I've been doing this for a while now and while I didn't start doing "A Year In Review" from the get go, that still means I've written about half a dozen of these. As I've written previously, not every year fits into a narrative and the more time pass the less I am willing to make it fit. 2025 has its share of narratives associated with it too. Some say it was a weaker year for metal but a very strong year for almost everything else. Others point the dubious and impossible to pinpoint influence of the second Trump administration. Yet others have their own stories to tell - victories, defeats, and the myriad other, smaller, emotions and experiences that make up a year.
For me, 2025 was many things but, more than anything, it was a year of a lot of heavy metal. So that's what I'm going to write about. Initially, this post was meant for the middle of the year content but we had plenty to publish back then and I had a suspicion that the trend will only get stronger as the year went on. I was right; if you look below, you'll see that the majority of the releases mentioned in the body of the piece were released in the first half of the year but the Honorable Mentions are littered with latter releases.
I would like to invite you to take a similar approach to summarizing 2025. There is no need to tell grand stories - December 31st and January 1st are pretty much the same. The wheel grinds on. Joy lives. It lives in grand stories and gestures, as it has since humans were around to experience it, but it also lives in smaller places and events. Maybe I'm getting old(er) but the more I experience, the more I find my mind lingers on small moments rather than big picture events. So, I want 2025 to leave behind a thousand tiny segments of me yelling lyrics at the top of my lungs, air guitaring off of a bench, listening to sick riffs while driving, and sharing my love of music with my friends. I want 2025 to be remembered for the reason I am doing all of this to begin with: heavy fucking metal.
Enjoy.
Heavy metal is never too far away from me. I’m always one life event, or one track, away from going on an Iron Maiden bender. Heavy metal is where and how I first fell in love with metal as a whole and, as a result, it is imprinted on me. However, it’s fair to say that I don’t consider it one of the “main” styles of metal that I listen to. There are always two or three albums each year from the style which I like, and maybe even one or two which I love, but that’s about the extent of it. Until 2025 rolled around, that is. In 2025, two things happened: first, a whole slew of excellent releases in the heavy metal adjacent sub-genres (NWOBHM, power metal, speed metal, and “just” good old heavy metal itself) were released. Second, I found myself especially receptive to these albums, feeling that old flame course through my veins again, as though I was sixteen again.
I cannot stress this enough: heavy metal made me feel on fire this year as it hasn’t for many a year. I found myself chair dancing, headbanging through streets, screaming at the top of my lungs, and tearing up with love and passion for this incredible music, the birthplace of metal as a whole. Why? Why this year? Who knows, to be honest. It was probably a mix of how hard the winter was and how much I was looking forward to Spring. Throw in my overall state of mind, the amount of stress I’ve been under, and my return to martial arts, and you will find me yearning for release and for agency, for a direction to my strength, an affirmation of life, feelings and states of mind that heavy metal has in droves. As is always the case when a genre of music takes over me, I just found that my internal and external worlds meshed the most when I was listening to heavy metal and that sort of fuel cannot be beat.
Of course, it also has everything to do with the fact that there have been so many amazing releases in heavy metal this year. First, there was a lot of great power metal. Fer de Lance released one of the best ones of the last several years, replete with the heavy metal roots that make power metal so great. I also wrote a lengthy review (kinda) about Helms Deep’s masterful Chasing the Dragon, another release that just "gets" what power metal is all about.
Secondly, there was also a lot of heavy metal in releases that don’t necessarily wear the genre as their primary influence, like the tinges of heavy metal riffs and solos on Dessiderium’s Keys to the Palace or the energetic moments of Lunar’s expansive Tempora Mutantur. I had a blast chasing those down, honing in on their crystal-clear sound as it rang from within layers of death, black, and progressive metal.
Then there was Sacred Leather's Keep the Fire Burning, an album which captured one of my favorite sub-sections of heavy metal: the power ballad. I've written about this before as well, but "Tear Out My Heart" has never been far from my rotation. It captures all of the grandiose, evocative emotions that I love heavy metal for and I found myself going back, again and again, to its highs and lows. The rest of the album has plenty to offer too, with blistering solos, uplifting riffs, and an overall directness that is at the heart of what makes heavy metal so great.
Lastly, for me, nothing else has strummed the strings of my heart like one man’s music: Kyle McNeill. Whether as part of Seven Sisters or at the helm of his own project, Phantom Spell (which I reviewed for the blog earlier this year), McNeill and his friends strike true to everything that made me fall in love with Iron Maiden, and British Heavy Metal in general, to begin with. No matter how far I go and how many albums I listen to, how many subgenres of metal I learn to appreciate and how many diverse styles of other music I learn to love, something in my soul always draws me back to galloping riffs, epic falsetto vocals, and blazing guitar solos. Both projects deliver these in droves, the first marrying them with an awesome and expansive science fiction concept and the latter diving deep into the folk tales, myths, and nature that have always driven British music in general and British Heavy Metal especially.
And so, there you have it! 2025 was marked mostly, for me, with the brand of heavy metal. I look forward to seeing if any more releases in the style will capture my attention in 2026 but even if that doesn’t end up being the case, I will be perfectly content with the rich trove of it that I’ve already found this year. If you’re not a fan of the style, there’s no better time to learn how to appreciate it than right now. And if you are a fan of the style, rejoice battle siblings! For we are eating well.
Honorable Mentions
Zeicrydeus - La Grande Heresie
Lunar - Tempora Mutantur
Kal-El - Astral Voyager Vol. 1
King Witch - III
Haunt - Ignite
Beast Eagle - Sorceress
Ultra Raptor - Fossilized