The Top 10 Worst Albums of 2025

It is that time again. Here we take a look at the worst albums of the year. They come from varied polarities of the rock spectrum, with none of the offenders coming right from the pop machine, some are trying to be goth and metal, some are jsut bad at what they do, and others are dabbling in an experiment gone wrong.  One of the things that made rap great in the 80s and '90s was rappers calling each other out for being whack. It provided a form of quality control. Now people have grown too sensitive for that kind of hard truth.

 Some would argue this is all subjective, but music is something that can be defined in technical terms, as well as artistic, and how it holds up over time. Chances are, if it is hard is get through one listen,

10-Creeper-"Sanguivore II: Mistress Of Death"

The British goth wannabes Creeper have learned from many of the mistakes that plagued the previous album, though some of the anthemic glam rock feel is there.if you like H.I.M. and Meatloaf, then this is your new favorite band I only like one half of that equation, and you already know which one. 

 https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2025/10/gothtober-creeper-sanguivore-ii.html

9-Primitive Man-"Observance." 

The problem with this album is that it is focused on scathing sounds and drifting into post-rock moods with them, rather than memorable songs; some of this is due to the vocals being used as a frequency rather than more purposefully. Even at their most experimental, they are still working off a formula. 

 https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2025/11/november-is-doom-primitive-man.html

8-Dead and Dripping -"Nefarious Scintillations." 

Even though this is all the work of one man, Evan Daniele. Perhaps his ego should have been checked at the door as he is a better guitarist than he is a vocalist or drummer, and bringing in session guys would have benefited him. Cool ideas were killed by shitty production and forced me to struggle through the album. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2025/12/dead-and-dripping-nefarious.html

 7-ESCHATON- "Techtalitarian" 

 It is kind of like when the guitarist won't stop soloing at band practice, as you are trying to iron out parts. The song finds them playing even faster, and things sound thin and rushed rather than heavy, as dizzying speed alone is just fast, not heavy. You would think that people into progressive music would have learned the value of less is more from jazz, but no, here we are. They continue to fly off in the hyper-fast fret-burning direction with little regard for heaviness; it could be Dragonforce if it were not for the growling. Truth be told, when you have guys who have played in Necrophagist and Arsis, we should be expecting more, no matter how technical they are,

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2025/06/death-is-june-eschaton-techtalitarian.html

6-Revenge - "Violation.Strife.Abominate"

Things are more frantic and feral this time around, but not as heavy, thanks to the thin guitar tone that carries a reckless buzzing to the otherwise punk frenzy going down here. I don't remember the drums sounding this bad last time. The production might not grate on the nerves of their fans, who are the only ones who will appreciate this album. 

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

5-Ethel Cain- ''Perverts." 

You can't say I play favorites, as this is the first time an artist who scored our number one album of the year is also on the worst album list. This is an ambient album she released before "Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You." This finds her at odds with the concept of sound vs song on the title track, leading you off into a wasted twelve minutes of ambient noise. It is sparse and tentative, far from her most memorable songs. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2025/09/ethel-cain-perverts.html

4-Halestorm- "Everest" 

The bulk of the album is bland jock jams, though They brought in a cog from the Nashiville Country machine in Natalie Hemby for the big ballad, which makes for a song you might expect from Miranda Lambert.  This is a well-produced album that rolled off the assembly line to cater to a very gullible demographic,  as good as a pre-fabricated rock album can get.

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2025/08/halestorm-everest.html

3-Lorna Shore - "I Feel the Everblack Festering Inside Me."

 They went into the studio and made the album expected of them, dialing the symphonic elements up enough to make it feel like they are not just dialing it in. It is enough of a change to talk about in interviews, and some kids are just dumb enough to be wow'ed by the guitar solos and overproduced layers of pig squeals to not ask further questions of this band or even know what questions they should be asking.. Is this done in a professional manner that sounds polished and massive? Yes, but these guys have a ton of money invested in what they do, so of course, they are making a professional-sounding album. But it's boring,

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2025/09/lorna-shore-i-feel-everblack-festering.html

 

2-Baby Metal-"Metal Forth." 

