Vince’s Top 10 Albums of 2025!
I was going to try and write something witty, perhaps even profound, about the journey that was 2025, but truth be told I’m tired and afraid it would end up sounding performative. So, in lieu of something clever, I’ll go with something heartfelt. I want to dedicate this space to the following: To my family and friends, who’ve never stopped supporting me, but especially my brother, who’s fought to help me find my happiness again. To the kind, talented, and hilarious folks at The Progressive Subway for inviting me into this community and making it feel like home—not just for words, but the people writing them, too. And lastly, to all the wonderful music I’ve had the good fortune to hear. Thank you so much.
2025 is dead. Long live 2025.
Nailed to Obscurity – Generation of the Void: Delicious melodic death-doom full of melancholia and might alike that channels the melodicism of Dark Tranquility and modern Katatonia, with Draconian’s gloom-bitten edge.
Sold Soul – Just Like That, I Disappear Entirely: Deathcore with more on its mind than bombast and brutality, Sold Soul’s latest offers up a moody, broody platter full of Gothic gloam and metallic melodrama.
ByoNoiseGenerator – Subnormal Dives: I may have given it a 6/10 in my review, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t one of the most wildly entertaining, absolutely gonzo albums I’ve heard all year—and the cover art is awesome to boot. Unhinged jazzy grindcore insanity abounds in these waters, me hearties. Jump in if you dare.
10. Aephanemer – Utopie
Style: Melodic Death Metal, Symphonic Metal, Neoclassical Metal, Progressive Metal (Harsh Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Kalmah, Shylmagoghnar, Dark Oath, Mors Principum Est
2025 is apparently France’s year to lose (spoilers: they did not). Not only did I get Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 on the videogame front sweeping awards left and right, but Netflix also released Last Bullet, a satisfying and madcap finale to Guillaume Pierret’s Lost Bullet films. What better way to open my Top 10 of the year list, I thought, than with another French banger. Aephanemer snuck into the final quarter with their most realized offering yet, Utopie. Nothing new going on here—rather, the album operates as a crystallization of their adventurous, rip-roaring neoclassical melodeath that ticked a whole bunch of boxes for me. Martin Hamiche’s guitarwork is tasty as ever, fiery and frantic but always in control, his playing flashy without ever feeling tacky or unnecessary. The way he bends from melodeath riffage to neoclassical pizazz is nothing short of amazing, likewise Mickaël Bonnevialle’s relentless kitwork. Layered and full of flourish, Bonnevialle’s playing is the highlight on Utopie, and just adds to the delight of repeat listens as I get lost in his deceptively expressive performance.
Recommended tracks: La Règle du Jeu, Par-delà le Mur des Siècles, Chimère, La Rivière Souterraine, Utopie (I+II)
Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | original review
9. Bianca – Bianca
Style: Gothic Metal, Melodic Black Metal, Black Metal (Mixed Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Rolo Tomassi, Faetooth, Messa, Oceans of Slumber
Do you like when spooky Italian women scream at you? No? Well, clearly you haven’t listened to Bianca’s self-titled sophomore record. Vocalist β delivers one of the coolest “beauty and the beast” performances of the year. Not content with the goblin-y rasps and mid-tone bellows of her contemporaries, β pairs hazy, doom-y cleans with truly sirenic screams, punching through the veil between worlds with attention-grabbing force. Bianca as a whole is an occult masterwork, blending the melancholia of Gothic and doom metal with black and death metal’s aggression to spellbinding effect. And the production—mama mia! Soft and spacious enough to keep everything from feeling crowded without dulling the music’s teeth or muzzling β’s cleans in distortion. If this is the kind of stuff Bianca is writing only a few years into their career, I can’t wait to see what’s next.
Recommended tracks: To The Twilight, Somniloquies, Nachthexe
Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | original review
8. Fallujah – Xenotaph
Style: Progressive Technical Death Metal, Technical Death Metal, Death Metal (Mixed Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Rivers of Nihil, Kardashev, The Zenith Passage, Allegaeon, Vale of Pnath
I’ve always liked Fallujah ever since picking up Dreamless on a whim thanks to its gorgeous sci-fi cover art. However, the band wouldn’t fully click for me until 2022’s Empyrean (again blessed with a bangin’ cover) where their expansive tech death and spacey atmospherics finally coalesced into a near-perfect package—a black hole that tugged at my attention despite a particularly stacked year. Xenotaph is Fallujah continuing their confident stride across this celestial highway, spinning dizzying tech death calculations amidst spacious nebulae of whorling synths and vocalist Kyle Schaefer’s othernatural cleans. Tech death by its nature can often feel alien in design, but Fallujah really live in this space like no one else I’ve heard. Rest assured, if there’s a cool extraterrestrial on the cover, you’re about to hear the boys at their best.
