“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”
Dissidence – Seven Crosses Impaled: Blending old school melodic Swedish death metal forms and the faster styles of New World underground metal like Mortem or Krisiun, Dissidence builds on its roots of melody with abrupt but precise riffs that project an atmosphere unique to the band.
***
Beherit – Live in Praha CZ: Featuring songs from its first two albums and epic late-career resurrection Engram, this live set eschews the muddy grinding sound of early Beherit for the clearer, higher-tuned approach used on more recent releases, but does credit to the old material with unrelenting streamlined versions of the classics.
***
Imprecation – Vomitum Tempestas: Showcases Imprecation at their strongest since 2012’s Jehovah Denied, using texture more aggressively and building songs from arcologies of riffs that slowly distill into verse-chorus loops less based on vocals and more on guitar work.
***
Tenebro – Un lama d’argento: This album combines the dynamics of black metal with an Incantation/Asphyx/Immolation approach that brings lots of tasty surging riffs while at the same time building songs out of the conflict of these riffs, making for an album that is inscrutable to 90% of the listening audience at this time.
***
Thaumaturgy – Pestilential Hymns: Thaumaturgy fuses an Immolation sense of harmony with the raw chromatic rushing power of an Incantation or Obituary, tunneling deep into a density of sound with multiple internal breaks creating a running dialogue.
***
Kaeck – Gruwelijk Onthaal: Elements of primitive death metal riffing re-arranged into subtlety and set into song structures that are like short folktales of conflict, each bending raw sound into a story that drops from bursting energy to enduring atmosphere.
***
Cryoxyd – …This World We Live In: On the surface very much in love with the Testimony of the Ancients era Pestilence, this band injects a sensibility of moods more like the technical albums from Immolation and Gorguts, replacing a frenetic urgency with more varied tempi and therefore, more adaptive riffing.
***
RIP to: Nisse Karlén, Ozzy Osbourne, Thomas Lindberg, and Jill Funerus.
Tags: 2025, best of, Black Metal, death metal
Speaking of Thomas Lindberg, If you like that funderground classic “Terminal Spirit Disease” where they were trying to be weaker Dissection far away from the Red Sky is ours, you’re going to love Nightrage – Sweet Vengeance.
“Viking History” is Wakanda for white people.
I honestly don’t care, I am focussing on the future – what I am now. I will not stagnate, and continually evolve.
One of those things happened and existed in reality. The other did not
mock Christ
exile Leftists
Not Lethal Prayer’s new album?
Thought you loved that shit, bro.
Dear Brett:
What is your opinion on Nick Fuentes ?
Report Nick Fuentes to ICE at (866) 347-242
Quality over quantity. At least there was some actual death metal this year. Cheers Brett.
“RIP to: Nisse Karlén, Ozzy Osbourne, Thomas Lindberg, and Jill Funerus”
I can understand no Ace Frehley and Brent Hinds, but no love for Ragne Wahlquist or Kevin Riddles?
Who?
Heavy Load guitarist and Angel Witch bassist, respectively.
Diabolic Messiah of the New World Order
by OMEGAVORTEX
This site’s editors have (mostly) never been fans of this band, but I still think that this is easily the album of the year, taking the lessons of the shorter songs from Morbid Angel’s “Abominations of Desolation” using rhythmic similarities within riffs to create song identities in material that is otherwise very similar in mood and structure, and then marrying it with the melodic and rhythmic freedom that Necrovore and Fallen Christ respectively gave the death metal genre in songs that express cosmic horror in an interestingly and exhiliratingly nihilistic way, with the horror of an uncaring universe imploding on itself being an exciting birthing ground for new opportunities. Criticisms of uniformity in mood creating “the same song 10 times” dissolve in an analytic light when the internal secondary rhythms are played off of the structures; criticisms of academic sterility fail in material that’s this innately exciting and, if I dare use the word in a world where the anti-mosh motto has been well established, “fun”.
Seconded. Omegavortex is definitely something. Arguably one of the best bands from this style of some sort of developement of warmetal. It is clearly trying work with what seemingly was a starting point and a default style of underground metal for newer generation and to advance it by actually reintroducing some of the important accomplishments of earlier styles.
It’s crap. (Sorry)
might be tolerable if they just decided to make powerviolence
I haven’t heard this year’s release yet, but their earlier material made them one of the bands about which I felt that it is worth to keep an eye on.
Listening to the first song from the new album.
Sounds like a less talented/more riff salad Angelcorpse.
I’m guessing you’ve never heard Angelcorpse in your life, then?
Can we go back to the era of Sarcofago, Blasphemy, and Merciless, and try again? Deathsiege is pretty cool though.
NWNumetal Hot Hits ’25
Great list. What does everyone think of Mages Terror – Damnation’s Sight (2024)?
Sucks.
Missed these:
Medico Peste – Aesthetic Of Hunger
Volaha – Popol Vuh
Havukruunu – Tavastland
Esoctrilihum – Ghostigmatah: Spiritual Rites of the Psychopomp Abxulöm
Thanks Brett – always to be consulted at Christmas time.
Until I get that CNN chyron of “Christmas Expert,” my life is unfulfilled!