The novelty of this album lies in the fact that the J-Pop group features a guest artist on each track. The only reason I decided to give this album a listen is because Poppy and Spiritbox are on it. Both artists flirt with the boundaries of what is metal and pop; just because an album has distorted guitars and some screaming on it does not make the album metal. Metal is an aggressive feeling of darkness that cannot be found on any track. In fact, I am embarrassed for anyone who appeared on this album. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2025/08/just-how-metal-is-babymetals-metal.html

1-Ghost - "Skeleta" 

Another album that earned a 5, they scored a 3 for the previous album, so it's an improvement.I think the fact that they make a turn further into pop with each album even has the music press, which was previously critical of the industry, not saying anything if they can't say something nice. But I will tell you how it is, at its worst some dreadful ballads make Styx sound heavy. So it's not worth owning, and was hard for me to make it through, but maginally better than their average album. The highlights are the riffs that sound like Dokken and Ratt, though those are far a few between. It ranked worse than anime schoolgirls because at least with that, you go into it knowing it will be terrible; this relies so heavily on a marketing image they have idiots invested in it, adding insult to injury when you listen to it. 

https://abysmalhymns.blogspot.com/2025/04/ghost-skeleta.html

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November is Doom- Primitive Man : "Observance"

 

Here is a band that proves my theory regarding sludge being the result of what happens when punks try to make doom. This is not our first rodeo with this band, and the rumble created here, which is thrown against a wall of feedback back, is what you expect them to hit you with. The rasp of the vocals echoing out feels like a more tormented version of death metal, and the atmospheric choices that paint this song are a wise investment to keep it from being more than your eardrums being pulverised. 

The second song opens with a minute and a half of noise that sounds like they caught the studio on fire. Then the drums come in to take things in a more doom-focused direction. They drone on for a bit before bringing down a harsh, deliberate pounding that accompanies the low growl of the vocals, which are just another punishing texture. At the five-minute mark, I begin to wonder what they could do for the next six minutes. The answer to this is lingering in the aftermath of the pounding fury. The guitar ambiance is plenty harrowing, and they create sounds that provide a fitting enough soundtrack to the real-time stream of the end of the world we are watching these days. This does contract dynamically into doom-tinted moments of heavy-handed chord dropping like a comet. This evolves into a swathe of angry atmosphere where the roar of the vocals rumbles on more abstractly.

The lumbering stomp of "Transactional" carries on the sonic aftermath of what unfolded in the previous song. The downtrodden trudge of crunching chords continues to drone on. Four minutes in, it begins to gain a throbbing momentum. Eight minutes in it starts soaring off into more of a shoegazing thing. It crashes back down into the kind of dense sludge that is the album's blood. They come back angrier and more in your face with the feedback barbed "Natural Law". Midway into the song, it finds its groove to become one of the album's most effective moments. They also begin to adhere to a formula that finds them jamming things out into a more post-rock place that stays anchored in heaviness thanks to the growl of the vocals. 

"Social Contract" opens with some Throbbing Gristle-like clanging. This drones on for four minutes before payoff. This is not the first time they have dabbled in industrial, though I prefer their previous efforts in this regard. There is some dark dissoance to this song that works well. This album finds the heavier moments sometimes crossing over into death metal levels of aggression. The last song picks up right where the previous song leaves off, with crushing death metal-flavored sludge that is full of venomous loathing. The song slowly begins to deconstruction into a sonically heavier guitar passage, more than a metallic riff-style playing. I will give this album a 7.5, as it focuses on scathing sounds and drifting into post-rock moods with them, rather than memorable songs; some of this is due to the vocals being used as a frequency rather than more purposefully. Being released on Relapse Records. 

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Primitive Man : "Immersion"

To their credit these guys continue to evolve. The first time I heard them was on their 2013 album "Scorn". They struck me as a sludge band that was rough around the edges. They have gone past the Eyehategod mark and now digging into death doom. Dissonant and ugly death doom, but that is what is feel like. It is bleak , but does not have the mournful sense of doom.The vocals are in a lower almost gurgled death growl. They get more atmospheric and less oppressive for the second song. These guys are so heavy, it often feels like they are throwing sounds at you rather than trying to write a song that you will want to listen to again. Here is some ear torture, I hope you like droning noise with a growl to it.

