After running a big internal (and conflicting) long list and arguing it out the only way we know how, we voted our way down to a top 10 metal albums of 2025. this is our final cut, and it says a lot about where our heads are at right now, heavy, emotional, messy, melodic, and sometimes just plain unhinged.
As every yearly list, keep in mind this is personal to our editors and may not reflect your own opinion, which we’d love to hear in the comments below.
Spiritbox – Tsunami Sea
Moves like a current, heavy and melodic in the same breath, with Courtney shifting from brutality to clean hooks like it is nothing. the songs keep bouncing across styles, but the pacing stays tight enough that it rarely drifts.
Feels built to prove they can do scale without losing personality, and when it locks in, it hits with both force and feeling.
The Sound of You Laughing – ThxSoMch
Gritty guitars, anxious energy, and a modern angst that pulls from post punk, alt rock, and a bit of rap cadence without over explaining itself. it feels raw and confessional, obsessed with isolation, spirals, and the weird numbness of being online all the time, but it still wants to be catchy, loud, and fast.
The best moments hit like a clenched jaw singalong, ugly feelings turned into something you can move to.
The Callous Daoboys – I Don’t Want To See You In Heaven
It is messy on purpose, a riot of mathy lurches, sudden sweetness, and whiplash transitions that feel like a panic laugh. the concept framing helps it feel like one long fever dream instead of random chaos, and the band sells every sharp cut with swagger and detail.
Overwhelming in the best way when you are in the mood for something that refuses to behave.
Songs to Sun – Stoned Jesus
It keeps the band’s doomy weight but lets more light in, calmer stretches, thicker atmosphere, and a mood that feels reflective instead of just crushing. the riffs still know how to lean heavy, but there is more space for texture and slow burn payoff, like they are choosing restraint as a flex.
Plays like a late night drive album that can still knock you over when it decides to.
Sleep Token – Even in Arcadia
This is polished to a mirror finish, pop and metal stitched together with zero shame. it aims for big feelings and big rooms, and even when the genre jumps feel excessive, the emotional hook is the point, obsession, longing, and self myth making wrapped in stadium sized production.
If you give in to the drama it hits hard, if you do not, it can feel like it is trying to impress you more than break you.
Deafheaven – Lonely People with Power
Harsher and more direct, like they dragged the beauty out of blackgaze and left a sharper edge in its place. the album feels like a full career summary that still has bite, with stretches that go pure blast and burn, then open into wide emotional air when it needs to breathe.
I lands as a grown up version of their intensity, less interested in flirting with softness, more interested in impact that lingers.
Deftones – Private Music
Sounds expensive and bruised, heavy but sleek, with the band leaning into their gift for making aggression feel seductive. the production is glossy without sanding off the teeth, and the songwriting keeps pulling between intimate and big surges that hit like a slow motion impact.
It feels confident, restless, and strangely warm for something that still carries that familiar Deftones feel.
Igorrr, Amen
As expected from the band, it is chaos, breakcore, baroque, metal, and electronic absurdity all crammed into the same room and somehow not collapsing. Every track feels like a new prank that turns into something genuinely nasty or weirdly beautiful, and the pacing keeps you tense because you never get the same idea twice for long. It is the kind of record you either replay to catch the details, or turn off because your brain needs a quiet room.
Turnstile, Never Enough
Takes the Glow On glow and pushes it into bigger pop instincts, more synth, more bounce, more left turns, but still with that punchy hardcore feel underneath.
The hooks feel sun burned and anxious at the same time, and the mood swings between euphoria and isolation without warning. when it works, it feels like a band refusing to sit still, stitching radio shine onto pit energy, then pulling it apart again before it gets too safe.
Lorna Shore, I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me
This one is huge, theatrical, and obsessed with scale, long tracks that feel built for arenas even when the riffs are going for the throat.
It leans hard into cinematic intros and classical touches, then snaps back into relentless deathcore sprinting, like it is trying to out run its own apocalypse.
The songs keep circling rot, ruin, and survival, and even when it flirts with formula, it sells it with pure force and detail as something unique.