That's Not Metal

TNM Albums of the Year 2025: Round 1

2025 Album of the Year time begins on That's Not Metal, with our first lists from Perran and Elliot celebrating everything from synth-punk to goth-doom, power-goregrind to jazz-death, post-metal to metalcore, legendary rock icons to grimy dungeon crust bands that this year gave us.

Hyperblasts: A Blast of Bloody Valentine

This week we've got reports from My Bloody Valentine's first shows since 2018 as we see one of the loudest bands in the world, reaction to Alissa White-Gluz being out of Arch Enemy, and we tell you how to get involved in our 2025 end of year shows. Releases: The Algorithm - Recursive Infinity The Pretty Wild - zero.point.genesis Danko Jones - Leo Rising Gasket - Gasket Stryper - The Greatest Gift of All Speedclaw - Stardust Morbikon - Lost Within the Astral Crypts Terror Corpse - Ash Eclipses Flesh Flesher - Gore On Gore Dome Runner - World Panopticon Spanish Love Songs - A Brief Intermission in the Flattening of Time The Halo Effect - We Are Shadows ExitWounds - An Offering to Tragedy Master’s Hammer - Maldoror Disco male//gaze - Too Late Now Excide - Bastard Hymns Equilibrium - Equinox Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons The Ominous Circle - Cloven Tongues of Fire Phobocosm - Gateway Fessus - Subcutaneous Tomb 1349 - Winter Mass

Vamping at the Disco

2025's final reviews is a crazy bag of disco mania with Creeper's Sanguivore II, Pupil Slicer, Drain, Astronoid, Home Front, Lamp of Murmuur, and Master's Hammer, bid farewell to Svalbard on tour, a new single from Converge, and about half an hour before our record, doing cartwheels at the reunion of Black Breath. Creeper 31:51 Pupil Slicer 1:09:19 Drain 1:24:17 Astronoid 1:35:08 Home Front 1:47:29 Lamp of Murmuur 1:59:08 Master's Hammer 2:18:05

Damnation Festival 2025 Review

The UK's biggest dedicated extreme music fest at Damnation Festival goes bigger than ever for its 20th anniversary with a bonkers two day line-up featuring Corrosion of Conformity, Napalm Death, Deafheaven, Perturbator, Anaal Nathrakh, Amenra, Warning, Wormrot, Castle Rat, and so many more to crack our skulls. Releases: Of Mice & Men - Another Miracle The Devil Wears Prada - Flowers Rise of the Northstar - CHAPTER 04: RED FALCON SUPER BATTLE! NEO PARIS WAR!! AVVT/PTTN - AVVT/PTTN Lamp of Murmuur - The Dreaming Prince in Ecstasy 1914 - Viribus Unitis Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin - Stygian Bough Vol. II Ragana & Drowse - Ash Souvenir VoidCeremony - Abditum Chairmaker - Leviathan Carcass Vower - A Storm Lined With Silver

Hyperblasts: Monster Mashing Marmozets

It's that week in November where every big festival announces their lineup so we assess the bills of Download, Outbreak, 2000 Trees, & Slam Dunk 2026, Turnstile come through Ally Pally, and finally one of the UK's great rock bands Marmozets return with first new music in over 8 years. Releases: Drain - …Is Your Friend Pupil Slicer - Fleshwork Astronoid - Stargod Set It Off - Set It Off Agnostic Front - Echoes In Eternity Cold Steel - Discipline & Punish The Devil's Trade - Nincs Szennyezetlen Szép Drowned In Silver - Mothers Omnium Gatherum - May the Bridges We Burn Light the Way Novembre - Words of Indigo Centinex - With Guts and Glory Glorious Depravity - Death Never Sleeps Dysentery - Dejection Chrysalis Yellow Eyes - Confusion Gate Waldgeflüster - Knochengesänge I & II Qrixkuor - The Womb of the World Primordial - Live In New York City Recollection - Vivid Dreams Alexisonfire - Copies of Old Masters Vol 1