By the third song I am lost It seems like it is the previous song. At this point I have given up on trying to review this like an album and I am going to just reate my experience listening to it since there are no real musical properties to give my views on. There are two minutes and twent seconds of annoying nosie, that I went back and listened to to make sure I have not missed any musical elements. There are none. This is just an interlude. The squeal at you with more feed back before flogging you with distortion and calling it "Foul" aside from the second song this comes closest to being a song if you consider slaps of distortion in your face along with howling at you a song. The drummer is not really doing shit but beating along to something so slow anyone could to it if they can count to three. Some higher notes to occur along with other crashing noises.

The drummer is required to do a little more work on the last sound exploration. It rumbles like the others things of this nature they have done. The vocal are just like all the other times they do this . Not dynamics. No melodies . Anti melodic. Is it heavy, sure. When reviewing the Kruelty album I said this is the heaviest album of the year as if it is heavier than this you are not going to want to listen to . That prophecy is coming true. I will give this album a 5. It only scored that high because I was ok with the second song and the first one was decent. It is mindlessly heavy.

Primitive Man : " Caustic"

I am back after weathering the hurricane. Just got power back last night and internet this morning so Here we go. Primitive Man is no stranger to us here. The band's sound continues to evolve into something heavier and now it's to the the point that if demons possessed a tank and drove it through a junk yard, it would sound much like the opening song of this album which is more death metal than it is sludge. Though when you reach the density these guys have labels become a mute point as it's a matter of frequency and function. They chug out of the jagged feedback that makes up "Victim". The vocals are a growl that almost comes across like low squawk. Forget making out any of the lyrics it is more about the sonic attack. I think a few years ago I would have been more impressive by the sheer heaviness of the album. I can appreciate it. The guitar tone is pretty apocalyptic it sounds like large pieces of machine are being smashed together without sounding industrial.

There is a more droning pulse to "Commerce" . The vocals carry the death metal bellow though the pace stays more deliberate. While it's heavy as hell, from a song writing perspective it holds on a lumber in a manner similar to doom. Dynamically I would not say it's static, as it swells into a tremolo section that is pretty massive sonically. The pace only picks up incrementally for "Tepid". There is less of a rhyme and reason to the grunted vocals on this song. Yes it is very, but I feel there needs to be more pieces to this puzzle and begin to miss some of the more industrial strength nuances I remember them having on their earlier work. The double bass brings a more barreling steamroller of an attack to "Sterility" which at times sounded like instruments were give to gorillas.

By the time the album gets to "Sugarhole" this pounding has numbed me out and is all beginning to sound the same. So I took a break from the album and came back to it. It still strikes me as heading in a more death metal direction. Three minutes into "Disfigured" and the pulse of the song is more pleasing to my ears. Not that this is ground breaking , but it flows better than the bulk of what I have heard from these guys this time around. There is more of a sluggish doom tinged hesitation to the chords of  "Inevitable" . It does move into another more sonic passage with tremolo guitar letting us know they understand that black metal has forever influenced every genre of music. The last two minutes of this song is the sound of a dead horse being beaten. This is the last real song as the closing track is an outro of ambient noise. I'll give this album a 7.5 , it's certainly heavier and while I don't mind the more death metal direction, I personally want more in terms of dynamics vs sheer weighty heaviness.

Withered : "Grief Relic"

After  six years this Atlanta based band is back for their Seasons of Mist debut. Their return roars up from the depths with a cavernous blasting. Very dense and heavy, the intensity it hits you with from the onset begs a question we ask most bands that are this heavy after the opening song plows us over ...O.k what else can you do? Write Songs? "A Realm of Suffering" answers with a very similar roar. New addition Colin Marston's bass playing adds another sonic texture to this. Known for his technical death/black metal projects, he serves the songs more than one might expect. They add a layer of sonic dissonance midway into the song, to help give it an identity apart from the first song. This is very ugly and sonic death metal. There is more of a classic death metal sound on "Withdraw" which digs into the grime filled groove. The guitars are well layered thanks to Ethan from Primitive Man who has also joined their ranks, as the band now only holds tow of it's original members.

