TOP 2025 Speculative Metal
The Speculative Assault
Metal has spent far too long under the rule of the Specter: that figure staring back from the mirror, bewitched by its own past and tradition. Spectral Metal (the traditional form) still fulfills an important role as an archaeological repository, but most bands remain trapped in an unbearable spiral of repetition: endlessly imitating established forms, homogenizing their sound, longing for some imagined purity…
Then Speculative Metal appears—opening space-time fissures, unleashing vorticial forces, and piercing into unexplored regions. For years, Speculative Metal has ensured that Metal remains Metal: defiant, vehement, experimental… speculative. It is the true sentinel.
Just as accelerationism launched a lightning strike against Kantian transcendental doctrine to expand into unknown territories, Speculative Metal once again transforms Metal into a Body Without Organs—one that does not obey established patterns—an organism of speculative forces that forges its own metallurgy unpredictably, releasing energies beyond its control…
Speculative Metal carries us from the known to the Unknown, unfolding a guiding vector that traces a path toward the Outside.
Inat-Se-Ragen expresses it perfectly in verse 66 of Metallicum Proverbia (2023):
“Worship only
what does not yet exist.”
The following list was assembled by Druj, Elliv-Lem, Inat-se-Ragen, and Relgneps Razalas, members of El Enjambre (https://www.instagram.com/elenjambre13/) and authors of the reviews at https://www.instagram.com/metalespeculativo/.
15. LA TORTURE DES TÉNÈBRES - Episode VII - Revenge Of Unfailing Valor
La Torture des Ténèbres releases a new album and that means a new opportunity to enjoy top–tier Raw Lofi Black Metal.
The imaginary framework on which Jessica Kinney builds the band’s proposal is fascinating, as are the immediately recognizable musical resources employed:
Relentless atonal and dissonant riffs (with huge melodic leaps that multiply their sonic aggression) unfold under an unceasing storm of blast beats. Added to this foundation is a textural layer of deep fog that buries the sonic discourse on an extraterritorial plane.
Thus, continuous interruptions of the narrative discourse occur, which becomes colonized by spores of information crossing different temporal planes, opening the music outward, toward liminal spaces dominated by metaphysical atmospheres.
Deterritorialization reaches its peak in many parts of the album, where the textural fabric takes over the musical foundation in a confrontation of inter-significant layers.
The instruments and vocals are affected by this struggle between planes, altering their timbre to the point of total distortion, in an excellent lo-fi production that represents the best of the Deep Fog movement.
14. HYENISM - Dominus et Deus
https://hyenism.bandcamp.com/album/dominus-et-deus-2025
This album is ASTONISHING.
Hyenism subjects us, in Dominus et deus, to one of the densest and most complex exercises in Speculative Metal of 2025.
The work with the triple guitar thread is outstanding. The riff-technology used here shows an originality rarely encountered.
The internal structure of the riffs and the variety of techniques used (atmospheric arpeggios, dizzying angular twists, delirious harmonic dissonances...) build an extremely complex, rhizomatic narrative discourse that stretches toward the horizon following irrational and unpredictable patterns. The deeper we dive into the album, the more the psychedelic sensation intensifies, with dreamlike passages of impressive craftsmanship.
The entire network of riffs is constantly driven by a rhythmic foundation that accelerates and brakes continuously and without rest in intervals so short that the disorientation is maximal; a sensation that increases to the point of paroxysm due to the multiplicity of rhythmic patterns, procedures, and constructions that confront horizontal melodic frequencies with Faustian vertical resonances.
The music flees from stasis; an unstoppable narrative flow that embraces a revolutionary structural accelerationism.
Top-level Speculative Metal.
13. BLUT AUS NORD - Ethereal horizons
https://blutausnord.bandcamp.com/album/ethereal-horizons
Blut Aus Nord is one of the main bands in experimental and speculative metal. Albums like MoRT (2006) brought dissonance in metal to one of its limits (alongside Deathspell Omega and Portal).
Their proposal has constantly mutated throughout a career as extensive as it is prolific, and Vindsval is the author of some of the most original and distinctive riffs of recent decades.
In their new album, the band once again explores their more melodic side, in what can be considered the most accessible work in their discography.
The characteristic textural density of their swarm-guitars is still present, but now the group develops its riff-technology through more defined tonal landscapes.
The structures deliberately avoid excessive complexity in order to focus on a few ideas per song, which unfold through slow, meditative variations.