Recommended tracks: Step Through the Portal and Breathe, Xenotaph, Kaleidoscopic Waves, The Obsidian Architect
Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | original review
7. Pupil Slicer – Fleshwork
Style: Mathcore, Metalcore, Post-hardcore, Sludge metal (Harsh Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Rolo Tomassi, Employed to Serve, Heriot, Svalbard
I’ve been waiting for Pupil Slicer to really click with me, and goddammit they finally did it. I was a fan enough of Mirrors and Blossom, but now on Fleshwork the band have metastasized into the grooving, blistering, nightmare machine I always felt they had in them. Marrying mathcore zaniness, grindcore aggression, and a -core-adjacent groove leads to a matrimony of a sonically unholy make. “Black Scrawl” festers like a ripe wound, while tracks like “Innocence” and “Heather” offer palpable spaces for the listener to slot into, with growling riffs and vivacious rhythms. The heightened sci-fi dystopia of Blossom returns in spats, with bright keywork accentuating tracks like a shiv to the ribs. Some may decry the band’s skew towards more “accessible” lanes, with the incongruous compositions of Mirrors all but absent here, but if it results in material like this moving forward, then I can’t wait for the next release.
Recommended tracks: Heather, Sacrosanct, Black Scrawl, Fleshwork
Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | original review
6. Blood Vulture – Die Close
Style: Doom Metal, Alternative Metal (Clean Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Alice in Chains, Baroness, Pallbearer
Why no, I didn’t realize that I missed Alice In Chains at all, at least not until I heard Die Close, Blood Vulture’s crushing debut. Pulling together Cantrellian guitarwork and vocals, main man Jordan Olds unleashed a shockingly great platter of Gothic-skewed doom tracks about a vampire stranded on a blasted Earth long after Humanity’s extinction. Guests Kristin Hayter (Reverend Kristin Michael Hayter), Jade Puget (AFI), Gina Gleason (Baroness), and Brian Fair (Shadows Fall) help flesh out the album across various tracks, with Hayter in particular crowning an absolute highlight on “Entwined” as she wends her gospel cleans with Olds’ rich croons against an epic backdrop of big riffs and thundering drums. While a buzzy production creates some small listening hurdles, it’s a small price to pay for songs that kick this much ass.
Recommended tracks: A Dream About Starving To Death, Grey Mourning, Entwined, Die Close: Finale
Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | original review
5. Calva Louise – Edge of the Abyss
Style: Metalcore, Alternative Metal, Progressive Metal (Mixed Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Poppy, Rolo Tomassi, Lake Malice, Wargasm, Holy Wars, As Everything Unfolds
Easily the biggest surprise of the year, I went into Edge of the Abyss expecting to be sufficiently whelmed, if not entirely repulsed by the band’s threat of a “Calva Louise Universe.” Instead, I found myself isekaied into a weird and wild musical dimension composed of skronky progressive metalcore, whiplash rhythms, and a year-best vocal performance by frontwoman / guitarist Jess Allanic, whose ability to shift from psycho-cleans to hair-raising screeches—while jumping from English to Spanish, no less—had me wheeling. I’ll be damned if I know what the story is powering this continuation of the band’s conceptual work, but luckily I didn’t need to in order to lock into what this world-tossed triumvirate put together. Also, despite being album number four, Edge of the Abyss feels as scrappy and hungry as a debut, roiling with the kind of vitriolic spit and grit that made entries like Slipknot’s self-titled and Mudvayne’s L.D. 50 so intoxicating. Who knew the abyss would sound so cool?
