We're back, basic black metal free, and covering everything of note that's been released over the holiday period, as well as the first batch of new releases from 2025! Which overstuffed and underinspired genre will invoke my ire this go around? Trad metal? Stoner doom? Brutal death metal? Stay tuned to find out!
Top Picks
Dreadnaught – Shutdown in a Heartbeat (progressive thrash, alt metal)
For a long time, Dreadnaught were an Australian metal institution. Following their 2016 album Caught the Vultures Sleeping, however, they just sort of disappeared and I wasn't sure if they were even a band anymore. Flash forward to the beginning of 2025 and they're not only back, but they've brought an absolute banger with them.
Despite the near-decade interlude, Shutdown in a Heartbeat picks up more or less exactly where Vultures left off, leaning even further into the band's more modern, progressive-thrash approach, rather than the groove-metal-tinged alt rock with which they made their name. Having said that, it's a bit more of a straightforward affair than its predecessor, being less reminiscent of Nevermore's seven-string shred assault than Arch Enemy in their more mid-paced moments. At the same time, it also feels a lot more focused, being driven by a consistent thrash metal momentum, which only ever slows down to allow "Devoid of Life" and "Flowers (Ver 3.)" to add some spacey Pink Floyd vibes to the mix, which should please everyone still fawning over the new Blood Incantation album. All of this also comes along with a near-constant lyrical assault against the workday grind, which perhaps sheds some light on their elongated absence (not to mention the world-wide pandemic that happened in the interim).
Whether Shutdown has the same staying power as Dreadnaught's self-titled 2009 record (which is still one of the best Australian metal albums of all time) remains to be seen. Either way, it's just good to have them back, and a great way to kick off the new year while they're at it.
Stick To Your Guns – Keep Planting Flowers (melodic hardcore)
Stick to Your Guns are a band I've always been aware of but never really bothered with. Every time a new album of theirs came around, I'd give it a chance. Yet, while they seemed decent enough at what they do, they never seemed particularly distinguished either. Keep Planting Flowers, on the other hand, grabbed me by the throat from the moment I first heard it, and has hardly let go since.
Perhaps the difference lies in the fact that Flowers is easily the heaviest Stick to Your Guns record to date. A lot of the album stays true to form, laying down a solid array of cathartic modern hardcore, punctuated by memorable, uplifting melodies, in the vein of The Ghost Inside, Dragged Under or even Evergreen Terrace (whose guitarist it turns out joined STYG all the way back in 2012). Then there are tracks like “More than a Witness”, which kicks off exactly like “Orange County Blonde and Blue” or “Faith in Fire” by Bleeding Through, before bringing in some serious mid-period Comeback Kid vibes; 55-second rager "Who Needs Who", which features Terror's Scott Vogel, has all the hallmarks of a classic metalcore opener (à la the band's own "This Is More", but with decent production this time); and ferocious, spite-fueled closer "H84U", which sees Seeyouspacecowboy's Connie Sgarbossa adding some extra venom into the mix as well.
At only around twenty-five minutes long, Keep Planting Flowers is an infectious and exhilarating listen that had me wondering: Have Stick to Your Guns always been this good? Having since done the research, I assure you: The answer is no.
Release Roundup
6Deep – Dead In 5 (nu deathcore)
Acerbity – End of the Line (thrash)
Algol – The Black Sands of Madness (ok black metal)
Allfader – Call of the Void (blackened melodeath)
Alt Blk Era – Rave Immortal (alt/electro metal)
Asphalt/Defiant Body – Split (sludge-doom)
Atra Vetosus – Undying Splendour (progressive post-black metal)
Baptiste Brun – Elevatio (prog shred)
Barshasketh – Antinomian Asceticism (black-doom)
Becerus – Troglodyte (death metal)
Beriedir – Liminal Spaces (progressive metal, melodeath)
Black Jade – White Hand Down (progressive/post black metal)
Black Pegasus – Mass Omega (industrial death-sludge, noisy post-black)
Black Pegasus – Mass Omega II: The South Chamber (noisy post-black, industrial death-sludge)
Blackwater – Aporia (progressive/blackened death metal)
Bloodlust – Yet Nothing Shines (metalcore)
Box – Born to Crawl (posty goth-rock)
Brain Mold – Infinitum Lumen (crusty black, brutal death)
Children of Nothing – Inferno (blackened doom)
Chimera Cult – Feral Well (metalcore, groove death)
Choir – Smithe Thee Smoldering Providence (noisy death metal)
Circles ov Hell – Thus Began the Descent (blackened death metal)
cohen_noise - Some Things Aren't Forever, But For A Reason (nu mathcore?)