Luminous clean-guitar arpeggios articulate an album of contemplative character which, despite the distance from the more abrasive dissonance associated with the band, continues to reveal a deeply sophisticated architecture, signed by one of the most relevant composers in contemporary extreme metal.
12. VENOMOUS ECHOES - Dysmor
https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/dysmor
Venomous Echoes is one of the most interesting bands in the entire I, Voidhanger Records catalog. Their music unleashes all kinds of compositional procedures that give rise to an impressive variety of riffs and speculative resources:
The guitar work is spectacular—sometimes with a dense, textural approach reminiscent of Ulcerate, and other times with a more progressive aesthetic similar to Imperial Triumphant (including winds and pianos, which provide timbral variety).
The fabric is enriched with textural layers that add estrangement and force the narrative discourse to mutate, being subjected to a large number of changes, continuously shifting.
The dense thread of riffs and the complex arrangements of the rhythm section display a discourse with multiple vanishing points that grow rhizomatically, spreading in numerous directions at once like a body-without-organs subjected to constant mutations.
Atonal and dissonant sections take us to territories where delirium is imposed and reality is left behind, with the music accompanying the body through its structural deconstruction.
11. CAVE - IV
https://centipedeabyss.bandcamp.com/album/cave-iv
Cave returns (one of the main projects of the ubiquitous Jared Moran) with a sonic organism emerging from the fertile Textural Death Metal with roots in Portal.
The band’s music has evolved from the more minimalistic and aggressively primitive approach of its debut toward an increasing complexity on all levels.
The guitars stand out, diving into uncompromising atonality, weaving a convoluted textural pattern of enormous density, enhanced by structures that grow more and more intricate in a controlled chaos reinforced by the open, constantly unstable approach to drum patterns.
The riffs are complex, wrapped in non-Euclidean, alien harmonies, driven by an excellent bass that enriches this complex molecular biology.
The narrative discourse is continuously infected by atonal solos with amphibious rhythmic behavior that push the fabric into irrational vortices.
10. HEXROT - Formless ruin of oblivion
https://hexrot-label.bandcamp.com/album/formless-ruin-of-oblivion
Hexrot’s debut album (Transcending Obscurity) is hard to believe.
Starting from thrash—the mother tongue of all extreme metal—the songs unfold with a riff-technology that performs irrational incursions into every style (death, black, doom...) at such a speed that absolute disorientation is unavoidable.
And although we are always navigating familiar waters, the clash of aesthetic paradigms produces a powerful sense of abstraction.
Guitars, bass, and drums are subjected to simultaneous aesthetic impulses (from the tonal to the dissonant), giving rise to a shapeless and fascinating organism that becomes impossible to comprehend when the synthesizers appear to add a totally hallucinatory sense of estrangement.
The music continuously inhabits technical and structural complexity.
We are before an example of the body-without-organs: a categorical fusion of styles, an internodal mutation where borders dissolve to walk a path rarely explored in extreme metal—the one initiated by the masterful and under-recognized Sadus.
9. QRIXKUOR - The womb of the world
https://qrixkuordeath.bandcamp.com/album/the-womb-of-the-world
Qrixkuor is one of those bands pushing metal into unexplored regions with unrestrained ambition.
The compositions on their new album are built upon an immensely complex and extended architecture of riffs, pushing the progressive elements of extreme metal to their limit.
To this, orchestral instrumentation is added alongside the traditional, in search of a “timbral delirium.”
The songs are subjected to extreme pressure, as the overlapping of orchestral layers with guitars and drums increases textural density. This creates a deterritorialization of the music through an accumulation of environments that fractures traditional architecture.
The network of guitars is built with insane detail; folds, connections, and continuous vanishing points led by riffs that travel between death and black with constant rhythm changes and incendiary guitar solos.
Special mention must be made of the texturization of the vocals, culminating in an album of dazzling hallucinatory character, like the excellent cover art by Santiago Caruso.
8. ᴍᴀʀᴛʀöð - Draumsýnir eldsins
https://martrod.bandcamp.com/album/draums-nir-eldsins
The Icelandic extreme metal scene is truly fascinating. In recent years, under the shadow of the cult label Mystískaos, numerous bands have emerged with some of the most experimental and original proposals in the current landscape.
One noteworthy aspect is the cross-collaboration among musicians in this scene, and Martrod is a supergroup in this sense (with members of Misþyrming, Wormlust, Leviathan, Skaphe, and Blut Aus Nord!).
