Hello! Thank you for being here. I know you have a lot going on with work, family, responsibilities of many shapes, sizes and decibel levels. Taking five minutes of your valuable time to glaze over my rinky-dink list is a real shot in the arm for this fledgling scribe. A hearty cheers to you!
People tend to float through the tail end of the annual cycle, as if passing into The New Year gives one license to jettison their current struggles into a decommissioned past. I get it – hope springs eternal, and the sparkly promise of a more fortunate future can’t have any blemishes. That used to be me, knowingly overlooking personal failings while clinking a fluted glass to “Que Será, Será”. List season cut that honeymoon mighty short. Whatever will be, will be, yes sure, but what about whatever will was? Don’t you need to think about THAT?? The short answer is yes. The long answer is uh, well…
You want to hear about a personal failing? I didn’t listen to much new music this year. Not even enough to create a full and strapping list to match my colleagues. If that’s a shameful enough admission for you to tap out here, so be it. There are plenty of other lists out there, teeming with earned knowledge, just waiting for you to graze upon them. More learned minds, however, would say it’s not about the size of the list. It’s about the swaying of the braying. List season, above all, spurs recollection and refined analysis. The subjects must be properly arranged and the organizer must be properly deranged to adequately defend why this particular arrangement makes the most sense. I may lack the numbers but the derangement is there, oh boy is it ever.
Maybe next year I’ll write up a top 50. Wouldn’t that be something? Yeah, I’ll do 50. (takes a swig of champagne and with his toe, sweeps his dropped cocktail weenie off the balcony)
THE REDUCED YET FORMIDABLE REARGUARD (15-11)
15. Tower – Let There Be Dark
For whatever reason, 2025 was heavy on the regular old heavy! Tower stormed back in a shadowy n’ spooky way with Let There Be Dark, an altogether, well, darker set of tunes than their last full-length outing. What’s new? Sarabeth Linden adopts a cooler, more witchy tone overall, lending the proceedings a velvet curtained theatricality. The riffs never left, the rhythm section still stomps, the songwriting remains airtight and true. One of the leanest and meanest this year, no question.
• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp
14. Nite – Cult of the Serpent Sun
Lean and mean brings us appropriately to our next sizzling hunk – Cult of the Serpent Sun. Purveyors of the Zero Bullshit Black and Heavy, Nite are back with album numero three-o, and if you claim to be a self-respecting heavy music connoisseur you shouldn’t need any more verbiage from me on the matter (you’re fiending for more? Click the review link below then check into a facility, will ya?). Nite bring every necessary appetizer, main and dessert to the function. If you leave hungry, that’s entirely on you, buddy.
• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp
13. Umulamahri – Learning the Secrets of Acid
Every day I wake up and fist-bump the uncaring void of the universe that I get to live in a timeline where Learning the Secrets of Acid‘s cover art is viewable at my leisure. Seriously, what an exquisite and revolting concoction. Doubly lucky are we that the music contained therein is also exquisite and revolting! Doug Moore (in his first of three appearances here [would you sit down for a few months, my guy? Christ almighty.]) gargles in his gravely chasm while rotting, churning guitars pulverize the scenery. A Cronenbergian maelstrom of body horror and punishing power.
• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp
12. Araphel – The Endchanter
Was that Nite record not black enough for you? Wouldn’t you know it there exists a bird of a more ebon feather? Italian trio Araphel are here to flex their black/heavy chops in a more sinister fashion. The Endchanter checks all the boxes of a Very Enjoyable Record – satisfying riffs, dry and evil croaks, audible, interesting bass lines? That last one was a wild card, I know. Yes, this is a more grim affair overall than Cult of the Serpent Sun but the underpinnings of trad metal harmony give it a swaying heft that it might otherwise lack. Throw this one on in the basement, crank some beers and let that lone light bulb hanging from a string toss some cool shadows.
• Bandcamp
11. Vultures Vengeance – Dust Age
Not only was this a rather trad-heavy year but 2025 was a banner year for the old guitar. Vultures Vengeance were the tip of the spear in that regard – Dust Age is boiling over with SMOKING riffs. Crystalline leads and solos out the wazoo! I don’t even think I have a wazoo anymore, come to think of it. Along with the aforementioned Tower record, Dust Age is another example of a stellar and pure heavy metal album. While the rest of the list tends to teeter across different genre borders, Vultures Vengeance aim true and shoot straight. Guitar fans take heed, lend thy ears.
• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp
THE TOP 10, MY FAVORITE 10 (10-1)
10. UNBIRTH – ASOMATOUS BESMIRCHMENT
Guitar fans take ears, lend thy heed – Unbirth are here and it’s the clobbering hour. Asomatous Besmirchment squeezes 5 tons of riffs into a 1-ton duffel. Imagine a sock full of quarters but the sock is your lower intestine and the quarters are tiny, dense wallopings. Further, imagine your delirious glee being pounded bloody into the pavement with it.
It’s one thing to buoy killer riffs end to end over a sea of blasts. It’s a whole OTHER thing for these riff strings to rise and fall with the contours of an actual, compelling song, and that’s what is so particularly impressive about this record. These Italian stallions have both the ridiculous chops and the sly brains to keep the songs constantly beckoning you back in for one more taste. I know for a fact that, to me, the prospect of an almost 6 minute brutal death metal song sounds like some too much icing-ass birthday cake – inviting at the outset, diabetically delicious for a few bites, then garishly overstaying its welcome. Take a listen to “Malignant Pregnancies” and tell me if that ain’t a filthy exception.
At under 38 minutes, Unbirth have crafted a very tidy, very fine pile of technical yet brutish death metal. Not since Onset of Putrefaction have I been so smitten by a record in this vein. That may speak to my ignorance of the genre more than anything, but the dexterous combining of world-class riffing with, dare I say, fun song structures is simply molto bene.
(author eyeing up the next track in the queue)
• Bandcamp
9. PHANTOM SPELL – HEATHER & HEARTH
I couldn’t possibly pen a sweeter or more discerning love letter to this album than our old pal Captain has – jam that link down there, see for yourself. Instead, I’ll tell you what this album did for me.
Heather & Hearth drills deep into the second theme (the first, of course, being “wow the riffs on this album, dang”) that runs through many of my top choices this year – escapism in one form or another. The first time I heard the chorus of “The Autumn Citadel” I was 17 again, dorkily engrossed in the hunt for the next artist and album to obsess over. That irrepressible feeling when you’re young and you find something you love; you can’t help but absorb its essence and peak around every corner, looking for secrets. Phantom Spell gave me that again.
Progressive rock is by nature a “flights of fancy” genre, for better or for worse. You don’t put on Yes or Emerson, Lake & Palmer for lean, gritty realism; you put them on because you want to be whisked into an airy realm of wiggly synths and extended, extraterrestrial diversions. Driving to work I would play Heather & Hearth and disassociate from traffic entirely, my mind getting lost in its analog warmth. The reviewer brain switched off and the enjoyer brain kicked on. This is a special album, fit for casual consumption but intended for rapt immersion.
• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp
8. SPECIES – CHANGELINGS
Theme #1 returns with slot #8. Riffs, more of ’em. A whole dang doodle of ’em. And not just guitars! Bass riffs, too! What a world, what a humdinger of a world we share, huh?
My mind’s-eye image of Species is thus – three robed and bespectacled wizards huddle ’round each other within what appears to be an unfinished basement. The walls are lined with tomes of old, and interspersed between the shelves hang curling posters of sinister bands now long defunct. The three have been here a great while, conjuring strange tones, pounding out mystical rhythms, intoning in strange tongues, until, after many years of divination, they unlock the object of their sorcery – Changelings.
The standard blueprint of thrash is well-worn, familiar. You could catch a glimpse of it in your peripheral and still be able to draw it from memory. That’s what makes Species so exciting; you know what to expect as far as essential components, but you do NOT know how clever and off-kilter these cats are going to get with it. Even in the most “standard” sections, there’s something happening that colors the scenery and steals the eye, ahem, ear, be it an elegant little bass riff propping up the guitar or an unexpected harmonic transition. Species speak in an age-old language but in a dialect that’s ever so spicy.
