Life has been busy! I haven’t been able to listen to as many albums as I usually would in a year. I only did a top five list last year because I hadn’t been able to listen to a lot of albums and because lists with rounded numbers are so darn nice to look at. This year, I’ve heard seven really good albums which are definitely list-worthy. The other albums? I wouldn’t put them in my Top 15. While I have listened to more than fifteen albums this year, I feel I haven’t heard as much as I usually do (averaging 60 albums) to come up with a solid fifteen.
So to save myself the grief of looking back and saying, “That album only was in my Top 15 because it defaulted to be there,” I’m listing my seven favourite albums from 2025, followed by the usual Honourable Mentions and Most Disappointed. I’m also stepping away from album descriptions this year as I’m a busy guy, y’know?
15. Pan-Amerikan Native Front – Little Turtle’s War (United States – Independent)
Black metal with a dash of awe. Pan-Amerikan Native Front’s second full-length is intense with power and rage. It’s lo-fi production adds to the chaos. My favourite track, The Great White Beaver Lurks, is an awesome mid-paced song among the disruption.
Unlike Pan-Amerikan, Friisk bestows intense moods and atmosphere with their debut album. Similar at times to one of my favourite Icelandic black metal bands, Auðn, Friisk brilliantly showcases some blistering speed alongside their dramatic performances.
13. Fluisteraars – Gegrepen Door de Geest der Zielsontluiking (Netherlands – Eisenwald)
It’s rare to see 20+ minute black metal songs, yet Fluisteraars pieces one together and it goes by in an instant. Almost avant-garde at times, Fluisteraars’s fourth album is ambitious and rich with nuance – all-the-while still showcasing moments of insanity.
12. Drawn and Quartered – Congregation Pestilence (United States – Krucyator Productions)
A group of death metal veterans, Drawn and Quartered’s newest release features the band’s technical ability to write strong, creative music. With a solid old-school death metal sound, Congregation Pestilence is rich with pacing and riffs to make your ears bleed. Without going into the typical verse/chorus structure, D&Q’s music is filled with brilliance.
11. WODE – Burn In Many Mirrors (United Kingdom – 20 Buck Spin)
A mix of blackened/death thrash metal makes WODE’s third album an extreme journey to experience. Unrelenting and surprisingly melodic, the album comes with a great energy to it. With unexpectedly catchy riffs and crisp production, WODE’s ever-changing style serves them well.
10. Cannibal Corpse – Violence Unimagined (United States – Metal Blade)
Another group of veterans in the death metal world, Cannibal Corpse’s newest may be one of their best since Kill (although I prefer Torture). While still keeping up the same sound listeners have become accustomed to, newcomer Erik Rutan added some awesome power I’m sure no one felt the band was lacking.
9. Ŭkcheănsălâwit – Alaskan Escape EP (Canada – Les Productions Hérétiques)
My favourite EP of the year! This speedily album feels bleak and cold – which is exactly what it was going for. To showcase a song: To an Alaskan Glacier, while minimal in instruments, is huge in drama making for an incredible feat to achieve. I would surely buy a full LP of this music whenever one is made.
While Fluisteraars had a single 20-minute song, Olhava has one, plus a few more over the 10-minute mark. The Russian duo pieces beautifully intense music with a raging atmosphere and subtle soundscapes. While two of the four songs are really black metal, Olhava brings in drone and ambient elements which perfectly encapsulates the ebb and flow of the natural concept they were aiming for in Frozen Bloom.
This band just keeps impressing. Outre-Tombe’s now three for three on making my annual lists and for good reason – their music is really flipping awesome. Moments of Abysse Mortifère remind me of early-Voivod, while others standout as early-Morbid Angel. A ripping good time, Abysse Mortifère knocks it out of the park.
6. Cynic – Ascension Codes (United States –Season of Mist)
After two thirds of the band passed away in 2020, how could Cynic continue? Paul Masvidal carries on Sean Reinert’s and Sean Malone’s legacy with Ascension Codes – a strange, yet familiar feeling. While the album feels bogged down by short interludes between songs, the music is an emotional progressive journey: absolutely brilliant and constantly transcending.
Their first release since LTE2 in 1999, LTE3 brings back the brilliance of Dream Theater members John Petrucci, Jordan Rudess, and Mike Portnoy, along with legendary bassist Tony Levin, to produce one of the most surprising albums for me this year. All-instrumental, LTE3 is not so much a jam session like previous albums, but a well-executed romp into prog rock and metal.
My favourite atmospheric black metal album of the year, Grima’s Rotten Garden was also the first album I picked up when it was released in January. It has been regularly spun since. It’s haunting beauty comes together with nature and grandiose scope. With the odd keyboard frill and additional accordion in certain songs, Rotten Garden is absolutely a fresh listen to every spin.
3. Koldovstvo – Ни царя, ни бога (??? – Extraconscious Records)
Not much is known about the band and their debut album: A Russian band name. Roman Numeral song titles. Signed to an American label. Is it one person or a group? What Ни царя, ни бога is though, is an experience. Was the album recorded in another room? The production is both astonishing and very entrancing. It’s albums like this one which I live for. Tracks I and IV are absolute standouts.
Also released in January, I unfortunately wasn’t able to grab a physical copy as it sold out. And it sold out fast for good reason too: it’s incredible. Immediately fast and dramatic, Calvaire is doused in both strength and agony. A rich and fast-paced album, it’s still a melodic black metal journey filled with so much emotion and heartbreak, you find yourself picking up pieces when all is said and done.
1. Mannveira – Vitahríngur (Iceland – Dark Descent Records)
There’s a handful of albums that happen to be there when you need them the most. Mannveira’s debut album Vitahríngur just happened to be that album for me this year.
