Best Of 2025 – Last Rites Combined Staff Top 25

LET’S GET READY TO FUMBLLLLLLE!!

Did we fumble? Sure, there’s about as much stylistic distance between our top two albums as possible, but that’s hardly a fumble. Last Rites has always been a little scattershot when it comes to sussing out what blows our collective hair back, and our 2025 list provides a solid snapshot of our shared eccentricity. Trad metal and progressive hard rock dusty enough to give Miss Manners the vapors for a week? Come on in! Belchingly brutal noisegrind marbled with rodent blubber more your raison dêtre? Pull up a chair, Porky! By golly, the all you can eat smorgasbord of clashing chow found below is kooky enough that you might think we were trying to put Golden Corral out of business. (We are not. Pappy needs his Fridee salisbury steak.)

Where we absolutely 100% for sure fumbled the ball, however, is by, um… not even writing about our 2025 champ. Like, whaaa?? The blame for that blunder can only be aimed at the fact that we never actually received a promo. In fact, the first bit of chatter concerning said album didn’t really hit the LR break room until a full month after its release.

June 20th at 10:23am // (album cover gets posted by Captain (Hey! That’s me!))
June 20th at 10:28am // Captain: “Whoa, the riff 3:50 into ‘Malignant Pregnancies…’
June 20th at 10:42am // Captain: “I will tell you what, I am not turning off [album] so far.”

/TIME PASSES/

June 25th at 8:23pm // Seth Butnam listens to the album and subsequently discovers the true meaning behind the name of the band. (No spoilers here, maties, but it ain’t particularly pretty, which therefore makes it even more awesome.)

From there, the record snowballs and rolls into something larger, Larger and even LARGER, and by October it appears as if 90% of LR has been fully flattened by its outrageous potency. And now, here we are, spotlighting our fumble at the finish line without a shred of shame. WE ARE HUMAN, HEAR US ROOAAAARRRRrrrrrrrr for a coach’s challenge. Our knee was totally down.

Okay, as has recently become custom, we now take a quick moment to compare our conclusions with some of our peers in an effort to see if we’re anywhere close to playing in the same sandbox. The short answer remains: mostly NOPE.

Decibel: 4 releases in common (one more than last year!)
Metal Hammer: 1 (4 last year)
Treble: 4 (2 last year)
Consequence of Sound: ZERO (4 last year)
Pop Matters: 4 (4 last year)
The Quietus: 3 (2 last year)
Metal Injection: 3
Metalstorm: 3
Stereogum: 1 (1 last year)

What can we take away from this? Kinda looks like Last Rites remains firmly planted up our own ass, which is just a snazzy way of saying we continue to be less concerned with the releases that drift closer to the mainstream compared to our peers. Is that a flaw? Eh, depending on how and why you land here, maybe? But not really. [WINK WINK / falls down the stairs]

That being said, if we only take into account the nine sites that have managed to drag their lists to the surface so far, we have A TIE for the top spot across the board in 2025, and those two winners are………..

Coroner’s Dissonance Theory: 7 out of 9 lists. That’s a very deserving honor, as it has become exceedingly rare for ancient thrashers (sorry, boys) to rekindle the fires effectively in the modern age. (A tip of the hat is also owed to Testament in that regard). Hell, a number of us doubted we’d ever witness another Coroner release in this lifetime, so getting something as enjoyable as Dissonance Theory after a 32 year gap? Pretty flipping remarkable, and totally deserving of high praise.

Messa’s The Spin: also 7 out of 9 lists. This one is less of a surprise, thanks to the fact that the Messa collective has found its way into Best Of conversations for the last seven years or so. 2018’s Feast for Water netted very high marks, 2022’s Close reached even higher, and now the moderately more goth The Spin has a lot of people wondering if Messa has actually reached their first true peak. Hey, upward trajectories are obviously great.

As always, our deepest gratitude is owed to YOU for still caring enough to visit Last Rites. This all wouldn’t mean very much if no one but us read our scribbles, and we speak right from the heart when we say THANK YOU for continued support. Here’s to hoping we’ll see you again in 2026, a year that just so happens to mark the 25th anniversary of the site’s existence under the shared MetalReview / Last Rites banner. Kind of a big deal! I mean, it’s no quantum computing breakthrough, but who really cares about that sort of garbage anyway.

