Best of 2025

(USA | Rise Records | Deathcore)

Relentlessly nihilistic mosh music for the end times.

(USA | Nameless Grave Records | Melodeath)

Atmospheric shredfolk that saunters from feeling as crisp as a winter morning to howling like a storm through a windbattered forest.

(USA | Closed Casket Activites | Hardcore)

Soulful, searing mosh fuel that wails with the year's most crushing hooks. Like a Pallbearer record condensed for primo pit potency.

(Switzerland | Independent | Black/Death)

Ritualistic black metal that pulses with a tribal drumbeat, glides like a spectre and rages with the dramatism of a tormented sorcerer.

(Japan | Willowtip Records | Grindcore)

Members of Gridlink reemerge with a more Deathgrind state of mind.

(USA | Profound Lore Records | Funeral Doom)

Erik Moggridge comes wholly to the dark side on this perfect amalgam of two unreal musical forces. The most immediate, most roiling, most rocking Bell Witch record to date which adds Mournful Congregation-esque doleful shred sections but never loses its most lugubrious heart.

(France | Debemur Morti Records | Black Metal)

Waiting on wax, so I've not yet heard this but it definitely rules.

(USA | Profound Lore Records | Deathgrind)

Filth, venom, the clangour of military malpractice. The harrowing soundtrack to the drone warfare era. But fun!

(USA | Lavadome Productions | Death Metal)

Peak classicist Death Metal artillery. Unrivalled technical skill and unmistakable game combine to make something unholy bludgeoning.

(UK | Heavy Psych Sounds | Sludge/Doom)

So called Caveman Battle Doom brigade provide another stampede of shellacking riffage.

(France | Independent | Death Doom)

Neoclassical violin shredding morosely dovetails into chunking death doom riffage before the whole thing collapses under the weight of itself into an atmospheric... dub sequence. Dub?! It shouldn't work, but for the exacting hand of sole creator Matthieu Ducheine, does it ever fucking work.

(USA | 20 Buck Spin | Death Doom)

Blockbuster Death Metal whose gleaming production lets you know that at least the scalpel is clean before it pierces your flesh. Gurgling goregrind, sprawling dungeon doom and percussive death metal throng in perfect symphony.

(Czechia | Beyond Eyes Productions | Black Metal)

Vivifying and oddly mellowed out atmoblack that seeks to etch a portrait of human suffering with more nuance than any pretender that could be called a peer to Cult of Fire.

(USA | Transcending Obscurity Productions | Brutal Death Metal.)

Freaked out mutant brutal/tech style Death Metal that seeks to drag Demilichian sewer spew beyond the Event Horizon.

(USA | Metal Blade Records | Thrash)

DH shed some of their crossover snarl in order to establish their purest metallic bonafides in search of the Thrash crown.

(USA | Creator Destructor Records | Thrash)

Doomsday shed some of their crossover snarl in order to establish their purest metallic bonafides in search of the Thrash crown.

(USA | Profound Lore Records | Funeral Doom)

Keeping some of the high melodrama from their ironically titled Hypnagogia but more successfully fusing it to their none-blacker Atra Mors funereal stylings, Evoken broach a new high watermark for the genre they helped found.

(UK | XL Recordings | Ravey Shit)

(+ Afterglow + Bonus Tracks) Freaky space alien dance pop shit that exists in the past and the future simultaneously. Hate to say I know better than Twigs but I think between the ~27 songs she released this year, you could filter out one perfect record.

(USA | I, Voidhanger Records | Progressive Black Metal)

Not yet heard but this definitely rules. (Releases December 12, 2025)

(Sweden | Transcending Obscurity Productions | Progressive Death Metal)

Morbus Chron gone Post Punk for a vicious, disturbing and ultimately dancable death metal record.

(Netherlands | Eisenwald Records | Black Metal)

Fluisteraars continue their career long winning streak whislt finishing their EP series that warps atmospheric black metal to triumphal, dizzying and psyched out new realms.

(Norway | Ván Records | Black Metal)

The mind behind Árstíðir lífsins strips away all bells and whistles and proffers a singeing, violent Black Metal record that recalls the greatest works of the old gods.

(USA | Closed Casket Activities | Grindcore)

Q. What happens when the arch-experimentalists bring their brand of grind back to earth? A. You get really fucking great grindcore as always...

