Highlights in metal, 2025

Highlights in metal

Messa – The Spin

Through a pair of outstanding previous releases, Feast for Water and Close, Messa had built reputation around a distinctive style of haunting and atmospheric desert-themed doom metal. In the The Spin, Messa have expanded their already eclectic sound, with a core now of heavy and gothic metal and influences from as far afield as blues and jazz. It’s an ambitious mix, but the true strength of the album lies in how effortless and organic it all feels, how completely it avoids impression of self-consciousness. Messa are a confident band who, having mastered their source material, now freely reshape it. To my mind, The Spin is an ideal contemporary metal album, built from elements traceable to the earliest days of rock and metal but reassembled in a way that feels fully modern.

Katatonia – Nightmares as Extensions of the Waking State

A mainstay of the genre for over thirty years, Katatonia needs little introduction. Their latest album—their fourteenth, by my count—has however been divisive among fans. At the time of this writing, it stands at 43% with 12 reviews on Metal Archives. Though due in part to irrelevant band drama, this state of affairs is also a genuine reaction to the band’s evolution. For years, Katatonia has been gradually introducing progressive elements into their brand of gloomy alternative rock/metal, but this album is their first belonging definitively to the progressive genre. As its critics have frequently complained, Nightmares… lacks the directness and immediacy of its catchy predecessors, City Burials and Sky Void of Stars.

Yet, while it bounced off me on a first listen, after a few more, I became quite obsessed with Nightmares… I’ve now listened to it countless times. I enjoy it best while resting on a plane, in that fugue state between waking and sleep. The album succeeds wonderfully at creating a hazy, feverish atmosphere—the title and artwork are apt—with the vocal and guitar lines flickering in and out, defying expectations and avoiding the simplistic choruses on which the band had become too reliant in recent years. That Katatonia continues to innovate within their sound so late in their career is admirable. I believe that in time this album will be recognized as among their finest.

Vauruvã – Mar da Deriva

Vauruvã and its sibling bands, Bríi and Kaatayra, play black metal melded with Brazilian country and folk music. Unlike some other attempts to combine black metal and ethnic music,¹ these are an unqualified success, achieving seamless integration rather than a mere alternation between disparate styles. As good as Mar da Deriva is, I like other releases by instrumentalist Caio Lemos even better, in particular Kaatayra’s final album, Inpariquipê. If you haven’t heard anything from this circle of bands, you’re in for a treat.

Harakiri for the Sky – Scorched Earth

Harakiri for the Sky continue to create post-black metal in its most emotive and melodic form. While Scorched Earth does not break new ground, it is flawlessly executed. With its long songs and total runtime well exceeding an hour, such an album could easily bog down, a fate suffered to some extent by its predecessor Maere, whose songs tended to blend together. Scorched Earth avoids this trap through more varied songwriting and above all through an irresistible sense of energy. From the first moments of opener “Heal Me”, the album picks you and carries you inexorably along. Even the closing cover of Radiohead’s “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” is great. Especially in the vocal style, lyrics, and song titles (“Without You I’m Just a Sad Song”, “I Was Just Another Promise You Couldn’t Keep”), the influences of hardcore and emo on Harakiri’s sound are more obvious than ever, but the delivery is so earnest that it somehow avoids being cheesy. Scorched Earth is infectious in a way that extreme metal rarely manages to be. It is easily my most listened to album of 2025, and one of my overall favorites.

Blood Abscission – II

The other post-black band on my list illustrates the surprising range of a niche subgenre.² Where Harakiri for the Sky are unrestrained and emotional, Blood Abscission are precise and mechanical. The looming pieces of machinery that adorn their albums convey well the music’s sense of dystopian futurism. Unlike some post-black bands, Blood Abscission have not forgotten the method of build up and crescendo that defined early post-rock and post-metal, but infuse it with the tempo of black metal, to great effect. Their second album, especially on the third and fifth tracks, features some truly awe-inspiring and apocalyptic crescendos. A powerful and cohesive album that does not waste a moment.

Austere – The Stillness of Dissolution

Dedicated readers might remember that I had praise for Austere’s 2023 album Corrosion of Hearts. I was less enthused about their 2024 album Beneath the Threshold, though it was hardly bad. With this year’s release, I can put the previous one in context: it was a transitionary album taking Austere from atmospheric black metal to melodic black/doom metal reminiscent of early Katatonia. The resemblance is most apparent on the aptly named second track, “Time Awry”, which, with its droning but melodic guitar work and alternating clean and harsh singing, could have been lifted straight from Katatonia’s all-time classic Brave Murder Day. That might sound dismissive, but it is very much intended as a compliment: hardly anyone (certainly not Katatonia) is keeping that sound alive, and Austere add their own embellishments from black metal. Austere’s revival in 2023 has been an unexpected boon for metal. I hope to see them continue.

Clouds – Desprins

Released to little fanfare in January, Desprins seems to have flown under the radar this year. That’s a shame, because while it’s not for everyone, Desprins is a unique and elegant album. Metal Archives lists Clouds’ genre as “atmospheric death/doom,” but I’d describe this album as funeral doom played to the accompaniment of flute. It’s a combination that shouldn’t work, but does. The only comparison that comes to mind is Shape of Despair’s debut Shades of…, whose sound was never replicated by that band or anyone else. What the two albums have in common is the paradoxical status of being funeral doom that sounds dreamy and light, rather than weighty and oppressive.

Sepulchral Curse – Crimson Moon Evocations

The magic of Crimson Moon Evocations lies in how it unites punishing blackened death metal with a strong sense of melody. It cannot be overstated: this album is heavy, its basic ingredients being pounding drums and a guitar tone that would be at home in brutal death metal. Judiciously layered over this are more melodic guitar leads, including the occasional solo. The formula is well illustrated in highlight track “House of the Black Moon”. Surprisingly uncommon in death metal today, Crimson Moon Evocations is a prime example of melodic death metal that is not melodeath.

