Worst albums of the year 2025

Welcome back, dear readers!

If you don't know what to make of that opening line, I'm referring to my recently posted yearly album Top 10, which I had to cut in half this year. This, then, is the second half. Because it's never just a Top 10; it's more like an overview of all the LPs I heard in the last year, by categorization. And in 2025, I listened to more new ones than I've probably done any year.

To be fair, I haven't heard a lot of these herein mentioned ones from start to finish. And that's because, for the most part, there's not a lot of reason for that. Indeed, as I mentioned conclusively in part 1, this one's gonna be about all the sub-par releases. From the perhaps somewhat decent, but boring ones, to the absolute dregs of the bilge-barrel-bottom ones.

In other words, I'll be bitching a lot. So please remember that I'm a living, breathing, feeling, loving, and caring human being just like yourself, with hopes, dreams, fears, and desires just like yourself. I just also happen to be fed up with all the world's trend-riding bullshit and with metal degenerating into sterile, riff-less, auto-tuned, copy/pasted whiny emo-core. And also, I'll be ripping into at least as many things that I myself would normally dig. But if it's bad, it's bad.

With that, on to the albums that I've checked out so you don't have to:

The autopilots

Starting with the ones I actually did listen to at least one, I gave the new Biohazard three spins (heeey, "Chamber Spins Three"!), and it had but shadows of the qualities that made "State of the World Address" ('94) reign supreme. You could hear that it's Biohazard, but it was all-round uninspired and generic. I heard the new Whitechapel twice. The heaviness and aggression were impressive, and I'd say the album had it all… except for anything memorable.

I also gave the new Alestorm two spins, and its piratey openings were perfectly thrilling. However, as it progressed, it only delivered more of the band's worn-out, unfunny jokes about big tits, tired lyrics about drinking, and annoying panderings to the club segment. Much like with Steel Panther, the joke is now officially over. Chevelle tried hard to muster up some emotion and sound like Tool, but those vocals were too wimpy and the production too polished for things to rock properly. And like any other late-'90s American post-grunge outfit, they've just plain survived themselves.

I know a lot of people were hella digging on the new LP from Coroner (also one spin), and sure, it was metal and stuff, but it was also pretty homogenous as for both the tonality and the unmistakably Tom G. Warrior-like vocals. And it didn't really thrash as you'd might expect. It wasn't downright bad or unimaginative, but foremost repetitive and uninteresting – unless, of course, one was simply pleasantly grateful after waiting for 32 years.

As far as hard rock goes, the four first songs on the new disc from Enuff Z'Nuff belonged to the rare category of soft hard rock. Nothing wrong with that necessarily, but this was just severely plain, tiringly goofy, and all-round unimportant. The first four songs on the new FM album sounded like Bryan Adams… Which is okay (especially if you're produced by Mutt Lange), but they were still uninspired and not hard enough for this website, even though their last one was.

Kicking the hardness level up a notch, the first half of the new Mob Rules album was as standard as things get in plain, straight-up heavy metal. Nothing new and nothing exciting – indeed, the definition of autopilot. The first 30 minutes of the new Tokyo Blade were boring and drudging – and the vocals on some of the tracks smelled of Auto-Tune. And the first 14 minutes of the new Michael Schenker Group showcased a flat, hollow production framing uninteresting songs played half-heartedly. I stopped listening when they rhymed "fire" with "desire".

I guess Halestorm is supposed to be metal. And while it's certainly played like that, it's written and produced like those modern hard rock bands that try to rock, but are sterile, uninventive and just plain boring, as was the case for the first half of these guys' new LP. Unless, perhaps, you're an emotions-prone teenager who's never heard hard rock before. That Lizzy Hale chick does have a powerful voice, but I stopped listening around one of those rock ballads that are deemed radio-safe because it has the name Pink on it. And hey, I actually kinda like Pink, but I don't wanna listen to stuff that sounds like her when I'm expecting things to kick ass.

Germany: Sacred Steel still play that unmistakably German branch of heavy metal with equal parts features from thrash and power metal. On their newest effort, they delivered 0% excitement, and their lead singer, apart from sounding annoyingly flamboyant, was flat in almost every line. The first song on the new outing from Udo Dirkschneider And The Old Gang was a bit on the lightweight side of heavy metal, and then some girl started singing outta left field. Nothing wrong with female vocals, but sometimes you can just smell the tokenism, and in those cases, I'm outta there. Finally, Crematory play uninventive melo-death á la Dark Tranquility, which I kinda knew already. But then, I reached the third song on their new LP, which had lyrics in German and a hysterical keyboard. And after that, so help me Dio, they put on a cover of "My Girlfriend's Girlfriend". Fuck off.

In power metal, the new Labyrinth wasn't bad, just neither new or interesting whatsoever. In folk metal, my countrymen in Trold apparently haven't decided whether they're supposed to be funny or serious. Either way, their growls are excruciating. Their fellow townsmen and folk-metalheads in Svartsot were a fresh breeze those 15-20-ish years ago, but the concept can't be expanded upon any further. And the first half of the new Scars On Broadway sounded like scrapped ideas from System of a Down, only without their dynamic production or interesting delivery. It might be cool if you couldn't get enough of whatever SoaD might come up with at any day, but as a standalone, Daron Malakian's outlet is unexciting, and he's missing the respective talents of his former bandmates.

