LISTMANIA 2025 WRAPUP

 LISTMANIA 2025  1 Response »
Jan 142026
 

(written by Islander)

We posted the last of our many 2025 year-end lists yesterday. As in previous years, the volume was extensive. As usual, some of them were re-postings of lists that appeared at “big platform” web sites and print magazines, and others were prepared by our own stable of race-horse writers. And once again we had a large group of lists from other guests and old friends. Plus, we’ve again received valuable, extensive lists in reader comments on THIS POST (new lists can still be added there).

In this article I’m setting forth links to all of the 2025 year-end lists that we published, divided into categories and listed within each category mostly in the order of their appearance. For people who are looking for the best metal that 2025 had to offer, these lists and our readers’ lists provide a tremendous resource, as they have in past years.

Heart-felt thanks again to everyone who contributed to 2025 LISTMANIA and to everyone who made time to read what we pulled together. A lot of people put a lot of effort into this series, as we do every year, but I can tell from the page views that it continues to mean something to fans of heavy music, and so we’ll continue doing it. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: DIABOLUS INCARNATE — “HUMAN, ALL TOO HUMAN”

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Jan 142026
 

(written by Islander)

Diabolus Incarnate is a long-running extreme metal project with roots in South Africa, now based in the UK. They were first formed in 2010, and Metal-Archives identifies a 2015 demo and a 2016 single as their output until now. Obviously, they haven’t rushed things, but now, 10 years since they arrived in the UK and with a current incarnation that brings together musicians best known for their work in other extreme metal bands, Diabolus Incarnate are ready to take a big step forward.

The band’s founder Dieter Engel is now accompanied by members of such bands as Fleshgod Apocalypse, Ingested, and Worm Shepherd, and we’re told that they have two EPs under way, with one at the mixing stage and another in pre-production. What we have for you today is the premiere of a fully finished single, “Human, All Too Human“, along with statements about the song by all four bandmembers. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2025’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 9): IN MOURNING, CYTOTOXIN, JORDSJUK

 Exceptions to the Rule, MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2025  No Responses »
Jan 142026
 

(written by Islander)

We’re at another installment of this list where I don’t really have any organizing principle to explain why I put these three songs together. They’re just three songs I thought deserved to be on the list, and they happen to come from three really good 2025 albums too, but each one sounds very different from the other two. Continue reading »

PUSH! – PLOWING AHEAD

 Album Reviews  No Responses »
Jan 142026
 

(Andy Synn is plowing ahead with reviews in 2026, aided and abetted by the new one from Push!)

There’s a line in the song “Movie Night” by Aesop Rock that answers the question “What kind of dog is that?” with the words “That’s a mutt… it’s five-dogs-in-one.”

And while we can’t be sure exactly what breed the spiky hound adorning the cover of Plowing Ahead is, it’s clearly not a pure-bred.

But, then again, neither are Push!, as while the Portuguese quintet are definitely a Hardcore band – one with the likes of Born From Pain, Sworn Enemy, and Merauder in their auditory ancestry – there’s also at least some Metal in their DNA too, as the hybrid-vigour of their new album so plainly demonstrates.

Continue reading »

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

 MOST INFECTIOUS SONGS-2025  4 Responses »
Jan 132026
 

(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. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: HOLOTROPIC — “IN_DIVIDUAL – PT. I: ANIMAL”

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Jan 132026
 

(written by Islander)

This is something of a very long-awaited reunion for us. It was almost exactly 11 years ago that I became captivated by an album named permeate by a band from Slovakia named holotropic, an album that I briefly summed up as “a blend of technical death metal, progressive metal, jazz, Eastern melody, and crazy shit.”

That permeate album was very well-received both in the band’s home and abroad, and they supported it with performances in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary. As time passed, the band’s lineup also changed, and currently members and ex-members of bands such as 0N0, God Defamer, and Catastrofy can be seen performing on stage with them. And while the time that has passed since holotropic’s last release has been significant, they did not stop writing new music, some of which they’ve incorporated into their setlists.

At last, the band are ready to release new songs. We’re told that they recently finished recording material for what should have been a shorter EP but in the end turned out to be 30+ minutes of music, and what we have for you today is an excellent sign of their achievements — the video premiere of the first part of a tripartite song named “in_dividual“.