Recommended tracks: Tunnel Vision, WTF, Aimless, Lo Que Vale, El Umbral, Hate In Me
Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | original review
4. Forlorn – Aether
Style: Progressive Metal, Alternative Metal, Metalcore, Doom Metal (Mixed Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Oathbreaker, Svalbard, Dawn of Ouroboros, Karyn Crisis’ Gospel of the Witches
Despite being a basic-ass suburbanite / one-time urbanite, I’ve always been drawn towards art that taps into dark, feral places: ancient woods where forgotten spirits linger amidst the ruins of fallen civilizations, occult practitioners invoking the power of Old Night. So hardly any surprise then that I would fall in love with Forlorn and their debut, Aether. Inspired by horror cinema and fronted by a real-life witch, the UK coven channel teeth-gnashing atmospherics with bone-grinding metalcore. Primal, ritualistic, violent; Aether churns and howls like a nightmare pulled from Earth’s oldest memories. With a new single already out, Forlorn is clearly of the mind to keep the cauldron bubbling. I can’t wait to see what vicious hexes they cast next.
Recommended tracks: Creatress, The Wailing, Funeral Pyre, Keeper of the Well, Spirit
Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | original review
3. Novembers Doom – Major Arcana
Style: Death-Doom Metal, Doom Metal, Gothic Metal, Melodic Death Metal, Death Metal (Mixed Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Opeth, In Mourning, Draconian, Katatonia, My Dying Bride
When the world hands you lemons, Novembers Doom can be counted on to mash said lemons into zesty, zesty lemonade. The Chicagoans have remained one of the most consistent bands in metal, especially impressive considering their thirty-six years, boasting an impressive six-album peak from 2002 to 2014. Major Arcana catapults the band over the satisfying, if somewhat staid Nephilim Grove (2019), reinvigorating their brooding and melancholic death-doom with vitality and purpose. Paul Kuhr’s vocals continue to age like fine wine, his baritone cleans sermonizing darkly romantic tragedy, while his bestial roars and subterranean bellows set the mortal soul asunder with fear. Long-time fans won’t hear anything particularly revolutionary on Major Arcana, but I don’t ever need Novembers Doom to be anything more than what they are: a veteran outfit dealing out the finest Gothic death-doom available.
Recommended tracks: Ravenous, Chatter, The Dance, Bleed Static
Related links: Bandcamp | Facebook | Instagram | original review
2. Astronoid – Stargod
Style: Progressive Metal, Synthwave (Clean Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Rolo Tomassi, Cloudkicker, Møl, Perturbator
In a world that has progressively (regressively?) grown increasingly hostile and nasty to all us regular people who don’t make nine figures a month, it’s easy—and cathartic—to focus on the art and music that taps into that anger, upset, and hopelessness most of us are feeling. However, life isn’t all brutishness; there’s plenty of love to be found still, hope flourishing in the cracks of the oppressive societies we’re all caged under. Astronoid’s Stargod is like a serotonin shot to the soul, a big warm hug of an album that channels a platonic 80s vibe via glowing synthwave foundations, ecstatic guitar lines, and an angelic vocal performance. Understanding that what makes flight so miraculous is the gravity that holds us down, the band wields deceptively heavy compositions to actualize the soaring heart burning at Stargod’s immutable center, creating a gorgeous—and inexplicably effective—musical dichotomy that feels like every hope and dream made manifest.
Recommended tracks: Embark, Love Weapon, Third Shot, Explosive, Depressed Mode
Related links: Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | original review
1. Sleep Token – Even In Arcadia
Style: Alternative Metal, Alt-Pop, Djent (Mixed Vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Bad Omens, Spiritbox, Breakk.away
Is Even In Arcadia the most technically proficient album I’ve heard all year? No. Is it the most progressive? Again, no. Taken in isolation, the big djenty riffs are fairly uncomplicated here, as are the pop, R&B, and trip-hop elements. There are no wheels being reinvented, not even within Sleep Tokens’s own wheelhouse. However, sometimes it’s less about complexity and more about how ingredients are mixed together that makes a dish winsome. Even In Arcadia whips household ingredients into a dark, savory, and undeniably addictive treat that I couldn’t put down. Drummer II continues his captivating reign as the band’s highlight, spidering his way across moody atmospheric slices and chugging bangers alike, blending everything from jazzy fills to vicious post-black blast beats. Vessel conjures his romantic esoterica with the usual captivating aplomb, crooning, rapping, and screaming along lush beds of introspective piano, trip-hop beats, and even some math-y guitar work on penultimate track “Gethsemane.” Even In Arcadia is everything I love about Sleep Token, and Sleep Token is, in many ways, indicative of a lot of things I love about metal—and music—in general. Haters be damned.
Recommended tracks: Look To Windward, Emergence, Caramel, Gethsemane, Infinite Baths
Related links: Apple Music | Facebook | Instagram | original review
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