Finally, the first three songs on the new Orbit Culture release were insufferably polished and masturbatorily over-produced melodic groove metal with growl in the verses and those nasal, Stinkin Park-like vocals and melodies in the choruses. All heard before, and unendurable at this point.

The horrors

That kinda brings us to this part. But we'll start in the 'various' department. I probably should like the new Dynazty album, seeing as how it's hard rock and all. But it sounded like the all-time most calculated Eurovision contributions. With some distorted guitar chords on top, sure, but primarily dominated by pandering, compressed keyboards. I lasted 10 minutes (phrasing). Even worse was the new effort from The Darkness, its opener merely being a lyrically slavish recital of rock-n'roll clichés with zero melody. I turned it off halfway through the sophomore cut, which was basically pop-punk in British, and with brass instruments. Yiechk.

The production on the new Elvenking was messy and muddy. It did sound like their brand of power/folk metal, and it did have some sensible hooks, but those lead vocals were constantly flat – just like I recall from the first album. Also Peavy Wagner from Rage was off-key, still playing some nice old-school heavy metal, but his vocals were way too loud in the mix, didn't have any reverb, and, above all, painfully out of pitch. And Sweet Savage (perhaps best known as the former band of then-future Dio and Def Leppard guitarist Vivian Campbell) were trying hard to be, indeed, both hard and down with the kids. The latter was heard in a horrendously stiff and polished production with even more horrendous club noises.

German phenomenon Mono, Inc. might be the most uninspired music I've ever heard. EVERYTHING is stiff and stylized, and NOTHING has any shred of creativity. Themes, melodies, riffs, lyrics, solos… everything sounds like it's written by a proto-AI that became obsolete years ago. The lead vocals stay within ONE octave – tops. The drums and the lead guitar are doing nothing. But the band itself is vogued out in black and purple renaissance costumes, and the description on their website says, "#1 Goth Rock Band". With the way they're styled up and the way they've shat out close to one album per fucking year, I'm tempted to believe they've got some coldly calculated market powers behind them. I lasted through the first three insufferably impersonal tracks; then they started to sing in German. Tschüss.

The first two songs on the new Battle Beast album had some impressive female vocals and one honest metal riff, but it quickly degenerated into good, clean, family-friendly, over-produced anti-metal. The new Skunk Anansie featured a coupla awkwardly try-hard openers; after that, some unimportant songs that wouldn't even have been cool back in the '90s. From Soulfly, I was expecting something at least in the qualitative vicinity of their last full-length, 2022's surprisingly rad "Totem". Instead, they treated us to an unlistenable muddy production, their most uninspired jock riffs to date, and zero memorability. I listened to it back-to-back, but the second time I tried that, I had to give up.

With that, on to the real stinkers. All That Remains is a bunch of pop-core, and the vocals sound like Auto-Tune. Shoulda known with a name like that. Alien Weaponry kinda thrashes, but then, in the choruses, it turns into that Trivium/Ill Niño kinda deal where it gets poppy and wimpy for some dumb reason. Underoath had some interesting ideas and a cool heaviness, but their sound is compressed, those digital club-pop elements are dreadful, and the vocals sound like a shreaking little girl. Might've expected it when it's described as "[X]-core".

A coupla bigger groups featured enough redeeming qualities that they didn't necessarily have to end up in this category, but did anyway. Spiritbox showcased some grand soundscapes and heavy axe chops. But the riffs were more like anti-riffs. The band does vary and experiment a lot. Their use of breakbeats, however, quickly goes from being interesting to being annoying. But the breaking point is that the vocals are poppy and stink of Auto-Tune. Also, it turns out the band supported Limp Dickshit, so fuck their hipster asses.

I also know some who are into Sleep Token, and the band does create both lofty heaviness and scrumptious piano- and saxophone-based vibes. But they still pander way too hard to the club segment with faggy melodies and that deplorable, sterile hi-hat emulator going "FT! T-T-T! FT! T-T-T! F-T-T-T-T!" And yes, I just used the term "faggy" in a degoratory manner. Fuck you, nitroglycerine-triggered Gen Z. Your reign of weakness ends tonight.

I lasted less than two minutes into the new album by that "Babymetal" travesty, and as one might expect, it is inhumanly sterile, stylized, and just as choreographed as their live performances. It has zero actual guitar riffs – in fact, nothing that really sounds like musical fucking instruments. But they use Auto-Tune, because that's popular these days, and that'll get them out among even more musically illiterate listeners who couldn't tell the difference between a human voice and a computer plugin. If you're listening to obviously conceptual mockeries like "Babymetal", you're contributing to killing not just metal, you putrid fucking traitor, but to killing music overall.