(By the way, although my English training tells me to capitalize proper names and titles, I’ll defer to the band’s tendencies not to do that — except in this post title). Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2025: DANIEL BARKASI’S 25 CUTS OF 25!

 LISTMANIA 2025  3 Responses »
Jan 132026
 

(For our final LISTMANIA installment of for 2025 [other than the still-evolving infectious song list], we present Daniel Barkasi’s Top 25 list.)

Arriving at the tail-end of Listmania is the one you haven’t been waiting for. Yup, it’s my year-end list of stuff that kept me going for another spin ‘round the record that is life. I chronicle my recent happenings in my monthly Obscurities column, so yes, we’re going to subject you to a quick synopsis.

This is being written post-move to the mountains and frigid cold of West Virginia. Unpacking will take a while, and most of my end-of-year downtime has been spent packing, moving, and unpacking. Not exactly relaxing as we’d like to unwind before going back to the day job, but it had to be done, and we’re settling in nicely. The pups and cats are doing great, and the sheep/pigs have a lot more space (and warm enclosures to shield them from this). I’m sure the new neighbors have enjoyed my cursing the high winds and temperatures in the teens we’ve endured the last few days. Being a Florida resident for a decade certainly changes one’s perspective on temperature, and I’ll be spending as much indoor time as possible until March or April. Whenever it becomes suitable for a human to exit the house. Continue reading »

THE BEST METAL ALBUM OF 2025 (RAFI’S PICK): TRIVAX — “THE GREAT SATAN”

 Album Reviews, LISTMANIA 2025  No Responses »
Jan 132026
 

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… Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: RAVENMOCKER — “INFALLIBLE”

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Jan 122026
 

(written by Islander)

Ravenmocker will be a new name for most of you. They are a melodic death metal band founded in Southern California just this year  by guitarist/vocalist Tom Tierney (formerly of Thrown Into Exile), joined by guitarist George Patmas (ex‑Dianthus), drummer Dylan Suierveld (Levinia), and bassist Will Buckley (Levinia, Anubis).

The band preview their music by identifying influences that include Children of Bodom, Insomnium, Amon Amarth, Kalmah, and Dark Tranquillity, but they also identify unexpected flavors brought into their collaborative songwriting process by each member — including aspects of country, jazz fusion, blues, funk, and classical choral music. And they were motivated in part by “a desire to carve out a culturally rooted identity inspired by Native American lore”.

To introduce themselves to the global metal community Ravenmocker will be releasing two singles — “Infallible” and “Where the Raven Flies” — that lead into their first EP, and what we’ve got for you today is an official video for the first of those songs, “Infallible“. Continue reading »

LISTMANIA 2025: TO THE TEETH’S “LIST OF LISTS”

 LISTMANIA 2025  10 Responses »
Jan 122026
 

(written by Islander)

We aren’t quite finished with our 2025 LISTMANIA series, but we’re getting very close. As we’ve neared the end in many previous years, we’ve included a “List of Lists” assembled by Dutch writer Peter van der Ploeg for his To the Teeth metal blog, which began life in May of 2016, originally on Facebook and eventually expanding to SubStack, and this year we’re sharing his List of Lists again.

As in the past, Peter explains that he began the exercise by assembling a population of year-end lists from an international group of music sites. For the 2025 endeavor, he identified the following sources:

This year I’ve counted the relevant lists from Album of the Year, Angry Metal Guy (AN Grier, Steel Druhm), Bandcamp, Brooklyn Vegan, Consequence of Sound, Decibel, Invisible Oranges (Colin Dempsey, Josh Rioux), Meat Mead Metal, Metal Hammer, Metal Injection, Metal Storm, MetalSucks, No Clean Singing (Gonzo, Will Cifer), No Echo, Popmatters, Rolling Stone, Stereogum, The Needle Drop, The Quietus, To The Teeth, Toilet ov Hell, Treble and Zes Losse Tanden. Some magazines or blogs publish a lot of personal lists: I included a maximum of two, to prevent publication bias.

Altogether, these lists included a total of almost 300 albums. Peter then assigned point values to the selections based on the rankings they received at their original locations. He explains: Continue reading »

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