The Best Industrial / Cyber / Electronic Metal Album - Metal Storm Awards 2025

Black Magnet - Megamantra

It took three albums for Black Magnet to put an actual black magnet on their cover art, one that clearly broadcasts the genre to be found here, and it's an album that feels spiritually like a self-titled record because of the band reinventing itself as a band instead of just a solo project for this one. Megamantra is thus more collaborative, the drums, dual guitars, and dual vocals making for a fuller sound, with the songs themselves shorter and more immediate, with a stronger alternative edge to them.

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Bong-Ra - Black Noise

Jason Köhnen has had a long history with metal (see Bluuurgh... and Celestial Season, and you'll see another of his bands nominated in doom), but his Bong-Ra project started out as an electronic offering of the breakcore variety that seemed completely separate from his metal work. All that changed with Antediluvian, and ever since every Bong-Ra album has been some variety of metal. Black Noise is of the more industrial metal variety, combining some Godflesh-like slabs of cold metal with an electronic framework that betrays the project's electronica origins.

Deafkids / Test - Sem Esperanças [Collaboration]

While it has been over half a decade since their last solo full-length album, Deafkids have been very busy since, between appearing on the Cyberpunk 2077 soundtrack, touring extensively, and exploring various collaborations. The Deafbrick collaboration was nominated in this category 5 years ago, and now so is Sem Esperanças, their crossover with fellow Brazilian experimental band Test. The tribal percussion of Deafkids and grindcore of Test make their presence frequently felt, but in between is plenty of exploration of electronic sounds, whether pounding dancefloor synths or more abstract sound collages, along with a good dollop of ominous industrial/noise rock. Sem Esperanças is very experimental, occasionally too much for its own good, but more often than not this Brazilian collaboration strikes gold.

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Fange - Purulences

Seven full-lengths and four EPs in 13 years is an impressive feat. Even more so when your band deals with crushing sounds as their main trade. The French Fange have come a long way since their debut album a decade ago, chameleoning their way through death, sludge, hardcore, post-metal and industrial. But for their last couple of releases they have grown into a mold based primarily on their industrial sound. And who can blame them when the result is not a mere mold but a golem ready to pummel you into pulp? There are still intense, filthy sludge and death metal pieces hanging on hooks, though, making Purulences a dark pleasure to listen to, especially with headphones because of how well Fange can fill the space with their colossal sound and a perfect production that makes you feel their explosive moments down to the bones.

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Health - Conflict DLC

Conflict DLC is the second part of Health’s neo-industrial saga started by Rat Wars. Health does well in capitalizing on the momentum created by their previous full-length, as this is some seriously delicious and addicting music for one hell of a night at the local underground club. Sexy, androgynous vocals are mixed with powerful basslines, melodic leads, and crushing beats along with heavy riffs for that metallic edge. The result is dark, catchy, lustful, aggressive, and melancholic all at once. Conflict DLC truly is music made for the third millennium.

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Igorrr - Amen

So we've finally nailed down Igorrr to some kind of consistently metal or metal-adjacent sound... which means he's finally normal, right?  Left.  Er, wrong.  For sure Amen is more conventional than the downright Dadaist works of infant Igorrr, but the whirring, grinding, glitching gears of his workshop do not yearn for normalcy.  Amen makes some friendly overtures toward industrial metal and some more extreme/progressive varieties, and it often does so in ten-second bursts as a way of parlaying breakcore into breakdowns; the warping and whizzing and battering electronics have only so much patience before they need to move on to the next about-face into a new instrument, a new vocal style, a new sample.  So yes, you can get an amen, and you can get stalked by an opera singer and a beating from a haunted piano and a bass-induced seizure a whole bunch of other stuff you didn't know to ask for.

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Mütterlein - Amidst The Flames, May Our Organs Resound

If that massive organ jutting into the black sky didn't tip you off, this is one menacing and unsettling album.  Mütterlein plays what could be recognized as some sort of black metal - tremolo-picked guitars, malevolent melodies, high-pitched shrieks, that sort of thing - nestled within eerie synthesizers and pressed forward by metallic drums, putting this into the industrial context where we have recognized it, and at times it finds that the most effective technique is to simply let the sound wallow in dread and become dark ambient (you will also sometimes hear the organ resounding, as advertised).  That combination of the one discipline of cold music with the other discipline of cold music and the other discipline of cold music, along with that other discipline of cold music, leads to some, well, cold music.  If you want music from haunted machines to hollow out your mind, you need look nowhere else than Mütterlein to keel over.

Saint Vengeur - Sex And Repression In Higher Society

Imagine yourself walking down the restless streets of a metropolis. You are soaked by the rain and blinded by the neon lights. The thrill of violence, sex, drugs, alcohol, and other, unspeakable vices tempt you at every corner. Or simply imagine the soundtrack to one brilliant underground sci-fi/film noir masterpiece. Saint Vengeur is the project of Herman Pańkow, who with Sex And Repression In Higher Society delivers a unique mix of industrial metal, darksynth, witch house, and a touch of black metal for extra malice. This type of electro-metal fluctuates between being creepy, melancholic, violent, and downright horny, with the passionate piano being the only beacon of hope in a world where the higher society draws pleasure in preying on the less fortunate.

Street Sects - Dry Drunk

One of effectively two Street Sects albums to drop that day and their first release in seven years, Dry Drunk takes the band's industrial rock in an even noisier and denser direction. Their more melodic demons having been exorcised on the other record, Dry Drunk is more abrasive and grotesque, keeping some of the melodic touch but sharpening it, using it more sparingly, and adding a thick layer of noise over it, making it feel inhospitable and malevolent even at its most malleable.

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The Algorithm - Recursive Infinity

The latest iteration of Rémi Gallego's algorithm is a bold step forward. Building upon the existing djent/darksynth combination that has brought success on past releases, Recursive Infinity features integration of additional electronic music styles, including drum & bass and glitch, while also introducing robotic effects-laden vocals into the fray for the first time. The pummelling electro-fied djent grooves are slightly less frequent, but in turn, when they arrive, the impact is all the more heightened, keeping The Algorithm on the cutting edge of metal/electronica hybrid music.