We’ve reached the end of another year, and the quality death metal releases keep stacking higher and higher. But don’t fear. Death’s Door is here, and we have the goods!
As our final gift to you and yours before we break for the holiday and prepare our year-end lists, feast on some of the best death metal we’ve heard this year. We’re confident you’ll enjoy more than a small smackeral of the goodness here. And if you don’t, kick rocks.
JK just tell us what you loved in the comments. THEN kick rocks.
Death metal. Forever.
-Jonathan Adams
Cream of the Crop
Suffering Hour - Impelling Rebirth
Of all the “it” bands in death metal over the past few years, none has received less love than Suffering Hour. Over two full-length records and a smattering of excellent singles and EPs, these Minnesota-based blackened death dealers have proven themselves to be among the most interesting, innovative, proficient, and vicious collectives in the extreme music world. On every level the band shines, so it’s supremely frustrating to see them miss out on the accolades and exposure other (very worthy) bands like Blood Incantation, Tomb Mold, Gatecreeper, and Ulcerate receive. So here’s my valiant attempt to give them even a tad more deserved exposure, because Impelling Rebirth is among their best releases to date.
A tight, vicious EP of five tracks clocking in at 14 minutes, Impelling Rebirth is an exemplary collection that showcases at full power everything this band is capable of. “Revelation of Mortality” feels like the track that most pulls all of the band’s sonic influences and elements together. From cavernous tremolo picked madness to thrashing riffs and deathly bellows, all spiced with an Ad Nauseam-core progressive bent, it’s hard to deny this track’s magnitude and the effectiveness in which it accomplishes its mission. Which, as far as I can tell, is melting our brains while we headbang ourselves into inky oblivion. Every track on here is an absolute banger front to back, and cements Suffering Hour’s status as modern death metal titans.
While I’ve always deeply enjoyed Suffering Hour, Impelling Rebirth feels like the release that cements their status as one of the absolute best and brightest acts in extreme music. There is genuine, awe-inspiring talent and vision on display here, and I cannot get enough of this sequence of tracks. Here’s hoping we get another full-length release sooner rather than later. But until then I’m gonna listen to this thing until my ear drums pop. Exceptional death metal.
-JA
Best of the Rest
Aephanemer - Utopie
French melodic death metal Aephanemer have taken a different path towards Wintersun worship than other melodic death metals AE-pex predators Aether Realm. Where the latter have chosen to drop the brow and arguably the quality after Tarot, Aephenemer have upped the symphonic grandeur and the melodic pomp and circumstance considerably since 2016 highlight Prokopton, and arguably still more since 2021s A Dream Of Wilderness, which I’ve recently revisited and rediscovered, after (aside from the amazing artwork) it failed to capture my imagination on release.
This was not the case with Utopie. Starting with another expertly executed symphonic intro as we have come to expect from Aephanemer, and clearly endowed with a more sophisticated production job this time around, the album impresses out of the gates with a strong three-song run of “Le Cimetière Marin”, highlight “La Règle du Jeu” and “Par-delà le Mur des Siècles”. Between exuberant melodies, majestic orchestration, lively and buoyant drumming, a decidedly more plopping if still sometimes buried bass presence, and the vicious, French-cadenced snarl of Marion Bascoul these melodeath mainstays are firing on all cylinders. The Wintersun comparisons are more obvious here than on previous platters, especially in the wildly melodic and technical guitar pyrotechnics, and lead to some wonderful moments.
Aephamener really show their compositional craft by delivering perhaps my favourite track on the album without the need for vocals. The sweeping, glittering meander of “La Rivière Souterraine” shows that when the compositions are strong enough, dropping the vocals entirely is a risk worth taking. The track exudes poignancy and drama, and has quickly shot up the ladder of my favorite melodic death metal ditties of the year.
Two part closer Utopie (Partie I and II) close out the album to more great fanfare, although the nature of Aephanemer’s music does mean I find my attention wandering every so often as there is a lot going on on this album, and the long track lengths late on the album threaten to drown engagement in excess. This is somewhat aided by the wonderful attention reset button offered by “La Rivière Souterraine” after a somewhat less excellent midsection, but I still feel a couple of minutes could have been shaved off the more noodly sections of the last two tracks.