Their excellent debut album shows a thoroughly worked-out proposal where the riffs are complex and extensive, full of nuances and variations, supported by a triple guitar mesh that increases sonic density to the point of asphyxiation—especially when atmospheric layers of synthesizers are added.
The rhizomatic structure of each composition is full of sections where intensity decreases but tension does not. These passages are the most experimental. Here Martrod uses a great variety of resources, introducing new elements in instrumentation and textural timbres as well as different percussion patterns. This allows the narrative discourse to renew its structure constantly.
Let us hope that the cult of dissonance continues to produce such solid proposals as this one from Martrod.
7. IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT - Goldstar
https://imperialtriumphant.bandcamp.com/album/goldstar-24-bit-hd-audio
Goldstar, the new album by Imperial Triumphant, shows a band that continues expanding its sonic horizon with boldness and intelligence.
We are dealing with one of the bands that have best adapted the influence of the revolutionary sound Gorguts created with Obscura (1998), which opened a new paradigm within speculative and extreme metal.
Imperial Triumphant has built a truly interesting discography, presenting continuous experimentations. Although their sonic aesthetic lies somewhere between the aforementioned Gorguts and Deathspell Omega, the band once again steps into seldom-trodden territories in extreme metal.
On Goldstar they handle constant changes of register with ease, avoiding the uniform approach typical of an album of this style. The riffs remain the foundation of the sound, offering great variety. But what takes the group to another level is their rhythm section: with an open approach, jazzy arrangements, and polymorphic rhythms, the sound expands into multiple vanishing points that venture into contemporary music, avant-garde jazz, and even Latin music (with Dave Lombardo as a stellar collaboration).
Steve Blanco’s bass deserves special mention, fully unleashing here the influence of Cliff Burton both in tone and arrangement, with wah-wah and distortion used at maximum intensity.
The last album recorded at the legendary Menegroth Studios by the ubiquitous and masterful Colin Marston is an excellent tribute that closes one era and brilliantly opens the next.
6. UMULAMAHRI - Learning the Secrets of Acid
https://umulamahri.bandcamp.com/album/learning-the-secrets-of-acid
UMULAMAHRI’s debut (Ordovician Records) is one of the releases of the year (with Andrew Hawkins from Baring Teeth and Doug Moore from Scarcity).
Its complex sonic architecture unfolds a rhizomatic cartography where the compositions destroy linear narrative and expand like an oppressive network.
A swarm of hyper-riffs expands like a constantly mutating constellation. Bass is replaced by synthesizers, and we encounter numerous passages where temporality is suspended through deterritorializing tools that unleash abstraction.
The compositional resources surprise one after another, based on alien drum patterns with irrational structures that subject us to repetition loops of colossal power.
The true essence of Morbid Angel (and not an imitation) hovers over all these compositions, revealing what may be one of the most interesting bands of the coming years.
5. DEFACEMENT - Doomed
https://defacementofficial.bandcamp.com/album/doomed
It is fascinating to watch metal changing before our eyes. The new album by Defacement (Avantgarde Music) brings very interesting innovations.
Following the bands leading Cosmic Death Metal such as Blood Incantation or Tomb Mold, Defacement also subjects its relentless Blackened Death Metal to stylistic torsion by mixing it with psychedelic and progressive resources typical of the ’70s.
The songs move unpredictably, fluidly blending brutal Morbid Angel-like riffs, misty sections that blur the boundary between technical and textural death metal, and genuinely luminous tonal and progressive sections where the guitars lean toward contemplative and ethereal sonic landscapes.
The drums deploy all kinds of patterns to adapt to each style, providing the album’s narrative with great variety—especially in the new and mystical tonal passages. These even use clean guitars, melancholic vocals, and jazz-styled drumming that plays with dynamics, which creates a strong contrast with the more abstract and dissonant riffs exposed through extensive atmospheric arpeggios.
Death Metal continues letting itself be contaminated by the wildest resources of progressive psychedelia, seeking unknown and unexplored regions through an unstoppable Faustian impulse.
4. HASARD - Abgnose
https://i-voidhangerrecords.bandcamp.com/album/abgnose
HASARD is one of the few bands that takes the industrial dissonance of Blut Aus Nord (one of the pillars of speculative and experimental metal) and transforms it into its own singular sonic organism.
