The Top 10 Black Metal Albums of 2025

It is not surprising that Black Metal's popularity continues to wane in the hipster metal scene. It's now called problematic by poseurs who were only into it for superficial reasons in the first place, as the genre has always represented misanthropic hate and nihilistic disdain for the world. These albums captured what black metal should be with very little compromise. Black metal is a sub-genre of metal that is for the true outsiders. Here are the bands that captured it best. 

 After I sort through the top 10 albums of all the respective genres, I use those lists to compile the top 10 albums of 2025. The very fact that these bands made it on the list speaks to how great these albums are, so it's not a slight that the number 8 album is above the 9th album; there is something that just gives it an edge that makes me want to listen to it more. After all, we can try to look cool and pick the hippest bands for a list, but at the end of the day, what makes an album the best is that it makes you want more, and you look forward to listening to it again. Perhaps you can find your next favorite on this list, and I have included links to reviews of these albums if you want to check out the audio on these guys. Anyway, here are the top 10 Black Metal albums of 2025

10-Cult Burial- "Collapse of Pattern, Reverence of Dust."

It seems all too often blackened death metal bands add the wrong parts of the two genres. These guys seem to get the atmosphere and aggression combo before going into a more winding technical riff for the second song. The vocals are produced to give the growls the biggest roar for your buck. When they chug along at a very deliberate pace, it gives the vocals more purpose. The use of a present bass in the mix is effective and creates a darker backbone for the songs

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2025/08/cult-burial-collapse-of-pattern.html

 

9-Karg-"Maroduer" 

This is the band's 9th album, and Black metal seems to be at the core of their DNA, as it's the attitude propelling the aggressive tendencies, and even in how the atmosphere is approached. The vocals are not screamed but shouted in a forceful yet pained manner. More melodic and angular than what I expect from any metal coming out of Germany, with some turns into a more in-your-face black metal approach, 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2025/02/black-metal-history-month-karg-maroduer.html

8-Deafheaven- "Lonely People With Power." 

On this album, they have balanced out the varied elements of their discography, right down to the deliberate chug the song transitions into. Having made their way onto the rock festival circuit, you had to wonder how much playing with big mainstream bands would influence them. Truth be told, when I saw them at Rockville, there was little compromise on their part to win anybody over. 6 albums into their career, I think it is safe to say if they were going to sell out, they would have by now. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2025/03/deafheaven-lonely-people-with-power.html

          

7-This Gift is a Curse-"Heir." 

This Swedish band plays a confrontational style of black metal that carries hard-core roots in its aggression. They do not just blast at you, but bring various influences. At times, layering things with like spoken female vocals before their more hard-core side of the band surfaces, and sparse places where they blast along in the vein of most black metal bands these days. It's the darker creep of the riffs that makes them stand out from the pack.  

 https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2025/01/this-gift-is-curse-heir.html

6-Shining-"Divided You Stand &United You'll Fall." 

Sweden's Shining should need little introduction here to regular readers, as they are one of the biggest bands from the depressive black metal sub-genre.  They have evolved past the weeping drama they once invoked. A gritty mix of covers and originals that finds them spreading their hatred in the best way possible.

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2025/07/shining-divided-you-stand-united-youll.html

 

5-1914-"Viribus Unitis."

This Ukrainian band is branded as blackened Death-doom. It is the band's fourth, the second since their country was invaded by Russia. That conflict is the inspiration for this album. They go from black metal to a more deliberate crunch to back on a blackened path until the more melodic doom elements also begin to creep in. They color the songs with chanted vocals and wisely placed blast beasts to craft actual songs that are effective rather than an angry burst of sound. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2025/11/1914-viribus-unitis.html

 

4-Grima - "Nightside" 

This Russian band brings a more overt aggression than I remember from their last album.  There is almost a more Dissection-like layering to the guitar here. The vocals are more anguished, with the black metal shriek doubled by a lower death metal growl.  The production is great; it's a stellar mix with nothing buried. For some black metal purists, this might be too much of a sell-out, although we should be well past that point of contention by now.

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2025/02/black-metal-history-month-grima.html

3-Abigail Williams- "A Void Within Existence." 

One of the rare American Black Metal bands that has stood the test of time as a legitimate representation of what their genre is, with the same level of sonic darkness as their European counterparts. There is a bigger sound that pushes them more in the direction of a band like Behemoth.  The guitar work begins to dazzle over the commanding march. They find the perfect blend of bleak melody with enough black metal bombast to keep the dynamics balanced.

