It’s been said to me that metal in 2025 wasn’t as strong as people hoped. I respectfully disagree.

When I look at the long list of albums I listened to, not only was the quality at a consistently high level throughout the year, so was the memorability. I was floored by old bands who made phenomenal comebacks. I was thrilled by bands who leveled up in ways I didn’t expect. I was awed by new bands who came out of the gate swinging like they’d been in the yard for years. I swooned over discovering bands who had been around for a while, but somehow had the audacity to fly under my very sophisticated metal radar.

And in a year filled with many ups and downs, personally, professionally and politically, it was soothing to know that no matter where the life pendulum swung, I could count on spinning some savagery every week to escape. Sometimes it took some digging to unearth the best getaway gems, but if you looked hard enough; if you listened hard enough, 2025 was a very strong year.

I believe my Top 25 Albums of 2025 is an excavation site of the best musical creativity, beauty and ferocity in metal across subgenres. I’ll continue to enjoy many of these records in 2026 and there are handful I will play regularly until the end of my days.

As I have in years past, I’m delivering my favorite records with descriptions, album covers and Bandcamp links. My Top 25 Metal Albums of 2025 selections were originally revealed last week on the epic episode #164 of the Metalheads Podcast. If you have 5 hours to kill, go give that a listen.

Happy New Year, friends. I hope your 2026 brings you immense joy, serenity, love and a year of glorious metal treasures.

–MARKISAN

1/1/26

25. UNREQVITED – A Pathway to the Moon

Prophecy Productions

https://unreqvited.bandcamp.com/album/a-pathway-to-the-moon

Lush, cinematic progressive black metal and cosmic post-rock with a symphonic soul that flows with mood and emotion like the waves of a moonlit nitrogen ocean on a remote planet.

24. KRIGSGRAV – Stormcaller

Willowtip Records

https://krigsgrav.bandcamp.com/album/stormcaller

Ferocious atmospheric black metal combined with melancholic death doom that features winding tracks full of dark smoke tones, venomous hooks, demon-possessed vocals and flurries of fire-swept shredding.

23. BLUT AUS NORD – Ethereal Horizons

Debemur Morti Productions

https://blutausnord.bandcamp.com/album/ethereal-horizons

A mystic black metal journey across the cosmos, blending sinister guitars and harsh rasps with otherworldly ambiance and ethereal choruses, all layered with star bright synths, reverb and immense melodic hooks that echo across nebulas.

22. SEVEN SISTERS – Shadow of a Fallen Star, Pt.2

Cherry Red Records

https://sevensistersheavymetal.bandcamp.com/album/shadow-of-a-fallen-star-pt-2

A gorgeously crafted, twin-lead power metal starship on the far side of the universe that makes a triumphant hyperlight jump into the heart of an exploding star.

21. BREATHS – Death Can Wait

Independent Release

https://breaths.bandcamp.com/album/death-can-wait

Cascading black metal and sinuous doom that melts perfectly into the band’s shoegaze caramel center filled with sincere lyrics that long for a sweeter future in a collapsing world.

20. PUPIL SLICER – Fleshwork       

Prosthetic Records

https://pupilslicer.bandcamp.com/album/fleshwork

Blistering mathcore with a pulse of industrial chaos, mixed with progressive post-metal atmospherics, blackened textured fury and catchy, meteoric riffs that leave irradiated craters in their wake.

19. PSYCHONAUT – World Maker

Pelagic Records

https://psychonautband.bandcamp.com/album/world-maker

Sophisticated, progressive post-metal with kaleidoscopic textures, rhythmic bass currents and explosive guitar work that perfectly dissolves into tranquil introspective drifts, like taking a romantic gondola ride through a Venetian waterway.

18. STRUCTURE – Heritage

Ardua Music

https://structure-doom.bandcamp.com/album/heritage

Forlorn doom epic with kaiju-size guitar work and a heartrending atmosphere of dark sorcery that evokes the weight of legacy and mourns the absence of loved ones like a tormented specter caught in-between worlds.

17. KLPS – KLPS

These Hands Melt Records

https://kollapsemusic.bandcamp.com/album/k-l-p-s

Ferocious post-metal sludge infused with hardcore, crustpunk and doom punctuated by crackling drums and floaty ambient synths that add contrast and elegance to the album’s massive mining-truck heavy riffs.

16. CAVE SERMON – Fragile Wings

Independent Release

https://cavesermon.bandcamp.com/album/fragile-wings

Progressive and playful post-metal rippling with clever, distorted guitar sounds, energetic shifting tempos and a shimmering cavern of blackened stalactites filled with delicate emotion and melody.

15. PHRENELITH – Ashen Womb

Dark Descent Records

https://darkdescentrecords.bandcamp.com/album/ashen-womb

This album is the sound of a howling, muck-crusted ogre in an ancient city sewer, crunching snake-riddled skulls beneath its feet as it tears through a wet membrane to a netherworld of unending despair.

14. THEURGION – All Under Heaven      

Profound Lore Records

https://profoundlorerecords.bandcamp.com/album/all-under-heaven

Melancholic, goth-infused doom death with a Himalayan mountain range of riffs and passionate vocals that switch from harrowing growls to Danzig-esque power croons, creating an album of expressive gloom thunder.

