Best of 2025

1) Messa - The Spin

Not a lot of female presence on my list this year, and it's not like picking Messa for my best of the year position is a play to win the hearts of the fairer sex. I've learned long ago, that if they haven't earned it, they don't want it, like anyone. 

This is the best album of 2025. Would it have been if the year were stronger overall? I'm not sure. All I can say is Sara Bianchin is the most soulful vocalist in all of heavy metal, no question. And The Dress is one of the best songs I've ever heard. With the sheer amount of music I've consumed over my years on this earth, I hope that statement carries some weight.

Go listen to it.

Enough from me and on to 2026.

Best of 2025

 2) Igorrr - Amen

No surprises here. I've been following Igorrr and his various projects since I was in diapers. His approach to music is singular, meaning he has no contemporaries. It's all just too unusual, and as much as I praise Defacement's compositional chops, it takes an extra set of titanium testes to venture out into completely uncharted waters and expect anyone to listen to you. Where did Igorrr come from? What parasite got into his head that made him like this, that made him infectious enough to attract some of the most talented vocalists in France to support him? I don't have a clue, but I'll keep supporting him as long as he keeps at it.

Best of 2025

 3) Defacement - Doomed

I remember taking a sound design class on Coursera years ago on a whim. It was a fun exploration of the potential for compositions from the ground up, not necessarily using instruments but just how tones interact with each other, what harmonics are, what timbre is. I'm not often reminded of the class because most music composition involves the interplay between static instruments, it's orchestration, rather than ground up sound design.

Defacement's Doomed reminded me of this class because their approach to music is as if the instruments are secondary to a broader vision. These compositions are layered with space and noise and the way they recorded the instruments is wonderfully dynamic, sometimes cutting through the mix, sometimes buried behind a soundscape that suggests hypnosis in the listener.

Upon approaching this album I was seeing descriptors like dissonant blackened death metal, but I don't know if I would describe it this way. The album is called Doomed and in many ways it is a Doom metal album. It's a deeply sad and mournful journey. The dissonance on this record is used as a tool rather than a theme. So don't go in expecting Portal or Abyssal, go in expecting that they took influence from these giants of the genre and gave you an additional reason to feel emotionally invested in their music.

Best of 2025

 4) Qrixkuor - The Womb of the World

There's a sub-sub-genre I've been keeping an eye out for. Attempting to name it... I don't know... "ritualistic blackened death metal" maybe. It's got some of the trappings of black metal in theme, the riffs are certainly death, but the hook is that it sounds like the band is performing an ancient rite that appears to be working. The music of Akhlys, and now Qrixkour seem to be taking ritualistic esotericism to a place beyond Satanism. There's something older and more mysterious that's being conjured by this music. This is music Lovecraft would've chosen for his film adaptations if he were alive to direct.

This is deeply unsettling, so it would be the most difficult one to recommend from this year's list. You not only need to get past the incomprehensible vocals, the jagged instrumentation, but you also have to worry about conjuring a foul ancient spirit into existence that may whisper in your ear promises of pleasure and success only to render you into a husk, blank and dim. Check in on me occasionally if I can bother you to do so. If I start acting like Renfield in service to my master, call someone, though I don't know who that might be.

Best of 2025

 5) Forced Starvation - Forced Starvation

Now we're talking. This is exactly the type of record I expected in response to the rampant unabashed corruption and systematic tearing of every moral thread straining to connect us into a decent modern society. Actually, allow me to lean in here. I fully expected every metal band in the world to discard their unique musical identities and release a grindcore album. That's what this world needs right now, for everyone to scream in unison over incomprehensible distortion being driven by clearly schizophrenic hammering of pots and pans and whatever else may act as a drum.

Maybe that's the reason I'm so disappointed this year. The music didn't even come close to reflecting the actual violence in the world. Forced Starvation is towing the weight for the rest of us. This album is pure mayhem, fury, two-step carnage. Turn it up to 11 and show the powers that be that you can be louder, more violent, than they could ever imagine being.

Best of 2025

 6) Conjurer - Unself 

Why no love for Conjurer this year ladies and gents? I don't think I saw this on a single damn list, the silence so deafening that I started to think I was wrong. I checked and rechecked. I'm not wrong on this one, though it is a vastly different record from their previous two outings. This has so much more emotional weight. This is the sort of heart-rending impact Converge brought to the table so long ago within the narrow confines of post-hardcore. The record preceding this in my list should take note, these are truly heavy riffs that maintain their melodic integrity.

Are there any shit takes to be had here? I don't think so. This is a really solid album top to bottom. Lots of big payoffs, plenty of visceral struggle, oodles of dynamics between quiet burning and blasting. This is the turning point in my list I guess, no more moaning, just great music.

Best of 2025

 7) Weeping Sores - The Convalescence Agonies

Speaking of 2-man bands, here's another one. They've been here before and so has Pyrrhon the other project these two particular men contribute to so it's no surprise they're here again. My instinct is this might be the waters receding for this particular project though it's well hidden in the maelstrom that is this style of sludgy death doom. This record introduced a lot of non-metal presence, strings, organs, horns. My sense is that these instruments are leaned on when they need to inject some melodic texture. But, why do they need this melodic texture coming from somewhere other than the guitars? It's because the guitars don't contain much melodic texture. The riffs are largely knuckled dragging sludge riffs, pedal the low power chord alternate with a higher octave open chord, repeat. I want more from the guitars gents, though my wants are irrelevant and this is still a damn fine record, just not a great one.

