The Best Doom Metal Album - Metal Storm Awards 2025

Castle Rat - The Bestiary

It's important not to forget about metal's geekiness. Straight out of the same '80s satanic panic that targeted both heavy music and role-playing games come Castle Rat. The Bestiary not only contains detailed information about beasts to be slain once you venture Into The Realm, but also some of the most veritable retro doom with songwriting aiming for the epic and production aiming for a rougher garage sound and a guitar distortion aiming for the fuzz.

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Drowned In Silver - Mothers

When doom approaches - not doom metal, but your doom - it probably sounds a lot like this.  Drowned In Silver emerges from that inky black corner that you just can't get your eyes to focus on and it slithers and staggers right up to your bedside to devour you.  This astounding debut album mixes folk, doom, and cultic ambiance into a slow, eerie wave that has the temperament and tempo of drone but is too emotional to be confined to soft sounds; the vocals are sometimes wisps, sometimes chant-like, but swell to powerful bellows and piercing peaks that refer to Primordial or Rainer Landfermann.  With such intense conviction, the somber, laborious drone-doom transforms into a passionate, wild grief, a sound that is dark, ancient, and unsettling.

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Faetooth - Labyrinthine

Fairies have had a relationship with doom metal ever since they first started wearing boots, but it's not been that often that they've come home to roost.  As you might expect, the music of the other world finds an easy kinship with the heavy haunts of doom, especially with these extra touches of shoegaze and post-metal upping the incorporeal feeling: fairies sure ain't sprites or pixies, and there's a feral, edge-of-the-forest danger in Faetooth's bite.  For those who enjoy bands like King Woman and Windhand, Faetooth is another that can maintain wispy, ethereal vocals against a relentless crush of electric death, that can keep mystical gloom balanced with the fierceness of its fuzz.

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Frayle - Heretics & Lullabies

Frayle's sound is not the simplest to categorize; while doom is arguably at its centre, there are alt rock and almost brattish pop sounds that creep into their music (which a Lana Del Rey cover on this latest effort underlines), while in the opposite direction, they integrate crushing post-metal heaviness and blackgaze atmospherics. Fusing all these influences together seamlessly is a tall ask, yet with album number three Heretics & Lullabies, Frayle are demonstrating an effortless mastery of their vision. The use of harsher roars as contrast to Gwyn Strang's eerie layered vocals is a great new addition, while the unusual mix of elements is at the same time disorienting yet also thoroughly compelling.

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King Witch - III

Witches love doom, and doom loves witches.  Must be the shared interest in magic herbs.  The association must somehow help the general effort, because the king of all witches here is aiming to have the king of all doom albums, and they're on the inside track: Laura Donnelly bellows each chorus with such intimidating power that even in the cooler stoner-reminiscent passages she channels Messiah Marcolin.  Traditional doom varieties are built on riffage, of course, and III has that coming out the ears, not to mention blistering solo work; the bass and drums are so drenched with energy and eager to escape that it's a wonder they can restrain themselves to the tempos of doom instead of jumping right off into thrash.  This is an album that masters all the fundamentals of the style and matches it with overwhelming performances and killer songs; there aren't too many albums from recent years that sound so at one with the platonic ideal of doom metal.

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Messa - The Spin

With The Spin, Messa decided to follow the trend of exploring the ‘80s sounds like so many other bands do, but the Italians do it with remarkable skill, professionalism, and elegance. They even got their hands on original ‘80s equipment to provide this excellent sonic result, which remains their familiar ‘scarlet doom metal’ with the jazz, blues, prog, and black elements, only now there is some hefty dose of goth rock thrown in the mix. This album is certainly the most accessible in their discography, and, at this point, it seems impossible for them to miss.

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The Answer Lies In The Black Void - Transcendental

The Answer Lies In The Black Void have already established themselves as a force proper instead of just the intriguing meeting of Bong-Ra and Thy Catafalque; Transcendental being the band's third album sets a very dependable schedule, and one that continues to solidify their sound as doom that's both haunting and almost cinematic. The vocals especially, layered in a quite ethereal way, do a lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to making Transcendental... well... transcendental.

Völur - Breathless Spirit [Collaboration]

Five years after Death Cult, Völur return to collaborate with producer and sound artist James Beardmore, aka Cares. Their intention here is to marry doom, folk, blackened passages, free jazz, classical music, oriental instruments, and electronic textures into a dark, mythic, and ritualistic journey through grief, tension, isolation, and transformation. The album's lyrics are based on Grettir's Saga, an Icelandic tale set in the eleventh century, further contributing to Breathless Spirit coming across as a cinematic, emotional, and immersive work of art.

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Wolvennest - Procession

The Dark Path To The Light was unusually compact for a Wolvennest album, but things are back to normal for Procession, a 75-minute sprawling beast back in the vein of the previous releases. Less ritualistic than Temple, this record brings back the gothic and occult rock elements in a major way, while also amping up the use of the theremin to sculpt the band's unique soundscapes. The album is something of a descent into darkness, bringing in harsher vocals, black metal components, and eerie operatic guest vocals among other novelties to depict the procession into the apocalypse.

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Year Of The Cobra - Year Of The Cobra

Album number three is an unusual one to reserve for the 'self-titled' moniker, but Year Of The Cobra is a sufficiently accomplished record that it may in fact be the ideal representation of Year Of The Cobra's vision. The husband-wife duo of Jon and Amy Tung Barrysmith have hit upon a truly winning formula here, assembling a collection of songs that spans the doom and heavy rock spectrum, from driving desert rock hits and burly stoner doom riffing to devastatingly evocative and mournful odes. The key element anchoring everything together are Amy's vocals, which have 90s alt rock gravitas on the harder tracks but an aching tenderness on the slower and gloomier cuts.

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