They flirt with some blackened elements on "Feeble Grasp", but return to the brand of death metal they are best at. The riffs morph back and forth on this one some of Beau's most impressive drumming. I had heard other drummers sing his praises, but never heard anything to really convince me until this song. There is one riff that takes you back to the early days of Mastodon where sludge met death metal. This is not surprising considering that Mike Thompson got his start with Troy Sanders in a band called Social Infestation. They take the song out on a dark and noisy note. I had already heard "Husk" going into this so it will be interesting to see how it feels in context of the album. I remember not being to taken by the initial listen though thought it sounded better than what I had previously heard from the band. They come out of a more chaotic beginning into a solid death metal groove. The vocals work best in the lower growls, the higher rasped screams seem a little forced when meshing with the overall vibe. They return to a more straight forward grinding death metal on "Downward". You can hear some punk under lying their sound at the onset, which is not surprising considering the bulk of Atlanta metal bands started out in the punk scene. The first guitar solo isn't a shred fest but more of a melody.

The ugliness continues on "Distort, Engulf" as the band proves they are  as nasty any death metal going today. This song is more straight forward than the previous songs in it's single minded attack. They close the album with a touch of atmosphere going into "To Glimpse Godliness". These guys don't need to drone into the ten minute mark to prove their point. They storm back into the heavy with authority. When the song drops down into the slower throb it reaches it's most powerful moment. This is a vast improvement for a band who previously  failed to win me over. Gone are any allusions to black metal as they have embraced their role as harbingers of some ugly death metal. I'll round this up to an 8.5.
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Primitive Man - " Scorn"

I went into this with little ...ok no knowledge of this band expect they seem to be featured on sites that share similar taste in metal. I did learn that very member of this band also used to be in Clinging to the Trees of a Forest Fire. The sludgey sound they capture seem to have become indigenous to America. Theres a coating of abrasive noise to their brand of sludge, the edges sound sharp and rusty like an a.i.d.s ridden Gorilla rPing you in a dumpster.

The grime encrusted fuzz corrodes all the dark corners of this album. Though the drums are acoustic they carry a similar cadence at times to that of an industrial band...think Godflesh not Combichrist. There are some grin score like temper tantru,s thrown before the more predominat machine like crush. The way the tempo retards on a song like "Antietam" makes it sound like the disease is slowing the big monkey pumping down as he runs out of steam and closes in on his last perverse breath. I think this song is particularly strong and I like the apocalyptic nature it conveys. To say the production is gritty would be an understatement. It sounds like every piece of mequipment used to record this album was rolled through broken glass and the band was whipped with barbed wire as they were recording this.

Vocally there are moment I would liken to Converge as it sometimes sounds like Jacob is screaming out of catharsis ad abandoning any decorum of the human language, which is the vibe I'm getting here as well. It barked , it's squeaked , we have set Noahs's ark on fire and it's sinking into the flood water amd these are the pleas we hear. With songs like "Black Smoke " the tone is almost set to equal parts noise and while I can appreciate the David Lynchian oddity found I. Experimentation , there needs to be some sort of notes for me to consider it a song. Not static and what may or may not be a moan.

"Stretched Thin" carries the punk venom with barking with rabid abandon.its not until the chug midway through does it really ,Orpheus into metal. The bass is very present and accounted for here which I'm a fan Of. "Astral Sleep" let's it's heft linger at first before it slides into the first piece of sludge that I would say comes close to having any doom ties. The build back in has a powerful chug to it. This is to Sludge what Lord Mantis is to black metal . Though that is not to say there is anything black about this album. It's darkness is more on the urban plane of existence. The punk leanins are they only hindernce here, I know to some extent it does part and parcel with grind core.

The conviction with which they set a out this with is pretty impressive , I think it should maintain a spot on my iPod so I will go ahead and give this one an 8 . It's powerful it tends to hit you with the same blows all too often , yet the feel of what they are doing has a very real desperation to it and I fou d myself like in Thai album much more than anticipated , so they get points for winning me over despite their lack of anything black.