2025 is off to a rip-roaring start. After taking the high seas by storm last year with High on Fire, Weedeater are craving a taste of the open road. The veteran Carolina stoners are packing their pipes in preparation for a month-long roll across California, the Southwest and East Coast with Napalm Death and the Melvins.
She’s serenaded crowds from the UEFA Champions League to The Game Awards, but on her latest album, Eivør reached several new milestones. The Faroe Islands superstar performed songs off ENN to sold-out crowds from Red Rocks to Hellfest.
Revenge reach a new level of conflict on their upcoming seventh full-length album. On Violation.Strife.Abominate, J. Read and his long-standing partner in chaos Vermin defy both modern black metal and degenerate kneeling swine.
EXOCRINE, a juggernaut born from the depths of Bordeaux in 2013, has relentlessly pushed the boundaries of extreme music. Founded by the virtuoso guitarist Sylvain Octor-Perez and reinforced by the formidable talents of Nicolas La Rosa, Jordy Besse, and Théo Gendron, they have cemented their legacy technical death masters.
When darkness descends, NITE flies high with blackened heavy metal. After venturing through space on their last album, NITE has returned to face the shadowy mythology that lay dormant beneath society’s underbelly. Each of the eight epic battles on Cult of the Serpent Sun tests the band’s mettle. But amidst their new album’s winding perils, NITE emerges triumphant. Lead single “Crow (Fear the Night)” is a rallying cry, calling for fists to rise with power and might.
2025 is building up to be another catastrophically successful year for Cryptopsy. The most vile band in the history of brutal death metal are honing their crown of horns in the wake of their JUNO Award winning album. Next month, they’re touring 10 cities across Latin America with fellow legends Atheist.
Fans and critics have been losing their minds over Defeated Sanity. Last year, brutal death metal’s most relentless innovators returned to the raw brutality of their early classics, but the band’s new album has also taken their legacy to even greater extremes. Not only has Chronicles of Lunacy landed on notable year-end lists from across the world of metal, rock and pop. It’s also broken onto the Billboard charts.
The Sylvan Embrace calls out to those who yearn for the solace of nature’s eternal embrace. Like a journey into the heartland of an ancient forest, this majestic latest single of SAOR‘s newest album Amidst the Ruins invites one to find refuge and rejuvenation amidst the rustling leaves and the wise whispers of the ageless trees. Each note calls to introspection, a reminder of the serene power that nature holds, and its ever-present ability to mend the wearied soul.
Reidar Olsen, the man behind DANHEIM has been producing music all the way back in his teenage years. Focusing on mostly electronic music, it wasn’t until 2016 that he fused this love for music production with his Danish roots. Loosely meaning ‘Danish home’, DANHEIM is the perfect marriage of old Norse mythology with ambient electronic music, à la Brian Eno. With his signing to Season of Mist, DANHEIM now reminiscences to the two albums that started it all: Munarvágr & Mannavegr. Munarvágr, the first of the two albums, is a 12-track showcase of thundering drums, subtle percussive instrumentation layered with deep chants. It’s an album that immediately sets the tone for what DANHEIM‘s music is all about – honoring old Nordic tradition in a majestic and fierce way. If you’re ever in the mood for a good workout while feeling like a viking about to conquer new lands, this is the the kind of album you’d put on.
Even among the accursed crypts of death metal, true legends never stay buried.
While many metalheads across the country brace for the beastly blizzards of winter, Necrofier are kicking off 2025 with their horns still blazing.
Sheer atrocities are right around the corner. Combining the most violent extremities of hardcore, sludge and black metal, THIS GIFT IS A CURSE have a created a truly unique, visceral sound – one that they will be exploring further on their newest album HEIR. On the lead single, Kingdom, THIS GIFT IS A CURSE explores a new sonic palette by working together with Laura Morgan of electro/industrial project Livmødr. HEIR is out March 7th on Season of Mist.
2024 stood out as another memorable year for Ne Obliviscaris. The maestros of extreme progressive metal celebrated the 10th anniversary of Citadel with a newly definitive remastered version. The band performed both their acclaimed second album and their latest album Exul in their entirety during a two hour set on their fall headlining tour of Europe. They also reunited with original drummer Dan Presland and toured South America for the first time. Now, as this year winds down, Ne Obliviscaris are tightening their strings in anticipation for an even bigger 2025. The band will return to North America for their first run on the CHAOS & CARNAGE Tour.
Around this time last year, before the underground legends descended one last time into Menegroth, The Thousand Caves, Defeated Sanity felt like they were in need of an adjustment. Over the past 30 years, no other band has hit on more ways to spin death metal on its deformed head. But instead of concocting another heady bludgeoning of jazz-infused chaos, they wanted to double-down on the neck-snapping brutality that fans love about their earliest classics.
In the windswept grandeur of Scotland’s towering peaks and mist-laden lochs, the mythic resonances of SAOR‘s sound rise once again. Today, the band shares their masterful playthrough for their newest single, Amidst the Ruins. Amidst the Ruins draws inspiration from a bygone era, merging black metal’s raw intensity with Celtic folk’s heartfelt melodies. As echoes of forgotten paths and crumbling relics of history unfold before your eyes, this composition serves as a solemn reminder of heritage lost amidst the modern world’s clamor. Watch as the band eloquently intertwines guitar melodies, pounding drums and heavy basslines on Amidst the Ruins: https://youtu.be/wugVW7uwQsU
Though named after the ancient volcanic rock, Obsidious are bonded by a love for technical death metal. This group of superb players features current and former members of Obscura, Dååth, Eternity’s End and Juggernaut. No wonder their first album was instantly iconic.
Renowned as dark lords of the Swedish black metal scene, MÖRK GRYNING return with their newest opus, Fasornas Tid. This visceral journey into the depths of human psyche is set to shatter boundaries and invoke the raw essence of 90s black metal with a modern ferocity that cements their legacy.
This time last year, Oceans of Slumber gifted fans a sneak peak at their new album with the piano medley “Poem of Fire”. The Texas trailblazers of progressive metal have never bowed to convention, but on Where Gods Fear to Speak, they reached new, dark cinematic heights. This year, the band toured North America with Lacuna Coil and New Years Day before topping the charts at college radio and critics’ year-end lists.
As Savage Lands prove on their breathtaking new single, metalheads aren’t ones to back down from a fight. After witnessing how land developers are tearing down Costa Rica’s rain forest, Megadeth drummer Dirk Verbeuren and his old guitarist Sylvain Demercastel decided they weren’t going to sit around and rust in peace. In 2022, they started Savage Lands, the music industry’s first artist-run environmental non-profit.
Even the most legendary heroes have their downfall. Back at the end of the 2000s, the underground had left Cryptopsy for dead thanks to an album that’s best left unspoken. But when the recent JUNO Award winners returned from critic-imposed exile in 2011, they reclaimed their crown as the most vile name in death metal with their self-titled album.