The Best Metalgaze Album - Metal Storm Awards 2025

Astronoid - Stargod

Metalgaze is all about bliss, blissful melodies, blissful vocals, enough to occasionally forget that you're technically listening to metal. Astronoid initially did that by having the blackgaze be contrasted by vocals bright and saccharine enough they might be more fit for some emo pop-punk. Over the course of their albums, the black metal pendulum swung around, and on Stargod it lands with the black metal element all but gone, replaced instead by a more progressive leaning, one less focused on chugs or weird time signatures, but more in atmosphere building not too far off from Devin Townsend, especially with how well the synths and the guitar acrobatics interplay beneath the attention-grabbing vocals.

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Autumn Nostalgie - Metanoia

Autumn Nostalgie does not rush things; mastermind Gergely Almásy spent a decade shaping Esse Est Percipi before finally releasing it, and he was similar patient in finding the opportune moment to create Metanoia. An album shaped by the unassimibility of life and instability of existence, the record is bleak yet beautiful, wrapping itself in a comforting blanket of melodic tremolo layers and inviting mid-tempo rhythms. The opening songs have a darkness to them, but as the album approaches its conclusions, there is an increasingly delicacy and levity, as if there is acceptance of existence in all its chaos and an embrace of the things worth celebrating in life.

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Deafheaven - Lonely People With Power

Deafheaven caused quite a stir (although when do they not?) when they ditched the 'black' part of the blackgaze equation and released Infinite Granite back in 2021. However, this was but a temporary detour, as they have returned back to the metal fold in style with Lonely People With Power, perhaps their most extreme release to date. While blast beats, pained screams and biting riffs aren't new to Deafheaven, there are riffs on Lonely People With Power that have even more bite than long-term fans would be accustomed to. At the same time, the shimmering textures and bright atmospheres long associated with the group make regular appearance here too, shimmering brighter than ever. There's also plenty more in the Deafheaven arsenal here, from post-punk influences to harsh noise detours, and when everything is brought together, you are left with the most diverse, well-rounded and complete Deafheaven release to date.

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Genune - Infinite Presence

Black metal can be very emotional. Yes, depression counts as an emotion. We have an entire black metal subgenre for that. Romania's Genune have always flirted a bit with it, but what set them apart even more was how specific their emotions could be, with predecessor Inert & Unerring's cultural malaise now being followed up by a painfully specific meditation on grief, the kind of intense emotion that's made only more resonant when contrasted with the stronger blackgaze presence on Infinite Presence,

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Harakiri For The Sky - Scorched Earth

How Harakiri For The Sky can keep up this level of quality when producing such volume in such short intervals, we don't know, but you can always say with confidence that their new album is going to be massive, it's going to be exhausting, but it's going to be great.  And so Scorched Earth is massive, exhausting, and great: it's a mountain of bloody catharsis expelled through pained screams and an endless bank of reflective melodies.  The almost desperate energy pulls about as much hardcore into metalgaze as there's ever been, but the black metal elements are undiminished, and what overrides all are the emotional progressions achieved through both piercing lead guitar work and additional instruments such as piano and flute.  The frenetic pace and delivery sound like a mad dash to wit's end, which at this length seems never to reach a denouement; Scorched Earth is, as per usual, a demanding listen, but one that gives more than it takes.

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Heretoir - Solastalgia

Heretoir delved deep into their Alcest-isms on Nightsphere, but they are back to being the unique and compelling voice within the blackgaze genre once more. Solastalgia is an hour-long journey through the trademarks of the genre - tremolo textures, mixed vocals, strong dynamic contrasts, surges of extreme instrumentation - but rendered in a way that distinctly belongs to Heretoir. With passionate clean vocal climaxes, swells of tranquillity and onslaughts of darkness, Solastalgia is heavily imbued with a sense of longing and sorrow, yet tinged with aching beauty.

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SVNTH - Pink Noise Youth

SVNTH have returned with an interesting and fresh take on post-black metal. Pink Noise Youth already marks their fifth release, and with that much baggage comes a will to try out new things, which is what this album certainly does. SVNTH explore traditional post-black and blackgaze while adding elements of progressive metal and psychedelic rock, even using something as unusual as a sitar. It all works really well and creates a unique atmosphere, making Pink Noise Youth well worth checking out.

Shedfromthebody - Whisper And Wane

That title forms a pretty decent description of how Shedfromthebody sounds: Suvi Savikko cultivates a minimalist presence, crooning simple melodic phrases and letting quiet guitar lines dissipate into nothingness.  But Shedfromthebody has to turn metal at some point, as the aggressive drums and distorted bass let on, and when it does, it turns on a faucet of thick distortion that bolsters those ethereal elements without betraying their subtlety.  The project continues to feel unique in employing elements that we would consider to map onto a doom metal context, rather than relying on black metal tropes to supply the heavy counterpart to its shoegaze base, and Whisper And Wane continues developing what has thus far proven a winning strategy.  This is metal as a more ethereal, burned-out, atmospheric construction of sound than what you will usually encounter, for those times when you want something heavy but you'd rather just be sad than bang your head.

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Unreqvited - A Pathway To The Moon

It's been quite a while since the zeitgeist of amateur one-man post-black metal bands that spawned Unreqvited, but they managed to endure the crashing of that wave to eventually transition to a live band as well. A Pathway To The Moon is the project's first album after this transition, and it does feel like a markedly different experience, especially in how overtly cinematic the post-rock side of it is. It comes with a lot of clean vocals, both in lyrics-heavy songs and in plenty of wordless vocalizations that try to match that level of cinematic feeling the songs have.

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Wounds Of Recollection - I Found The Love That I Was Looking For

Wounds Of Recollection are back with their traditional yearly release, and I Found The Love That I Was Looking For stands out as one of their most memorable to date. Stylistically, this is still the same emotionally charged blackgaze of their previous releases, but the songwriting has been kicked up a notch this time around, leading to some very memorable compositions. It’s a beautiful album with a dose of heaviness that delivers all you could ask for in blackgaze.