Doused in sludge and dreariness, Vitahríngur time-and-time again happened to be my go-to when I needed it the most. It’s raw, rather simplistic approach to music writing can keep the listener engrossed to the music and feel what they need to feel.
Rarely going into blast beats or fast speeds, the album keeps a mostly mid-paced tempo to it – its dark nature sucking you in with each kick of the bass drum. The muddied vocals give grief, anger, and sorrow, keeping with the overall tone of the album. The song, Í köldum faðmi is a perfect example of all of that.
While the title track offers a bit of optimism, the album constantly keeps you down, throwing the listener back into the cacophonous well.
While straying a slight bit from the overall sound of Icelandic black metal, Vitahríngur still defines its own sound with a nihilistic approach and gloomy dissonance.
Blessed by Perversion – Remnants of Existence Iron, Blood and Death Corporation
Brutally intense with some pulse-pounding riffs and beats, Blessed by Perversion’s second album, Remnants of Existence, is a thrilling album for death metal fans to really engage with.
Ironically (or coincidentally) the Greek band released their album on Christmas Day in 2020. Their six-track album hits the ground running and setting a mood of what they’re trying to accomplish. The intro track, Descending into the Catacombs, is a slow minute-fifteen-long burn as the listener becomes surrounded by the sounds and sights the music creates in their mind. Then come the double kicks and Gallery of Bones picks the album up.
Flowing with mid-paced and rhythmic chugging for a short while, a sudden change in structure is where Hell breaks loose. Guitar and bass change – the tempo picks up and the listener is slammed with a wall of brutality. With an impressive guitar solo and well-placed, almost groovy riffs near the end of the track, the song ends only to be carried by an even heavier track, Atonement Refused.
Feeling more in-place with mid-90s death metal, Atonement Refused rips through with blistering speed. The hefty chugs within the chorus, followed by its technical bridge – and well-placed bass groove – changes up with moments of a Phrygian scale and mirrors something sounding almost from Nile. However, it doesn’t come across like a “copy” as the ideas fits within the atmosphere and feeling Remnants of Existence is aiming to create.
Within Among the Tombs of Absent Gods, the crushing riffs don’t stop. Feeling even darker than the last track, the album continues its descent for the listener. With layered vocals, the growls become more sinister and absorb the listener down the band’s dark path.
In Caverns of Torture, there’s a Cannibal Corpse-y feel to the song with its finger tapping intro and addition to more treble on bass guitar. The pounding chorus with pinched harmonics, along with the slamming snare adds some interesting colour to the already impressive track. After a bit of a break down, the song resets itself with the finger tapping intro and descends into madness with a dark guitar solo and filthy riffs that really pushes out the aggression.
The anthem-like Within Monumental Chaos concludes the album with probably the more memorable chorus on the album. The song features a descending scale with a technical breakdown which, in my opinion, really encapsulates the songwriting prowess of Blessed by Perversion. With a sweeping guitar solo, the song begins its double-kick conclusion as it wraps up the album with an epic, yet dark feeling.
Every song on the album was an impressive feat. While bass could been louder in some moments and kick drums may feel over-processed in some parts, Remnants of Existence floored me with quality in both production and song-writing capability. Rarely do I get to review albums from independent bands that really knock me off my feet.
A technically brilliant and dark, haunting journey, Blessed by Perversion’s Remnants of Existence is an album within the death metal realm that should not be missed.
Bloodfeast Ritual – Altars of Sacrifice Self-release
In their debut EP Altars of Sacrifice, Los Angeles band Bloodfeast Ritual serve up the guts and glory of old school death metal alongside a variety of death metal styles.
With relentless energy throughout each song, the 20-minute EP perseveres with a battery of brutality mixed in with many melodic moments. In the opening track Grave Fodder, the very-Swedish death metal influence shines through. Many unison riffs in the higher register initially present the band similar to one like Arch Enemy – with epic choruses and bright solos – the song provides a lot of heft among the beauty.
That beauty, however, somewhat disappears within the next song title: Eternally Molested By The One Most Foul. With the band still reeling Swedish death influences, the song itself begins to show a different sound the band is going for. With an influence more similar to the band Death, the song features lots guitar prowess while still being a cohesive song. Riffs and chugging dominate the majority of the song with more-shredding than melodic solos in-between.
And yet, the style changes yet again, rather smoothly into classic death metal with No More Room in Hell. Featuring some of the more guttural vocals on the album, the music also feels heavier. The layered vocals hearken to Aborted, but the music to something like Cannibal Corpse. Fast and devastating, the lyrics even evoke the scenes from Dawn of the Dead: “Eat them one by one / Feast upon the intestines / Smell of death fills the air.”
The heaviest song on the album, Chopped Up and Burned, is the song with the most weight. Blast beats abound, the darkest lyrics, the dirtiest riffs: the song has it all. The very traditional death metal sound is the clear inspiration for the song, with some of the more fast and intense solos the album has to offer.
Concluding the EP with the shortest track, Fetid Offering is the “newest-sounding” song on the album, with melody similar to the first track and guttural vocals reaching some of the higher registers, almost becoming screams. The song ends the EP on a high note with a steady growing, epic-feeling conclusion which somewhat contrasts the rest of the album.
With plenty of ideas mixed together as an EP, it shows many different avenues Bloodfeast Ritual can take. Although each song is brilliantly constructed, as a cohesive whole, the listener may get mixed messages to what the sound the band really wants to achieve.
Consistently brutal and relentlessly thrashy, Bloodfeast Ritual’s Altars of Sacrifice is an impressive and intense debut showcasing the many musical influences and songwriting prowess the band has to offer.
UncannyDerek 