Another year of filth in the books. And it was a good one, music wise. There wasn't really a single genre that dominated this scene this year, with a good spread from grind to screamo and every breakdown and riff in between. Once again to highlight that eclectic wealth of quality releases and range of styles we cover under this column, we've sorted our year in review into top 10s by sub-genre, with writers inputting their own list with their personal highlight, and some guest picks from other contributors. Thank you for spending another year with us, we'll keep things rolling in 2026 with more highlights from our favourite festering, dissonant and mosh-ready sub-genres in the near future.
-TB
Top 10 Grindcore (including powerviolence, cybergrind, goregrind, mathgrind, deathgrind, noisegrind, false grind, etc.) Releases of 2025 - JD
Highlight: Decultivate - Decultivate
One of the most confounding aspects of this year in music is the extent to which Decultivate flew under the radar for most people and publications. I predicted it was going to be my favorite grindcore album of the year, as well as one of my favorite albums of the year overall, even though it was released within the first two weeks of January. Now, as I’m writing this at the end of December, I don’t think I have seen it on even one list after having scanned a multitude of lists from several publications. A cursory search reveals only a handful of sites even reviewed the album. A travesty, I tell ya!
While I consider myself an internationally-certified grind freak, one of my primary criticisms of the genre is how indistinct songs can be from one another. This often seems more egregious the more tracks are included on an album. It all just blurs together after a while. On the other hand, Czech quartet Decultivate seems to have taken a more thoughtful approach to composing on their self-titled debut. Through the utilization of a variety of rhythms, meters, and other compositional choices, each of the album’s nine tracks stands on its own merit. While the album is rife with blastbeats and other components of grindcore, the band often integrates characteristics of d-beat and Converge-style hardcore. Opener “Já Sám” includes a 7/4 riff played against a 4/4 d-beat. Drummer Marián plays a complex snare pattern mixed with a hardcore beat on the opening of “Trápení druhých,” and the song eventually ends with a 5/4 breakdown. All of these elements allow for enough variation so that each song has its own character.
One aspect that I highlighted in my original review of the album that I want to reiterate here is the lyrics. Let’s face it: lyrics are not the focal point for most who listen to heavy music, especially as they are often obscured by the screaming or growling of the vocalist. But, if my Czech-to-English Google translations are to be believed, the lyrics on Decultivate are not only unique among grindcore bands but they are also pure poetry. The lyrical themes on Decultivate explore loneliness, the dissolution of relationships, and existential malaise. “Pojď dál a posaď se” illustrates the conflicting feelings of comfort and inertness in settling down with lines such as “The warmth of home/And the coffee is sour/Crooked pictures on the walls.” “Chcete vědět víc?” opens with the lines “Brutality in the eyes/Light envy in the back/Today just a memory/Heels don't touch the ground.” My interpretation of the lyrics is that they explore the relationship that people have with an abusive leader once they have become entrapped by a cult of personality.
With the level of artfulness and thoughtfulness that I can only presume went into the making of Decultivate, it was never a question to me which grindcore album would come out on top. My wish for 2026 is only that others would also recognize its genius.
Barren Path - Grieving
Birth and Loss - Birth and Loss
Chepang - Jhyappa
Endless Swarm - The Body Hammer
Iron Lung - Adapting // Crawling
Meth Leppard - Gatekeepers
Psudoku - Psudoktrination
Rotten Sound - Mass Extinction
Sick Destroyer - Sick Destroyer
Top 10 Metalcore (including mathcore, metallic hardcore) Releases of 2025 - PK
Highlight: Abrupt Decay - The Illusion of our Choices in a World of No Options
I hadn't heard a single note from Abrupt Decay until this album was released last August, and it quickly made me realise what I had been missing out on. The Illusion of our Choices in a World of No Options is a schizophrenic mind fuck of an album that manages to flow way better than it has any right to. The band jump from mathcore to nu metal to deathcore without warning then segue into hip hop interludes and it all just works. There is a distinct air of “zero fucks given” attitude throughout this record, and I have to admit this nonchalant approach is definitely part of the appeal.
This album isn't just an eclectic Jambalaya of genres, it's also as abrasive as a sandpaper facial. The vocals are harsh, the production is claustrophobic and even the way the album flows is designed to disorientate. I know, it really sounds like I'm not selling it, yet I genuinely find immense joy in this record. The first haunting notes of opener, “Black Rock”, soon give way to a blistering explosion of blast beats and screams that your speakers will barely be able to handle. It's one hell of an introduction and it's just a taste of what these Albertan's have planned for your woefully unprepared psyche.
