2025 begone! We’ve finally hit the end of the year, and with it our mega round-ups of all that has been great in the past twelve months. It’s been a big year for metal – Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne bowed for the final time with a massive hometown gig in Birmingham, only for the Prince Of Darkness to pass away just 17 days later.
But it wouldn’t do to dwell on the doom and gloom – we also saw two new metal number ones this year from Ghost and Sleep Token (you can read about those below), plus massive shows by everyone from Ice Nine Kills and Sabaton to Deftones, Halestorm, Iron Maiden and Spiritbox, all playing at both arena and stadium levels.
We’ve also seen some serious step-ups from metal’s next generation with exciting new bands creating ripples across the board, be they deathcore heavyweights Lorna Shore or doom metal warriors Castle Rat. Below you’ll find the official Metal Hammer albums of the year, as voted for by our wonderful staff and pool of freelance writers. Read on to find out if there’s any great new releases you might’ve missed.
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Metal Hammer’s 50 best metal albums of 2025: 50 – 4150. Slomatics – Atomicult (Majestic Mountain)
(Image credit: Majestic Mountain/Press)
Twenty years and eight albums in, this Belfast sludge trio know their strengths, and deployed them all here with satisfying force and seasoned discipline. Cosmic void-headed lyrics, heaving dinosaurian riff constellations, mad-professor synth experiments, stretchy fuzz tones, hammering backbones: all forces aligned to help Atomicult’s 40 minutes fly by, however slowly. The nasal operatics of Marty Harvey’s shamanic wail took us even further into the ether, the singing drummer whacking the high notes with both emotional intensity and a cool poise.
(Image credit: Press/Century Media)
Three decades in, Lacuna Coil are still finding new weight in their sound. Sleepless Empire deepened the shadows they reclaimed with Black Anima – a confident stride into heavier, more cinematic territory that played to all their talents. This 10th album balanced punishing grooves and drama with the melodic precision that defined their rise. Radiating renewed conviction and focus, it was proof that their creative pulse remained as strong as ever.
Lacuna Coil – I WISH YOU WERE D3AD (Official Music Video) – YouTube
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48. Katatonia – Nightmares As Extensions Of The Waking State (Napalm)
(Image credit: Napalm Records)
Despite the departure of founder member Anders Nyström, Katatonia maintained their high standards on their 13th studio album. Fervently experimental, but still bursting with gorgeous tunes, Nightmares… lived up to its title and made gentle moves into fresh territory, not least with Efter Solen, a ballad sung in Swedish, and Warden, one of the darkest songs in their repertoire. Thirty-four years after emerging from Stockholm’s shadows, Katatonia proved, again, that metal can be beautiful.
47. Testament – Para Bellum (Nuclear Blast)
(Image credit: Press/Nuclear Blast)
More than 40 years in, Testament are still relentless in their pursuit of boots-onpunters’-necks thrash brutality bevelled by an enduring touch of class. Para Bellum wove innate ferocity and outside influences – black metal atonality in For The Love Of Pain, synthetic orchestration in Meant To Be, jazzy bass counterpoint throughout – with huge melodic choruses, topped by more livewire energy than any band that’s existed since 1983 should have without special permission.
46. Beyond Extinction – Where They Gather (Self-Released)
(Image credit: Press/Beyond Extinction)
Centred around the concept of the last city on Earth, Beyond Extinction’s debut was an extreme metal triumph – a deathcore record so feral and untamed it had the potential to become a scene standout. Much of its ferocity lay in the bludgeoning delivery, spurred on by the heartache of the passing of their guitarist, Zach Scott. 2026 should be a breakout year for a young band full of determination and venom.
45. Paleface Swiss – Cursed (Self-Released)
(Image credit: Press/Paleface Swiss)
Given their biblically brutal earlier work, Paleface Swiss seemed unlikely candidates for breakout success. Granted, Cursed was less unhinged, but it was still heavy as hell and thrillingly unpredictable, chucking nu metal, hip hop, grunge and an unexpected amount of melody into their savage blend of deathcore, thrash and hardcore.