Changelings is the “band’s band” album of the year, without a doubt. The chemistry is red-hot and the songs are packed to the gills with interesting twists. To get pedantically visual, if we are assessing the Venn diagram of “natural band interplay” and “compositional shrewdness”, sir, I’m sorry but there’s only one circle here. I paid for two.
• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp
7. CEA SERIN – THE WORLD OUTSIDE
Progressive metal in 2025 has lost me. At some point in the last 10-15 years, the genre moved in a direction with which I do not identify. The djent movement arrived, start-stop, irregular rhythms became de rigeur, impeccably-coifed clean vocalists soared their hearts out, and all the while I sat on the sidelines, wondering what happened to this little alcove I had so adored in my younger years.
The World Outside, like an attentive Little League coach, plucked me off the bench and shoved me back on the court. So many of the elements of progressive metal that I admire are present: complex, YET STILL FUNCTIONALLY MELODIC, rhythm guitar work, a narrative arc that works both lyrically and is illustrated by the musical pacing of the album, and of course solos, solos, solos. Flash abounds, yes, but it is in service to the whole.
Above all, I can tell Cea Serin imbue their compositions with a dose of much-needed humanity. This genre can be cold, sterile, machine-like in the way the DAW directs the action, like you’re listening to Skynet conduct and perform its own material. The World Outside is warm-blooded and powerful. I hope this is a harbinger of where progressive metal is headed, or perhaps to where it is returning.
• Bandcamp
6. FLOATING – HESITATING LIGHTS
Hesitating Lights continually blipped on and off my radar this year. There was the initial “what…was that?” listen, followed by the “OK, I think I get it, but let’s go back in” round. After a handful or so more listens I settled on “I don’t know what this is and I WON’T know what this is but it rips. Case closed”.
Genre is atomizing at an unquantifiably quick rate. Aspiring and latent musicians worldwide now have access to both A) all of the music that’s ever been recorded, and B) an unprecedented ease of the DIY recording process. I shouldn’t be surprised Hesitating Lights exists; the reasons why are evident all around us. What I AM surprised by is how fucking deft the splicing of disparate sounds is. This is some very heavy yet very spindly material. It’s harsh, it’s catchy, it’s light, it’s dark. It’s Floating – slip into their dimension before the portal closes.
(The perennially handsome and sublimely knowledgeable Zach Duvall wrote more and gooder words regarding this one. Click the link below for some bona fide sashaying from a worldwide hoss.)
• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp
5. GLORIOUS DEPRAVITY – DEATH NEVER SLEEPS
I, a perennial dumb dummy, said this about my number 5 pick back in (VERY pleased I could reuse the first fourteen words of this entry from last year) October for the full press review:
“This is not the kind of death metal that requires unending, whiplash variations to maintain interest. This IS the kind of death metal that will use every ounce of meat it has to rearrange your face into new and unanticipated forms.”
If that makes a boink of sense to you then why haven’t you checked this record out yet, hmm? I wrote that nonsense last Halloween for Death’s sake! (the self-plagiarism is over. It’s all over.)
Death Never Sleeps is the most fun record on this list, and DEFINITELY the most fun of the remaining entries. Oh, you asked for Moore, Doug? Here he is! Again! You want thunderous chugs and gnashing blasts? Right here, stupid! You want a 34-minute avalanche of no-bullshit, burly bruiser death metal? My tandem bike’s got two seats and I’m headed for that bloody chalice. You in? Ideally you’re in front since you’re bigger than me.
• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp
4. ZEICRYDEUS – LA GRANDE HERESIE
Listening to La Grande Heresie reminded me of the first time I read Perdido Street Station by China Miéville – it was up to me, having now crept over the threshold into their universe, to orient myself to their strange, unfamiliar rules, and lo, what assailed my ears was kind in its enigmatic attack. Believe it, stranger, for the wonders of Zeicrydeus’ version of “thaumaturgy”, a kind of hybrid between physical science and magic, are a heavy music listener’s delight.