There are sub two minute blasts of depravity sitting next to seven minute sprawls of gloom. The guest vocals from Trench, Diploid, Cell Damage and Killing Of A Sacred Deer (who released my favourite Deathcore album of 2025) add even more layers of chaos and unpredictability, because the band decided there clearly wasn't enough already! With so many highlights and insane moments to choose from I'd rather not single out anything in particular. It would be more fitting if y'all just listened to the whole album in its entirety and feasted on every deliciously twisted morsel.
Bore - Feral
Pretty Mouth - Dead Ends
Dead Hour Noise - Slow Burn
Deaf Club - We Demand a Permanent State of Happiness
Eyes - Spinner
Godot - Fever Songs
God Complex - He Watches in Silence
Jackal Twins - Cuzco
Deadguy - Near Death Travel Services
Guest Pick: The Callous Daoboys - I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven
Look, I get it. This album was understandably polarizing. Too jarring in its genre-swings for some, not mathcore enough for others, and probably still too mathcore for even more. But to me, in its ambitiousness is where their creativity soared. A band that’s compared to The Dillinger Escape Plan making my pop-hit of the summer in “Lemon”? Pop-punk and alt metal colliding with sassy whitebelt chaos? Or their avant-garde post-metal leaning 10-minute outro song? They took a lot of swings here and all of them happened to work for me. Was the end result a bit disjointed and confusing, sure. But they dared to try something new and cavalier, and it probably pushed a lot of new listeners out of their comfort zones into a place where they could come to appreciate the genius that mathcore and experimental heavy music can offer, and for that alone this album deserves a shoutout here.
-TB
Top 10 Post-Hardcore/Screamo Releases of 2025 - TB
Highlight:
Crossed - Realismo Ausente
There was some debate whether to include this in the metalcore or screamo list, but regardless, it belongs in a column highlighting the best music of the year. Realismo ausente is the third album from this Spanish group known for their violent and bleak blend of emotive hardcore. From the moment you dive in, knives slice through the feedback. The riffs and guitar tones here are viciously striking. Like the audio form of that prison hallway fight scene in The Punisher, this album is unrelenting, dense and suffocating, with some of the atmosphere of dissonant black metal and the sinister blackened crust aura of Portrayal of Guilt. But everything is always in motion. Whether it be the disorientating screech and crunch of their breakdowns, or their rumbling bass and sludgy punk riffs, they never dwell on the same idea for too long keeping things consistently surprising and disarming. Screamo, metallic hardcore, whatever you want to call it, this has a lot of edge, distortion, and enough panic chords to both give and cure anxiety.
Crossed are the sort of band that feel meant to be experienced live in a tightly packed small venue. Just a mass of the collective embodiment of chaos and grief, feeding off the band and each other, with likely no one left unscathed. It’s raw and teeming with the visceral passion that screamo has become known for. Behind the swirling sharp blades on the exterior of this album however, Crossed employ some compelling nuance in their song-writing that elevates them to being one of the most memorable and re-listenable bands approaching this sound, not that there are a lot of them. You can hear every layer properly, with every instrument contributing to a greater whole, with production that is tight and sharp, but serrated. The standout element on Realismo ausente has to be the vocals though. Piercing blackened Spanish shrieks that descend on you like nazgul, match the violent and insidious tone of the album perfectly. They cut through both the mix, and your chest. This is one of the best iterations of raw, emotive dissonance that the hardcore-adjacent world has seen this decade.
Othiel - World’s Fastest Car
La Dispute - No One Was Driving the Car
Nuvolascura - How This All Ends
Point Mort - Le point de non-retour
Lord Snow - Have You Heard of the High Elves
Asunojokei - Think Of You
Emma Goldman - All you are is we
God Alone - The Beep Test
Hundreds of Au - Life in Parallel
Guest Picks - JD
Hetta - Acetate
This is unfair to Hetta (sorry!), but I want to preface this by saying that Burn, Piano Island, Burn… by The Blood Brothers is one of my top three favorite “punk” (using the term loosely) albums of all time. Any band that can even come close to recapturing The Blood Brothers’ at their most chaotic, technical, and creatively uninhibited is a win in my book. Despite employing dissonant chords and sassy shouted vocals, there are genuinely catchy moments (relatively speaking) scattered throughout the album. This is primarily accomplished by the band’s technical proficiency regularly taking a backseat to more straightforward, albeit offkilter, chord progressions and melodies used jointly with repeated vocal lines that are more catchy for their rhythmical patterns than melodies, per se. Several tracks, such as “Plainclothes Man” and “Triple Tracy,” go so far as to have identifiable choruses. Even with all of the new bands coming out of the current skramz and sasscore revivals, there are few bands in those scenes that are writing as thoughtfully as Hetta. “Testify in stereo” indeed.