Paleface Swiss – River Of Sorrows (Official Music Video) – YouTube
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44. Wytch Hazel – V: Lamentations (Bad Omens)
(Image credit: Bad Omen)
Colin Hendra’s troupe of wandering minstrels have been the gift that keeps on giving for 10 years, and V was another meticulous reassertion of their magical songcraft. The emollient nature of Wytch Hazel’s perky, folky, time-warped proto-metal was boldly attested by goosebump-inducing closer Healing Power, neatly summating the strength of their music’s profound emotional pull. Themes of spiritual struggle, doubt and despair maintained a melancholic darkness in the midst of all the wholesome, motivational jubilance.
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43. Vukovi – My God Has Got A Gun (Sharptone)
(Image credit: Press/Sharptone)
‘This is my life and my trauma.’ So declared Vukovi vocalist Janine Shilstone at the top of her band’s fourth full-length. But rather than sounding like a tortured baring of the soul, My God Has Got A Gun thrummed with a defiant energy that turned each track into an anthem of empowerment. It didn’t hurt that the album had some of the catchiest hooks this side of a I Know What You Did Last Summer sequel, and gargantuan riffs to match.
(Image credit: Press/Century Media)
The third album from these punk-infused thrashers continued their Wild West-set tale of doomed preachers and mysterious portals, and was a delicious slice of macabre Americana, loaded with pummelling pit anthems and sharp left turns that saw Stu Folsom and his rhinestone-loving cowboys from Hell explore new musical frontiers. The surf rock-meets-Slayer mash-up Abilene Grime was a blast, while the cowpunk-flavoured, gang vocals-driven Bird Song Of Death was gloriously crazed.
41. Machine Head – Unatoned (Nuclear Blast)
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If 2022’s Of Kingdom And Crown put Machine Head firmly back on track, Unatoned seemed to make the move permanent. Blessed with some of the heaviest and catchiest songs the Oakland heavyweights have ever recorded, the album streamlined the brutal excesses of its predecessor, going straight for the jugular and aiming squarely at the circle-pit. Unbound and Bonescraper were the most obvious bangers, but from the exhilarating Outsider to the crestfallen closing ballad Scorn, every song smashed the bullseye.
MACHINE HEAD – ØUTSIDER (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO) – YouTube
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Metal Hammer’s 50 best metal albums of 2025: 50 – 4140. Der Weg Einer Freiheit – Innern (Season Of Mist)
(Image credit: Press/Season Of Mist)
With Innern, Der Weg Einer Freiheit delivered black metal’s response to pumpkin spice latte season. Everything about the German quartet’s sixth full-length evoked frosty mornings and dry leaves underfoot, whether that was Tobias Schuler’s impelling shift behind the drum-kit or the luscious, post-punk leanings of closing track Forlorn. The record had lava leaking from its windpipe and blastbeats for days, but never shied from the emotional devastation that’s become DWEF’s trademark. Innern had the guts, grief and gravitas to rival Deafheaven’s best.
39. Margarita Witch Cult – Strung Out In Hell (Heavy Psych Sounds)
(Image credit: Press/Heavy Psych Sounds)
Anyone looking for a new set of raucous riff-slingers following the dissolution of Orange Goblin could do worse than checking out Margarita Witch Cult. On this, their second outing, they ranged from Sabbathian proto-doom to rollicking stoner grooves, all with a dash of Uncle Acid-style psychotic psychedelia. The basic elements were certainly familiar, but the Birmingham trio added their own distinct flavour to this delicious sonic cocktail.
MARGARITA WITCH CULT – Witches’ Candle // HEAVY PSYCH SOUNDS Records – YouTube
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38. Hexvessel – Nocturne (Prophecy Productions)
(Image credit: Press/Prophecy Productions)
On 2023’s Polar Veil, after a career flitting between tree-huggy acid folk and doomy retro psych rock, Mat McNerney’s muchloved troubadours shifted their MO to an eerie black metal framework. Nocturne perfected that blend, presenting a wintry folk horror milieu rooted like skeletal oaks in dormant woodland, arcane and rustic atmospheres gone disturbingly wonky and woozy. After one fire-spitting scream, portentous clean-voiced chants and wounded croons echoed hauntingly across the centuries, and Hexvessel’s various strands were pulled together in ugly/beautiful symbiosis.