I bring in the idea of magic not just for its handy literary reference point, but for the fact that there truly is an enchanting power to La Grande Heresie. I’m well acquainted with the building blocks, yet the album’s eccentricities act as an uncanny valley, suspending disbelief enough for you to just glimpse the gleam of the ten thousand spears atop the bleeding mountains. When I wasn’t jamming Heather & Hearth this year, I likely had this album on to achieve a similar, but markedly more sinister, effect. The dull, throbbing rage of morning traffic can be tuned to the pitch of the timpani on “Dragonships on the Juurn (Open Wide the Gate of Zeicryde)”, and in a matter of moments you’re engulfed in triumphant, lacerating melodies from lead guitar and lead (no bullshit) bass alike, grinning ear to ear. La Grande Heresie was my extreme metal escape of 2025. Will it be yours in 2026? Queue it up tomorrow, you sure-to-be-hungover sap.
• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp
3. OROMET – THE SINKING ISLE
Lone Watie wrote what might be this publication’s Paragraph of the Year regarding Oromet’s The Sinking Isle. His encapsulation of the magnitude of this work speaks for itself:
“It’s easy to imagine these guys in the mountains, sitting at the edge of a massive outcropping, legs dangling, minds drifting through the beauty beheld to the big questions and round again to what it all means right here right now, lyrics spawned by reflections on the futility of the rat race, riffs born from cloud shadow that makes even the surrounding peaks feel small. People transform in such moments, experience life-changing revelations, often humbling, sometimes daunting, perhaps exhilarating, in any case inspiring as a reminder of life’s great dualities. How fortunate for us that this particular pair of musicians have channeled their experiences into such wonderful art.”
It’s not easy to write a unique, entertaining and/or informative summary of a work of art. It’s especially difficult to act as said work’s sloppy seconds follow-up essay. To be more grateful, however, it’s a blessing to have such inspiringly talented coworkers. Click the link below if you missed the full review of The Sinking Isle.
All I can say is I love this album. On the Saturday before Christmas this year, while one child was asleep and the other was out of the house, I spent a marvelous 43 minutes sitting in the front room, soaking in this record from beginning to end, feeling completely at peace. It was a grounding moment. Despite my ears and emotions being swept away in the rolling tide of the music, I was able to briefly recognize how lucky I was to even be there in the first place, absorbing this loud, colossal work of funeral doom in a comfortable room on a modest sound system, the windows keeping the cold at bay, waiting for the familial chaos to again come crashing in. The see-saw of serenity and pandemonium, “life’s great duality”, as it were.
In short, Oromet channel big feelings with big sounds. Hmm, I guess I could have just said that.
• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp
2. WEEPING SORES – THE CONVALESCENCE AGONIES
Moore’s Law states that the number of albums that feature Doug Moore in some capacity doubles about every two years. While no one has proven this to be inarguable as fact, no one has also incorrectly attributed this meaning to the actual Moore’s Law. Given these parameters, we can only know two things to be certain:
- This is the last entry on my list TO feature Doug Moore, and…
- The Convalescence Agonies is a spectacular album.
The lore behind this sophomore Weeping Sores outing is available within an interview published by Invisible Oranges, should you choose to familiarize yourself. Full enjoyment of The Convalescence Agonies is not dependent on the lore, per se, but adds a great deal to its impact. This is music born of strife, of physical pain and mental anguish. It is a solemn reminder that behind every piece of music you consume is a person or persons channeling themselves into sound. What, then, becomes the output of a person in distress?
Carried by riffs run ragged and raw, The Convalescence Agonies presents like the reanimated corpse of an armored, fallen soldier, dragging its weapon ever forward in pursuit of past enemies. The production is dry, but because of that you can see and feel every moving part within. You can hear the pick drag heavily over the strings. The drums pound and crash as if they’re being recorded in the next room. Annie Blythe’s (her first of two appearances in this here article) cello mourns and sings alike, its tone naked and warm. Everything is utterly unconcealed.
*In 2025, there was no more complete of a personal statement in the world of heavy music than this one. Weeping Sores have transmogrified a prolonged season of weakness and suffering into a towering monument of extreme metal, mighty and declarative.
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*The alternate ending to this entry was “I guess you could say Mr. Moore really Doug deep to make this one”, which would have worked as a goofy ending bookend with the beginning, but in the interest of not being an asshole(**) I decided against it.