One last thing to address before dipping into the goods. This year’s List Season is respectfully dedicated to our fallen brother, Deathofthesun / Warren Binder. There’s a lot of folks in the metal community and beyond who are feeling his loss in a very big way, and we sure are gonna miss him. See you on the other side, homeslice. [CAPTAIN]

25. TRAUMA BOND –
SUMMER ENDS, SOME ARE LONG GONE

“Occupying primarily a grindcore ground, this duo’s sound spreads its tendrils outward into post-punk, Godflesh-esque dystopian industrialized harshness, hardcore punk… It’s a bleak and ugly world that Trauma Bond inhabits, and that’s entirely the point. From the martial whispered chanting of ‘Brushed By The Storm’ to the squalling epic cacophony of ‘Dissonance,’ Summer Ends is 28 minutes of cathartic harshness..” [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

• Last Rites Missing Pieces Review
• Bandcamp

24. SCIMITAR – SCIMITARIUM I

Scimitar plays a kind of smoky, goth-tinged form of epic trad metal that ought to remind listeners of greats like In Solitude and even Hammers of Misfortune, and yet, also not. This is a band clearly doing Their Own Thing, even if many of the ingredients – spiraling lead guitars, bombastic drums, shuffling rhythms, bits of neoclassicism, and touches of extreme styles like blasts and dissonance – are sourced from throughout the ages. But the band plays with an almost reckless abandon (especially the drummer), as if they’re intent on creating a slightly manic atmosphere for their crazy talented singer. Vocalist Shaam Larein already has a great solo career, and here she brings her wailing Souxsie-isms and mystical dynamism to a full band situation. The result of this pairing is nothing short of magic, making Scimitarium I one of the coolest debuts of the year. [ZACH DUVALL]

• Bandcamp

23. FLOATING – HESITATING LIGHTS

“One of the more interesting tricks Floating pulls off here is exactly how they integrate the two main sides of their sound. Sometimes they intentionally separate them, offering passages of clean, sparse guitar lines straight out of the Joy Division playbook before exploding into sections of Gorgutsy dissonant riffing and (admittedly somewhat restrained) blasts… …But more often those elements are combined, resulting in that oh-so-effective vibe that can’t help but act as the initial hook into this record.” [ZACH DUVALL]

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

22. ZEICRYDEUS – LA GRANDE HERESIE

“Advertised as a band for fans of Rotting Christ, Varathron, Mortuary Drape, Running Wild, and Manowar, how could this not be a staple in the 2025 Last Rites camp?… …There are various corners of the metal buffet to feast upon here. I encourage you to indulge sooner rather than later. Despite not giving this one a proper cover, I can assure you at least a few of us will be talking about this one for the remainder of the year. Superb album.” [BLIZZARD OF JOZZSH]

• Last Rites Missing Pieces Review
• Bandcamp

21. HYPOMANIC DAYDREAM – THE YEARNING

By 2022, San Diego’s Putrescine had evolved into something fascinating, plopping its magnum opus, “In a Growing Sun,” onto a split with Adzes. Suddenly, the once-OSDM-y band was fusing creaky Carcassian wetness with far more avant-garde inclinations. It was, like, if Thantifaxath messed around with Timeghoul while working on a graduate thesis concerning experimental classical music. But the dramatic shift in sound wasn’t off-putting in a way that art music can be. “In a Growing Sun” ferried through a Bermuda Triangle of fringier interests, but wasn’t fart-sniffy, wasn’t impressed by itself. Instead, it had a very human core provided by Marie McAuliffe’s emotionally resonant vocals, an audience surrogate who held the door open for bewildered listeners. McAuliffe took that out-there energy with her to Hypomanic Daydream. At first, the new solo project sounded like it would follow the trails blazed by bands like OLD, Carbonized, and Disharmonic Orchestra, a uniquely progressive strain of no-genre metal that recalled an early ’90s sense of adventurism before then-burgeoning styles became more codified. Debut album Image introduced new elements, twisting sections into something like Coroner or Voivod messing around with vocaloids — you know, just your usual death metal album that included a Paramore cover. And then, like Putrescine, Hypomanic Daydream took the leap. The Yearning, a headspinningly eclectic record of disparate influences, sounds so much like the shape of something to come. And yet, it’s still undeniably metal, taking recognizable touchstones and welding them together into a metal mecha. Often, these tracks sound like Eye-era King Diamond jettisoned his band for Atheist, and that new crew was Tron’d into an early internet mainframe storing JRPG soundtracks. The Yearning is also so very human, too. It’s no surprise that Big Feelings Metal advocate Brendan Sloan is in the credits for reamping and mastering. Even when a listener is caught up in a whirlwind of guest Quetzal Tirado’s bass clarinet(!) solos, there’s this emotional aspect that aims straight for the heart. The Yearning isn’t an academic exercise in genre fuckery or weaving an RIO spirit into metal’s DNA. It lives, it breathes, it feels. [SETH BUTTNAM]

