The Best Metal Albums of 2025
Every 2025 record the editors have reviewed, from the highest score down.
8 reviews
8.5
Cryptopsy
An Insatiable Violence
Nine albums deep and still the fastest room in Quebec.
Rafael Quintero
Aug 13, 2026
8.5
Whitechapel
Hymns in Dissonance
They put the clean singing away and remembered how to scare people.
Jonah Pike
Apr 21, 2026
8.0
Blackbraid
Blackbraid III
A trilogy closed with a plateau instead of a summit.
Eirik Solvang
Jul 1, 2026
8.0
Sodom
The Arsonist
Analogue drums, four decades in, and nowhere to play it.
Declan Rourke
May 16, 2026
7.5
Malevolence
Where Only the Truth Is Spoken
Sheffield goes to Los Angeles and comes back sounding enormous.
Gareth Llewellyn
Jul 22, 2026
7.5
Behemoth
The Shit ov God
Immaculate execution, undermined by a decision made in marketing.
Andrzej Sawicki
Jun 3, 2026
7.0
Lacuna Coil
Sleepless Empire
Heavier, yes. The question nobody answers is what for.
Ilse Brandt
Apr 2, 2026
6.5
Ministry
The Squirrely Years Revisited
He burned the tapes, then spent forty years arguing with the ashes.
Curtis Vance
Aug 27, 2026