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 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 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.)

Not yet heard but this definitely rules.

(USA. Profound Lore Records. Deathgrind)

Filth, venom, the clangour of military malpractice. The harrowing soundtrack to the drone warfare era. But a lot of fun if you eschew the lyrics sheet!

(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 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 that trades in gleaming production value that lets you know 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)

(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 finsihing 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 strip 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 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. Progressive 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)

Not yet heard but this definitely rules. (Releases December 19, 2025)

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

Not yet heard but this 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 alway 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.

(Portugal. Osmose Productions. Blackened Death Metal)

Not yet heard but this definitely rules.

(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.

(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.

(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)

Not yet heard but this definitely rules.