Molt - MOLT
While Molt has a range of identifiable influences, such as Fugazi and Drive Like Jehu, their 90s post-hardcore sound isn’t one that I’ve heard a lot lately. And it’s certainly not one I’ve heard done as well as on MOLT. But even on their impressive debut, they demonstrate a wide array of approaches within that sphere. Opener “Midvillain” starts with an odd-metered tom pattern that keeps the listener perpetually off balance like a headjerky Tilt-a-Whirl ride, but the song eventually transitions to a spacious segment with sparse delayed arpeggios performed by the guitars. The beginnings of “Sucker Spring” and “Unhealthy for Sensitive Groups” are more simplistic and represent the two most straightforward, nearly catchy, parts of the album. However, both of those songs end with more aggressive climaxes. Molt are not necessarily rewriting the playbook on post-hardcore, but they are demonstrating the vast sonic possibilities and varied emotional palette the genre has to offer, and doing it exceedingly well.
Top 10 Noise Rock/Sludge Releases of 2025 - JD
Highlight: Pile - Sunshine And Balance Beams
Like many bands that made our top sludge/noise rock albums of the year, Pile is a band that defies easy categorization. But they certainly have enough elements of noise rock to justify their position here. Over their nearly twenty-year career, the Boston quartet has deftly combined elements of that raucous genre into their sound as well as elements of post-hardcore, indie rock, folk, and even ambient/experimental music. In spite of vocalist, guitarist, and principal songwriter Rick Maguire’s penchant for instrumental and vocal melodies, the band’s early releases found them simultaneously reveling in aural confrontation, which was usually accompanied by Maguire’s vocals reaching a strained howl. That belligerent aspect of their sound had softened over their last few releases, but Sunshine and Balance Beams finds the band returning to their darker, more aggressive roots, starting early on with “An Opening.”
However, Sunshine and Balance Beams makes it clear that Pile are not simply returning to their roots after having creatively exhausted themselves. To the contrary, while several of their more recent efforts demonstrated a more inhibited approach and, arguably, did not live up to the quality of their earlier albums, Pile seems to have rallied around a fusion of their noisier early days with their more refined recent sonic qualities. While the tension in “Born at Night” gradually but anxiously builds, it is accompanied by strings that add a source of drama. Likewise, the first half of “Bouncing in Blue” is subtly performed with piano and strings as the only instruments accompanying Maguire’s vocals before the guitars and drums come storming in. “Holds” is compositionally simple, and the restrained performance from the band recalls much of All Fiction (2023). Yet, tracks like “Deep Clay” are some of the band’s most jarring since Green and Gray (2019).
Even as the quartet nears its twentieth year as a band, Sunshine and Balance Beams demonstrates that Pile have a lot of fuel left in their creative tanks. And their dedicated cult following is sure to continue as passengers on the band’s unpredictable journey.
Blue Youth - Defeatist
Computer - Station on the Hill
Demonic Death Judge - Absolutely Launched
The Grasshopper Lies Heavy - HEAVY
Honningbarna - Soft Spot
Human Leather - Here Comes the Mind, There Goes the Body
IAN - Come on Everybody, Let’s Do Nothing!
Toru - Velours Dévorant
YHWH Nailgun - 45 Pounds
Guest Picks - PK
Spares- Spares
My end of year list was unranked, because it seems arbitrary to put albums in order of preference when they are so varied and appeal in different ways. However, if I'm being honest with myself, Spares debut record was the one that took my breath away and got played the most in 2025. OK, technically it's an EP but I don't give a shit about that because all six tracks are stunning, emotional and completely immersive. Is it noise rock, post punk or post hardcore? The answer is probably yes….all of the above. In fact, if you want to hear one of the best rock songs of 2025 look no further than “Stalemate” with its melancholy charms and delicate touches that build into a rasping fervour. Utterly immense. I've only just spotted this, but a quote from my original Heavy Blog review is now in capital letters on their Bandcamp page and I stand by every word.
