As a consequence of a few rough years and the steadily increasing feeling that my life is drifting off course, I decided to make a change in 2025 so I moved to studying full time in an effort to eventually switch my profession to something that boosts my creativity rather than stifle it. My recent downtime on the blog has been the effect of needing to focus all of my attention on this new direction, and this has also led to less consumption of new music. But that only means that rather than listen to a thousand albums this year, I’ve settled for about half of that. Furthermore, it’s made me appreciate the albums that don’t waste my time even more, leading to this list of fourteen albums that draw me in with each fresh spin. “Is that why all of the albums on your list are brown or yellow?” – you might ask, dear reader, to which I have no sensible answer. But I am sure that when these albums finish with you, you too will be brown and yellow from the beating they deal out. Here is the music I enjoyed in 2025, without compromise.
Street Sects released both the best industrial album of 25 (we'll get back to that later) and the best synth pop album (meaning the only one I listened to, yes) with spinoff act Street Sex. It's the same two guys making what is essentially the same kind of music with a distinct change in direction. It's much catchier than their main act but still manages to have a similar bite, and its hooks don't let go. With songs providing a lighter roasting of happy topics such as millenials who don't want to have kids, record execs stealing your legacy and fair wage, and sticking your phone up your ass, Full Color Eclipse does hit different. It's a great companion piece to their main act that hooks, amuses, and addicts in equal measure.
Combining brutal death metal and grind with denpa is a stupid fucking idea. So why is it that I've been unable to throw this album out of my rotation for almost a year? It's both fun and competent, that's why, and I'll die on this hill. The metal parts are well executed and so finely tuned to go together with the insufferably happy denpa parts of the songs that it feels like these people were born to play this music. Pig squelas fly left and right, a lady sings cheesy-happy vocal lines only to join in with the growling and screaming, chiptune is tackled by muscular double kicks, and so on. It never fails to put a smile on my face and sometimes that's all you need.
To make a good pure heavy metal album nowadays you need to either do something novel like what Unto Others are doing, or you need to do what's come before exceptionally well. Tower fall in the latter category. Let There Be Dark reminds me a lot of early Iron Maiden, before the punk had completely drained from their sound. Sarabeth Linden has a similar quality to that of Bruce Dickinson in that her voice has a lot of power and character, and she is one of the main points that makes Tower's style soar. But there are a lot of quality heavy metal riffs on this album, played with just the right amount of urgency that they gain some of that sense of "danger" that made classic heavy metal so fun to listen to.
Accusations of fanboying aside (disproving my guilt by doubling down here), Paradise Lost's output has been nothing but consistent as the band continue to evolve past the midpoint of their fourth decade. The fact that they can continue to find new wrinkles of their established sound on their 17th release is amazing enough, but that they do so with this kind of subtlety is something else entirely. Ascension benefits from the longest pause between albums the band have ever taken, going in a direction that combines their dour trademark doom with a more traditional metal-leaning direction. While the gothic part of the equation is still there, it's subdued and takes a step back. Aeron Aedy's presence is felt more here than I can remember for the last few albums, and this lends the guitar parts on Ascension a different character than Paradise Lost's usual fare. This switch up has been much needed despite the last few albums hitting the mark more often than not. It's great to see the band are still in such good form, still producing albums that make me feel that memento mori all over again.
I should have spent more time with Tooth and Nail, but I kept wishing for it to be just a bit more dynamic in production and writing. However, the more I listen to it the more it opens up to reveal well thought out details under its punishing death march. There's a dark cloud of tragedy that hangs over Tooth and Nail's guitar leads that worms its way under my skin each time I put it on. It's a trait that bleeds into every performance, from the vocals to the overall song progression, and this makes the album even heavier than its individual parts make it seem. I'm reminded of how the post-influenced genres of metal slowly build up songs with steady shifts in the riffs, but done by a death metal band more intent on pummeling. That makes it a harder album to parse completely, but also one that doesn't necessarily need to be understood as much as felt. Likewise, the bass provides the record a low rumble that makes it more intense than it already would be with the all-out drum assault. It's a pure shot of hate-crying-in-the-shower adrenaline that is hard to put down once it gets going.