Any fans of symphonics-heavy melodic death metal should take definite note of this album, as Aephanemer show once again they still have the chops to make this formula work, and deliver an ever more polished iteration of their tried-and-true formula on Utopie.
-Boeli Krumperman
Hecktic - Unbeholden
The one thing death metal does for me that no other genre of metal does is that it sometimes makes me go “holy fuck” and want to absolutely tear something apart. This is good rage, clean rage, like a blue fire burning everything away. Unbeholden, Hecktic’s second album, is engineered in a lab to make me feel this rage. From opener “The Legacy is a Lie” opening with the vile words of George W. Bush Jr. and ending with the harrowing words of protest against them, through the impossibly powerful and agile riffs of “Plague Waltz”, and all the way to the gruelling and abrasive vocals throughout, Unbeholden is a slab of death metal excellence and aggression.
Tying all of these excellent elements together, the production on this album is just unrelenting. Drowning everything in a dark tone that nonetheless muddies not a note of the music, Unbeholden sounds even more menacing than its constituent parts would lead you to believe. Yes, it’s loud in that death metal but it’s not just loud to be loud; the volume is there to make sure that every bass note, double kick, and churning chords hits you right where it should, namely your stomach. It also makes the album strangely palatable in a way; I can listen to this one all day long and in fact have, circling around and around its dark allure like a moth to some fucked up flame.
Alright, you get the picture. This is death metal with a capital “AAAAHHHH”, filled with rage against the bastards who pretend to “lead” us even as they drive us right off a cliff. It is filled with that anger that is at the core of death metal, the seat upon which the genre was founded, and the number one thing I still go to it for. If you want to feel that rage channeled through some truly excellent metal, Unbeholden is your ticket.
-EK
Blindfolded and Led to the Woods – The Hardest Thing About Being God Is That No One Believes Me
Why are bands from “down under” so good at making progressive death metal? Ulcerate, Portal, Convulsing and Eye Eater are a few notable mentions, but Christchurch quintet Blindfolded and Led to the Woods are now a must on any list of Antipodean aural aggression. Their new album, The Hardest Thing About Being God Is That No One Believes Me, picks up the mantle from where previous full length, 2023’s Rejecting Obliteration, left its listeners…and that is a very dark place indeed. The troubling subject matter of this concept album is that of someone having their sanity slowly unravel, giving way to unhealthy obsessions, and the band have clearly dug deep to paint this disturbing picture in as much detail as possible.
On my first listen I could immediately hear elements of ‘…And Then You’ll Beg’ era Cryptopsy in the vocal delivery and off-kilter riffs, while some of the hurtling rhythms are reminiscent of Kill era Cannibal Corpse. These comparisons should tell you there has been a slight shift from their recent dissonant death metal leanings to a more direct and abrasive sound. There are still plenty of intelligent melodic flourishes throughout the album, but they are merely the side dishes that accompany the main meal of delicious technical progressive death metal.
Epic eight-minute opener “Arrows of Golden Light” covers the full spectrum of where BALTTW are in 2025; jagged riffs are thrown at you like knives in a circus act, insanity speed blast beats pummel you into submission, and delicately plucked chords trickle over a thunderous double kick and synth soundscape. It keeps you locked in, as you try (and fail) to guess what might be coming next. “Red” is another track that will stay with you as it bounces between black metal ferocity and a symphonic-sludge finale (we could all do with more symphonic-sludge in our lives). The title track is also suitably complex with a sumptuous jazz inspired mid-section that I wish lasted a few minutes longer.
I’ve been struggling to get into a lot of the celebrated death metal releases this year, and I still haven’t put my finger on exactly why that is. This album, however, has got me back in the game and I’m genuinely grateful for that. BALTTW have created an exceptional blend of ferocity, technicality and originality that not only enthrals the listener, but pulls you into an ominous world where the inner thoughts of their twisted perpetrator run riot.
-PK