• Bandcamp

20. TYPE: ARMOR UNIT –
REVOLUTIONS IN SAECULA

“Sonically, the clear antecedents to Type: Armor Unit are the expected ones given that ‘spacegrind’ tag, the likes of Discordance Axis, Antigama, Gridlink. Those are grinders whose aggression is both visceral and cerebral, with riffs that twist and skronk between tempo shifts from fast to faster and beyond, and Type: Armor Unit does all of that, with dashes of post-ish drift (‘Portal’) and electronic squee to add to the spaciness. But for all those futuristic trimming, Revolutions In Saecula never loses sight of its primary objective, which is to grind, and so grind it does, and well.” [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

• Last Rites Blast Rites Review
• Ampwall

19. EFFLUENCE – PIANISTIC DISMEMBERMENT

“Play this album at the same time as another album and you might not tell the difference. Is that a negative feature? It is if you’re a WIMP, because whatever album gets played whilst Pianistic Dismemberment gets air time is an album that’s seen its last days on this toilet earth, and the death blow will not be for the faint of heart. Play any or all of these songs as your first dance with a blushing bride and your firstborn will surely burst from the womb with monster truck tires instead of limbs.” [CAPTAIN]

• Last Rites Missing Pieces Review
• Bandcamp

18. BARREN PATH – GRIEVING

“We’ve got one of the most creative guitarists in the history of the style… and one of the most accomplished grindcore drummers of the new millennium (himself a drum god, credit where it’s due)… and with them, the remainder of the instrumental line-up of one of the most interesting grind bands in a quarter century, and top it off with the vocalist from several supremely underrated outfits…” [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

17. OROMET – THE SINKING ISLE

“Oromet shares spiritual pace with Agalloch and Wolves In The Throne Room, where multiple guitars draw light in the darkness of doom to emulate starlit skies and the reflected sunlight of snowy trees… …More directly, these songs fit with the exemplary notion of funeral doom, connecting with Skepticism and Mournful Congregation fundamentally and, more distinctly, with those whose doom rings through with regality and epic scope, like Vouna and especially While Heaven Wept.” [LONE WATIE]

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

16. GRAYCEON – THEN THE DARKNESS

“This is an album that speaks – sometimes directly in its lyrics, at other times obliquely in its moods and instrumental gestures – of betrayals, disappointments, deep roiling wells of anger and pain. It is dark, wrathful, venomous – it’s also, at 79 minutes, exhausting… …Then the Darkness is the paradoxically comforting sound of three friends figuring out just what the hell three people can do in this world, and if it turns out all we can do is bring a little somber beauty and righteous fury into our own corner? Then by god, that’s what we do.” [DAN OBSTKRIEG]

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

15. DELIQUESCE – SAVIOUR / ENSLAVER

“Saviour / Enslaver is an absolute beast of a death metal album–brutal, crushingly heavy, blindingly technical, deceptively varied, and brimming with far more personality than you typically get from this corner of the style. It should be a no-brainer for fans of Suffocation, Defeated Sanity, and their ilk, but really, let’s not hold back here: if you like death metal, do yourself a major solid and get your head cratered in by Deliquesce.” [ZACH DUVALL]

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

14. ARAPHEL – THE ENDCHANTER

Araphel’s rapid ascent in 2025 is equal parts surprising and unsurprising. The band’s 2024 EP, Old Comet Transition, was, after all, not all that different from the riff-heavy black metal mysticism of The Endchanter. However, where the former was in part a victim of its short form, the latter benefits from the breathing room a longplayer affords; with sufficient space and time, the atmosphere intensifies and the riffs become the structural building blocks with which these more orthodox endeavors thrive. The wider appeal here, of course, is the latter element; though Araphel’s sound is steeped in the atmosphere endemic to the Greek black metal tradition, there’s no denying that The Endchanter owes its infectiousness to the almighty riff. And the album accomplishes more in its rough 38 minutes than most do at twice the length. [CHRIS C]

• Bandcamp

13. CORONER – DISSONANCE THEORY

“In some ways, Dissonance Theory feels like a combination of Mental Vortex and Grin, but in many others it is its own album, continuing Coroner’s tradition of never quite releasing the same record twice. It also sounds like it could have come out 30 years ago as a direct follow-up to Grin, compressing time and sounding like the band picked up right where they left off, both in sound and thankfully also in quality.” [ZACH DUVALL]