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2025/05/abigail-williams-void-within-existence.html

2-Morast-"Fentanyl"

This is what black metal should be. Darkness and misery forged into music. It carries a dreadful throb, that is not what you might think of as depressive black metal, but they succeeded in capturing the despair of a junkie in a manner so real we have not heard it since mid-2000s Nachtmystium. I did not know fentanyl was big in Germany, but it's spread worldwide now, as I am sure the trailer parks of Europe in the Eastern Bloc are spreading it like roaches.

 https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2025/02/black-metal-history-month-morast.html

1-Blut Aus Nord - "Ethereal Horizons." 

The French Black Metal band's 16th album shows Blut Aus Nord never makes the same album twice, and they are embracing every side of the genre here while cloaking them all in their signature atmosphere. It is like listening to a smoke machine envelop a band rather than just seeing it on stage. Atmospheric black metal is being pushed in new directions, while the pained moaning of the clean vocals cuts through the thickness of sound, bringing' Mercyful Fate's earliest incarnations of black metal to mind. There is the needed cauldron of blast beats and tremolo-picked guitars needed to identify their blackened intent, but not sounding like everyone else in the process

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2025/10/blut-aus-nord-ethereal-horizons.html

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This Gift is a Curse : "Heir"

 

This Swedish band plays a confrontational style of black metal that carries hard-core roots in its aggression. The first track does not just blast at you but brings various influences. I like how they are layered with the spoken female vocals when things break down by the end of the song. "No Sun, Nor Moon" finds the more hard-core side of the band surfacing on the chorus, though it blasts along in the vein of most black metal bands these days. I like the darker creep to "Void Bringer" though the vocals are more chaotic and work less with what is going on. 

"Death Maker" is the typical blasting you expect from black metal though a tad more feral in its frenzied snarl. "Seers of No Light" also falls along the more wrathful slant of black metal, and is not as sonically interesting as the more experimental and ambient take they embark on with "Cosmic Voice" even though it does work off more of a drone, and might not fall into the hooky bounds of songwriting, it shows there is a time and place for everything, and this type of willingness to play with the formula and think out of the box is something many of the other songs could benefit from as well. Fans of just black metal might find this to be their least favorite track if they only listen to black metal for their brains to become battered by blast beats. 

"Vow Sayer" falls closer to the expected bound of black metal, with some eerie melodies that create ambiance behind the more in-your-face onslaught in the front of the mix. In some ways, it's closer to the chaos of a band like Deathspell Omega. There is a darker atmosphere to the song "Old Space" that throbs with a darkness that I find more pleasing, along with a whispered vocal that is more brooding. All of these things are more pleasing. This swells into a more sludge-like mood, but is the first moment in this album that feels like this. The last song finds the vocal back in a crazed snarl that stirs things into a more chaotic vision of black metal. I'll give this album a 9, it's dark enough black metal that it works for me, though due to the unhinged vocal approach which is not as purposeful as what I normally look for I'm not sure how much I will actually listen to it, but there is no denying the success of what they created here.Out March 7th on Season of Mist.  

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This Gift is a Curse : " A Throne of Ash"

I like this. Judging from how the physical album were sold out in one day maybe not a fervently as their fan base. Sure they had a swathe of atmosphere opening the album, along with some sonic moments on songs like "Gate Dweller", but they remind me of Pantera's more unbridled moments.A shade darker unless we are talking about "the Great Southern Trend kill".  Yes they are pissed. This Swedish band might be many things, but I do not hear any sludge at all. Blackened hard core is the most apt sub-genre to stack them into. "Thresholds" is a pretty convincing case for that. There is also some thrashy touches, which when mixed with the hardcore in the perfect storm of double bass creates the Pantera sound I am talking about. I am sure the Pantera comparison, which might be something some of the metal hipsters in these guys might not be able to un-hear, is not something the band really set out to do.

They are pretty preoccupied with speed and pour it on more often than not , I am just trying to key in on the cool guitar riffs buried under the explosion of sound. Things do not slow down until "Monuments For Dead Gods". Then they of course build back up with a river of double bass flowing beneath them, thus ending the Pantera comparison for a minute. The vocals have a throatier resonance to their bark, versus the more screamed approach of the album so far. The more screamed part the lyrics cut through a little better. After the ambiance leading into "Wolvking' we are back at a full throttle in your face kind of thing. This finds the songs beginning to bleed together. At that pace it is hard to make out any thing. I know I complain about bands getting too fast. I love black metal so I am not opposed to it. The problem is too many bands use it as any easy way out. This theory is proven on "I am Katharsis". By blasting right past you, there is no need to hone the finer points of song writing.

There is more grinding noise to " I am Your Black Halo". It sounds like a car accident and feels like a train wreck. "Wormwood Star" is a little darker and moodier. It does end in a crusty pounding. I wil;l give this album a 7.5, think I have not pulled any punches about what did not work for me. What worked was the sonic heaviness and the cool guitar parts. The rule aroun here is coll riffs alone does not a good song make. So that factored into the acore as well.