Our Top 11 Albums of 2025

2025 was a strange, delightful, and occasionally chaotic year for music. A few veteran heavy-hitters delivered exactly what we hoped for, but the real thrill came from breakout acts that we had either somehow slept on until now, or debut albums that crashed through the scene like they owned the place. It felt like everytime we thought we had our favorites locked in, another band came out of nowhere and demanded a spot on the list. 

So, in the spirit of celebrating the weird, the wonderful, and the wildly replayable, here is our (very belated) Top 11 Albums of 2025, presented in no particular order.

Chat Pile x Hayden Pedigo - In The Earth Again

In one of the unlikeliest collabs of 2025, we have noise rock/sludge band Chat Pile on one end of the spectrum, and finger-pick style guitar virtuoso Hayden Pedigo on the other. Together, they've expertly crafted a folk-tinged melancholic tour through a noisy post-apocalyptic wasteland. Here, stabs of acoustic guitar intersperse with shoegaze and sludge to form an empty Southwestern hellscape of loss. We will drink to the world that was, mourn our losses, and carry everyone's stories into the darkness at the end. As collaborations and concept albums go, this one is best enjoyed start to finish, as you shouldn't try to cherry-pick the apocalypse. 

If you have ever stared into the cold vastness of an empty desert and wondered what that might sound like as an album, this one may be for you. 

Castle Rat - The Bestiary

Castle Rat, for those unfamiliar, is the musical embodiment of an airbrushed wizard on the side of a 1970s conversion van. This is not an insult.

This crew of medieval misfits has reassembled to deliver another album's worth of extremely catchy Sabbath-inspired doom grooves for listening to within the expanded Frank Frazetta universe. Right out of the gate, The Bestiary grabs hold with the vocal hook of "Wolf I" and does not let go until "Sun Song" has run its course and the album's outro has started. If you're okay with having fun and maybe sending your doom metal off to theater camp for the summer, this one might be for you.

Igorrr - Amen

If you were afraid that metal stopped being weird the moment Mr. Bungle stopped recording new albums, I have good news for you. Trying to explain Igorrr to someone who has never heard them is a losing battle. It always reverts to "It's weird, you'll like it". "Weird", of course, does not do Igorrr justice. Igorrr is a sound so unhinged yet meticulous that language feels inadequate. You can list the ingredients all day long, but it still does not prepare the listener for what this album actually does to their brain. 

Amen is a full tilt cavalcade of weird, disparate sounds mashed together in ways that shouldn't work, but they do. It should be nonsense, yet it becomes something beautiful. Take the song "Blastbeat Falafel" for example: Middle Eastern melodies, black metal screaming, and string instruments that I can't identify all boiled down into super concentrated, chunky ADHD musical stew. Bring your bowl and spoon, Igorrr is dishing out ample servings. 

The only way to really understand is to surrender and just go with it. 

Faetooth - Labyrinthine

Here on Labyrinthine, Faetooth continue to craft their special blend of "fairy doom" -- a sludgy doom core populated by aspects of shoegaze, heavy alternative, and atmospheric black meta. The songcraft on exhibition here is utterly sublime; "Death of Day" sounds like Alice in Chains discovered Acid Bath and Chelsea Wolfe in the same day. The rumbling beat of "White Noise" has been stuck in my head and my car stereo since this album dropped, its more ambient parts now serving to highlight portions of my work route through the vacant foggy fields of Wisconsin. On the other hand, "October" recalls the heavy alternative of the 90s, and in doing so, makes my heart heavy with nostalgia for an era I thought was long since gone. 

For fans of: staring out the window in September and watching the leaves turn with equal parts whimsy and existential dread.

Sanguisugabogg - Hideous Aftermath

Slam titans Sanguisugabogg return with another absolute banger in Hideous Aftermath. While the first half of the album might feel very familiar to slam veterans, containing slab after slab of dense deathly cuts devoid of anything resembling fat, it's the second half that gets off the beaten path and sees the band exploring the far reaches of death metal. From the Godflesh-tinged industrial beat of "Repulsive Demise" to the twisting, gnarled riffage of the latter half of "Sanctified Defilement" and even the chord voicings in "Semi-Automatic Facial Reconstruction" see a band content to take chances with new approaches to pants-shittingly heavy music. Rest assured, however, that they are still one hundred percent Sanguisugabogg. Dark, guttural, and never meant to leave the confines of the sewer. 