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

12. SULFURIC CAUTERY – KILLING SPREE

“The arrangements are more intricate than the full-on poundings of previous releases. At nearly nine minutes, closing track ‘Millions Of Slobbering Rats Devouring Their Blasted Out Brains’ is almost progressive, longer than most grindcore EPs on its own. More importantly than the technicality, though, is that Sulfuric Cautery continues to deliver a positively primal pummeling, twenty-one songs in twenty two-minutes. Sandwiched between the likes of ‘Disemboweled With Shit Stuck In Their Mouths’ and ‘Slobbering Rats,’ there’s much to love about the absolutely savage ‘Murder Suicide,’ the curiously titled ‘Bourgeois Historiography,’ and the almost (by relative standards) groovy title track.” [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

• Last Rites Blast Rites Review
• Bandcamp

11. MESSA – THE SPIN

“Time will tell, as it always does, if Close has truly been usurped, but at this very moment my heart believes The Spin to be Messa’s magnum opus. They have somehow adopted a lingua franca between their past and probable future selves, creating a sound that harmonizes with the elder parishioners while charting the chord changes ahead of the hymnal. Unexpected news can be one of life’s great joys or cruelest punishments. In that spirit I can delightedly tell you that this growth is benign.” [ISAAC HAMS]

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

10. 夢遊病者 (SLEEPWALKER) – РЛБ30011922

2025 has been a wonderful year for instrumental albums. While other personal favorites like Abhorrent Expanse and BarrSheaDahl leaned more into the realm of brain-damaging free jazz shotgunned through a death metal filter, 夢遊病者 (Sleepwalker)’s single-track album is a 37-minute sojourn through many musical flavors and stories. The band states that РЛБ30011922 is intended to represent a life lived from first breath to the final bit of dirt being tossed on your grave. It would be rather difficult to argue against that sentiment, but to these admittedly silly ears, its sounds and transformation bring to mind the experience of a road trip; not just any road trip, but one that spans a great distance and time, covering varied landscapes met with every kind of weather.

A passage can be the sonic equivalent of rolling through the nighttime desert with your hand out the window, enjoying a cool breeze on your face, while the next can stir memories of a sudden rain splashing on the windshield seemingly from nowhere. The song will take on dark, ominous tones that feel like driving toward a pitch-black cloud, leaving you unsure whether to continue toward what may be a tornado. Its notes can get erratic, like hitting a patch of black ice and spinning out. 夢遊病者 can stir toward dizzying heights where the oxygen begins to thin as easily as they can create a lush soundscape that feels alive and comforting, like an evergreen forest.

РЛБ30011922 is an album made for nighttime drives, camping, surfing, hiking, nostalgic bonfires, forward-looking star gazes, chatting with friends, remembering what it’s like to be alone, the brightest day, the darkest midnight, and all the other moments that make a trip a memorable journey. [SPENCER HOTZ]

• Bandcamp

9. VULTURES VENGEANCE – DUST AGE

“The adventurous heroes out there who appreciate galloping heavy metal with loads of guitar sorcery will absolutely find suitable reward with Dust Age, though, as will existing fans and devotees of classics such as Omen, Manilla Road, Medieval Steel and Cirith Ungol. And as for how things might shake out over the next ten months? I refuse to give that another thought for at least six months. One thing I’m sure of as of today: Dust Age will be in the fight with all arms swinging when that time eventually comes.” [CAPTAIN]

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

8. PARADISE LOST – ASCENSION

“More than anything, Ascension further hammers down the impression that Paradise Lost could keep doing this well into their elder years. After all, this is a band that already sounded old when they were teenagers. Why not keep playing grizzled, grumpy, and sad music for decades more? As long as they’re still able to write at this level and find tiny ways to keep twisting their formula, the goods will keep coming.” [ZACH DUVALL]

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

7. UMULAMAHRI – LEARNING THE SECRETS OF ACID

“Umulamahri, a band whose name is derived from a Morbid Angel tune that’s clearly about Wilt Chamberlain laying waste to the New York Knicks on March 2nd, 1962 (“You’ll perish within the hands / of the storm that means your end” [Euro-step / easy two]), has very suddenly appeared as if from nowhere to deliver a very curious—AND YES, TRIPPY—take on death metal that sounds a bit like modern Gorguts colliding with Chaos Echoes and being slammed through a table by a classic New Standard Elite hearthrob. WHEW, what a sentence.” [CAPTAIN]