Best of 2025

 8) Dormant Ordeal - Tooth and Nail

Polish death metal and I go way back. Vader was in many ways my father when my father was 6 Coors deep throwing things during tantrums about the news. Vader and Behemoth and Decapitated are still around though they look different now, some older, some swapped out musicians to capture the vitality of fresh blood. But, since that original movement there hasn't been a continuous influx of new thrashy polish death metal. Polish extreme music culture has largely been taken over by black metal, some of the best black metal in the world mind you.

Dormant Ordeal is here to remind us that Polish death metal isn't dead yet. This album was my workout album this year due to its churning, blasting momentum. When I felt myself flagging I could lock into a blast beat and struggle through for a bit longer before submitting to the fragility of my mortal flesh.

The only judgment I can squeeze out of any critical assessment of this album is just that it wasn't a surprise when I discovered this is a two man project. It punches above its weight for a collection of ideas from two men, but it does sound a little lean at times, a little stretched at others. More human push and pull likely would've provided more texture and nuance to this raging fire.

Best of 2025

 9) Vauruvã - Mar da Deriva

Brazilian atmospheric black metal. It was the artwork on this album that managed to pull me in closer. And when that happens I give the album a taste, a few seconds to determine if a full spin is necessary. My time is a rare commodity or at least that's what I tell people. The tastes of this album failed to get my attention so it went into a dust pile in the back of my brain along with the other stray thoughts.

But, on occasion I allow particular albums to express themselves in full without being initially compelled. I'll think, "I have to wash the dishes and either I do it with something in the background or in silence." Nothing to lose if the album is mediocre. In this case, Vauruvã proved to be worth my time indeed. Is it the MOST interesting atmospheric black metal album to cross my path? Certainly not, but it does have a warm texture, a penchant for memorable melodies, enough quiet folky passages to give a dynamic quality. There's enough here to be a welcome accompaniment to a long quiet highway drive at night, and that'll get you number 9.

Best of 2025

 10) Astronoid - Stargod

Third shot is the most sticky sweet song released in 2025. It is a classic heavy metal ballad that would be at home in a crowded arena provoking closed eye lip syncing from a crowd enthralled by a nostalgic sense of teenage love and long summers under a golden sun.

BUT! the album as a whole struggles to maintain this high water mark of exuberant heavy metal exhilaration. And when it fails it washes together into one homogenous glob of viscous artificial sweetener. There are many great ideas on this album, but the songs don't quite capitalize in a way that would make this album great. Astronoid got my attention this year in a way they failed to previously, so I'll be looking forward to the next one.

Best of 2025

I spent this entire year telling my buddy not to lose hope in music this year, that the next big release was right around the corner. Surely with all the darkness in the world right now metal bands wouldn't be able to help themselves from making the next big genre defining record that turns the absurdity we're witnessing into a transcendent work of clarity, a feat only really great metal can pull off. 

But, the months wore on, and on, and there wasn't much of anything. I'd check the usual blogs, the reviews, the continuous feeds of new music and nothing. I should be clear, there were so many releases this year, many from very well known bands, bands with pedigrees of talent, but everything felt disengaged, safe, going through the motions. Good music isn't something that just shows up and lurks in the corner of the room, it's the 600lb gorilla that won't leave the room until he says he wants to. It's a spectacle, a new way to see existence, one that imparts wisdom and maturity through intensity, and often destruction that winds up cleansing our soul of the buildup of angst.

I don't want to spend my entire preamble belly aching, I still made a list this year. A lot of handwringing was done, a lot of sifting through the mid, a lot of last ditch efforts to find the buried veins of gold everyone else missed.

I remember a year like this not so long ago, a drought. I claimed the world was holding its breath, planning strategies of attack, laying in wait. This year doesn't feel like that. This year feels like people are wounded, treading sewage, trying to stay afloat, just trying to survive. Trump, Epstein, fear of the future of AI, transparent corruption, back room deals that are now proudly spoken of in the front rooms. These things, save AI, were always there, but it's now all in the forefront, unburdened by the necessity of whispered voices. In a way this is an improvement, it's all laid bare. We now know all of the world's leaders, taste makers, tech moguls are fucking predators, grifters, and opportunists. There is no one at the top fighting the good fight, no one is speaking up for the little guy, no one is planning for a future beyond their own self-interest.

This was a bad year in so many ways. The wind was knocked out of us. We need to catch our breath, tend our wounds, and prepare for war. Mind you, I'm a pacifist, so when I say war I mean, words, and riffs, and passion. It's coming. I believe in 2026, or rather I'll pretend I do and keep lying to my buddy.

P.S. Instead of showing untamed exuberance, I'll be begrudging. I'll explain why these albums were good enough, but not holding back on why they shouldn't be there.