Walk Beyond the Dark was a banger of an album that took me a long time to understand. After all, atmospheric black metal is usually something that I bounce off because of the genre's overindulgence with song lengths and riffs repeated ad nauseam. When done well, however, it can be a compelling thing with well planned moments bleeding emotion. Abigail Williams accomplished this then, as they do now on A Void Within Existence, by making Mike Heller's drums the beating heart. His intricate fills and creative drumming allows the music to take its time exploring without the risk of things becoming rote. Couple a rawer focus on the black metal side of the band's songwriting with overall shorter songs leading the first half of the album and you've got a black metal album that travels across a great trajectory, becoming more atmospheric as it goes along. While different from Walk Beyond the Dark, I found this album to be a grower that I kept coming back to because of this structure.
Shoegaze, like post-rock, is a genre that fails to stick each time I try to get into it. It might have to do with the aim of the genres being antithetical to what I enjoy in music: directed songwriting. I can only conclude that too much direction is hard when making music that's meant to be airy and textural, but that's why it's such a surprise to me when I couldn't stop going back to Slow Crush's latest album, Thirst, even finding it creeping up my list of 2025 favorites. In essence, trying to understand why this is the case comes down to looking at what genres Slow Crush play around with: shoegaze, post rock, and grunge. Thirst picks and chooses the best elements, playing with textures of shoegaze, dirtying them up with the heft and instrumentality of grunge, while also working towards the post rock climaxes in measured amounts. It does all this without overstaying its welcome, as most post influenced things do. The result is an album that washes over you when you aren't paying attention, but grabs hold of you once you start to acknowledge it. This is a potent combination that keeps me coming back to it despite being outside of my wheelhouse of genres. Best shoe I've gazed in, would look again.
Who releases an album this good at the ass end of the year? Half expecting a tiring disso-fest when pressing play (though I know this band makes some good stuff), I was floored by how good the...softer progressive parts are. Precipice is a weird album in that it features some expectedly heavy material, but it's how the songs connect from point A to B with its progressive aspects that makes it stand out. It almost feels wrong to call it a progressive death metal album, because the weight given to its classical and jazz influences feels just as important. Starting with the roomy production, each element of this album breathes, and Lychgate have dialed back the organ so that it isn't as overpowering as it could be in their previous work. A jazzy sense of psychedelia lets the songs wander in their cold labyrinths before the Minotaur bursts through a wall with its thrashy death metal riffing. I can't recall hearing an album as alien in its intentions as this since maybe Ingurgitating Oblivion's album from last year, but similarly, a lot of the inspiration seems to have been sourced from old literature and philosophy. Don't sleep on Precipice because it released mid-December, or it will find you in the labyrinth of your dreams.
All the way back in January, Uuliata Digir popped out of nowhere and served up a hybrid album of sludgy death metal cross-bred with Dead Can Dance and Heilung, that made me giggle at the thought of Brendan Perry doing death roars and Lisa Gerard doing black metal shrieks. That is, until I choked on that laughter when it proved to be a fantastic hybrid of genres I never knew I wanted to hear. Uulliata Digir have a sound that keeps the tension high and takes on a ritualistic feel, like the aforementioned Heilung, which then allows the creeping death metal to crash through like a train ramming into its next station. There is a rare cohesion here that's remarkable for a debut album in how each member of the band sets up the atmosphere and complements each other, even when the songs go riff-forward. While there are stops into headbang territory, this album is one of those that sweep you up in its highly organic structure and ends like a trance before you know it's over. I will never underestimate Polish new age music again.
Nine times out of ten, re-recordings are bullshit. The other time is Sigh, who apparently don't do things in half measures. I Saw the World's End has a different name, because it's clearly a different album than the original Hangman's Hymn. Every performance is re-recorded, new elements have been added in the writing (like the fantastic session drumming by Mike Heller, that makes the album hit like a ton of bricks), and the audio is tuned so that the compositions take on a completely different color and clarity. Where Hangman's Hymn is a bombastic and theatrical orchestral metal album, I Saw the World's End is a blackened thrash album that's backed by classical music, and that is where the compositions excel. An album that I never reach for because of its terrible production is now one of my go to Sigh albums, and it proves Mirai Kawashima's point that these are some of his best compositions. But more importantly, it's great to hear Sigh sound this vicious three decades into their career. Since they put out Scenes From Hell back in 2010 it feels like they are becoming the best version of themselves with each new release. And now, when things like production and a greater sense of cohesion between writing and pure musical skill seem to be converging like never before, they're again set to become what they've always been, for years to come.
