Atanamar's 20 Favorite Albums of 2025

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My 20 favorite albums of 2025, alphabetically:

Aldaaron - Par-delà les cimes

Black metal for sprinting up mountains. Beware cerebral edema. Once you're there, enjoy the views and the riffs that pick up momentum and piquant on the way back down. Chant along with some odes to alpine mysticism, marvel at the melodies, practice your french.

Blood Abscission - I I

Just fucking majestic. Second wave aesthetics married to modern surgical precision, dedicated to grand movements that hit me like Weakling or early cascadian black metal.

Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons

The horizons are so very ethereal, and this formulation of Vindsval's many visions is absurdly compelling to me. Simultaneously diaphanous and grounded, mellifluous and ripping. Those clean vocals are the best Vindsval has conjured; I hear the vulnerability of a young Jonas Renkse in there. Gimme.

Chaos Inception - Vengeance Evangel

Demilich on coke. Big-riffed, flippy, floppy death with the revs redlined. To me, a pure jugular-ripping joy.

Coroner - Dissonance Theory

Not at all what I was expecting for a glorious return, sporting some neon black Nevermore-modernity and riffing like Kreator. Yet, it fucking rules. The lyrics and vocal delivery may induce cringe, but the thing rips, romps, and shreds its way past that bit of euro-boomer cheese. Endlessly listenable.

Decrepisy - Deific Mourning

The original core of Acephalix augmented with disturbing leads and nauseating oddity. Absolutely barbaric death-doom in ascension. Groovy, graviton-slapping heaviness.

Délirant - Thoughteater

The sweet, psychotic sounds of serpent-speech. Channels the systolic slithering of Vindsval's 777-series. Myriad manias in liquid form.

Dormant Ordeal - Tooth and Nail

Masterful, mesmeric, blackened, speed-seared dissonance. Diverse, addictive, riff-replete, outspoken excellence. Put a gun to my head and I'll immediately name Tooth and Nail as my favorite album of the year.

Drofnosura - Ritual of Split Tongues

Massively ambitious, dimensionally warped sludge. Compositionally complex, elevated by glissando-goated vocals.

Fluisteraars - Sediment der Impressies

Jubilant and vivifying analog black metal. Big, bashing drum and bass bear up piercing pinwheels of pastorally-grounded perfection.

Grey Aura - Zwart vierkant: Slotstuk

A perplexing, potent, perilous journey through realms black and blue and bizarre. For a vibe check I can only liken the experience to hearing Enslaved's Monumensíon for the first time. Ride those convoys to fucking nothingness.

Havukruunu - Tavastland

Frankly, I don't understand whatever universe of eternal victory birthed Havukruunu. Triumphant d-beat melodies and black metal trappings and the chants of a thousand jubilant vikings just works. It works so hard.

Kostnatění - Přílišnost (Excess)

Sure as shit ain't anything like it. Transcends categorization and the bounds of all dissonance with guitars tuned to chaos-minor. Most fucked up album of the year. Beware the melodic chants that somehow tie the room together and bind your soul to excess.

Morke - To Carry On

Arabesque obsequies in castles made of castles. Elevates Obsequiae's vibes to their platonic ideal. Evidently I can listen to these meta-harmonic melodies forever. Beyond the worship of form, fey feels are fed to demon-haunted screams.

Pelican - Flickering Resonance

Pelican exit stagnation with a phenomenal panoply of melodic, grungy-sludge. The dual-guitars explore the same harmonic spaces with little regard for each other, as sweet baby lucifer intended. A completely unexpected burst of joy that's held up all year.

Skjolden - Insouciant Metaphysical Grandeur

The Obsequiae-verse belches forth another work of astounding puissance. Gallop to glory on chariots of levitating melody, horsepower honed to escape velocity.

Species - Changelings

Impossibly enjoyable tech-thrash hewed by force from the husk of 1988. The sheer volume of mouth watering riffs is feat for the ages. Never lets up its hold, not for a second.

The Ominous Circle - Thus Beckons the Abyss

A long-awaited sophomore effort suffers no slump. The wood-chipper continues to fire off shit-hot gobbets of filthy-death glory. Sofa King satisfying, seriously solipsistic sounds of an engine about to blow a head gasket.

Yellow Eyes - Confusion Gate

An almighty exploration of the tintinnabulous spaces between harmony and dissonance at warp speed. Black metal of sinuous, delicate mien mashed to fucking pulp by drums hit as hard as drums can be hit. Just goddamned gorgeous.

Zeicrydeus - La Grande Heresie

Majestic, mutated, blackened tech-thrash mastery. Bombastic, bass-driven exhortations to die by the sword.

This year's host of hungry ghosts, by the numbers:

  • Record label with the most favorite albums: Tie between Debemur Morti and Willowtip (two each)
  • Repeat offenders (bands appearing on past years' favorite lists): 4
  • Number of metal albums purchased in 2025: 172
  • Number of album reviews I wrote in 2025: 18

Fifteen Honorable Mentions

  • Ancient Death - Ego Dissolution
  • Białywilk - Wniebowstąpienie
  • Chestcrush - ΨΥΧΟΒΓΑΛΤΗΣ
  • Diabolizer - Murderous Revelations
  • Exterior Palnet - Haragma II
  • Frightful - What Lies Ahead
  • Hedonist - Scapulimancy
  • Heir - Terra Triumphans Jubila
  • Hexekration Rites - Misanthropic Path of Carnal Deliverance
  • Lamp Of Murmuur - The Dreaming Prince in Ecstasy
  • Nightbearer - Defiance
  • Pissgrave - Malignant Worthlessness
  • Rintrah - The Torrid Clime
  • Sepulchral Curse - Crimson Moon Evocations
  • Throne - That Who Sat Upon Him, Was Death

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