Cranialgrind – Cadena alimenticia (death metal)
Crochet – Cherish (mathcore, screamo)
Crucial Velocity – Controller (prog rock/metal)
Culak – Ens Astrale (folky prog-doom, post-black)
Detection – First Blood (thrash)
Diabol – Graveyard Backtery (death metal)
Dominum – The Dead Don’t Die (symphonic power metal)
Dream Fatigue – The Lady in the Sky (alt rock)
Druparia – The River Above (progressive melodeath)
Eddysss – Dead Zone (instrumental prog-metal)
Elyose – Évidence (goth/electro metal)
Empty Mirror – Deus Profanus (symphonic/powerish metal)
Epitaph – Path to Oblivion (doom metal)
Estuarine – Corporeal Furnace (blackened prog-death)
Ethel Cain – Perverts (gothic ambient)
Ex Deo – Year Of The Four Emperors (symphonic groove/melodeath, Kataklysm)
Excruciations – Purification Through Torture (brutal death metal)
Exiled Hope/Steel Forge – Realm Of The Exiled (blackened melodeath)
Eye of Aquila – Atavisms (stoner metal)
Faithxtractor – Loathing & The Noose (blackened death-doom)
Frontierer – The Skull Burned Wearing Hell Like A Life Vest As The Night Wept (brutal/chaotic mathcore)
Garden Of Stone – The Grave Mistake (goth metal)
Gnostician - Unification as an Art (brutal mathcore)
Guilt Dispenser – Detonation (grindcore, power violence)
The Halo Effect – March of the Unheard (melodeath)
Hanry – Disruption (post rock, ambient)
Haunted Horses – Dweller (industrial post punk/goth)
Hexenbrett – Dritte Beschwörung: Dem Teufel eine Tochter (blackened speed metal)
Jarnbord – Filmer för blinda (crusty/blackened grindcore)
Jota – Haven (blackened post-hardcore)
LaColpa – In Absentia Lucis (noisy blackened-death/sludge-doom)
Lights to Remain – Damnation (melodeath)
Lord Agheros – Anhedonia (very-symphonic black metal)
Matenrou Opera – MUTSU NO HANA (symphonic goth/power-metal, visual kei)
Maw – The Humble Collapse (post rock)
Megafauna – I Owe This Land A Body (chiptune)
Membrane – Deathly Silence (post metal)
Midwinter – Is There Anything You Want to Say? (post-hardcore, metalcore)
Mirar – Ascension (symphonic tech-metal, thall?)
Molecular Decay – The Disembowelment of a Pathological Factor Human (goregrind)
Moondark – The Abysmal Womb (sludge death)
Moonthoth – Czarnonoc (posty/progressive black metal)
Mutagenic Host – The Diseased Machine (death metal)
Nicolas Waldo – World on Fire (power shred)
No Eye Has Seen - Impermanence (tech-metal/core)
Obscure Sphinx – Emovere (doom sludge)
The Obsidian Resurrection – As Darkness Falls (death metal)
Othismos – Sottrazione (sludgy/deathened black metal)
Passynth – Mina’s Sounds of the Sea Tape (electonic, vaporwave)
Pale – Our Hearts In Your Heaven (noisy post-black)
Paleface Swiss – Cursed (nu-beatdown, Slipknot-core)
Pandemic – Phantoms (thrash/speed metal)
Patriarkh – ПРОРОК ИЛИЯ (fake Batushka)
Plaguewielder – In Dust & Ash (blackened goth metal)
Rauhbein – Adrenalin (folk metal)
Revolting – Night of the Horrid (melodeath)
Rupaul – Good Luck and Don't fuck it Up (drag/dance pop)
Sacred Son – Grief Commodity (post-black, death-doom)
Sadie – The Revival of Darkness (nu metal/core, visual kei)
Sadist – Jugular Bells (Christmas tech-death)
Sandbreaker – Revelations Of The Sand (sludge doom)
Sarkasm – Carnival Of Atrocities (death metal)
Shovelhead A.D. – Timeless Old (thrash)
Sight Of Theia – The Great Dreamer (posty prog-metal)
Silent Deep Ocean – In Dark Eternity (gothic funeral doom)
Silentio Mortis – God Is Dead (doom)
Sisters Of… – Marie/Michel (post doom)
Slaughtersun – Black Marrow (violin death metal, Lamb of God)
Suncinder – Heretic (instrumental blackened-death metal)
Sutekh Hexen – Primeval (“deconstructed” black metal)
The Cimmerian – An Age Undreamed Of… (sludge metal)
Tremonti – The End Will Show Us How (alt-metal, butt rock)
The Veer Union – Welcome To Dystopia (badiecore)
Violent End - Everything In Seconds (hardcore, metalcore)
Whisper – Gravemind (prog death)
Wyatt E. – zamāru ultu qereb ziqquratu Part 1 (psychedelic folk)