37. Jonathan Hultén – Eyes Of The Living Night (Kscope)
(Image credit: Press/KScope)
Jonathan Hultén’s second solo album proper saw the former Tribulation guitarist journeying deeper into the realms of ethereal folk, but this time he drew on a broader canvas than 2020’s more stripped-back, solitary-sounding Chants From Another Place. Eyes Of The Living Night had a grand majesty to its arrangements that deepened the beauty and elegance in Jonathan’s melodies. Synths, electric guitars, organs, electronic beats and even glockenspiels fleshed out his vision, drawing us into a fully formed world.
(Image credit: Press/Century Media)
These melodic death metal Swedes have been on a seriously hot streak over their last few albums, but, even by the high standards they’d already set, Death Above Life was a jaw-dropping, face-melter of a record. Packed to the brim with savage riffs, pummelling rhythms and the kind of hooks In Flames used to make in their peak years, this was as good an example of technically dizzying melodeath as you could ever wish to hear in the modern era.
ORBIT CULTURE – Hydra (OFFICIAL VIDEO) – YouTube
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35. Deaduy – Near-Death Travel Services (Relapse)
(Image credit: Press/Relapse)
For a band that threw in the towel 28 years ago to rise from the ashes and deliver a caustic shotgun blast of metallic hardcore excellence in 2025 was a true stranger-than-fiction moment. Near-Death Travel Services sculpted Deadguy’s charming contempt for mankind into cogent singalong missives, as musical maturity squeezed present-day poise out of 90s noise to create 11 punishing and anthemic rallying cries designed to forcefully get into – or crush – your head.
34. Calva Louise – Edge Of The Abyss (Mascot)
(Image credit: Press/Mascot)
Four albums in, Calva Louise found their voice. Folding in disparate sounds ranging from jazz and EDM to metalcore and alt rock, Edge Of The Abyss emerged as a wholly unique chimerical creation, held together by the potent vocal acrobatics of Jess Allanic. As songs pinballed from gleefully hyperactive to gorgeously grandiose and crushingly brutal, Calva Louise were clearly thriving on not letting anyone second-guess where they might go next, be it a dancefloor-filling beat or a belting singalong chorus.
33. Gaahls Wyrd – Braiding The Stories (Season Of Mist)
(Image credit: Press/Season Of Mist)
It’s always heartening when an established artist goes out on a limb instead of resting on their laurels. For his second album ’neath the Wyrd banner, former Gorgoroth gargler Gaahl pulled out all the stops as he explored the world of dreams and the subconscious. While you were never too far from a jagged riff or nape-prickling solo, the band exploded ever outwards, Gaahl stretching the limits of his voicebox while his comrades picked through prog, folk and goth influences to craft something aweinspiringly cinematic.
32. Propaghandi – At Peace (Epitaph)
(Image credit: Press/Epitaph)
One of the most underrated bands going, Propagandhi have pushed punk rock forward for 40 years. At Peace was another evolutionary statement, with such grooving songs as Cat Guy owing more to Judas Priest than to D.O.A.. At the same time, Chris Hannah’s lyrics stayed as incisive as ever. Observations on climate change, incels and the rise of fascist dictatorships proved that this lot have never lifted their fingers off the cultural pulse, no matter how much their style has changed over the years.
31. Malevolence – Where Only The Truth Is Spoken (Nuclear Blast)
(Image credit: Press/Nuclear Blast)
The quality of Malevolence’s back catalogue was already sky high, but even by the Sheffield crew’s lofty standards, they crushed it with Where Only The Truth Is Spoken. There were no curveballs here. No bells or whistles. From hulking opener Blood To The Leech, this was just Malevolence doing what Malevolence do best, dropping banger after groovy, metallic banger, this time with pristine production from Lamb Of God and Korn producer Josh Wilbur. Zero skips.
MALEVOLENCE – So Help Me God (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO) – YouTube
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Metal Hammer’s 50 best metal albums of 2025: 30 – 2130. Cwfen – Sorrows (New Heavy Sounds)
(Image credit: Press/New Heavy Sounds)
wfen’s debut album belonged to a twilight realm, and it sounded like they had been inhabiting it since time immemorial. Beginning with a ghostly march, Sorrows merged gothic doom and radioactive post-punk riffs, enervation and enlightenment, like it was burdened with a dark secret. Agnes Alder’s unearthly yet authoritative vocals carried a slow-burning power, but the volatile trawl of Wolfsbane and lustrous phosphor blooms of Whispers revealed a songwriting mastery. These were anthems displaced onto a more glacial, majestic timeframe.