1914 have two great skills that they keep honing in their work. They have a keen sense of how to make a peanut butter & jelly combo of death and doom metal, to the point where it feels like genres meld and I can call them either. Then there's the emotion. A lot of death metal bands cover war in their theme and lyrics. 1914 makes you feel the weight of these themes like few bands can, focusing on the emotion, the terror, and the hopelessness of small people being swept up by the currents of history. Nowhere is this as clear as in Viribus Unitis, a concept album about a Ukrainian soldier's journey through the first world war, a topic that hits in both a historical and contemporary sense. It's this storytelling that shines through in the album's trajectory that makes this release special and sets 1914 apart from bands that are content to rehash old Bolt Thrower riffs or Amon Amarth barrages. Viribus Unitis hits differently from the rest of the band's body of work, with its songs' united narrative direction setting it apart not only lyrically, but in the music's cohesive tone across the album. As does its bold gamble to let the doom influence lead its final suite of songs — a tell tale sign that 1914 are one of those bands that aren't content releasing the same album again and again.
It's easy to be cynical about favorite bands changing up their formula. On the one hand they should always pursue the art that makes it all worth it for them. But on the other hand they might move past what you appreciate about them in the first place. Imperial Triumphant is not the first band to streamline their style, but few ever manage to do it as well as this, and it was fully needed as Spirit of Ecstasy seemed to hit an opaque dead end for the band's previous trajectory. But Goldstar is more than a trimmed down mainstream death metal affair. It shows that what really matters about the band, their intricate attention to detail, personality and subtle sense of humor, is wholly intact. It snuck up on me exactly how listenable and "unlistenable" this album is simultaneously. It's very easy to have on whether you're paying attention to or not, but during each spin new details leak through like a neon sign breaking through the pouring rain of their Noir York City. With another top tier gold star on their belt, I look forward to seeing how these creative guys keep developing. Smokin' kills, but with Goldstar it's easy to see why a pack a day is a thing.
Effectively my metal album of the year, Changeling surprised me by putting out a progressive death metal album that is actually...you know, progressive. Each of its tracks has a story to tell without losing cohesiveness across a whole hour. As I clumsily stated in my writer's blocked-review, it's an album focused on sustaining tension, only allowing release from it sparingly, with purpose. This is somewhat antithetical to most popular albums in the genre, that are overly focused on being palatable or else serving as vehicles for its musicians to showboat. That isn't to say that Changeling have no chops, they absolutely do, but the fact that it's all in service to clear meticulously written songs raises it higher. I can't heap enough praise at songwriters that pay attention to the album structure as well as the individual songs they're writing, but the performances on Changeling also shouldn't be ignored: vocalist Morean puts on one of the most creative performances of his career, and Mike Heller yet again hammers out a complex drum performance that lifts everything around it (that's three for three for this guy). Tom "Fountainhead" Geldschläger's and Arran McSporran's fretless gymnastics also raises its technical pedigree to soaring heights, proving that you can, in fact, be indulgent and write good albums at the same time. Changeling is a stunning monolith of a debut that deserves attention for choosing the path less traveled, and beating the perfection game by releasing in great form.
The writing was on the wall when Skinny Puppy failed to release a follow up to their 2013's Weapon during the 10's, yet it still hurt when they folded ten years. Most of the electro industrial genre seems to content to rehash the same techno tropes of yester-year, but that's only part of why Street Sects feel so vital as a future torchbearer of the genre. They have now released what is possibly my favorite industrial album since the 90's. Dry Drunk sits at a near perfect crossroads of electro-industrial, power electronics, and hardcore punk, mugging anyone who has the misfortune of passing by so it can pay for its next hit. The fact that it covers so much ground with its poppy refrains, electronic interludes, samples of electric screwdrivers, and all out noise barrages in its tight 39 minute runtime speaks volumes about how finely tuned this album really is. Like the thermal runaway in an electric car battery fire, it erupts again and again with blinding intensity, and I just have to let it burn out on its own each time I hit play. A perfect representation of 2025.
