Our Annual Report recap of 2025 continues with our ranking of the 30 Best Metal & Hard Rock Albums of the Year. Keep it tuned here all month for more accolades, interviews, and lists — and check out our full 50 Best Albums of 2025 countdown.

Heavy times call for heavy music, as we’ve said before.

Many paid heed in 2025. Deafheaven returned to a bleaker and blackened metal sound on the decisively titled Lonely People with Power , spearheading a wave of uncompromising artistic statements from metal, punk, and hardcore. It was a year in which artists of all sub-genres used expression as a means to navigate turmoil, whether internal or external.

Many took a political stance, such as Detroit collective The Armed with their hardcore-via-noise-jazz onslaught entitled THE FUTURE IS HERE

See Full Page