(USA | Death Hymns | Psychedelic Black Metal)

I'm deathly allergic to the waffling, hippieish brand of improv-psych that Gates of Dawn wield to their lysergic Black Metal texts but damn if this shit doesn't rule.

(Japan | Lymphatic Sexual Orgy Records | Goregrind)

The drain is clogged and it's talking to me with the sophisticated elegance of a highly qualified mortician whose sole interests include; flesh, the decomposition of flesh, and the flies that are attracted to said decomposition.

(USA | Transcending Obscurity Productions | Death Metal.)

Sometimes hitting the basics well is the hardest thing you can do. This might be the most "death metal" death metal record we've heard in years. No tinkering, just riffs.

(USA | Willowtip Records | Black Metal?)

Kostnatění almost entirely sheds its black metal skin here to emerge as something heretofore unexperienced. Never before has technicality been bent to such ill-at-ease forms in the pursuit of something so raw, empathic and real.

(USA | Independent | Krallice)

It's Krallice

(USA | Empire Records | Hip-Hop)

2 Chainz is casually one of the best rappers on the planet, Larry puts me to sleep and Al provides another set of exceptional beats from his seemibgly bottomless collection. Very smooth.

(USA | Gurgling Gore | Goregrind)

Who am I to say you can't take corrupted, bottom of the sewer goregrind and splice it with the none-brighter melodies of pop punk in order to collapse two distinct forms of nausea into a wholly new form destined to make your listeners blow chunks?

(UK | Debemur Morti Productions | Progressive Black Metal)

Waiting on wax, so I've not yet heard this but it definitely rules. (Releases December 19, 2025)

(USA/Iceland | Debemur Morti Productions | Black Metal)

Waiting on wax, so I've not yet heard this but it definitely rules. (Releases December 12, 2025)

(Canada | Independent | Funeral Doom)

A "full length" funeral doom that is shorter than most of their peers' individual songs, Memorandum still stuff in more character and more feeling with classy soloing, glacial synthwork and occassional eruptions into black metal territory.

(Italy | Metal Blade | Doom)

I'd always rebounded off this band for their stuffy experimentalism but their core talent was obvious even from a far. Here, they strip their formula back to reveal the glistening machine beneath, hooks on hooks, riffs on riffs and a stifling atmosphere like vapour rising off of hot tarmac.

(USA | Gilead Media | Blackened Doom/Sludge)

A surprisingly scant, surprisingly light record for a collaboration some two decades in the making but two of heavy musics heaviest artisans combine here to use ethereality to truly enunciate the bleakness of this existence.

(International | Tankcrimes | Black Metal)

Dudes from Municipal Waste, Finntroll, Ænigmatum et al, bang their heads together to make raucous, fun Black Metal in an old school way that would no doubt piss off most of the joyless old scrotes who founded the genre. Nothing more Black Metal than disappointing the so called authorities.

(Portugal | Osmose Productions | Blackened Death Metal)

Brimming with throat-searing ritualistic piety, The Ominous Circle present an offering to the dark ones through a plodding riff-base filigreed with gnarled shreds of shred.

(USA | Dawnbreed Records/Gurgling Gore | Uptuned Death Metal)

Since the onset of the genre, dudes have been messing with Death Metal's DNA, typically in search of the darkest, dankest tones. But something got lost in the sludge... so the sickos in Plasmodulated uptune their guitars so you can know for damn sure that the darkness and the dankness comes straight from the riffage, no pretending.

(UK | Invictus Productions | Orchestral Blackened Death Metal)

The biggest, boldest swing of the year sees a band crystallise a decade of rapid expansion into an unrivalled masterpiece of chastening atmospheric death metal. In engineering a core of churning, everblack death metal around a spiralling, ensorcelling orchestral grandeur, Qrixkuor have come closer than any band before them in accurately defining an image of Dante's 9 circles with sound.

(USA | Century Media | Brutal Death Metal)

The arch-pisstakers in the 'Bogg get deadly serious on this third record, adding clangorous industrial and virulent sludge to their boneheaded brew. Like any good corpse, a tad bloated.

(USA | Closet Casket Activities | Powerviolence)

Raw powerviolence fury with shades of Dystopia's sample-laden sludge morass. It's an ugly world we live in and this record comes some of the way to matching that ugliness.