Three Days Grace sounds like all other so-called "heavy" music these days: Compressed, auto-tuned, plastic-y run-of-the-mill grooves. Fuck you, calculating corporate cocksuckers. Same thing went for Adept: Polished, whiny, and poppy just like all other contemporary shitty pseudo-metal. Just die already. And finally, the bottom turd-cake award would go to The Devil Wears Prada, releasing an insufferable gruel with the most hysterical and trend-speculating ingredients from emo, pop punk and metalcore. The hysterics are at club level, and everything's wimpy and dishonest – especially given those breakdowns and screams they haphazardly throw in the mix in order to come off as genuine.

Normally, I try to avoid speaking in absolute terms when describing music, but the three latter groups are the worst shit I've heard in 2025, if not ever. And just as normally, I'm in a fairly good mood. People tend to consider me funny; I meditate; I love traveling, kitties, Pink Floyd, and Monty Python, and I'll cry on cue if you put on "Fields of Gold" or "Africa". But if you put on shit like the aforementioned, I immediately despise the entire world and feel like eradicating all of us, including myself.

The ones I didn't hear at all

I took a look at the cover of the new Wildhearts LP and decided that I didn't need to take it seriously. Also, Swans and Merzbow released new albums, but they probably wouldn't be hard enough to qualify for reviews in here anyway. Heaven Shall Burn put a cover of that "Killswitch Engage" joke on their new output, so no need to listen to that, either. And my fine countrymen in Panzerchrist released a part 2 to their 2024 release, but since I didn't review that one, it would feel weird to review its second part.

Much has been said about German fashion magazine poseurs Lord of the Lost, who are allegedly also a metal band. However, I looked at some pictures of them and saw what guest performers were featured on their new release, and on that basis, I concluded that the less said about them, the better. Same thing went for Feuerschwanz whose new release had covers of "Gangnam Style" and "Dragostea Din Tei". Also, they were among the featured on aforementioned Lord of the Lost LP. Easy-peasy.

I did hear the first 10 minutes of the newest outing by The Vintage Caravan, but they're more psych-rock than hard rock. It also doesn't show a lot of faith in one's own material to have Mikael Åkerfeldt do a guest performance and then open one's album with the one song featuring said performance. I also heard the first song on the new Vintersorg, but the production was messy, and there was no progression. Ditto the first song on the new Blood Red Throne; it was just as meat-and-potatoes death metal as the last time I listened to them.

I woulda listened to the new Imperial Triumphant, but nobody put it out on YouTube. Same thing went for the new releases from Ian Paice's Purpendicular and L.A. Guns – not that the latter's previous effort was worth a lot of attention. I almost listened to a record by those King Gizzard… guys, but the version of their new release that did get put on YouTube was missing a track. And no: I can't be bothered with streaming services. As far as I'm informed, they're paying the artists jack-all anyway, and I have enough digital shit in my life as it is.

There was a new Spïnal Tap movie out; totally dodged my awareness, as did the accompanying soundtrack. Also, was Incubus supposed to have put out a new LP? Kept on looking for it; couldn't find shit. There did come a new Alcatrazz, but once again, no Joe Lynn Turner, so no attention from yours truly. There was also a new Avatar album out, but the one I heard from them in 2023 was just as predictable as the band's James Cameron movie namesake.

Apart from that, didn't hear the new releases from Risen Atlantis, John 5, Mystic Circle, Lynch Mob, Necrodeath, Wardruna, or Between The Buried And Me. As for the latter, however, with a name like that, maybe I shouldn't bother anyway.

… And of course, all of the artists mentioned in this article and its antecedent constitute the proverbial tip. For every release on my yearly to-hear list, I had to omit 5-10 others. And I still only managed to review 37 albums in total in 2025. Just goes to show that there's a great imbalance between quantity and quality in the vast world of metal – at least the new stuff.

Moving forward…

In terms of new releases, we don't have a lot to look forward to in 2026 so far. There's already a new Kreator out today; should probably say something about that. Megadeth have a farewell album coming out this month. February sees new outputs from KMFDM, Mayhem, Rob Zombie, and Clawfinger. And apart from that, 2026 so far has new shit lined up from Vreid, Lamb Of God, Exodus, Black Label Society, Nervosa, Sunn0))), Archspire, Immolation, and Skindred.

So, as you can see, we're kinda in for a bunch of B- and C-level stuff. Probably gonna be some good releases in there, but I'm not sure I'm gonna be reviewing all of these. This is also because I've learned in 2025 that I need to prioritize my reviews. While I'm hoping to keep up my frequency, I'm also aiming for listening to fewer albums fewer times.

On a personal level, I'm also planning to do a lot of non-GMB-related stuff in 2026. As some of you might recall, I was attempting to move my company last year; I'll give that another go. And I'm currently lining up another, potentially much bigger project than GMB, but it's too early to say anything about it, other than the fact that it won't be related to GMB. But I'll make a blog post about it when the time is ripe.

I've also been looking into ways of expanding upon GMB, but that might take second or perhaps even third place – at least for the first half of 2026. Indeed, it's too early to say a whole lot of things. Rest assured, however, that I will keep on spitting truths about real metal and hard rock alike, and that I'll keep on making inappropriate jokes along the way.

Think global, act metal.

– Andy