(written by Islander)
I’m a bit late finishing this new installment of the song list, and so I’ll dispense with an introduction and just get right to the three infectious songs I’ve added today.
PUTERAEON
Puteraeon’s 2025 album Mountains of Madness was very well-received around here. We had the good fortune of premiering the complete album and I slobbered a lot of words over it, calling it “their best work yet in a 17-year career” and predicting that for listeners who dived into it, “hearts will hammer and nightmare visions will unfold” because of its success “in creating a quickly encroaching and eventually engulfing atmosphere of mystery, dread, and ultimate insanity.”
On top of that Gonzo put the album at No. 7 on his year-end list, acclaiming it as “their finest hour” and “relentlessly satisfying”, and even our friend Johan Huldtgren, whose year-end lists tend to remain firmly devoted to black metal, gave it the No. 2 spot on his own 2025 list. He also called it “their finest work to date”: “they have never sounded as sharp, focused, or truly monstrous as they do here.”
The song I chose for this song list from Mountains of Madness, “The Nameless City“, exemplifies why all of us were so blown away by the new album. It’s indeed a monstrous (and monstrously crushing) ravager, but one that’s also threaded with eerily swirling and miserably squirming guitar-leads that pierce through the massive riffing, the skull-busting beats, and the nightmarish vocals.
When the music becomes less titanic, a mesmerizing melody slowly unfurls in the company of a musing bass notes and cracking drums. That melody is as much a reason for the song’s presence on this list as the brutally stomping grooves, the eviscerating riffage, and the wild vocals that follow it. Just a tremendous song in all ways.
https://puteraeon.bandcamp.com/album/mountains-of-madness
https://www.facebook.com/puteraeon
ANGES DE LA MORT
This next song revived a debate I have with myself every year. The song itself, “Le Feu Sous la Grace“, was released last November as one of two songs on a demo by this Montreal-based black metal duo (indeed, we premiered it). On the other hand, our understanding was that the demo tracks would be included on the band’s second album, projected for release this year. So, should I consider it for the 2025 version of this list or wait and consider it for the 2026 edition?
You can see how I resolved the question. It was easier to resolve than some other conundrums I’ve pondered, where we actually have 2026 release dates in place for albums that included infectious advance tracks put forward last year. Also, when I premiered the song I actually promised that it would be on the 2025. I wrote quite a lot in introducing the song, and I might as well just repeat all that now:
“It’s a constantly changing but relentlessly thrilling song of fire and ice, and it rocks as hard as it rips. It’s also packed with hooks that will spike listeners’ heads and keep them coming back for re-plays.
“Fires blaze in the song’s wild opening, thanks to broiling riffage that furiously writhes and blisters the senses, coupled with furiously hurtling drums and magma-strength bass upheavals. The music then shifts into punk-rock beats and fretwork that sounds feral and viciously ecstatic, joined by double-bass thunder, scalding screams, brutish bass-slugging, and brazenly blaring chords.
“The dual-guitar work throughout the song is constantly attention-grabbing, most especially when the song hits the two-minute mark and the paired guitars create a rippling melodic harmony that flows across steady beats and seems simultaneously despairing and glorious, beleaguered and defiant (or maybe how you interpret it will depend on your own mood).
“That melody descends into deeper darkness and the hostility of freezing drifts, but ADLM gradually ramp up the intensity again, and reprise the song’s hook-filled riffs and head-moving rhythms again, once more fronted by white-hot vocals of unhinged intensity.
“P.S. You may know that one of our year-end LISTMANIA features is a list of the year’s most infectious extreme metal songs. This one will be on it.”
https://adlm.bandcamp.com/album/le-feu-sous-la-glace-3
https://www.instagram.com/adlmhorde/
NATTVERD
Last spring our Norway-based contributor Chile reviewed a just-released album named Tidloes naadesloes by the Norwegian black metal band Nattverd. In his vivid write-up he called the song “Med Knieven I Oeyet” the album’s “ultimate prize” — “a wonderfully blasting track that literally puts a knife to our face peeling the skin off by the sheer power of the riff.”
I found myself in agreement with Chile about “Med Knieven I Oeyet“. It races and rips, ruthlessly hammers and slugs, vents vampiric screams of vicious lunacy, and expels a changing array of riffs that boil, swagger, jolt, savagely pulsate, and diabolically moan.
The song’s huge grooves are compulsive, and so is the way the guitars gloriously soar and scream near the track’s end. It’s always exhilarating to hear this feral song, and that’s a big reason I’ve kept coming back to it (but the whole album is also terrific).
https://soulsellerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/tidloes-naadesloes
https://www.facebook.com/nattverdofficial/