(We concluded the rollout of our 2025 Most Infectious Extreme Metal Song list at the end of January, but our South African contributor Vizzah Harri has prepared a three-part Addendum of infectious songs that weren’t included in our main list. The complete title of this Part 2 is: “Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathies – An Infectious Addendum Part 2 of 3 (Blackened reaches, To stars and beyond, Unclassified viral infections, Queer cuts for bygone moons.”)
Wikipedia only lists around 1555 albums across all genres including metal for 2025 and only around 468 on the page for ‘heavy metal’. If you have Catamarcan dune sands’ worth of time on your hands you should really give the big list a scroll cos cool stuff like the Malatu Astatke’s reimagining and improvisation on old hits popped up. The encyclopedia for the archives of metal lists 32,613 releases for last year:
The very first album listed was that of Estuarine’s psychotomimetic and reality-distorting Corporeal Furnace, which boded auspicious foreshadowing for the rest of the year, and even the most ambitious of experimental acts struggled to best this behemoth of experimental psychedelic technical blackened deathgrind:
The last listing is that of Pito Pakeeto’s live album, a crossover blackened thrashcore band. This isn’t an academic journal so we’ll go for humor and twisted metrics with a band that also released a new LP last year and likes taking the piss with titles such as A Crab With Hotdogs For Hands and Mark of the Danger Dog. However, one listen to the tracks above or embedded below will raise uncertainty over how sincere they are in their satire. PP have some fire to discharge, PP make ow, PP make lobster god proud with musical chops.
For the sake of balance, we’d have to mention at least one more last-gasp album that had a release on the 31st, and it has a fitting closer to almost shut the year off with. The wolves of Ulver have returned and want you to have a good time:
Taking a very unscientific guess at a conservative mean of thirty minutes per release, a total of 32,613 releases means 978,390 minutes; which is 16,306.5 hours; yep – nearly 680 days’ worth of music. That isn’t taking into account what other genres got up to. It is therefore fair to assume no-one has the time to listen to everything, and that even in this addendum you might not find your favorite sounds from last year, however you might find something new to sink into.
9 Black(ish) servings
Starer – I cry your mother’s blood
With a lot of albums, it is hard to pick just one track, so it is with this one. You might think that it is chosen only for how wondrously lush and penetrating the opening salvo is, but the hooks intensify in number and severity from thereon in until what was left of you is suspended by gambrel in the devil’s own abattoir.
Der Weg Einer Freiheit – Eos
Patience is a virtue cos that intro leads to chimerical chords. They jump a few gears with throat singing and an excellent tone choice sounding like the whole compact and intricately constructed monument inhabits a space of stately grandeur yet is not dwarfed by it or overbearing in its imposition. Riffs for days, smack this miasmic aura of yassness on, and forget about all the evils of modern-day drudgery.
Post-black screamo that falls into the same distinct-sounding emo-gaze yet unboxable realms of the avant-garde. “SHA-512” is a lamentation on a digital dystopia with a catchy as fuck melody and rallying gang vocals. SHA’s are cryptographic hash functions consisting of binary strings with finite sizes that have properties conducive for cryptographic applications.
The music has folky and symphonic leanings, drums and breakbeats programmed to denote electronic nostalgia, the gaze of shoes fit for a burial; to some ears it can evoke melodrama, to others the raw power of honest railing at the injustice of involuntary birth; it is unabashedly indie, it is atmospheric, and it is triumphant. [I use the metal archives all the time, but those guys obviously didn’t give the whole album a listen cos if one has to crush actual visible oranges like abriction has done on closer Naranja and still get snubbed, wtf is metal then?]
Amphisbaena – Rift I Wading The Deserts Of Earth
Missed yourself some Rites of Thy Degringolade? Amphisbaena’s doomy blackened death is here for your fix. The guitar tone on that riff after the 1:10 minute mark can be played for a whole LP length. Outrageously mixed, exquisitely constructed, beautifully performed blackened death for the ages.
Cemetery Trip – B.L.A.T.T.O.T.L
Don’t play cards against me cos I cheat: ““B.L.A.T.T.O.T.L” stands for Beheaded Leader At The Temple Of The Lycanthrope, what an opening, what a track. [This] track reminded me of other magical musical hapaxes like that found in the “Spring” of the big Viv, you know, Vivaldi. Or That riff from “The Czar” of Mastodon (R.I.P. Brent and thanks for all the music).