Bogg forever, surface never.

Haggus - Destination Extinction

Hybrid crossover-thrash-meets-grind band Haggus dropped Destination Extinction with all the subtlety of a dank basement show where the walls sweat and the amps may actually start fire. What's the occupancy limit? Is any of this up to code? Absolutely not, and that's the point. If music can evoke a scent, Haggus is sweat, stale beer, and shitty weed -- and I'm here for it. 

The recipe is simple enough: pitch shift pig squeals over 80s thrash riffs and skank beats until everyone is involuntarily head-bobbing and questioning how they ended up in a ski mask. Haggus turns that chaos into craft: the riffs and basslines lock in with filthy precision (and some surprisingly tasty bass solos), and the drumming hits that perfect "slam your fist on the dashboard" sweet spot. From the first blast to the final squeal, Destination Extinction is wildly infectious fodder for road trip scream-alongs and anyone craving a little crusty catharsis. It's just fucking fun.

Trauma Bond - Summer Ends, Some Are Long Gone

Expertly blending grindcore, industrial and sludge into an oppressively dense monolith of sound, Trauma Bond manages to appeal to my lizard brain in a way that very few bands can achieve. Eloise Chong Gargette's vocal performance is terrifying in aways that are hard to quantify (if "evokes scenes of drill torture" can be considered a compliment), and Tom Mitchell's chunky grind riffage will have you bobbing your head along to the murky bombast by the album's end. By the time the album's closing track starts to play, the sound of its bleak sludge dissonance echoing out over the landscape serving as a bit of respite from the grindcore bombast, you will be ready to ride the conveyor right into the captive bolt gun.

Breaking of waves, crashing of bones.
 

Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons

Ethereal Horizons picks up the torch from 2019's weirdly groovy Hallucinogen and shambles with it into the forest, continuing to forage for strange fungus along the way. By that, I mean that this feels like a direct sequel. What does that mean for you, the listener? Black metal with elements of post-rock, shoegaze, and more unique melodies than should be legal. 

If you'd like your black metal to send you on a diaphanous journey through wooded spectral landscapes, this may be worth a listen. Just consult your field guide, and make sure you don't accidentally harvest a death cap. 

We'll see you on the trail.

Messa - The Spin

The Spin was one of my strongest contenders for album of the year. Expertly blending doom metal, post-punk, 80s goth, dark cabaret, and dabbling in a host of other genres, this one grabbed hold at release and has yet to lose its grasp. From the driving Siouxie-meets-Sabbath beat of "At Races" to the more sedate "The Dress" (complete with a jazz interlude that makes me long for Portishead's heyday), each song is utterly unique and an absolute earworm. Every member of the band turns in a performance for the ages, from Sara's powerful vocals to guitarist Marco's utter tour de force through a myriad of techniques, each aspect serving to showcase just how special The Spin is in context of its competition. 

A must-listen.

Tombs - Feral Darkness

With their sludgy and moody take on modern black metal, Tombs is instantly recognizable in the USBM scene. Right out of the gate, Feral Darkness roars into action with the thunderous "Glass Eyes / Ghoul" while being cautious to let off the gas periodically to affix a black metal scowl. The title track, on the other hand, smacks you over the head with stank-face Crowbar riffs while the vocals echo out from a murky cave system. From there, it's just riffs, scowls, and vibes, the latter of which comes to a head in "Nightland". Dark, gothic, and moody in all the right ways, its haunting notes will echo into your psyche for days on end.

Feral darkness is bursting at the seams with inspired songcraft, and I can't recommend it enough to anyone looking for a great USBM fix. 

Youth Code - Yours, With Malice

As we all start to feel ground up in the gears of the great capitalism machine, it seems like an opportune time to spin up some quality industrial. Yours, With Malice doesn't waste any time getting started, with opener "No Consequence" launching immediately into Youth Code's trademark hardcore-punk-meets-90s-industrial sound. This time around, the music is a little less Skinny Puppy and a little more Pretty Hate Machine, but the vocals remain as consistently abrasive and timely as ever. Sara Taylor snarling, "Make it all make sense!" is the perfect soundtrack for.... [gestures broadly]... everything going on in the world right now. Yours, With Malice feels like an encapsulation of 2025 in hard industrial form.

Find these albums as well as best-of lists from previous years on our Spotify profile.