29. Sleep Token – Even In Arcadia (RCA)
(Image credit: Press/RCA)
Sleep Token’s fourth album didn’t quite reach the same heights as their 2023 career-defining magnum opus, Take Me Back To Eden, but it did continue to deliver the emotionally driven, genre-transcending metal that has captivated fans in their millions. While Infinite Baths was easily one of the heaviest tracks the band had ever made, Caramel offered a tantalising peek behind the mask, exploring the harsh reality of fame. Even In Arcadia was another intriguing release from the biggest metallic band in a generation.
Sleep Token – Caramel – YouTube
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28. Backxwash – Only Dust Remains (Ugly Hag)
(Image credit: Press/Ugly Hag)
On this, her fifth release, ZambianCanadian rapper Backxwash eschewed the harsh industrial metal of her previous trilogy of albums for a lusher, more soulful and more traditional hip hop soundscape. Borrowing from the cut’n’paste production style of Kayne West, Only Dust Remains was lighter in sound, but just as revealing and cutting in tone and message. The impressive result was a fascinating juxtaposition in sound and style – on one hand beautifully soaring and on the other still gnashing with rage. A sublime reinvention.
27. Agriculture – The Spiritual Sound (The Flenser)
(Image credit: Press/The Flenser)
With so much woe in the world, it’s always a relief to have heavy metal to turn to: the sense of community it offers, and the chance to give yourself over to timehonoured rituals. No one knows this quite like Agriculture, whose second album channelled fury, sorrow, joy and hope as they sought to transport you beyond the workaday. Combining jagged black metal with elements of shoegaze, slowcore and post-rock, the Los Angeles quartet crafted something meditative, absorbing and thoroughly atypical.
26. Blood Vulture – Die Close (Pure Noise)
(Image credit: Press/Pure Noise)
Trading corpsepaint for corpses, Jordan Olds – aka YouTube star Gwarsenio Hall – debuted his musical project with an ambitious concept album about a vampire reckoning with the realities of immortality. Two-parts proggy Mastodon sludge, one-part Type O-style goth metal, the resulting concoction made great use of Jordan’s celebrity connections from his time with Two Minutes To Late Night with appearances from Brian Fair, Steven Brodsky, Jade Puget and Kristin Hayter to craft a spell of gothic melancholia worthy of Dracula.
25. Halestorm – Everest (Atlantic)
(Image credit: Atlantic)
Halestorm have done more than most to keep classic hard rock and metal alive in the 21st Century. Their basic formula of big riffs and bigger hooks has taken them to stadiums, but on sixth album Everest they took a different route to the summit. It was recognisably the same band, but with more variety in the songwriting and reflective lyrics informed by frontwoman Lzzy Hale’s struggles with mental health and sobriety. Everest still rocked, but in a less predictable way.
Halestorm – Darkness Always Wins (Official Music Video) – YouTube
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24. Rwake- The Return Of Magick (Relapse)
(Image credit: Press/Relapse)
Like your dodgy uncle, Rwake had been ‘away for a while’. Rather than serving time in the big house, however, we assume these drug-fucked sludgers had spent the years lost in the Arkansas wilderness, living off the land, draped in ragged animal pelts and devising a new religion with the assistance of ‘herbal remedies’. The Return Of Magik oozed sickness and ill-ease, but also a malignant kind of spirituality – a rare effort that was equal parts Sabbath lunge and strange, backwoods mysticism.
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Bands have been blending death metal with progressive ideas for decades, but few have achieved the dazzling symbiosis that blossomed on Rivers Of Nihil. Self-titled for a reason, this was the Pennsylvania band’s most focused and accessible work, with songs that dared to dream beyond the prog metal norm. The whole record sounded huge and undeniable, with adventurous centrepiece Water & Time and the fiery fracas of American Death standing out as the sharpest blades in a magical box.
