Columnus Metallicus: The Best Heavy Metal of 2025

Reaffirming their status as arguably the UK’s most robust, powerful and unpretentious black metal act, the Manchester quartet’s fourth album expertly straddled the line between sinister atmospherics, punky energy, yearning, almost Peaceville Three-style melancholy and unabashed heavy metal bravado, all without ever compromising their furiously evil sound.

These Leicester punks’ debut created its own unique sonic world, a wild, lawless place where belligerent d-beat hardcore, psychedelic garage rock, driving speed metal and hyperactive noise rock all spill into each other with reckless abandon. Pure adrenaline in audio form.

Building off the extremely strong foundation of their 2023 debut, this Californian funeral doom duo continued to squeeze an extraordinary amount of emotional resonance out of the sub-genre, with an incredibly rich undercurrent of yearning melody cascading through their monolithic compositions like fresh spring rivers pouring down from mountain tops. “Epic’ might be a sorely overused word but it’s difficult to describe the scope and grandeur of this record any other way. 

This Brighton duo’s frenetic blend of blistering noise rock and raucous sludge metal sounded tighter than ever on their long-awaited debut LP, marrying sardonic Melvins-esque riffs to thunderous Lightning Bolt style rhythms and arming them with infectious hooks tackling climate change, corrupt billionaires and class war with a wry wit missing from some of their more sloganeering peers. 

There’s a generally accepted belief that extreme metal drummers went as far as humanly possible at least a decade ago, and that the niche sub-genre of gore grind peaked well before that – thankfully LA grind duo Sulfuric Cautery continue to piss all over such nonsense from great heights on their third full-length, dishing out one of the most batshit insane drum performances I’ve ever heard whilst exhibiting some of the freshest and most inventive song-writing in the genre. Grindcore in 2025 simply does not get more intense than this.

American funeral doom titans Evoken returned after a seven year absence – and with their original logo to boot! Remarkably, this seventh full-length did a decent job of recapturing the deathlier, somewhat more energetic feel of the 1994 demo that originally bore that spiky little beauty, but also imbued it with all the atmospheric, mystical nuance they’ve accrued in the intervening years. An immediately satisfying record that nonetheless retained the depth we’ve come to expect from the band. 

Given that Endless Blockade alumni Andrew Nolan’s Intensive Care were already on a similar trajectory to The Body, it makes sense that Was I Good Enough? isn’t a million miles from either’s respective output, especially in comparison to some of The Body’s other more transformative collaborations. It is, however, a fine example of both at their most crushing, blasting hypnotic sludge riffing and searingly aggressive power electronics into cold, dubbed out soundscapes with palpable venom.

After Moor Mother provided a remix for Sumac last year, it was only a matter of time until these two visionary forces joined together, but little could have prepared us for how explosive and vibrant The Film is. Whilst the punishing ‘Scene 2: The Run’ delivered exactly what you’d expect from this pairing, with Sumac’s tense, free improv post metal providing a dizzying backdrop for Moor Mother’s razor sharp rants and dissociative flows, the album dives deep into some seriously abstract terrain as it unfolds at glacial, cinematic pace, with neither party afraid to explore subtle, near silent soundscapes alongside squealing sheets of guitar feedback.

Guitarist Hayden Pedigo’s pastoral American primitive brought a lot of beauty into Chat Pile’s deliberately ugly industrial clamour, revealing a softer, more fragile side to the band that helped their psychotic sludge hit even harder by contrast. In The Earth Again was a powerful slow burner, a cohesive series of curious, wounded vignettes that formed a heart-wrenching depiction of the rot at the core of American culture. 

Once again proving war metal need not be beholden to either sonic or aesthetic cliches, these Spanish maniacs’ fourth full-length was by far their crispest sounding offering yet, incorporating eerie but surprisingly melodic lead work and bringing their chaotic sound into clearer focus without sacrificing any of their demented energy. 

New York’s Yellow Eyes returned to a somewhat more traditional black metal framework with the surprise release of Confusion Gate, whilst still incorporating many of the post industrial and folk influences that had informed 2023’s glorious curveball Master’s Murmur. The result is arguably their strongest and most well-realised album yet, neatly sidestepping the more prevalent cliches associated with modern black metal of both the atmospheric and dissonant kind to create a yearning, cathartic and extremely riffy sound rich with both earthy melody and an insidious, otherworldly unease.