13. IDLE HEIRS – Life is Violence

Relapse Records

https://idleheirs.bandcamp.com/album/life-is-violence

A creative and balanced earworm of disquieting post-metal featuring Coalesce vocalist Sean Ingram, who delivers vicious rasps and unexpected heartfelt cleans that bleed intense lyrical storytelling and vulnerability like a mortal wound seeping through a field dressing.

12. ALDER GLADE – Holocene Extinction

Orko Productions

https://orkoproductions.bandcamp.com/album/holocene-extinction

Glimmering, atmospheric black metal enchanted by a spell of haunting dark forest magic that swirls above a canopy of surging guitars, pulsing basslines and glistening wavelets of whispered keys.

11. BIANCA – Bianca

Avantgarde Music

https://avantgardemusic.bandcamp.com/album/bianca

Dynamic and brutal black metal with operatic turns down delicate phantom corridors, shrieking chambers, doom wrecked tunnelways and alluring doorways that suddenly swivel open to reveal a breath-stealing darkness.

10. AUTUMN’S DAWN – We Lost Our Hope Along the Way

Avantgarde Music

https://avantgardemusic.bandcamp.com/album/we-lost-our-hope-along-the-way

A striking ebb and flow alchemy of atmospheric black metal and 90s emo wanderlust with heavy, heartbroken guitar cries that revive memories of my rebellious youth and the anguish of old romances, while making me yearn for serenity in the unstable void of this modern world.

9. HETEROPSY – Embalming

Caligari Records

https://caligarirecords.bandcamp.com/album/embalming

Volatile, olden death doom with cavernous hooks and soiled cave troll bellows, but with luminous bursts down melodic pathways, placid moments of fear and reflection, and rocket-fueled solos that conjure the live exhilaration of a classic heavy metal band on fire.

8. CRANIAL – Structures      

Moment of Collapse Records

https://cranialband.bandcamp.com/album/structures

Devastating crash of ultra-heavy atmospheric sludge doom and brooding post-metal that lulls you in, traps your body in ghost sand then pulls your skeleton down through your meat casing with earth-sinking shatter chords.

7. STYGIAN BOUGH – Vol. II

Profound Lore Records

https://bellwitch.bandcamp.com/album/stygian-bough-volume-ii

This 2^nd album by Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin truly fulfills their collaborative potential with obsidian sharp songwriting that captures the soul-stirring doom of Bell Witch’s Longing and evokes the personal despair of Warning’s Watching From a Distance, with liquid mercury solos and tender, threadbare vocals from Erik Moggridge.

6. ANCIENT DEATH – Ego Dissolution

Profound Lore Records

https://ancient-death.bandcamp.com/album/ego-dissolution

Transportive, progressive death metal that’s equal parts technicality and introspection, laced with a verdant atmosphere of infectious guitar solos, occasional beguiling-siren vocals and a battery of low-end destruction that brittles your bones and adrenalizes your blood.

5. DEAFHEAVEN – Lonely People with Power

Roadrunner Records

A gorgeously crafted, cohesive synthesis of Deafheaven’s entire catalog, combining black metal ferocity, intimate shoegaze and scorching atmospheric post-rock with a synth-kissed sheen to create a blackgaze classic.

4. COLTSBLOOD – Obscured Into Nebulous Dusk

Translation Loss Records

https://coltsblood.bandcamp.com/album/obscured-into-nebulous-dusk

Glacial, ritualistic blackened sludge doom that conjures nightmarish images of a world slowly devoured by a spiraling black hole where all the broken architecture and shattered bodies collected from previous collapsed dimensions swirl lifeless in the dark space… waiting.

3. AN ABSTRACT ILLUSION – The Sleeping City

Willowtip Records

https://anabstractillusion.bandcamp.com/album/the-sleeping-city

Gorgeous, dynamic progressive death that weaves layers of heaviness with an engrossing sound palette of soaring melodies, geysers of atmosphere and icy bladerunner synth into a concise and elegant sci-fi metal masterpiece.

2. OROMET – The Sinking Isle    

Transylvanian Recordings

https://transylvanianrecordings.bandcamp.com/album/oromet-the-sinking-isle

A cataclysmic eruption of molten funeral doom that flows in emotional and melodic currents like lava sheets, sliding down a hillside toward a quiet seaside village of sleeping townsfolk, who dream of sun-drenched morning waves and handheld walks on the shore just moments before they’re incinerated.

1. BA’AL – The Fine Line Between Heaven and Here

Road to Masochist Records

https://baalbanduk.bandcamp.com/album/the-fine-line-between-heaven-and-here

Colossal, blackened post-metal with some of the most beautiful and effortless emotional shifts in orchestration I’ve heard in metal. From bombastic world-ending ruin to feather-light sentimental landslides, there’s an intense feeling of vulnerability and a raw, heart-rending disclosure to this album that makes me remember the moments in my life that hurt me, or challenged me, or made the world seem at once smaller and bigger than I imagined. The music is grand, passionate and brutal, and the agile vocal delivery by Joe Stamps – who moves from screams, to death roars, to quivering 90s emo croons – exquisitely enhances the sincerity and fervent might of every song. The Fine Line Between Heaven and Here is the most compelling and essential album of 2025. It stays with me long after I listen.