The Best Extreme Progressive Metal Album - Metal Storm Awards 2025

An Abstract Illusion - The Sleeping City

An Abstract Illusion is a concrete success: after an amazing triple win in the 2022 Metal Storm Awards, they surely felt the pressure to deliver again, because they've flown from Woe to Whoa!  Purple velvet keys and gold lamé guitars lead this journey of colorful poetry, a perfectly paced and balanced expression of despairing awe.  The Sleeping City borrows from extreme genres, touring black metal and death metal in bursts of blastbeats and growls, but it's never overplayed, never sinking into mere genre trappings.  Even in those most extreme moments, the album is light, crisp, and melodic, and there are frictionless transitions between these metal dives and bouncy passages reminiscent of classic prog with vocal harmonies and instrumental interplay; the keys are always tasteful, whether as accents or as the primary engine of a sci-fi soundscape.  With three albums, An Abstract Illusion officially have a pattern, and this string of future classics has yet to dip below excellence.

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Centuries Of Decay - A Monument To Oblivion

With 8 years between their self-titled debut and follow-up album A Monument To Oblivion, Centuries Of Decay spent on average over a year working on each of the long songs found on this hour-long monolith. However, unlike the Chinese Democracies of the world, this is a record where one can almost hear the years in the consummately refined compositions featured across this beastly progressive death album. It's an album that at different times leans towards the dissodeath of Ulcerate, the post-metal of Psychonaut, the groove of Gojira, or the similarly multifacted extreme prog acts Hath and Wake. There is claustrophobic aggression, foreboding atmosphere, and salivating guitar work, whether in the form of irresistible riffs, memorable melodies or scintillating solos.

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Changeling (GER) - Changeling

What happens when members of Alkaloid, Fountainhead, Virvum, and Malignancy join up to create a new extreme progressive metal band? What happens when the session roster is so huge that it includes instruments like Wagnerian tube, vibraphone, dabouka, glockenspiel, and church organ? Symphonic prog death? At times, but not quite. What Changeling do on their statement-like self-titled album is prog death that is very keen to play around with everything it can get its hands on: fretless bass melodies, intricate time signatures, atmospheric moments, choirs and orchestras, and a 17-minute closing track to wrap everything up as if it were a gift.

Cryptosis - Celestial Death

Cryptosis was, from its very outset, a reinvention: the personnel of Distillator changed their name, and changed their approach to thrash to a more modern and technical one. Given this background, one could easily understand Cryptosis opting to consolidate after the success of debut outing Bionic Swarm; instead, they opted to revolutionize themselves in what is arguably an even more dramatic manner. There is still thrash in Celestial Death, but it is not an exaggeration to state that symphonic black metal is an equally viable label to place upon the record, and the album has also ventured into the progsphere. Hints of where Cryptosis would develop towards were audible in the debut record, but the transformation is nonetheless remarkable, not least for how well executed it is: dizzyingly technical yet irresistibly hooky riffing works very naturally with the new epic blackened dimension.

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Dessiderium - Keys To The Palace

Keys To The Palace is nominated in the Extreme Progressive Metal category, and it is an album with growls, blasts, and extreme-leaning riffs. However, the overwhelming emotions inspired by Dessiderium's latest record are of bliss and jubilation. Project mastermind Alex Haddad declared that Keys To The Palace was a record of triumph following two albums focused on defeat, and in keeping with this vision, the new release is a sumptuously melodic and bright album with playful keyboards, dancing lead guitar lines, and glowing soundscapes. It's difficult to listen to Keys To The Palace and not feel a huge smile spread its way across your face.

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Fallujah - Xenotaph

It wouldn't be a Fallujah album if there wasn't a new line-up since the last one, but the band have keep the bar raised high with each change, and Xenotaph is no exception. Vocalist Kyle Schaefer makes the role truly his own this time around, incorporating plenty of memorable clean vocals alongside his existing repertoire of growls and screams, while bandleader Scott Carstairs once more demonstrates the brilliance of his unique style, filling the record with an abundance of strong riffs, scorching solos, and lush melodic and ambient leads, which are so wonderfully paired with frenetic drumming. Fallujah have long been a unique and soaring voice within the tech-/prog-death scene, and Xenotaph is but the latest pile of undeniable evidence regarding their vitality.

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Farseer (USA) - Portals To Cosmic Womb

Sludge can be a wonderful style if all you want is a barrage of blistering ugly noise, but there's more you can do with that evocatively titled mish-mash of fuzzy doom and bloody-knuckled hardcore.  Farseer testify that you can get great results by prog-ifying: mix high-impact rhythms and gruesome growls with stinging guitar leads and hyperactive percussion, push some of those big statement chords into sustained atmosphere and hone that bluesy twang into whole different keys, and let some reverb drift in for a vaguely psychedelic flavor.  In some respects, Farseer are single-minded and consistent, in others experimental and meandering; wherever they're leaning at a given moment, you're getting some kind of interestingly textured take on sludge that likes to live more in melody than the norm, and Farseer will ride that to the top of their field.

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Hexrot - Formless Ruin Of Oblivion

Formless Ruin Of Oblivion is one of the wildest, densest debut albums we’ve encountered. It was released out of the blue by Hexrot, a virtually unknown duo that has been around just since 2022. While the complex songwriting can be difficult to describe, its flavourful and divisive nature is the very reason it’s such an addictive work. The listener may hear the post-metal leanings of Ulcerate, the caustic density of Flourishing, and the jazziness of Gorguts. It all boils down to a true symphony of atonal, dissonant madness. It’s no wonder the artwork was taken from Hieronymus Bosch, as the otherworldly, off-kilter, all-around bizarre variant of death metal that Hexrot creates is a perfect match for the apocalyptic work of the Dutch master.

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Rivers Of Nihil - Rivers Of Nihil

The departure of two longtime members does require some reinvention, which might explain the need for Rivers Of Nihil to cement their identity with a self-titled album. Perhaps the biggest harbinger of change is that the employed saxophonist for the already expected spots has been changed as well. But have no fear, Rivers Of Nihil both extends the band's direction and reverses it, with a larger share of clean vocals, more tastefully integrated without the need for softer moments, while at the same time pushing for more straightforward extremity in the vein of Monarchy.

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Symbiotic Growth - Beyond The Sleepless Aether

An hour-long voyage through alternate realities and the cosmos, Beyond The Sleepless Aether is a jawdropping odyssey of progressive death and black metal. The capacity for striking melody amidst furious intensity and structural complexity is reminiscent of the likes of An Abstract Illusion and Ne Obliviscaris, and the use of synths and electronics even more so of the former. However, Symbiotic Growth firmly demonstrate their own remarkable songwriting skills, with impeccable pacing and transitions across lengthy compositions that are filled with a surplus of memorable riffs and melodies, compelling atmospheres, and staggering virtuosity.

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