Submersus felt like Hell at their most belligerent, and it was all the better for it; the desolate atmosphere of the project’s earlier records still lurked around the edges, but the focus here was firmly on hulking great doom riffs, belted out with visceral aggression and caked in one of the year’s most sublimely filthy, bowel shaking guitar tones. Top tier riff worship.

Almost a decade after former duo Ghold welcomed guitarist Oli Martin into their ranks, the UK’s most inventive avant-sludge outfit are now a fully fledged quartet with the addition of Warren Schoenbright’s Alex Virji on secondary bass – and their first album in six years was just as dense, layered and expressive as you’d expect. Marrying the more wistful, melodic sound of 2019’s Input>Chaos with the raw riffing of their early days and some of the most experimental, surreal passages they’ve ever put to tape (‘Leaves’, for example, is like a glimpse into an alternate universe where Joe Preston joined Coil after leaving the Melvins), Bludgeoning Simulations reaffirmed everything that makes Ghold great whilst, thrillingly, also suggesting they’ve only begun to scratch the surface of their unique sound.

Condensing the disorientating sprawl of their last few records into a tight, sub-40 minute package and honing their surreal, maximalist jazz fusion inspired black metal into some of the punchiest, most immediate songs they’ve ever put to tape, Goldstar is almost certainly Imperial Triumphant’s most accessible record yet, without sacrificing any of the vibrant art deco lunacy that put them on the map in the first place.

Funeral doom duo Bell Witch’s second full-length collaboration with Aerial Ruin, Erik Moggridge’s solo folk project, was even better than the first; not only did it boast a much clearer, more impactful production than Volume I, but Moggridge’s guitar was implemented much more thoroughly and imaginatively, allowing room for soaring harmonies and emotive solos alongside his somber finger picking. They felt like a proper power trio here, creating a much more dynamic record that stands as more than just the sum of its parts.

More intimate, subtle and meditative (but no less sprawling) than their explosive 2020 debut Éons, the second full-length proper from this mercurial Belgian collective eased off on their skronkier, jazzier tendencies to explore deep, resonant ambience, transmutating tectonic doom riffs into transcendent ragas and arriving at some of the most colourful, hallucinatory drone metal since Monoliths & Dimensions. 

There’s no shortage of bands blending shoegaze-y textures with black metal in 2025, but very few are doing it with the passion and sheer conviction of this Leeds quartet, who expertly balanced desperately haunting melody with astonishing ferocity here, blending dreamlike ambience into harrowing blasting. The songwriting was incredibly taut and effective; for just 32 minutes it’s emotionally exhausting in the best way. One of 2025’s most cathartic listening experiences. 

The Liverpudlian doom trio’s third full-length felt like their most refined album yet, distilling their abyssal sound into four perfectly realised and constantly evolving sonic monoliths, rich with both blackened and funereal flavours alongside a distinctive atmosphere that is all their own. As earthy and animalistic as it is vast and cosmic, there was an eerie, almost mystical quality lurking in this record that made it even more hypnotic.

Having already mastered the art of suffocatingly bleak, ink black sludge metal, Denver trio Primitive Man let just enough light into their sound on this fourth full-length to revitalise it whilst staying true to their crushing roots, incorporating a host of psychedelic harsh noise textures, melancholy guitar leads and moments of eerie calm amidst their dense, churning wall of sound. Combined with some of guitarist Ethan Lee McCarthy’s most personal, surprisingly hopeful lyrics, Observance is the band’s most dynamic, layered and haunting release yet, less nihilistic than before but just as powerful. 

It’s highly likely we’ll look back on The Spin as the album that made Messa massive, honing their smoky doom into its most accessible, refined and focussed form yet without losing an iota of the dark, jazzy atmosphere that made their previous records so intoxicating. Deftly balancing soaring, crystalline hooks with sumptuously gothic gloom, every moment here feels essential, with both Sara Bianchin’s spell-binding voice and guitarist Alberto Piccolo’s rich, expressive leads both at the top of their game. From driving anthems like ‘Reveal’ (complete with some subtle but effective extreme metal flavours – check out those cheeky blasts in the verse!) to smouldering slow burning epics like ‘The Dress’, The Spin was perhaps Messa’s most potent and well-rounded statement yet.