OUR LIST OF 2025’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 8): THEMATA, VICTIM OF FIRE, HVRT

(written by Islander)

As I’ve repeatedly stated (to protect the innocent), this is MY list, not some kind of list of THE SITE. But while my own tastes and listening habits drive things, I do try to pay attention to what our readers have suggested, as well as what got our other writers pumped up. That’s pretty much what drove me to package these next three songs together:

Yesterday’s segment was likely to make DGR happy, and today’s installment should make Andy Synn happy… unless he thinks I fucked up and picked the wrong songs from these three albums. Well, we’ll see….

But what I really hope is that these selections will make YOU happy when you hear them. And to be clear, I’m still driving this bus. While my co-writers helped steer me toward these albums and songs, I genuinely did find them very catchy, memorable, infectious in different ways.

 

THEMATA

Among the three of us here with the longest tenure as NCS writers, our tastes could be envisioned as a Venn diagram, with as much area outside the intersection as within it, but Themata’s 2025 EP Riven was solidly within the space of overlap.

Andy Synn wrote in his review, “Make no mistake about it, this is absolutely one of the heaviest, weightiest releases – EP, or otherwise – that you’re likely to hear all year,” and then he went on to name it one of 2025’s best EPs in his year-end “Short But Sweet” list. DGR also put the release at No. 7 on his year-end Top 50 list, writing: “Finnish group Themata sound fucking gigantic on their EP Riven and their machinistic sense of groove is undeniable.”

And I got into the intersection with a SEEN AND HEARD post that featured the not-easily-forgotten Riven song that I’m now including on this list. To repeat what I wrote then:

“This new one is named ‘Colossus‘, and of course with a name like that you expect something… colossal. The song does manage to live up to its name, thanks to humongous drums that rumble and smash, massively crashing, grit-caked bass tones, and torrid roars. However, the high, trilling lead guitar melodies and horn-like fanfares sound less colossal and more emotionally stricken, as do the vocals when they split apart at the seams.

“But everything fits together, because all the song’s facets are dark in one way or another, including the lead guitar’s forlorn wail as it pierces through a phase of towering musical immensity — just before zeniths of calamitous extremity in which the vocals and the riffing both scream in burning torment as the rhythm section bludgeon listeners senseless.” (Good video too!)

https://mearamusic.bandcamp.com/album/riven
https://www.instagram.com/themataband/
https://www.facebook.com/themataband/

 

VICTIM OF FIRE

The next song is from yet another album that again fell into a Venn-diagram intersection, this time a record that strongly attracted both my friend Andy and myself. In his review of The Old Lie, he acclaimed “the overall and unashamed hookiness of the music”, and then went on at year-end to list it as one of his Personal Top 10 favorites of 2025, writing: “Victim of Fire are all about the power of riff, and their self-described brand of ‘Stadium Crust’ (think At The Gates/Darkest Hour meets Martyrdöd/Iskra) is packed to the proverbial gills with enough compulsively catchy guitar work and electrifying energy to power a small city.”

As for myself, I again devoted attention to one of the album tracks in a weekend SEEN AND HEARD column. To be clear, The Old Lie is stuffed with infectious songs, and if I’d been more considerate I would have checked in with Andy to see which one he thinks is the most worthy contender. But I didn’t. I went with my first impulse, and picked “Apocalyptic Inclination“.

If you haven’t heard this one, prepare for a bludgeoning, turbocharged assault laced with miserably squirming and distressingly wailing riffage and fronted by cutthroat snarls and screams that sound completely unhinged. But also prepare for a haunting instrumental interlude with a meaningful vocal sample, which then leads into a soaring yet emotionally distressing guitar solo.

It’s that guitar solo that’s a big reason why I picked the song, but the racing, roiling, and hard-hitting segment that brings the song to a close is equally important.

https://victimoffire.bandcamp.com/album/the-old-lie
https://www.instagram.com/victimovfire/

 

HVRT

Next up is a song from another album that made Andy’s “Personal Top 10” for 2025. He also reviewed it and named it one of the year’s “Great” albums. After all that I thought I ought to pay attention to Cancerbloom, especially after seeing him characterize the music in his review as sitting “somewhere between Black Anvil, Black Breath, and Mantar, on the sludgier, punkier side of things… all nasty riffs, gnarly grooves, and stripped-down, hook-heavy songs designed to take no prisoners and take no shit.”

As I had hoped, the album punched all sorts of my pleasure buttons. I was sorely tempted to add “I Don’t Wanna Die In America” to this list just because of the song’s name, which has sounded even more relevant over the last week. But instead I chose the album’s opening track, “The Wait, The Weep, the Woe“.

In his review Andy specifically called out that song as “a swaggering, stomping, sludge-soaked monster of a track, all massive guitars, meaty bass-lines, and pounding percussion whose rolling kicks and sudden bursts of blastbeats hit you right in the ribcage with an almost physical force.”

That’s all true, and I’d add that the vocals are both savagely scarifying and depressive in their divergent tones. It’s an emotionally distressing song, amplified by intensely swirling and soaring lead guitars, but quite a memorable one — and it will punch your teeth out too.

https://hvrt.bandcamp.com/album/cancerbloom
http://www.facebook.com/hvrtband