There are payoff riffs, there are singular monolithic moments in the history of music that most people can go, yep, that’s a great tune, that transitional moment there, this opener here, that bridge … omg that solo, and how about that goddamn bass! The beginning of “B.L.A.T.T.O.T.L” is a moment that gets me every single fucking time.
Chovu – Mali
This is not black metal, it’s from a black metal album though. The acoustic opener of Chovu’s Ufalme Wa Mali does things with guitar, percussion, and lilting lullaby that is truly unique in metal music. Sounding like a chant to keep evil at bay for the voracious skittering snarls of demonic possession in the wings. Enchanting, ritualistic, and utterly mesmerizing.
Venomous Echoes – Broken
Record player fuzz whispers from the wings as piano and string leads haunt dreams you didn’t know you had. Unfurl the punishment of a soul in torment foregoing catharsis, horror aesthetics paired with a percussive treatise serving as rails for the terror-inducing nightmare-scapes of dissonance made corporeal.
Nel Buio – sguardo innocente,
Song titles that piece together a poem. Touted as “pure Italian blackwave” and released through Avantgarde Music, II as an album that has boatloads of atmosphere including cyberpunk synths and ideas to wrench one out of generic appetites. It got a stellar writeup from the Island man himself:
“[grabbing] attention immediately, something like a feverishly twisted version of a harpsichord or calliope. Those demented and darting tones almost get drowned out by an ensuing maelstrom of maniacal drumming, blaring and heaving riffage, monstrous growls, and rabid howls. But the music also seems to miserably wail in shrill tones, and those demented darting keys reappear, along with cries that sound like a voice ripping itself apart in blood.
“The song is an almost overpowering assault from beginning to end, but seems even more ruinously calamitous near the end. The vocals are really terrifying; the drums go wild; everything else, including those mad sprites in the music’s upper reaches, sounds berserk.”
Lamp Of Murmuur – Forest Of Hallucinations
Black metal is at its best when there’s a good mix of temporal sensibilities, a solid grounding in the history of the craft, with the ability to look forward to horizons that shape the future you’re helping to forge by the very treading of new ground. Lamp of Murmuur get this and like other ambitious projects don’t limit themselves to pop-encumbered boundaries while also keeping ideas fresher than new(ly) skin(ned corpses).
Ever heard of the “enough ideas to fill an album” trope? This murmuuring lamp worships at that fragile yet rewarding altar. I was trying to get to the exact Slayer song the recurring opening riff of “Forest of Hallucinations” made me think of, and it seems that TYME beat me to it. Going all symphonic on the South of Heaven-leanings, the drums and bass forget about metal and go full funky swing before a consummate dissection is performed.
To 3 stars and beyond
Lazer Throne – Her Jeweled Skull Shines No More
Wanna stare into the void, haven’t heard enough screams into the abyss? The album features the sounds of an actual black hole, what’s more metal than that!? Aether-searing lasered solos, pacemaker-busting crescendos, filmic to the max, space metal gone intergalactic, channeling the disconcerting and melancholic indifference of singularities. God-tier cosmic black.
Labyrinthus Stellarum – Ravenous Planet
Progressive atmospheric cosmic black metal that dipped a few too many fingers in the ecstasy pouch, got addicted, decided that Mesarthim ain’t the only ones that could do electro-inspired cosmic bm, and caused a veritable rift in reality.
Old Machines — The Sundering of the Irradiated Sons, and the Rebellion Sparked by the Gene-Plague
Have you ever heard music that didn’t sound like it came from a different time per se, nor necessarily other dimensions, it just sounded like an alien race heard human music and decided to have a crack at it? That’s kinda what this sounds like. If these extraterrestrials had horses, they didn’t even care to gallop, this is a full-speed suicide cavalry charge. The riffs, licks, and notes ain’t waiting, they’ve got galaxies to conquer. (Thanks to DeathMetalMama for the recommendation!)
6 Unclassified viral infections
Author & Punisher – Mute Swan (ft. Megan Oztrosits of Couch Slut)
I had to remind myself that this was not a Chelsea Wolfe colab cos the coda is so reminiscent of her Pain is Beauty era. They could have played static after the first 30 seconds I was converted in. Highly contagious.
Barren Path – Horizonless
Solid grindcore that, gasp, gives you space to breathe in between waterboarding cascades. Gridlink might be no more, but 80% of that band are now Barren Path. A mix of exceptional grind, tech, and death. Suffocating in a blissful peace that the end you seek is this barren path you find yourself on.
