The 10 best death metal albums of 2025

Lorna Shore/Cryptopsy/Orbit Culture/Whitechapel/Slaughter To prevail.

Death metal continues to thrive in 2025. With subgenres ranging from melodeath and technical death metal to deathcore, goregrind and beyond, it's a genre that continues to inspire and attract massive audiences the world around, its influence felt everywhere from Slipknot to Poppy.

But if there's one thing that's defined 2025, it'd be deathcore stepping up to the big leagues. Lorna Shore and Slaughter To Prevail have gone from promising hopefuls to genuine contenders, hitting levels previously unheard of for such extreme bands. That in mind, here are the 10 records that defined 2025 in death metal...

Cryptopsy – An Insatiable Violence (Season Of Mist)

Want to get your arse handed to you but feeling tight on time? An Insatiable Violence was the album for you this year. The second release from Canadian kings Cryptopsy since their 2023 comeback, it mixed technical death metal chops with pure fucking rage in a way that only they can. No space was wasted across this 33-minute onslaught, with sticksman Flo Mounier once again stealing the show as he battered his kit like it had made love to his wife. Cryptopsy’s second run continued in impeccable form, and it’s hard to think of such an intense yet intricate band who’ve aged better. Matt Mills

Dormant Ordeal – Tooth And Nail (Willowtip)

Not to be too lofty about it, but Tooth And Nail was a miracle of a record. The fourth album from Polish pair Dormant Ordeal was a blackened tech-death monstrosity that somehow had… melody?! The drums were as incessant and unyielding as a tsunami, while frontman Maciej Proficz had a snarl which made Nergal sound like a field mouse. At the same time, the opening of the cascading Horse Eater felt genuinely catchy. Everything That Isn’t Silence Is Trivial flaunted a graceful acoustic passage, while the guitars during the bridge of Solvent almost dared you to hum along. Elegance in music this brutal is rare, making this band all the more special. Matt Mills

Floating – Hesitating Lights (Transcending Obscurity)

Floating promote themselves as a “death metal/post-punk” band, and that hits the nail on the head, really. On their 2022 debut The Waves Have Teeth, the Swedish tandem introduced themselves by darting between two wildly different poles: disorientating extremity à la Ulcerate, and moody gloom à la The Cure. This year’s Hesitating Lights did more to fill the gaps between those genres, often backing up jangling lead guitars with rampant noise and hoarse vocals. There weren’t any catchy singalongs comparable to Friday I’m In Love, but the duo’s avant-garde bleakness offered more than enough, and it feels like they still have room to evolve, as well. Matt Mills

Kardashev – Alunea (Metal Blade)

For years, Kardashev have claimed to be at the forefront of deathgaze: a hybrid genre mixing the dexterity of tech-death with the emotion of shoegaze. 2022’s Liminal Rite proved the mash-up had legs, but the Americans sounded more confident than ever on Alunea, unafraid of giving each individual style the space to impress. The dances between ambience and full-tilt hellscapes felt fine-tuned, while vocalist Mark Garrett was in his finest form to date. In fact, single Seed Of The Night was one of extreme metal’s most moving moments all year. A powerful album that more people should have talked about. Matt Mills

Lik – Necro (Metal Blade)

In a year where death metal took big steps forward, Lik made sure the old-school was remembered. Composed of members of Katatonia, Bloodbath and more, the Swedes hearkened back to the days of Entombed and Grave, when guitars sounded like chainsaws and frontmen snarled about fucking corpses. Necro wasn’t just nostalgic; it was also home to some top-shelf songwriting, with War Praise and They being scream-along bangers that clearly had thought put into them. The band may be a side-project, but this album rivalled some of the recent output from death metal’s A-tier. Matt Mills

Lorna Shore – I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me (Century Media)

Arguably the biggest success story in deathcore right now, Lorna Shore needed to produce something special for album number five to consolidate the hype, and boy did they deliver. I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me is as epic and emotional a statement as you'll hear anywhere in metal this year, melding sweeping symphonic bombast with crushingly heavy deathcore and histrionic melodies that'll tug your heart strings 'til they snap. At the centre of it all is Will Ramos, a mercurial talent who can spin from gut-churning bellows to ear-piercing shrieks without breaking a sweat, reacquainting himself as the best screamer of his generation. Merlin Alderslade

Orbit Culture – Death Above Life (Century Media)

Given just how ascendant deathcore is these days, it's easy to overlook that melodeath was the first subgenre to really elevate death metal to arena proportions. That's certainly not something lost on Orbit Culture, however: their fifth album, Death Above Life has an ambitious edge that screams for massive stages. OC have played their fair share in 2025 - supporting Trivium/Bullet For My Valentine in January, playing Main Stage at Download and Damnation - but this album feels like a serious indicator that the sky is the limit for the Swedes, packing both emotional heft and stirring, anthemic tunes into a glorious 10-track package. Rich Hobson

Paleface Swiss – Cursed (self-released)

Paleface Swiss' evolution from br00tal beatdown hardcore specialists into one of modern deathcore's most interesting boundary-prodders has been impressive, and it all culminated in their most expressive and exciting album yet. Cursed took heavy cues from nu metal, alt rock, hip hop and melo-doom for a riotously enjoyable listen that undoubtedly pissed off a fair few purists, but points to a future of boundless possibilities, frontman Marc 'Zelli' Zellweger putting in an MVP performance as he roared, screamed, gargled and crooned his way through one of the first truly great metal records of 2025. Merlin Alderslade

Slaughter To Prevail - Grizzly (Sumerian)

Although mired in controversy, that hasn't stopped Slaughter To Prevail becoming one of deathcore's biggest draws. A decade in, the Russian-founded band gave deathcore a serious boot up the arse with their third record, Grizzly both embracing the fundamentals of deathcore as a whole while giving it a few quirky flourishes that helped them stand out from the crowd. The result was a record which was undeniably extreme, but still felt massive, STP not going in for the blockbuster production of their contemporaries and instead just going for pure, visceral force. Headlining Bloodstock in 2026, it'll be a test of whether they're truly ready for the big leagues. Rich Hobson

Whitechapel – Hymns In Dissonance (Metal Blade)

"I BEAR THE NUMBER, 666!" For all that deathcore's next generation have stepped up in 2025, you can't count the old guard out yet. Whitechapel's ninth record, Hymns In Dissonance is grandiose and apocalyptic in its destructive capabilities, a crushing assault on the senses not unlike being buried beneath a sudden, violent tide of earth and stone. Even amidst that, there's a sense of anthemia, songs like Prisoner 666 and Hate Cult Ritual offering up roar-alongs that aren't so much chest-beating as ribcage-caving. Rich Hobson