Swarm-riffs with an absolutely insectivorous tone attack our mind continuously in the band’s second album. Tremolo is used as a technique to transmit a dissonance that dominates the entire sonic discourse.
The guitars (relentless) emit riffs that weave a fractal pattern where minimalism and repetition are the chosen mechanisms for transcodification.
As the atonal virus expands, the drum variations and the excellent, ominous arrangements of winds, strings, and pianos provoke a sonic fold where avant-garde black metal curves and enters fully terrifying industrial atmospheres.
One of the albums of the year, released by the speculative unit of I, Voidhanger Records.
3. YELLOW EYES - Confusion gate
https://yelloweyes.bandcamp.com/album/confusion-gate
Yellow Eyes is one of the most interesting bands in American experimental black metal, and their new album will surely appear on many best-of-the-year lists.
The album worships the tremolo-riff as a way of expanding its triple-guitar swarm through hallucinatory rhizomatic structures.
The guitars unfold and cross in complex counterpoints that reach their climax as they traverse extensive and intricate networks of arpeggios that move the narrative forward while simultaneously holding it back in a fascinating struggle between dissonance and the tonal.
The handling of tension is impeccable. The drums change constantly, allowing a sonic discourse to unfold and grow continuously, seemingly inexhaustible in its variety and dynamism.
This variety is enriched by deterritorializing elements that introduce abstraction throughout the album (a technique the band has used across their fascinating discography): synthesizers, clean guitars, winds, and dark textures that open the door to a deep and ominous folklore underlying all the music.
2. ESOCTRILIHUM - Ghostigmatah - Spiritual Rites of the Psychopomp Abxulöm
ESOCTRILIHUM is one of the bands that best explains how extreme metal has changed in recent years, and how it has deepened its tendency toward speculative experimentation.
Their latest album (I, Voidhanger Records) perfectly fits all the speculative techniques the band has deployed throughout their prolific career:
The songs are based on few ideas relative to their length, which increases formal importance, building labyrinthine and rhizomatic structures based on the repetition of patterns to exhaustion.
The continuous exposition of these thematic cells relies on the loop as a way to move the song forward, confronting minimalist and maximalist approaches simultaneously.
The production hides and reveals at the same time: while the instruments are subjected to a hyperdense, oppressive texture (with keyboards continuously dominating), details and nuances emerge to the surface, allowing the fabric to advance triumphantly, displaying its timbral richness and resources.
Psychedelia has been infecting extreme metal for years, making it mutate into a fascinating organism that grows and transforms thanks to the unrestrained ambition of bands like Esoctrilihum.
1. TEITANBLOOD - From the visceral abyss
https://teitanblood.bandcamp.com/album/from-the-visceral-abyss
From the beginning, Teitanblood seemed to have forged a pact to dismantle the homogenization infecting extreme metal of this century like a virus. The unfathomable depths of their music came to dissolve borders between styles, erasing the limits between its main manifestations: Death and Black.
From the Visceral Abyss (Norma Evangelium Diaboli) comes to confirm that Teitanblood is one of the most important bands of the century for Extreme Metal.
Their new album is conceived as a war machine designed to destroy everything in its path. The brutality emanating from this beast is so astounding that we can sense that the death of Timo Ketola (the illustrator behind most of the band’s artwork and a de facto fifth member) may have served as a catalytic element for conceiving this sonic temple worthy of R’lyeh.
The band deploys an incredible arsenal of resources: within the apparent uniformity and minimalism lie deep structural and textural complexities that enrich the album’s narrative development and a complex musical discourse that seeks disorientation through rhizomatic structures of total annihilation.
The riffs (ancestral relics exhumed through the subversion of orthodoxy) are a tribute to the pioneers of extreme metal, a worship of nearly forgotten blasphemies invoked into our plane by NSK, and they are exposed to their ultimate consequences, with a dazzling primitivism. They are repeated as loop-weapons upon which the devastating drum work rises, full of nuance even as it is immersed in this spiral of madness, driven by the tremolo that blinds us completely.
The album is constructed with millimetric precision. The solos and NSK’s demonic vocals constantly alternate, intensified by the continuous conception of all compositions thanks to the heretical-engineering work of CG Santos and the hallucinatory visual work of David Glomba.
Follow Teitanblood in their blasphemous archaeological labor toward the Sancta Sanctorum of Extreme Metal. Enter the Hypogeum!
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