Artwork by Nestor Avalos; recommended for fans of Melechesh, Behemoth, Dark Fortress
(Last month Israeli metal writer Rafi Yovell made his reviewing debut at NCS, and while he hasn’t brought us a year-end list to share in our nearly completed 2025 LISTMANIA series, he has enthusiastically identified his album of the year.)
Black metal almost always comes with rage for religious fanaticism, regardless of where or when you’d argue the genre began. Fascinatingly enough, though, I think the Middle East was where black metal would reach its conceptual summit.
There have been many great black metal releases from the region, but last year the Iranian-born but now UK-based Trivax blessed us with one of the best extreme metal records I’ve ever heard.
Surely, I wouldn’t be the first to point out that awesome metal tends to flourish from hardship. And my pick for the best metal album of 2025? Holy fucking J’hannam, The Great Satan takes that concept to a whole other level…
Now before anyone asks, I just need to put this out there: The Great Satan isn’t my album of the year because of its concept alone. It’s just as awesome musically. I mean, listen to the intro track “Atash”. It’s only 3 minutes, yet still feels like a journey on its own. The instrumentation and Shayan’s vocals are ferocious in their bite, the folky melodies are haunting, and the Farsi lyrics are an authentic touch.
From that point on, the tracklist turns into that of a contrasting movie score, alternating between hectic battle themes and quieter, menacing interludes. It’s a ballsy approach to take for sure, but at no point does it get in the way of proper pacing.
The production here is quite sharp, which may initially put some off, and I get it — I’m a big fan of raw recordings too. In the case of The Great Satan, however, it fits. Because there’s so much going on in the mix, a crisp sound allows you to properly take everything in. I sometimes forget that this is a three-piece band, given the sheer depth heard in each song.
Even though the ensemble mostly sticks to a typical formula of guitars, drums, bass, and vocals, there’s this weird orchestral quality to each song. Shoutouts to Greg Chandler and Samuel Turbitt for producing an album with such a unique sound!
As far as band performance is concerned, every member knocks it out of the park on this one: Shayan on guitar and vocals, Sully on bass, and Matthew Croton on drums.
Furthermore, The Great Satan’s songwriting is nothing short of phenomenal. Instead of just being another Middle Eastern black/death metal album with folk influences and not much more than that, The Great Satan does a fantastic job of keeping you guessing.
For instance, the title track is an interlude with harpsichords and Farsi spoken-word clips in the background. It never quite becomes a burgeoning battle theme like the main tracks, but it does get increasingly chaotic as it continues, even throwing in operatic vocals in the latter half (courtesy of Vickie Harley). Her appearance isn’t so dominant to the point of overpowering the rest of the song and killing the immersion, but it’s present just enough for you to notice it and feel unnerved.
The track right after that is “Daemon’s Melancholia”, which like the rest of the album’s core songs, is an epic of rage and chaos. However, it contains elements of the interlude that came before it through shared melodies and atmospheric sections. And in the best part of the song, Shayan’s vocals switch to a higher-pitch than his usual style, and he starts dropping lines in Arabic!
There’s so much more I could say about each song, but I’d rather leave it at that for the time being because I simply don’t want to spoil anything else. Plus, if I were to do that, we’d be here for a good 4 hours or so. It’s just THAT good. I do want to say one more thing about the album as a whole, however, and what particularly made it stick out to me so much: the emotion.
This may sound cheesy, but listening to The Great Satan made me feel like I was witnessing something truly catastrophic unfolding right in front of my eyes that I was helpless to stop. And this was even before reading up on the lyrics or anything of the sort. Given the background for Trivax and The Great Satan, however, it makes sense. Some bands channel hate for religious institutions to appear edgy, and then there’s putting your life on the line to create sonic rage aimed at the theocratic force which is still assassinating dissidents like you around the globe.
Trivax’s The Great Satan is truly the Ghormeh Sabzi of 2025’s metal releases, not to mention one of the best extreme metal albums I’ve ever heard.
Check out the album on Trivax’s Bandcamp HERE and follow their socials in the links below. Happy New Year, and for all intents and purposes, stay metal, my friends!
Bandcamp
Spotify
Apple Music
YouTube
Instagram
Facebook