22. Bloodywood -Nu Delhi (Fearless)
(Image credit: Press/Fearless)
The nu metal revival is in full swing, but while many have adopted the sonics of Korn and Deftones, none have managed to give the style such a drastic refresh as Bloodywood. Mixing Bhangra, folk, hip hop and groove metal, Nu Delhi maintained the explosion of flavours that defined 2022’s Rakshak, Bloodywood sounding just as fired up celebrating national cuisine with Tadka as they were on the rallying call-to-arms against oppression, Halla Bol, examining life and cultural identity in India in 2025
21. Havukruunu – Tavastland (Naturmacht)
(Image credit: Press/Naturmacht)
These Finnish black metal visionaries delivered an invocatory masterwork steeped in fire, frost and ancestral memory. Across its storm-lit expanse, the quartet channelled grandeur and grief, weaving martial riffs and folk-tinged melody into a towering hymn of defiance. From the surging Kuolematon Laulunhenki to the mournful title track, Tavastland carried the weight of history, where riffs felt like thunder and vocals like war cries echoed through pine and snow. Proof that the old gods still breathe through distortion and flame.
Metal Hammer’s 50 best metal albums of 2025: 20 – 1120. Blackbraid – Blackbraid III (Self-Released)
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This one-man project exploded into metal’s consciousness just three years ago, with a stunning debut that lived up to the surrounding hype. Since then, the output has only improved. III was still feral black metal at its core, but imbued with a crunching swagger, melodies, and blazing solos that would have had the class of ’91 sneering down their corpsepainted noses. There was also a rich atmosphere and Native American themes, setting Blackbraid a class apart in modern black metal.
(Image credit: Press/Century Media)
A trifling 32 years after their last album was released, Coroner returned with the thrash album of 2025. Always weirder and more adventurous than their peers, the revived Swiss trio were in an uncompromising mood on Dissonance Theory. Brutal, twisted and reassuringly strange, their new songs had stellar riffs galore, and frontman Ron Broder sounded even angrier than ever. Nobody sounded like Coroner three decades ago, and the same remains true today; this comeback album brought originality, viciousness and verve in huge quantities.
18. Bleed From Within – Zenith (Nuclear Blast)
(Image credit: Press/Nuclear Blast)
Since the Covid pandemic, Bleed From Within have rocketed up the British metal ranks, and Zenith was the Scottish quintet’s most confident work so far, adding new strands to their metalcore blitzkrieg. The bagpipe breakdown during In Place Of Your Halo, the electronic pulse of Known By No Name and some majestic guest vocals from Mastodon’s Brann Dailor signposted a band at the peak of their ambition. Plus, every song came with hooks immense enough to catch a great white shark.
BLEED FROM WITHIN – In Place of Your Halo (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO) – YouTube
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17. Architects – The Sky, The Earth & All Between (Epitaph)
(Image credit: Press/Epitaph)
Jordan Fish might be modern metalcore’s go-to producer, but on the evidence of Architects’ 11th studio album, it was money well spent. Merging the stadium-metal ambitions of 2022’s The Classic Symptoms Of A Broken Spirit with some of the heaviest and straight-up angriest music the band have made in years, The Sky, The Earth & All Between was a record that fans of every era could love. When the lads played their biggest ever show, at London’s 02 arena in October, the songs sounded right at home.
16. AFI – Silver Bleeds The Black Sun (Run For Cover)
(Image credit: Unknown)
A matured AFI returned with a 12th album that marked another shift in sound: flamboyant 80s revivalism delivered with playful conviction. With a smattering of The Smiths and The Sisters Of Mercy, and a brew of Bauhaus and Joy Division, Silver Bleeds The Black Sun was wrought with post-punk melodrama and urgent dystopian disenfranchisement – a love letter to the new wave that had always been a fundamental part of their DNA. The horror punk days were long gone, but AFI were still deliciously goth.
15. The Callous Daoboys – I Don’t Want To See You In Heaven (MNRK Heavy)
(Image credit: Press/MNRK Heavy)
The Callous Daoboys are in a class of one – no other band is pushing musical boundaries quite like this Atlanta, Georgia crew. Proof of this was evident from the very first song on this exceptional third album, as it shifted from hard-hitting math metal into a chilled saxophone movement and back again in the space of a minute. I Don’t Want To See You In Heaven was equal parts beautiful and eccentric, and its 13 tracks provided an embarrassment of riches for those who took the time to explore them fully.