Denude - A Murmuration of Capitalist Bees
Quite possibly the best album title of 2025, but this record is so much more than clever monikers. It's an ode to frustration, anxiety, anger and the ills of our modern society. This is likely the kind of album that KEN Mode wanted to make when they released Success, albeit with more aggression. Denude somehow make this seem effortless, churning out intricate yet catchy math rock with bucket loads of charm, character and melody. The fact that this is a debut album is pretty ridiculous, as most bands don't sound this good after being together for a decade. The production is gorgeous too, with its intimate tone making it feel like you are sat 10 feet away from them at the back of a dive bar. If you dig math rock, noise rock or anything in between you need this album in your life.
Top 10 Deathcore Releases of 2025
Year in Review and Highlight(s): The Acacia Strain - You are Safe From God Here & Whitechapel - Hymns in Dissonance
My love of deathcore has waned considerably over the past decade, but 2025 was admittedly a very strong year for the genre. It would take something special to end up in my personal year end list, and while that didn't quite happen here, there were two in particular that stuck out. I’ll get to those, but first I want to touch a little more on the genre as a whole.
The symphonic side of the genre is still hard to ignore, with a handful of offerings if that’s your flavour, but the reception from fans seems to have tipped back in favour of the more old-school sound from the genre, or even just the beatdown side of things. Lorna Shore remains the most popular band in that scene and just announced a new headline tour, but their latest did little to evolve or progress their sound and continues to be polarizing for its battle in the loudness wars and over-reliance on the same schtick. Shadow of Intent however showed that their fusion of deathcore with the symphonic side of melodic death metal still has room to explore as they remain one of the more consistent bands in the genre. The biggest new face which caught a lot of attention this year on this side of things was Netherwalker and their debut Odyssey of Respair which stuck out for its incorporation of rapid tech death into a symphonic concept album.
The myspace/oldschool-revival thing continues to flourish, notably this year lead by PSYCHO-FRAME and Thus Spoke Zarathustra. The former bridged the throwback sound with modern production and a commitment to generally just being as brutal as possible at all times, monotony of the end product be damned. The latter really stuck out at first for essentially being the follow-up to As Blood Runs Black's Allegiance that we never got, but it might have leaned a little too heavy into that album-worship territory. For some bands doing something genuinely unique and pushing the boundaries of deathcore in 2025, look to Black Pegasus and their stoner/deathcore hybrid, or Sinsoftheflesh for a screamo and mathcore infused blend of sassy brutality.
But as mentioned, the best releases this year arguably came from those sticking to the roots of the genre and doing what it’s always done best: just being flat out heavy. Few words better describe You Are Safe From God Here, the latest (and 13th now (!!)) album from The Acacia Strain. This band has never been afraid to mix things up here and there, releasing a straight up doom-sludge album last year, and often venturing a little more into the metalcore side of things. This album feels like the culmination of everything that came before it. There’s sludgy swamp-dwelling downtempo chugs that feels like walking in waist-deep mud, some up-beat push-pit riffs to piss people off, a general nihilistic, angry and violent aura, and of course Vincent continuing to be one of the best frontmen and lyricists in the scene. It’s incredible that a band could somehow release its best album twenty-four years after they formed, but that might just be what happened here. You Are Safe From God Here is unrelenting, uncompromising, just pure earth-churning filth showcasing what this genre is all about.
Another big name in the genre that has also been unafraid to diversify their sound is of course Whitechapel. Not too long ago it seemed they may have been ready to leave deathcore behind them, but they turned things completely on their heels this year with Hymns in Dissonance, maybe the most “pure” deathcore record you can find. This album is almost equally death metal as it is hardcore, arguably to a fault. There’s nothing necessarily unique or special about this, it’s not overtly technical, sludgy, or theatrical, it’s just a band who knows what makes this genre tick going back to their roots to make it tick some more. Huge vocals, huge breakdowns, huge solos? Everything here is big, loud and a bit over the top, continuously like getting pummelled in the face by a hammer. But if someone asked me what deathcore sounded like, I might just show them this album.
Sinsoftheflesh - Perpetual Psychological Brutality
Shadow of Intent - Imperium Delirium
Thus Spoke Zarathustra - I'm Done With Self Care, It's Time for Others' Harm
PSYCHO-FRAME - Salvation Laughs in the Face of a Grieving Mother
Black Pegasus - Mass Omega
Coma Witch - The End of Forgiveness
Despised Icon - Shadow Work
Killing of a Sacred Deer - A Visage of a Mangled Body