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

6. DISSONA – RECEPTOR

“Listeners will notice hints of Leprous, Anubis Gate, and Zero Hour, but also probably any number of other prog metal, death metal, and traditional metal bands, not to mention artists from jazz, electronic and ambient, and classical backgrounds. Most importantly, while all these influences are there and identifiable in discrete moments, the culmination of their impact on Dissona’s developmental process is a sound all their own and a wonderful instantiation of the band’s name, a portmanteau of the words ‘dissonant’ and ‘persona’.” [LONE WATIE]

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

5. KAKOTHANASY – METAGONISM

Ah, technical brutal death metal, oftentimes one of the most confounding and rewarding sub-sub-genres of our beloved heavy metal universe… Pulling from the crushing heaviness of Suffocation and the what-the-fuck-was-that twisted riffery of Defeated Sanity, Switzerland’s Kakothanasay is a perfect example of that dichotomy on Metagonism, their second full-length in slightly over a decade of existence. Riffs spiral around one another, twisting and turning and then settling into chunky muted beatdowns; rhythms shift endlessly, blasting to grooving to all points in between; the vocals are indistinct grunts, another rhythmic element and never quite the focus, bolstering those riffs and rhythms. The formula is fairly straightforward – as much as technical brutal death metal could be – but the execution is impeccable, from the off-kilter riffing of “Ephemeral Demise Macro-Episodes Merging in Successive Epiphenomenal Conglomerates” to the bulldozer gait of “Methanized Autocatalytic Clash Culminated Into Ascetic Abolishment.” (Oh, yeah, and the song titles are something else, too.) One of the heaviest and smartest records of the year, Metagonism exists on a plane both immediate (“oh, damn, this is heavy as hell”) and intricate (“I’ve listened to this thing thirty times and I’m just now noticing the drum fill here…”), and all of that is immensely rewarding, which is exactly how technical brutal death metal should be. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]

• Bandcamp

4. SPECIES – CHANGELINGS

“…the band’s ultimate advantage relates to the manner in which the three players play off one another so pleasantly, imaginatively and seamlessly. You hear everyone pretty much at all times here as they wander, jump and fly around together, and Changelings continues to uphold that ‘live in the studio’ feel that heightens the organic sense of connection between each player… …it’s quite nice to experience progressive technical thrash that never manages to come across as overly showy or self-aggrandizing. Bottom line, Changelings is just FUN thrash that’s not at all ‘pizza thrash’, and that’s crucial to the album’s success.” [CAPTAIN]

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

3. WEEPING SORES –
THE CONVALESCENCE AGONIES

“Don’t go to Weeping Sores because you like sludge or death doom and are looking to be ground into dust. Go to this New York duo when you’re ready for introspection among agony; or seeking unique elements fighting against tried and true formulas; or when you need cold commiseration alone at the end of a shit week. Your best listening experience will be one personal to you, so regardless of what that turns out to be, just listen to this album at some point this year.” [SPENCER HOTZ]

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

2. PHANTOM SPELL – HEATHER & HEARTH

“…Heather & Hearth manages to eclipse its predecessor, simply because it finds new ways to reach that next step higher: It’s proggier, the new folk element suits the songwriting perfectly, it feels heavier (possibly due to the way that folk offsets the galloping), and I think McNeill has grown as a singer. Simply put, Heather & Hearth is an absolute stunner, and it’s a shoo-in as an adversary that will clash TO THE DEATH with the latest Vulture’s Vengeance and Reflection albums for Favorite Traditional Metal Album of the Year.” [CAPTAIN]

• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp

1. UNBIRTH – ASOMATOUS BESMIRCHMENT

Death metal can sound like all sorts of intended bodily harm. Some death metal wants to hit you with rocks. Some death metal wants to crush you under a tank tread. Some death metal wants to slosh you around the inside of a cement mixer filled with acid. But on Asomatous Besmirchment, Italy’s Unbirth just wants to cut you with knives. If you’re the kind of sicko who loves to hear electric guitars doing awesome things, Unbirth has written you a prescription for insanely great riffs played in and out and all around the corners of insanely great songs. Unbirth shares with Suffocation (surely one of the most key influences here) a knack for dazzling the listener with technicality and pummeling them with brutality while never fully committing to one pole or another of the death metal palette. What we’re left with, then, is riffs that scythe and stutter and leap and shuck and jive and hammer and slice, slice, slice. It’s a red-lined, razor-sharp, unrelenting album that can work on the level of letting it obliterate and overwhelm your senses, and that can work on the level of dissecting and appreciating just how smart and – yes – sophisticated it is, even as it plucks a serrated blade from your freshly aerated abdomen. Surprise! Now your organs live on the outside. [DAN OBSTKRIEG]

• Bandcamp

Posted by Last Rites

GENERALLY IMPRESSED WITH RIFFS

All Posts