14. Employed To Serve – Fallen Star (Spinefarm)
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Employed To Serve have been storming it for a while now, but they had never sounded as alive, hungry and absolutely furious as they did on Fallen Star. Among the expected hooks and spine-shattering breakdowns, Breaks Me Down forged new territory with chilling synths and synthetic beats, while appearances from Jesse Leech and Will Ramos ramped the energy up further. The triumphant sound of a band taking a giant leap, knowing full well they had the goods to back it up.
Employed To Serve – Atonement (feat. Will Ramos) – YouTube
(Image credit: Century Media)
To call Imperial Triumphant’s sixth album ‘accessible’ would a misnomer, but Goldstar buffed the New York trio’s resplendent, Art Deco death metal with a shine most enticing. It was still as jazzy, extreme and dynamic as the roaring 20s, but gave fans and sceptics more to dine on. Unbelievable hooks came out of nowhere, Eyes Of Mars opening the record with a bluster that should force Behemoth to retire. The whole edifice felt meticulously blueprinted, which made it all the more startling when Bloody Panda’s Yoshiko Ohara bulldozed through 45 seconds of improvised grindcore. Reinforced with queasy, Clockwork Orange-style keys and off-kilter radio jingles, Goldstar was built to stay.
12. Paradise Lost – Ascension (Nuclear Blast)
(Image credit: Press/Nuclear Blast)
Paradise Lost proved once again that melancholy ages like fine wine. Ascension found the Halifax legends refining every shade of their gothic and doom legacy, tracing lines back to Icon while pushing forward with renewed purpose. It stood as a monumental synthesis of every era – a fifty-fifty split of fury and fragility – showcasing a band not merely enduring time, but mastering it with chilling grace and creative vitality. Nick Holmes balanced gravelly growls and wounded croons, Greg Mackintosh’s riffs carved sorrow and splendour, and the whole affair pulsed with grim elegance. Through the funereal weight of Salvation and the haunted sweep of Lay A Wreath Upon The World, Ascension reaffirmed PL as masters of beautiful misery.
11. Conjurer – Unself (Nuclear Blast)
(Image credit: Press/Nuclear Blast)
Musically looser than 2022’s Páthos, Unself mixed the core elements of piledriving sludge and doom riffs with post-metal subtleties and unexpected departures, including a stunningly reworked gospel song. Lyrically, it was informed by vocalist Dani Nightingale’s recent journey following a diagnosis of autism and a realisation that they were non-binary, leading to a complete re-evaluation of their sense of self. This was a weighty and at times bleak record, but there was also a cathartic joy in its bellows of defiance.
CONJURER – Let Us Live (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO) – YouTube
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Metal Hammer’s 50 best metal albums of 2025: 10 – 110. Wardruna – Birna (Music For Nations)
(Image credit: Press/Music For Nations)
On 2021’s Kvitravn, Wardruna examined the big picture, investigating humanity and its relationship with the natural world. For its follow-up, the Norse folk project zoomed in. Birna (‘she-bear’) was a conceptual piece distilling the life cycle of its titular animal into a single year, from summer through hibernation to spring.
The music was patient and rhythmic – standouts such as Hertan and Himinndotter even used exhales as a percussive instrument. Thanks to those traits, the album became one of Wardruna’s most immersive and tribal offerings, soundtracking the greatest Pagan ceremony the mind’s eye could conjure up. Monumental concerts at London’s Royal Albert Hall and Pompeii’s Roman Amphitheatre only reaffirmed the shamanic power that these songs had.
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I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me positioned Lorna Shore at the apex of deathcore’s evolution. After the viral eruption of 2021 track To The Hellfire and vocalist Will Ramos’s transformative arrival, the New Jersey outfit had already broken boundaries, but here they one-upped themselves in devastating ways. Arrangements swelled and exploded, driven by near-mechanical drumming and guitars that reached for something vast and volatile.
Meanwhile, Will’s unearthly vocals became a spectacle, driving a record where symphonic grandeur collided with brutality. Across 66 minutes of relentless aggression and dense orchestration, the album offered no reprieve from its intensity and, in refusing to trim their extremes, Lorna Shore pushed deathcore to new, uncharted heights.