(Germany/Spain | Sepulchral Voice Recordings | Thrash)

Primo backwards-looking Thrash that sidles up to Heaven's gates like a gaggle of demons with an army of riffs.

(Russia | Avantgarde Recordings | Atmospheric Black Metal)

Black Metal's chief architect of the harrowing lament returns with an army of synths and stringed instruments to carve a new work of slowly thawing humanity.

(USA | Moonlight Cypress Archetypes | Country/Drone/Black Metal)

There's no preparing you for the madness within but the collage on the cover might give you some clue as to the swamp-dredging skullduggery you'll find. Imagine a moonlit, moonshine hootenanny brought to its knees by an invading Sunn O)))

(USA | Profound Lore Records | Blackened Death Metal)

15 minutes of the most incisive face-eviscerating metal of the year. Explores the primordial swamp where Thrash started to spread its black wings, birthing metals both Black and Death but through darkest innovation revivifies that sound for the present day.

(USA | Dark Descent/Me Saco un Ojo | Deathgrind)

In 2007, Insect Warfare dropped a genre defining immediate classic Grind record. They'd break up within a year...

In 2022, Malignant Altar dropped a genre defining immediate classic Death Metal record. They'd break up within a year...

In 2025 members straddling various line ups of both those bands reemerge with a twisted hybrid of their much lauded past: Terror Corpse...

(USA | Dark Descent Records | Deathgrind)

Let us pray to the dark ones that these mf'ers can stay together to make a sophomore because they've somehow done it again.

Sewer spewed death doom suffuses uncomfortably with nuclear fallout deathgrind to form an amalgam so dark it blots out the sun and leaves you gasping for air. Feels like the punkish fury of early Celtic Frost battling with the gothic trudge of later Celtic Frost with the clangorous timbre of only the truest death metals.

(USA | Profound Lore Records | Death Doom)

Alex Poole (Chaos Moon, Martröð, Ringarë, Vörnir, Skáphe, Gardsghastr, Guðveiki etc. etc. etc.) is one of black metal's busiest minds and certainly its greatest architect of sepuchral, lysergic lead guitar playing. So what happens when he tries his hand at early Katatonia-style mournful death doom? Perfection, that's what.

(UK | Floodlit Recordings | Crust/Metalcore)

A roiling, burdensome beast that marries Remission-era Mastodon's tempestuous beatdowns with all the limb-flailing fury of the 00's metalcore scene. A ravenous march through the tech-scarred mindscape of the modern epoch.

(USA | Ordovician Records | Progressive Death Metal)

If you're gonna reference FFTTF era Morbid Angel and pair it with a cover like that, you're gonna have to bring the weird, you're gonna have to bring the heavy. Oh, you did? Cool...

(Brazil | Flowing Downward | Atmospheric Black Metal)

We may have left the era of Caio Lemos' peak conceptual meddling, but we haven't left the era of his ever-peaking craft and inutterable beauty. His most furious vessel returns for a third record that meticulously waevaes in textures from his more wandering projects.

(Australia | Me Saco Un Ojo Records | Brutal Death Metal)

Scintillating, bass flubbery, pick scraping, pinch harmonic, chug-chug jud-jud boneheadedness. Like they pulled my ideal Suffocation meets Cryptopsy hybrid out of my dreams and made it reality.

(USA | 20 Buck Spin | Progressive Death Metal)

Waiting on wax, so I've not yet heard this but it definitely rules.

(USA | Crepúsculo Negro | Black Metal)

The crown jewel of The Black Twilight Circle returns with a burning, brooding, ominous monument that brings to mind pre-bandcamp era early 00's peak USBM.

(International | Amor Fati Productions | Black Metal)

Alex Poole (Chaos Moon, Martröð, Ringarë, Theurgion, Skáphe, Gardsghastr, Guðveiki etc. etc. etc.) teams with an international who's who of dudes he already has dozens of bands with to bring a forth a blend of Swedish, Icelandic and American blackened traditions.

(USA | I, Voidhanger Records | Death Doom)

Perhaps the Doug Mooriest of DM's multitudinous DM projects, a warping blend of tragedian death doom and Pyhrronic weirdo weft.

(USA | Gilead Media | Black Metal)

Daring black-meddlers return to true metallic realms wearied and weathered by time's onward march with their lengthiest, most morose statement yet.