NO TIME FOR LOVE, DOCTOR JONES!  I gotta get these lists done while there’s still time, while the clock and calendar still read 2025.  Although, who are we kidding: time is a flat circle, this year has felt like a goddamn century and everything’s made up and the points don’t matter anyway.  Setting jokes and references aside, this year has been the most up-and-down I can remember, and even into the closing moments of 2025 it still feels like it’s not letting up.  Fortunately, there’s always music, and this year has been just as good as any in recent memory, mostly for me to catch up on after the fact, but still.  There was a lot to dig into this year, and I still feel like, even going through absolutely everything that hit my ears, I am only scratching the surface.  But what a surface indeed it is.  

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Nite – Cult of the Serpent Sun

When you load up Nite on Spotify, it has no choice but to differentiate them from another similarly named band by referring to them as “Nite (metal)”.  Apt.  What you get is an insanely catchy and groovy swirl of blackened, old-school metal, with as many ear-worm riffs, hooks and fretboard burning guitar solos as one can pack in a thirty-seven minute album.  The Nite hype was real with Voices of the Kronian Moon, but Cult of the Serpent Sun takes everything that made that album immediately charming and plugs it into a high-voltage generator, turning every facet of Nite’s schtick up to eleven.  This is some black n’ roll perfectly crafted for those of us for whom leather jackets, spiked bracelets and back patches will never go out of style.  It is living, breathing proof that metal never dies.

This one also showed up on Chris’s mid-year round up, so if you didn’t read that when it dropped or the last time I linked it, READ IT NOW.

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Primitive Man – Observance 

Primitive Man are known for one thing, primarily: being the heaviest goddamn band in the known universe.  Their records are dense like a black hole is dense, and Observance is no different in that respect.  You have to hand them the honorable mention simply for making another album that could make the ground collapse underneath your speakers, but that would be depriving Observance of its flowers due for its subtle nuances.  This is the most brutally honest Primitive Man’s lyrics have been to date, and also the most hopeful and positive the band has ever been.  A new focus in the lyrics helps make the brighter, more ambient moments in the music pop more, and if you really dig in, you get a side of the Denver trio you might not have noticed before.

There was a lot more to say about this one, and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to give it a review!  Check that out in full right here.

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Judicator – Concord

I’ll admit: even for me, someone who likes a fair amount of prog in their metal, there was something about The Majesty of Decay that didn’t grip me.  I didn’t want to write Judicator off completely without the vision of Alicia Cordero, but it seemed we were going in two different directions.  Concord, then, surprised the hell out of me when I threw it on, on a whim.  Judicator’s focus on historical themes and literary themes this time takes them to the American West, with a touch of Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian, and it also reunites them with enormous, sing-along choruses and catchy, earworm riffs that get to the point much faster and much more efficiently than anything they’ve done since Let There Be Nothing.  It’s the perfect medium between Judicator 2.0 and what has always positioned them at the forefront of American power metal.

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VoidCeremony – Abditum

This one and one other album on this list nearly slipped through my damn fingers simply based on timing alone, but I would be severely disheartened to have a new jaunt from VoidCeremony pass me by.  Abditum picks right back up where Threads of Unknowing left off, seamlessly blending together jazz fusion and death metal in a slithery, sinewy tapestry, this time sans Phil Tougas on the lead work.  However, this album sparkles no less in his absence, as the compositions are solid and full of the kind of off-kilter riffing and jazz-influenced melodies and harmonies that make VoidCeremony impossible to categorizing and a delight to listen to.  It’s also worth noting the guitars on this are just as razor sharp and dizzying to listen to as ever, and just because they can never make the same album twice, they have TWO bassists on this one.  You know that means it’s already got my seal of approval.

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Pupil Slicer – Fleshwork

This was the other album that almost passed me by, despite the fact that I knew it was coming and I told myself I wasn’t going to miss out on catching it.  November was a busy month for me, okay?  But I will drop everything for new Pupil Slicer, and despite the short amount of time I sat with it, this album dug its claws into me in the exact way I was hoping it would.  If Blossom wasn’t heavy enough for you, I think Fleshwork is going to do nicely to bridge the gap between their stellar debut and they new influences they have thrown in along the way.  Headed as always by the inimitable talent of Kate Davies and her unrepentant roar of a vocal delivery, this is the most honed their brand of math-driven grindcore has ever sounded, and there’s even a few dance beats and synths thrown in there for good measure.

Chris managed to save me from myself by reminding me of both of the previous releases in his November installment of “The Month That Was”.  Check it out here!

