The Best Extreme Doom Metal Album - Metal Storm Awards 2025

Bell Witch / Aerial Ruin - Stygian Bough: Volume II [Collaboration]

The second collaboration between Bell Witch and Aerial Ruin lands Bell Witch their only album since Demo 2011 to be shorter than one hour, even if only by a scratch. Stygian Bough: Volume II works at integrating the sound of the two bands even more, feeling like more than just Aerial Ruin's Erik Moggridge singing over funeral doom with folkier interludes, but rather a more morose, thoroughly doom-ish affair, with Erik's guitar contributions making it feel like a fuller band effort in a more traditional metal sense, complete with some of the most soaring guitar solos you'll find in funeral doom.

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Evoken - Mendacium

Evoken's release schedule might be as slow as their music, but they make every year of waiting worth it. Mendacium continues Hypnagogia's conceptual streak with the story of a 14th-century monk isolated due to illness and slowly decaying, a story very fit for the slow-decaying sound of funeral doom. The medieval setting goes hand in hand with some of the gothic touches and the acoustic/synth interludes, but Evoken's strongest point is keeping the music emotionally resonant and avoiding monotony for the long, slow course of the album's hour-long runtime.

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Falling Leaves - The Silence That Binds Us

From the most unlikely region of the UAE, death-doom band Falling Leaves have sprouted once again after a lengthy 13-year hibernation, this time even more nourished and in full bloom with this highly anticipated sophomore The Silence That Binds Us. No longer do they remain silent - the opposite, in fact, as they've not only carried on their tremendous form from where they left off but even managed to surpass the quality of their highly acclaimed debut. The UAE might not experience the season of fall in quite the same cold, grim, and bleak way as Northern Europe or Scandinavia do, but The Silence That Binds Us is proof you needn't be there in physical form to experience it. Falling Leaves have captured the exact same melancholic soundscapes through one of the most emotionally charged and memorable performances in extreme doom in 2025.

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Lightless - A Foreseen Loss

Lightless are a relatively new name within the German extreme metal scene, yet with their debut long-player they have already achieved something few bands ever manage: they have captured the very essence of doom. Distilled multiple times and thus intensified, enriched with a hefty dose of sludge for added heaviness and refined with a small pinch of post-metal for better digestibility, this thick mire of blackened doom seeps from every bar and every breath of A Foreseen Loss, flows through every note, settles on every lead-weighted riff, and fills the at-times agonizingly long pauses between drum beats with a viscous ooze of darkness and despair. In the end, only one bitter realization remains: humankind is doomed, and it's entirely our own fault.

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Mizmor / Hell (USA) - Alluvion [Collaboration]

A match made in Hell. Mizmor and Hell, two giants of sludge metal hailing from Oregon, USA, join forces again on the album Alluvion. With an overall somber tone, the music grinds along, balancing an elegant combo of acoustic guitar work and deep bass tones with an ever-present, reverberating wall of distorted riffs. Largely adopting Mizmor’s style—grand soundscapes accentuated by the characteristic, strained, blackened vocals—the album also presents clear characteristics of Hell’s suffocating atmosphere. The bands nicely complement each other, creating a thick, buzzing sound full of unnerving noises amidst an ambience of droning riffs.

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Nortt - Dødssang

With the 2003 debut, Nortt was first to coin the term “Pure Depressive Black Funeral Doom Metal”. It's a mouthful but also a very precise way of describing Nortt’s music. By mixing the lamenting tone of doom metal and the harshness of black metal, Nortt achieved a blood-chilling sound that has separated the project from any other in the funeral doom metal scene to this day. Dødssang is the latest dirge by the now 30-year-old project and it is a grim endeavour. The painful distortion of the raw riffs is mixed with haunting piano and dark ambient passages that paint very vivid images of foggy autumn nights at the graveyard. The agonisingly glacial tempo of the music will test the mental strength of the listener as they will feel time itself eroding their body and mind. Interestingly, it’s all very calming. When one gives in, the dark, beautiful solemnity that impregnates Dødssang becomes noticeable. It's the feeling of someone who has accepted their ultimate fate.

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Novembers Doom - Major Arcana

Novembers Doom are rightly regarded as one of the most influential and praiseworthy bands in death-doom, and their three-decade reign over the US scene has only gone from strength to strength. Their origins may be rooted in classic '90s gothic/death doom but they've come along way over the last 30 years, introducing progressive, melodeath, and even elements of folk into their style, and Major Arcana is solid proof as to how far this band has developed and matured. Even after all these years they've managed to pull off one of their finest albums yet, where through a top-tier performance and excellent songwriting they've maintained their privileged rights as majors of death-doom.

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Spiine - Tetraptych

To succeed in funeral doom, you're going to need some cavernous vocals (check), you'll need expressive guitar leads (check), and you're gonna want to get comfortable with the piano (check).  Xenoyr's growls are a slow, relentless roar like the swallowing sea; Samantha Escarbe brings her Virgin Black cello experience to bear in guitar work that is resonant and sustained; and soft layers of orchestration, not just piano but strings as well, add a cushion of emotional depth to the tide of harsh, bleak doom.  Spiine brings the members' collective experience to bear in the creation of an atmosphere that feels practiced and calculated for its perfect understanding of how to press buttons but no less meaningful and absorbing for it; Tetraptych is one of the heaviest, most despairing records of the year and will suffice as a worthy depression aid for anyone who just needs to lie facedown under the bed for an hour (like us).

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Structure - Heritage

Bram Bijlhout is joined by a couple of studio friends for the full-length debut of Structure, an album that follows in the tradition of the best melancholic doom: emotional vulnerability delivered in the most crushing of guises.  Drums from journeyman Dirk Bruinenberg create a lot of space for the melodies to reverberate in; Bijlhout's coarse growls, sometimes layered with quavering cleans, reach that plane of pain that needs to be communicated in death-doom's dirges; the songs are moving, always mournful in aspect and as melodic as you can get away with before losing the dark, personal grounding.  But if there's one thing that defines Heritage, it is Bijlhout's weeping guitars: whenever the solo breaks in, whenever the guitar takes the melody, his playing deepens the mood.  This is where he strikes gold and where Heritage becomes one of the truly great doom albums of the year.  And to convey "the sadness of everyday life", to explore what these songs seek to explore, that is what you need: an authentic expression of feeling.

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Ter Ziele (NED) - Embodiment Of Death

While their shared emotions and propensities to heaviness should make them natural bedfellows, doom metal and post-metal have not been subject to nearly as many genre fusions as a number of other metal genres. However, Benelux acts such as Amenra and Ortega have previously demonstrated the rich potential of this combination, and so, too, do Ter Ziele on debut album Embodiment Of Death. The pained vocals and trudging repetition of the band here do lead to natural comparisons with the aforementioned Amenra, but Embodiment Of Death is entirely its own beast, incorporating post-metal textures and song structures into a morose, crawling blackened doom core. Occasional melancholic melodies add a more beautiful touch of sadness to proceedings that are often more desolate and bleak, exhibiting even fewer hints of colour than the monochrome album artwork.