The Best Hard Rock Album - Metal Storm Awards 2025

Avatarium - Between You, God, The Devil And The Dead

It's been a while since Avatarium stopped being a Candlemass side project; slowly the band has taken their doom sound in a different direction while still recognizably having that epic doom touch. The band has always played around with '70s rock, whether more straightforwardly hard rock, more heavy psychedelic, or more occult rock-leaning, and Between You, God, The Devil And The Dead is a further step towards solidifying Avatarium's hard rock chops.

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Bergfried - Romantik III

We've reached a healthy place in the rock/metal sphere where we can comfortably embrace our passion for pop music, even the cheesy stuff that used to make Exodus fans vomit back in the day, but even so, it's rare to find a band so clearly indebted to the soundtracks to '80s teen movies.  Romantik III is full of reverb, cool guitar licks, dusky vocals, and big, sexy hooks that say "directed by John Hughes".  Sometimes Bergfried kick it up into a light heavy metal symphony, but the heart of their sound is in sentimental AOR and pop ballads so earnestly dramatic that you can practically feel your hair feathering in real time.  It's an intriguing look at how power metal might have evolved in an alternate universe... or perhaps a reminder to call your parents and ask whether you can inherit their Bonnie Tyler records already.

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Blaze (JPN) - Out Through The Door

Blaze have returned from a lengthy break, so if you fancy taking a break yourself (from extreme metal) then Blaze offers a way Out Through The Door and into the realms of classic '70s hard rock and '80s NWOBHM, inspired by bands such as Scorpions, Rainbow, Uriah Heep, and Iron Maiden. If melodic hard rock riffs with great galloping rhythms, breathtaking solos that are as out-of-this-world as the cover art, and a polished and refined production to live up to modern standards are what you seek, then just head Out Through The Door with a fiery Blaze, you won't be disappointed.

Bygone - Bygone

Bygone’s self-titled debut is a retro-sounding album that heavily draws from '70s hard rock and proto-metal. Its warm guitar melodies and spacey keyboards create lush soundscapes that often have a cosmic or galactic feel. A doomy ethos permeates some of the compositions, and the confident vocals help in that direction, but the album is generally more dreamy and has a space-travelling mood. The band pays homage to giants such as Thin Lizzy, Uriah Heep, early Scorpions, Rainbow, and UFO, successfully channeling the past, but also having enough character to be relevant today.

Cold In Berlin - Wounds

Downer rock is alive and unwell, gasping blue for breath in the frigid alleys of a Berlin unmoored in time.  Cold In Berlin start with the pessimistic psychedelia of a '60s outcast and hit fast-forward, skipping generations until the hippie church organs melt into the dark frosting of synthesizers that reverberate beneath these bitter hymns.  Synth arrangements by Bow Church work magic next to Maya Wittleton's shivering vocals and the distant-sounding instrumentation, yielding a ghostly and forlorn mixture of goth rock and darkwave that strikes the heart with its poignancy as it peels the skin with its chilling touch.  Perfect if you're planning a midnight rendezvous with destiny by some misty riverbank in the old city center.

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Ghost - Skeletá

To the extent Ghost was ever a metal band, they haven't really been for a while now - they're full-stop pop, serving up hip and hook-filled contemporary hits that are just so infectious and bright/dark there's just no other word for it.  Not that there's really a need to quibble about genre when the blasphemy is this infectious.  Ghost's execution continues to make use of primarily metal elements, though they are definitely getting cheekier over time with aping artists like Toto, Journey, and your other favorite AOR bands, and each new Papa (we're up to V Perpetua, if you weren't counting) grows more impassioned in his homilies, delivered with the same soft tone but steadily rising emotion.  The songwriting frequently sounds very much of the moment even as it borrows tricks from the past ('80s), the distant past ('70s), and prehistory (whichever medieval century in which the Catholic Church was at its most aesthetically Catholic), but even if some of the mystery has waned, the fun factor has not, so Skeletá stands a pretty good chance of converting the nonbelievers.

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Phantom Spell - Heather & Hearth

Neither progressive rock nor proto-metal are genres frequently associated with one-man bands, but why should we let black metal have all the fun? Kyle McNeill, who already explored his retro influences in 2025 with the latest album from the Iron Maiden-inspired Seven Sisters, brought together the likes of Rainbow, Kansas, Rush and Deep Purple in shaping the classic yet remarkably fresh sound of Phantom Spell's sophomore effort Heather & Hearth. With two tracks over 10 minutes, the album's prog rock credentials are not to be ignored, but above anything Heather & Hearth is a celebration of that boundary where classic rock met the earliest iterations of metal, crafting songs that are driving, anthemic yet sophisticated, in a manner that is arguably even more accomplished than contemporaries such as Hällas.

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The Vintage Caravan - Portals

With how much the past decade of Opeth had them softening their sound (well, until the last album happened), it was only a matter of time until they ended up in the hard rock category. That's not really the case, but Mikael Åkerfeldt fits like a glove on the opening track of this album, and if he doesn't stay for long, he leaves us with an Icelandic trio fully capable of entertaining us for the rest of the journey, and one that seems to have specifically upped the prog antics on this one. Portals is a bit of a deceiving album, its 17 tracks seemingly imposing, but it's splattered with enough self-titled interludes to keep the actual runtime at just under one hour.

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Time Rift - In Flight

An important quality of retro music is convincingly sounding like it belongs to the time period it emulates. Of course a band literally called "Time Rift" would be aces at that. There's a lot of very obviously noticeable passion here, especially in new singer Domino Monet's vocals, that makes In Flight feel not like a band on autopilot in its emulation but like one that's in love with that late-'70s moment in metal's history where it was not yet separate from rock; thus In Flight still has plenty of moments with more of a bluesy or boogie feel.

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Wytch Hazel - V: Lamentations

Wytch Hazel sticks out among its peers in these Awards as this is their fourth time in a row they are nominated in the category for Best Hard Rock Album. Their light of hope shines bright, for their music shows remarkable consistency and quality. The English quartet has not rested on its laurels, however. Its fifth chapter, Lamentations, sees the band further refining their songwriting and carving their own niche among the other retro bands. Groovy and bluesy hard rock tunes collide with inspiring NWOBHM guitar solos. But it's when Wytch Hazel double down on the vibrant, emotional acoustic touches inspired by British folk of olde that their rich sound palette is truly complete.

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