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Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin – Stygian Bough, Volume II

Some things just go together like peanut butter and jelly, and those things are Aerial Ruin and Bell Witch.  Their mutual partnership and collaborative nature is nothing new, but the second installment of them as a proper trio is the follow up to Volume I that I have been waiting for since that first volume dropped.  It should be no secret that the three’s musical voices, as well as their actual voices, blend together seamlessly, but there is a lot here that takes Volume II beyond standard fare.  The concerted focus on shorter (if you can call them that) compositions and allowing each song to have its own identity does a lot to break up the “one long song as an album” trend Bell Witch have been on and makes this release something that has a lot of memorability to it.

This one I did manage to catch in time to give it a proper review, and you can read that one right here!

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Lamp of Murmuur – The Dreaming Prince in Ecstasy

Lamp of Murmuur have been a band that has intrigued me since they first came on my radar: their brand of post-punk meets black metal is so interesting on paper, and while I really do think their EP Submission and Slavery is where it’s at, I found myself pretty disappointed in Saturnian Bloodstorm.  It was almost like a bait-and-switch when that album dropped, but I think they are picking up the pieces on The Dreaming Prince, and I’m happy to say this album has grown on me in a massive way.  What other black metal can you legitimately shake your ass to the way you can on the magnificent three part title suite?  The balance is moving in the right direction here, and I find myself almost wanting to go back and reevaluate my initial reaction to Saturnian Bloodstorm.  Almost.  I’ll stick with this and see where they go from here.

Colin wasn’t as blown away by this album as I was, but he’s a tough one to please, and even he had similar positives as me!  Read his full, unbiased thoughts here.

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Adorn – s/t

No band stays broken up forever, even if all they did was release one hell of a demo over ten years ago.  Adorn suddenly appeared, as if from a dream, to remind me why that little demo has stuck with me all these years, and at a time when their brand of sappy, romantic, exuberant black metal was exactly what I needed as inspiration and fuel.  The only proper way to describe this album is “gorgeous”, and the use of melody, simple and plain but heart-achingly beautiful, is so completely unique and unlike any of their peers, even among those who do the Romantic thing.  The violins and piano here are kind of what makes it go over the top, but it’s also Adorn’s attention to space and detail that make their songwriting so emotional and so effective.  The addition of vocals as well, is a welcome one, and really works to add that extra layer of depth and rawness to the six tracks that make up this, Adorn’s long awaited debut.

For more words on Adorn, but also about how much I love my wife, check out my full review here.

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Between the Buried and Me – The Blue Nowhere

This album, perhaps more than any other, is the biggest surprise to me that it ended up on this list.  I have been a BtBaM stan since The Silent Circus, thank you very much, and when I heard the first single off The Blue Nowhere, my first thought was “oh no”.  I mean…I have no choice but to trust in the now quartet that their progressive leanings won’t come at the cost of the song, and you know what?  I was right.  I should have trusted them all along, because not only does The Blue Nowhere not sacrifice anything in the metal department for the Chili Peppers-esque funk of “Things We Tell Ourselves in the Dark”, it sounds much like a Between the Buried and Me album, as much so as any of their other releases, but it sounds like they have a fire lit under them to really get out there and try new things.  I’m on record as loving Colors II, but this feels like they’re making a vital record again, not retreading old ground.

Chris has much more to say about The Blue Nowhere, and you can, nay MUST, read it at this link.

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Full of Hell – Broken Sword, Rotten Shield

And now for the customary EP that rounds the whole shebang out.  What makes a Full of Hell release an album and what makes it an EP, you might be asking?  I guess you just know it when you feel it, and this feels like an EP to me, but make no mistake about it: this is as intense as anything else they release.  If anything, it feels like a revisitation of a classic form for the collective.  Almost gone are the avant garde influences on Coagulated Bliss, although I’m sure not forever.  Broken Sword, Rotten Shield is a simple assault of grindcore and hardcore rippers of tracks, supplemented by their trademark noise manipulation to round things out.  What it lacks in frills it makes up for in just rock-solid delivery.  For a band that never seems to make the same release twice in a row, it’s to have something more simple and straightforward to hold us down while we wait for whatever the hell is to come next.

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If these are the honorable mentions, just imagine how good the main list must be, huh?  And that doesn’t even begin to cover the albums that *just barely* didn’t manage to make the cut, of which there are several.  I guess you’ll just have to go back and check out this year’s full back catalogue of reviews and goodness, right here at Nine Circles, Member FDIC, to see what you and I both missed.  There’s a lot more to come though, both from me still and everyone else, so while you’re spinning these fine records, make sure you come back to check out what everyone else had to say.  Until then, dear reader…

-Ian