————————————————————————————————————————**still including this confirms the author IS an asshole
• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp
1. MESSA – THE SPIN
“…Messa are realizing the potential of their constituent pieces. Lead guitarist Alberto has always had the feel of a doomslinger with a closet love of jazz and blues. Sara has always been the moodring, coloring the proceedings to her whim. The rhythm section has always swung heavy, hands low, chin exposed and teeth bared. Together, they have spent three previous albums showing us their chops through one compositional trick or another: adding in new timbres, varying tempos and highlighting key players, but until now it has all felt in service of an experiment (decreasingly so, admittedly). The Spin is the abstract – the presentation of the experiment’s findings neatly packaged into one tight paragraph.”
The Spin ended up quite the darling around the old internet, huh? Back in April when I cheesed out my review, I wouldn’t have predicted it. I obviously loved it and obviously still do, but Messa really must be doing their best Sally Field at the 1985 Oscars about now.
In a year where I became fixated on either guitar heroics or escapist fantasy, The Spin embodies neither. It is a cherished work unto itself and has been the immovable object atop my list for nine months now. Messa took a bold sidestep into the unfamiliar, retained their “improvisation meets deliberateness” core and STILL managed to sound effortlessly confident in their new skin. Ain’t nobody out there lying – The Spin is outstanding. You should probably introduce yourself.
• Last Rites Review
• Bandcamp
I didn’t intend to sound so ungrateful in that introduction. Yes, list season is work but life is work, a realization that is hardening more and more each year. I’d much rather “work” ranking the unbelievable amount of new and bitchin’ music that’s lobbed at my head than do any other work which I’m contractually or socially obligated to perform.
What are you looking forward to in 2026? Are you looking forward at all? Do you need some encouragement in order to do so? May I?
- You are presumably a heavy metal fan in the year 2025. Next year will feature more of that, much more, and some will be exceptional. Some might brand itself upon you forever.
- Last Rites will still exist, barring force majeure. That’s fun!
- You could meet the love of your life. You could love the love of your life more than you currently do.
- You will be above ground, and by virtue of your being there you can see, hear, feel, smell, touch and breathe everything that makes our physical reality such a treat.
Until next time, friends.
(read on for some lighter recommendations. close your browser and burn your computer if you hate lighter recommendations.)
LIGHTEN UP FOR ONCE, SHEESH – 8 NONMETALLIC BLASTERS
Life can’t be all stink faces and rage rampages. YOU need something to take the edge off. YOU need to relax.
In that spirit, here are 8 albums with which to do so, four of which are either very dark and decidedly unrelaxing OR so emotionally taxing that relaxation becomes an intellectual pursuit, impossible to manifest in your current condition. Anyways, happy tootin!
8. Djrum – Under Tangled Silence
Now, I certainly ain’t know nothing about this here fancy e-music, but boy does it tickle my head brain, I tell ya. A virtuosic exploration of piano, percussion, electronics, and a whole host of other unusual elements, Under Tangled Silence is about as hard to explain as it is a delight to listen to. If you’re a fan of piano plinks, percussive plonks or the ever-shifting nature of matter, a dialogue with Djrum will do ya good.
• Bandcamp
7. Earl Sweatshirt – Live Laugh Love
I’ve been an Earl fan for most my adult life so any new release is reason to celebrate. Live Laugh Love continues the more relaxed leanings of Sick! and Voir Dire. While I believe my favorite era of his career has come to a close, Earl is undoubtedly the best rapper and lyricist he’s ever been. With age comes wisdom and a dash of mellowing – Live Laugh Love is a breezy, contemplative sojourn (if the cover doesn’t tip that off at all, sonny, you need an optometrist), one well worth delving into if you’re a hip-hop fan.
6. Rosalía – LUX
Motomami didn’t hook me like El Mal Querer did. In fact, Motomami was the point where I realized that perhaps the widely agreed-upon critical assessment of Rosalía was in error, at least insofar as what they liked about her output. With LUX, this trend has unfortunately continued, yet surprisingly this album is still very good and nice! LUX is a relative behemoth of a pop record, with a musical density unrivaled by any of her current contemporaries. Don’t go in expecting a verse-chorus-verse type deal, though – this is an unusual hybrid of latin music, classical and standard pop, and quite unlike anything I’ve ever heard. “Divinize” was one of my top 5 most listened to tracks this year. Check it out for that alone.
