
Earthside - "Let the Truth Speak" (Seempieces - The Art of Travis Smith)
Hypno5e - "Sheol" (Ivan Bertin)
Death Goals - "A Garden of Dead Flowers" (Kate Feast Photography / Gabriel Wilson)
MouthBreather - "Self-Tape" (Plague of the Circus)
The Zenith Passage - "Datalysium" (Shindy Design)
Jeromes Dream - "The Gray In Between" (?)
Invent Animate - "Heavener" (Hayden Clay Williams)
AHAB - "The Coral Tombs" (Sebastian Jerke)
FVNERALS - "Let the Earth Be Silent" (Anton Novozhilov)
Algiers - "Shook" (Mark Mahaney)