Arkhaaik – Uihtis

A cheap way to describes this album is “Bølzer play death-doom.” While one can indeed detect Bølzer-isms in both the singing and riffing, the comparison does not do Arkhaaik justice. For one thing, I like this album better than anything Bølzer has done since Aura, their original EP. Arkhaaik are also bolder and more experimental. Within the trappings of death-doom, Uihtis seeks to recall the earliest days of humanity. And what an atmosphere it creates! Countless metal bands try to evoke a primeval or ritualistic atmosphere; unlike most of their peers, Arkhaaik actually succeed in doing so. Come for the aura, stay for the crushing doom riffs.

Smiqra – Rɡyaɡ̇dźé!

While superficially rooted in some combination of black and death metal, Smiqra defies genre classification. Metal Archives describes it simply as “avante-garde metal.” Smiqra is a one-man project by “J.L.”, better known for his work as Ὁπλίτης (aka Hoplites). For whatever reason, while I haven’t yet managed to get into Hoplites, this even wilder and more whimsical album immediately clicked with me. The pace is lightning fast, the instrumentation technical and frenetic. The ever-shifting drum patterns are especially cool. The lyrical themes are appropriately bizarre: minotaurs and… academic publishing? (“Peer Review by Oxen”, “Major Revision!”). I can’t properly convey what this sounds like, but if you’re a seeker of the weird and wonderful, give Rɡyaɡ̇dźé! a try.

Honorable mentions

Bergfried - Romantik III

Bergfried’s music seems rooted as much in pop as in metal, an impression bolstered by Anna de Savoy’s charismatic performance as lead vocalist. At least one listener has even detected ABBA-isms in this one. But make no mistake, the band’s first full-length is still very much metal, staying centered around the crucial element of any metal album: riffs. This is apparent from the electrifying opening leads of the first song, “Dark Wings,” and an anthemic and spirited style of hard rock/heavy metal is maintained throughout. If I have a complaint, it is only about the backing vocals from the band’s other member and sole instrumentalist, which are highly annoying but mercifully intrude into only a few passages.

Paradise Lost – Ascension

Hearing, for the first time, the leads in “Serpent on the Cross” and “Tyrants Serenade” put a smile on my face. Those gloomy yet catchy riffs are unmistakably Paradise Lost, and Nick Holmes, though noticeably aging, still delivers both clean and harsh vocals in good form. While Ascension is too safe and comfortable to be a truly great album, I’d recommend it without hesitation to any fan, containing as it does something from every era of the band’s long career. My favorite Paradise Lost album since Faith Divides Us, Death Unites Us.

Tribunal – In Penitence and Ruin

Gothic doom metal of the beauty-and-the-beast variety, Tribunal expand on a classic formula by incorporating cello and piano and a fabulously theatrical clean vocalist, whom I’ve heard described as a “female Messiah Marcolin.” Yet for all its melodramatic flourishes, In Penitence and Ruin is a surprisingly heavy album. If you’re imagining something like Draconian’s most recent work, think again. One of my favorite doom metal releases in 2025, just barely missing my top ten.

Hedonist – Scapulimancy

Discerning readers will notice that within extreme metal, my lists tend to favor black metal over death. One reason for this is that I find much contemporary death metal to be a little dull. There are two ways keep it exciting without leaving the confines of the subgenre: inject a healthy amount of melody (see Sepulchral Curse above) or deliver massive groove. Hedonist take the latter approach. This is mid-paced death metal in the fine tradition of Bolt Thrower, all earth-shaking groovy riffs that rumble along like a tank. While far from original, Scapulimancy is the best album I’ve heard in this style for years.

Dishonorable mention

Fluisteraars - Manifestaties van de Ontworteling

In Manifestaties…,³ Fluisteraars has taken that most dreaded step for a black metal band: released an ambient album. Is it good or bad? I couldn’t say. All I hear is wind rustling through trees. The ambient album accompanies a series of three EPs, De kronieken van het verdwenen kasteel, running from 2023 to this year. These are quite good for what they are, but with each barely reaching 15 minutes, it’s still thin gruel. I say all this out of genuine affection for the band: past works Bloem and Gegrepen door de geest der zielsontluiking, creative, wild, and exhilarating, are destined to become classics of black metal. Perhaps in 2026, Fluisteraars will return to making the music they were born to make.

Things I missed in 2024

A few excellent releases from 2024 that flew under my radar but might have made last year’s list.

Funeral – Gospel of Bones

Fittingly, Funeral was among the originators of funeral doom, with their 1995 debut Tragedies following just a year after Thergothon’s genre-defining Stream from the Heavens. Having not followed their career, I wasn’t sure what to expect from Gospel of Bones. What we find here is not funeral doom but gothic doom metal with lead vocals performed by a professionally trained baritone opera singer. I must say that my experience of this album is not unlike attending an opera: everything tends to blur together, at times receding fully into the background, but I enjoy it nonetheless. An unusual album well worth experiencing.

Filesharemaiden – Veuve

On the basis of the band name, I had dismissed Filesharemaiden as a meme band. This year I happened to hear and enjoy Luminesce’s Mirrored, an album made by the same musician, Alice Simard, under a different moniker. Having now paid proper attention to Veuve, I can confirm that it’s no joke. On the contrary, it’s excellent, if difficult to describe. The core of the sound is tech death, with all of the virtuosity that one expects from the genre and an especially magnificent and prominent performance on bass guitar, accompanied by weirder elements of avante-garde and progressive metal. Most impressive about this album is how it avoids the disjointedness so typical of tech death: Veuve is a unified composition best appreciated by a continuous listening.