5. Clipse – Let God Sort Em Out
Clipse are back, ladies and fellas, and they’ve still got the goods. Cocaine, of course, but also a collection of rough n’ ready tunes! If it weren’t for the utter dominance of billy woods and crew in the remaining selections, this would have been my most-listened to hip-hop album of the year. Nothing fancy, just veteran bars from Pusha-T, the newly resurrected Malice and lethal, icy production from Pharrell. FFO cocaine, selling cocaine, making selling cocaine sound cool, rappers who enunciate, rappers who make enunciating sound cool.
4. August Fanon & billy woods – gowillog
This one could have crept higher if I had given it more time. gowillog was a surprise release, a remix/reimagining of the also-released-this-year GOLLIWOG, and it’s a stunner in its own right. I’m totally unfamiliar with August Fanon’s output besides this release so I can’t offer any guidance in that regard, but if you enjoy Backwoodz Studio offerings in general I think this will be another stellar pickup for your library. Overall this is a less claustrophobic affair than GOLLIWOG but it glowers menacingly nonetheless, pitting woods’ inimitable world building against some more spacious, even occasionally pretty, beats. Double feature this after my number one pick for a real mindblow.
3. Armand Hammer – Mercy
It seems like only yesterday I was championing We Buy Diabetic Test Strips. A scant 26 months later Armand Hammer return with Mercy, another collaboration with The Alchemist after 2021’s Haram. How billy woods can release two tremendous albums worth of lyrics is beyond me, but if this is the way he chooses to live I’ll happily bask in his afterglow. Mercy is a bit more restrained and contemplative than I’m used to from Armand Hammer. They haven’t lost their confrontational edge, nor their cutting commentary. It’s more like they are aging and fighting their battles on other, less chaotic fronts. Regardless of my assumptions of their intent, this is an essential hip-hop record in a year of many. Sick cover art too, huh? Dang.
2. Annie Blythe & Brendon Randall-Myers – Only in the Dark
I believe our own Seth Buttnam is the hero responsible for alerting us other lowlives about this album. Two musicians, one playing a standard-issue orchestral instrument and one manipulating “electronics” are the sole makeup of Only in the Dark, though the outsized emotional toll it takes would lend itself to a much more expansive group. I don’t necessarily want to spoil any specifics of the music; preconceived notions or predicted passages would only lessen the significance of the material. If you can absorb this record in its entirety over headphones, from beginning to end and ideally free of distraction, then you’re ready. The first time I tried I wasn’t ready. Thank heavens I gave it a second shot.
1. billy woods – GOLLIWOG
Another year, another billy woods release, another shoe-in for my number one non-metal album. It’s unfair at this point but maybe fairness isn’t real, and further maybe “fairness” is a ruse concocted by a shadowy upper caste, intended to give the gutterfolk some hope.
Maps was a jolly romp compared to GOLLIWOG. Where the former was globetrotting and introspective, the latter is almost maniacally one-note. Any escapism there is to be had is fleeting, used to illustrate whatever homegrown darkness billy is interested in examining. Lyrical density is a given – billy is as pure a poet as they come, after all – but what is most surprising about GOLLIWOG is how relentless it is. Initially I contended with it the same way I contended with Earl Sweatshirt’s Some Rap Songs; the first 2-3 complete listens were more a grappling match than a focused appreciation. Once the shock wore off it was easier to put it through the mental sieve and see what flecks of precious material came through.
I don’t know what to expect anymore when recommending billy’s material to people so for the most part I’ve stopped. To be as fart-sniffing as I possibly can – you either get it or you don’t. You love it or you never come back. Honestly, pitching this album is more difficult than pitching Unbirth. SO, finally, should you listen to it? Please fill out the below questionnaire:
- Do you enjoy hip-hop (Y, N)? If you circled Y, continue to #2.
- Are you partial to impressive lyrics (Y, N)? If you circled Y continue to #3.
- Do you find the myriad of injustices and horrors present in modern American society to be hideous enough to warrant listening to a 52-minute allegorical treatise (Y, N)? If you circled Y, continue on and click the link below.
Remember earlier when I said I’d do a list of 50 next year? I’d like to use this opportunity to publicly deny that claim.
Goodbye, and good luck!