Lorna Shore – Glenwood (Official Video) – YouTube
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8. Turnstile – Never Enough (Roadrunner)
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2021’s Glow On didn’t just feel like Turnstile reaching for greatness and grabbing it with all 10 hands; it was a landmark album for hardcore music, the moment one of its most unique graduates threatened to finally take the genre (spin)kicking and screaming into the mainstream. So, how do you follow it up? You do it all again, but even bigger, bolder and stacked with even more iron-clad bangers.
From the shimmering pop-core of I Care to the thunderous mariachi-mosh of Dreaming, the oi-oi punk rock-cumpanpipe wooze-off of Sunshower, the exhilarating nosedive from propulsive hardcore to floaty, percussive EDM in Look Out For Me… look, this album was just ridiculous, OK?! The whole damn thing sounded like it had been beamed down from space.
7. Creeper – Sanguivore II: Mistress Of Death (Spinefarm)
(Image credit: Spinefarm)
Reinvention is to Creeper what breathing is for mere mortals. From pop punk to Nick Cave-cum-Bowie hybrids to 80s goth metal, the Southampton six-piece always sought to shed their bepatched leather jackets and emerge anew. Sanguivore’s sequel was all the more curious, then, given they’d opted for another jaunt in randy vampire attire. Sanguivore II engorged those gothic tendencies, Will Gould literally just shouting ‘SUCK! SUCK! SUCK!’ at one point.
Alongside duelling guitars Iron Maiden forgot about, genuinely jump-scare saxophone and Hannah Greenwood’s secret-weapon vocals, Creeper were out to suck blood and more. That they remained the UK’s best rock songwriters for four albums on the bounce was just a side-quest on their voyage to eternal life and everflowing libido.
6. Deafheaven – Lonely People With Power (Roadrunner)
(Image credit: Roadrunner)
After the shoegazing 2021 album Infinite Granite, Deafheaven refused to stick, and twisted once again. In doing so, the San Franciscan crew found the finest way to meld their own unique brand of light and shade in their career thus far. The band had rarely sounded heavier or more brutal than they did on the clattering Slayer-isms of Revelator, or more fist-pumpingly instant than on Body Behavior, but they still maintained the quiet, delicate beauty of their most atmospheric and introspective material on the cerebral journey of Amethyst and Incidental II.
Add in a haunting, spokenword guest appearance by Interpol’s Paul Banks on the noir-ish Incidental III, and Lonely People With Power was the broadest, most ambitious and most dynamically challenging release of Deafheaven’s career.
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Northern Italy’s self-described ‘scarlet doom’ quartet always boasted a wider scope of inspiration than most, deftly weaving threads of smoky jazz, moody blues, supple prog and spooky ambient into their solemn metal tapestry. On The Spin, their fourth album, Messa dyed that whole tapestry in Black No. 1, concertedly channelling the quintessence of the 80s goth rock scene with passionate conviction, painstakingly nailing authentic sonics while honing the hooks to a keen point.
From mesmerising earworms such as At Races, Reveal and Fire On The Roof to the trumpet-enhanced languor of The Dress and devastating epic closer Thicker Blood, Sara’s voice scaled new levels of affecting power. Alberto’s guitar solos similarly raised the bar for unorthodox distinction within contemporary classic rock heroism.
Messa – The Dress (Official Video) – YouTube
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4. Spiritbox – Tsunami Sea (Pale Chord / Rise)
(Image credit: Spiritbox)
Spiritbox could have capitalised on the buzz around their 2021 debut, Eternal Blue, by rushing out a second album, but instead the Canadians took their time before hitting us with their next full-length. And hit us they did. Tsunami Sea was a fine-tuning in every sense of the word, dialling up their more ethereal sensibilities on tracks such as A Haven With Two Faces, and sharpening their harsher moments on ragers Soft Spine and No Loss, No Love.
It also turned the band into true contenders. In hindsight, it’s likely Tsunami Sea will be looked back on as the moment that catapulted Spiritbox into metal’s upper echelons. Watch this space; by album number three, Spiritbox could easily be one of the biggest bands in our world.