Calva Louise – Aimless
Best breakup song you didn’t hear from last year. There needed to be a ballad in here, a genre-bending one at that. Saccharine vocal melodies that hit harder for being an iron fist in a velvet glove. Uncompromising groove, sublime latin string influence, vibrant keys, industrial finesse.
Fell Omen – Starscourge Phase One & Phase Two
Uber-metallic punk acting as a time machine straight back to the 1980s. It’s not all bright leads and solos; them riffs lurking in the shadows bear fangs eager to induce envenomation of the neurotoxin variety. Electrifying leads with the horsepowerage of a harras on raceday to scratch that itch you have for the golden age of metal you didn’t know is right the fuck now. Or is that the next entry?
Tower – Let There Be Dark
Throwbacks thrown around like Beelzebub parading Prada of yesteryear on gangplanks ablaze from dumpster fires in exchange for thrifting treasures in our austere present. Dirty pink lines would be one way to describe what motorheads have more than a soft spot for. These New Yorkers happened upon a container of Pervitin washed up on the shores of Long Island and this album is the result.
Knives – THE DAGGER
Noisy post glitch core jazz punk. Catchier than the clap. Who said nümetal is dead? These Bristolians didn’t get the memo. The sax and guitar interplay is haunting and insanely bewitching too. Adding beauty to a track that is a reaction to an encounter with bigotry.
“Oh la4wd but ain’t that a queer sound”
Melpomene – Transcend Form
This album cover just screamed quality and it did not disappoint. Not enough fantastic forays into the worlds bass strings can conjure up? Here is a selection that takes the listener to “an otherworldly cosmic-mattered dark level in ‘transcend form’… when that bass reverbs through my jaw I cannot but stretch my mouth in an oomph so wide my mouth starts splitting at the corners. Fuck. The album transcends form 3 minutes and 32 seconds into the eponymous track, and at 3:37 chrysalis is reached, complete.”
Exquisitely constructed emphatic instrumental metal, or as the Melpomene describes themselves, emotional post death.
Transgressive – Remember Us To Death
Plagiarized wholesale from an earlier writeup:
“Transgressive play a deathy thrash with a tendency to write riffs that induce a lot of replays. Infectious as all fuck… [with] a chest-burst of fury…
“Thrashed up riffage with an insistence that sure as shit will poltergeist the volume knob into broken speaker territory. As the song builds in intensity the gear is put into that ghost 7th slot one searches for when one fumbles for losing count in an old stick shift mobile. No mistakes or missteps here though, and just before ‘I will not be silenced’ is wrenched with the force of demonic possession from vocalist Pitts’ jugular, the riffs become magisterial.
“Fuckin power metal highs in the vox … fitting like a knuckleduster snug and ready to crush jaws and shatter teeth. The reprise is necessary with a wailing solo to boot, jacked, pressing, commanding as fuck.
“If you don’t like your art to be sprinkled with social justice and refrain from reading the lyrics, then I doubt you read this far, but the chops Transgressive display in just the dueling guitar solos and fat as fuck crunch of the drums impacting like maces Ḥashshāshīyīn with bass that bleeds breadth of grandeur is enough to induce a click on the buy button.”
P+A+G+E+S – Shine On
Trance-inducing mantra, spiraling ascension of atmospheric purgation, tones chosen to edge and unbalance. Unpredictable liaison with funereal dirge in essence before only in the third act a ghoul makes aware its presence. Mantric even when climax is breached. This whole album is a must listen for post metallic sludgy doom afficionados. Don’t sleep on it.
Moshmallow – Pink AF!
It’s from 2024, yeah I know. Look, the customs of lands you are a guest in tend to rub off on one, and technically the year of the snake and the dragon are both serpents, and the new year only starts mid Feb… I didn’t even know there are music videos with billions of views, so it’s definitely not this (albeit super wholesome) Marshmello vid, it also is not the only Moshmallow to be found on Bandcamp in song form, don’t do it to yourself, it’s objectively horrendous in every synesthetic form of taste, in fact I think people have developed misophonia from just hearing the first 7 seconds.
The real Moshmallow – Appearances can be deceiving, especially if preconceived notions of what heavy is, what “it” should look like, you get the idea… You don’t need to read my take, quoted lyrics: “Here’s a lesson // It’s self-expression.”
This tune has dangerous levels of infectiousness; you will be infiltrated and possibly dominated and: “I don’t have the necessary explanation as to why I relate to pink as fuck.”