(written by Islander)
We’ve reached Part 14 of this list today, which includes three songs I think are exceptional for reasons beyond their addictive qualities.
I’ll also report that I’ve been able to spend enough time with other candidates on my gargantuan list of 2025 songs that I’ve succeeded in mapping out all the remaining Parts of this list except the last one. Figuring out the last one is always a daunting and distressing challenge, and I’ll be agonizing about that one probably right up to the eve before I post it at the end of next week.
THE OMINOUS CIRCLE
The Ominous Circle’s 2025 album Cloven Tongues of Fire received lots of acclaim around metaldom, including here at our own underground hovel, where Chile put it on his YE list and Andy Synn named it to his Critical Top 10 (calling it “one of the most visceral, and virulent, albums of the year”) after first naming it among the year’s “Great” albums. To borrow from Andy’s Top 10 writeup:
Bristling with scathing dissonance and grim, discordant weight – manifested in twisted skeins of chugging, churning, chattering guitar and low, lumbering bass-lines that growl and grind just on the edge of human hearing – yet also haunted by ghostly shades of gloomy ambience and flickering phantoms of bleak, blackened melody, it’s an album that’s similarly more restrained (more willing, as in “Black Flesh, Sulfur, and All In Between”, to let the damage linger and force the listener to wallow in it for even longer) and more extreme than ever.
As I’ve repeatedly emphasized, not every great song or great album can be honestly classified as “infectious”. “Catchiness”, for example, may not be among the qualities most people would identify in The Ominous Circle’s new music, but it’s damn sure hard to forget.
“Through Tunnels Ablaze” exemplifies the album’s addictive qualities. It is indeed violent, even catastrophic, delivering a surging charge of percussive cannonades, wildly roiling and swarming riffage that’s grating in tone, and gargantuan roars. When it becomes less violent, it becomes more dismal. It also includes a couple of drum solos that are a part of the song’s attraction.
But what really struck the song in my head like a spectacular spike is the piercing mid-song guitar solo, which eerily wails, feverishly quivers, and ecstatically spasms. It’s an unearthly experience, and after it concludes the song as a whole becomes unearthly as the guitars create a changing array of warped and chilling sensations above both a furious drum-and-bass onslaught and another rhythmic pattern that seems more ritualistic.
https://osmoseproductions.bandcamp.com/album/cloven-tongues-of-fire
https://www.facebook.com/theominouscircle/
VENUS STAR
Sometimes I make promises I don’t keep because I forget about them. In the case of this next song I made a promise, but the song itself wouldn’t let me forget.
When I first heard the Venus Star song “Pebble” from their latest album Smokeless Fires, I jumped to write about it in one of our new-music roundups last June. At the end of that little feature I made reference to this Most Infectious Song list, which at that point didn’t exist and which I didn’t even start compiling until six months later. I wrote: “If this one isn’t on it, feel free to whip me with a spiked flail.” Thankfully I didn’t forget that promise since I’m not in the habit of wearing armor.
Smokeless Fires includes other infectious songs (check out “Lesson” and “Remember”, for example), but “Pebble” still stood out. Its gripping bass riff is very heavy and very ugly and moves like a vigorously surging behemoth while an abrasive guitar sizzles, roils, and whines around it. Like that highly addictive bass throb, the drums sink their own hooks into listeners’ heads; even though they’re not fancy, they get muscles moving. Meanwhile, the vocals echo like enraged goblins slowly screaming in dank catacombs.
And while we’re here, let me give one more round of applause to Dávid Glomba for the album’s fantastic cover art.
https://terraturpossessions.bandcamp.com/album/smokeless-fires
https://www.facebook.com/TerraturPossessions
HAVUKRUUNU
The breadth of the praise that Havukruunu received for their 2025 album Tavastland is demonstrated in part by its appearance in the No. 12 spot of To the Teeth’s “List of Lists“, which compiled rankings of almost 300 albums from a multitude of international music sites, including ours.
Here at NCS, it ranked highly on the year-end lists of Chile, Professor D. Grover the XIIIth, and The Goat Tavern. There is a through-line in their comments about why they rated the album so highly — an appreciation for the power, the fury, and the epic nature of the music, and how strongly it makes a listener want to take up a sword and shield and charge into battle.
I wasn’t immune to the charms of Tavastland either. In fact, it emotionally overpowered me, and so I felt compelled to do something of my own to honor the experience, i.e., putting something from the album on this list. Without overthinking which song I should choose, I just impulsively went with the opening track, “Kuolematon Laulunhenki“.
It begins with an extended spoken-word introduction that sets the stage for the album as a whole, but after that Havukruunu raise their standard with a heroically blazing riff, sky-high voices, and sheets of stratospheric sonic flame, all of it backed by booming rhythmic grooves.
Without diminishing the song’s epic nature, they set the drums to hammering and unfurl a swirling guitar-lead that’s magical. They also cause the riffing to vigorously charge and the vocals to snarl and scream as well as sing. The music then viciously roils and furiously batters, creating a maelstrom of violent combat.
It feels like war, and even more so when a rapidly flickering solo flashes forward, but the soloing also seems to grievously wail. When that opening riff and those soaring voices return, you realize how much they’ve already gotten their hooks in your head.
The song is truly stunning, and not the only one on Tavastland that could be summed up with that word.
https://havukruunu.bandcamp.com/album/tavastland
https://www.facebook.com/havukruunu/