3. Castle Rat – The Bestiary (Blues Funeral Records)
(Image credit: King Volume)
Castle Rat scrabbled into life back in 2019 as DIY doomsters with a keen eye for high fantasy aesthetics, and 2025 saw them well on the way to becoming a genuine phenomenon. Balanced and weighted like the perfect blade, their second album blended Riley Pinkerton’s razor-sharp songwriting and powerful voice with an ambitious knack for the theatrical that threw together plague doctors, weird druids and a barbarian queen sitting astride an enormous unicorn.
The Bestiary gave us a tantalising glimpse through an enchanted mirror where derring-do won out and heroic forces for good shattered the rancid shackles of evil. Could The Bestiary do for sword’n’sorcery doom pop what Ghost did for the priesthood? We most certainly hope so.
2. Deftones – Private Music (Relapse)
(Image credit: Press/Relapse)
Over the past few years, Deftones have blown up in a way that nobody anticipated, least of all them. TikTok and streaming playlists cast the band as the godfathers of ‘baddiecore’ (a term coined for new-era icons such as Sleep Token, Spiritbox and Bad Omens), making Private Music their most anticipated release in decades.
When it arrived, almost half a decade after predecessor Ohms, the quality matched the expectation. Their 10th album found space for every shade in the Californians’ sound. cXz and Souvenir walked the tightrope between angst and atmosphere like only this lot can, and Cut Hands revisited the nu metal freakouts of the Around The Fur era. It was the perfect, comprehensive platter, put out at the perfect time.
1. Ghost – Skeleta (Loma Vista Recordings)
(Image credit: Loma Vista)
Skeletá completes a remarkable run for Ghost of three albums of the year on the trot. But if the top spots for 2018’s Prequelle and 2022’s Impera felt like forgone conclusions, this time around, our crystal ball was a little more cloudy. It wasn’t just that there was strong competition from recent winners Deftones and Creeper, this was also one of those Ghost albums that can take time to adjust to.
For some, particularly after the swagger of Impera, Skeletá’s move into more wide-open, AOR-informed territories felt indulgent (relatively speaking, of course) – more wrapped up in reverie than pressing hard on our pleasure centres. Other, early misgivings were there were no standout, rally-the-rafters songs to rival Rats or Square Hammer.
But seven months and change after its release, all of us having had to endure another annus horribilis and knowing there’s worse to come, in need of epochal, emotional release and left with a faint residue of yearning in need of amplification, Skeletá hasn’t just emerged as a worthy winner. It now feels like the one album that most resonated with 2025’s psychic terrain, projecting it onto the biggest, most immersive of canvases.
Skeletá introduced us to Papa V Perpetua, and a furthering of the band’s lore. But even if you’re not an avid follower of each twist and turn, that sense of narrative is intrinsic to the Ghost experience. Some bands burn bright, then become to certain extents shadows of their former selves. But in its audacity, songwriting craft so at ease with the vast reaches of a broader continuity and a newly plaintive scope, this was an album that could only be made six albums in, having amassed a trove of achievements to reflect upon.
More than that, Skeletá was clearly conceived as an album, a full, sweeping suite, where every track took on its true resonance in relation to one another, each recognisably in service to an overarching narrative flow. If the more immediate Impera shone its gaze on the fall of empires, Skeletá had more personal and existential concerns, and they were present in every note, each moment becoming memorable in its own right.
The thud-thud, lament-tinged rallying cry of Peacefield; the twin leads like shagged-out stars at the start of Satanized; Cenotaph’s gilding of every trick in the AOR, top-down, chugging-40-on-the-highway playbook– deep down you felt you already knew them, like they were mined from some apocryphal Utopian age. If Tobias Forge’s once-arch vocals now carried an undertow of uncertainty, it was also the key to Skeletá’s power. Still more narrator than personal confessor, he sounded like a torchbearer in dark times. That was never more apparent than on Guiding Light’s power-ballad-meets-Phantom Of The Opera melodrama, and the final destination, Excelcis.
A sacrament consolingly administered by the Church Of All-Out Cheese, it was an attempt to make peace with mortality as it led us all trembling to the threshold, ending on the devastating line, ‘This is the end of the avenue / I am afraid of eternity too.’ Skeletá was a masterwork – a consummate rock opera that gave voice to a shared sense of loss while rekindling our capacity for wonder. Where Ghost can go from here feels like the biggest mystery of all.
Ghost – Satanized (Official Music Video) – YouTube
