Sonic Selections (((o))): 10 Essential Metal Albums released in October/November, 2025

 

Another couple of months are behind us, and as we close the book on October and November, it’s time for my latest recap of the incredible music that landed during this stretch — my Top 10 Records from the past two months, otherwise known as our essential Sonic Selections (((o))).
 
In October, I clocked up 7360 minutes of listening — over 122 hours — spanning 69 artists and 487 individual tracks.  November was a much quieter month, but still full of quality: I listened to 3487 minutes of music, explored 36 artists, and played through 212 tracks.
 
Across the two months combined, I dug into 126 albums — 87 in October and 39 in November — before narrowing the field down to the 10 new releases that made the final cut for this feature. The standard was so consistently high that choosing just ten felt almost cruel.
 
From a personal standpoint, October and November delivered a phenomenal run of new music. I hope you’ll dive into my favourite albums below and discover something that hits you just as hard. When the releases are this good, who even needs words to review them?
 
See you next month — and don’t forget to check out my weekly playlists and essential records of the week, which I share regularly.

10).
 
⚔️ Artist: Cthvn
🩸  Title: “Hymn”
⚔️ Release date: October 10th, 2025

🩸 genre/tags: post metal, sludge, doom, black metal

9).
 
⚔️ Artist: An Abstract Illusion
🩸  Title: “Sleeping City”
⚔️ Release date: October 17th, 2025

🩸 genre/tags: atmospheric progressive death metal

8).

⚔️ Artist: Old Year
🩸  Title: “No Dissent”
⚔️ Release date: October 24th, 2025

🩸 genre/tags: doom, sludge, death doom

 

7).

⚔️ Artist: Terzij de Horde
🩸  Title: “Our Breath Is Not Ours Alone”
⚔️ Release date: October 10th, 2025

🩸 genre/tags: black metal, blackened hardcore, screamo

6).

⚔️ Artist: 1914
🩸  Title: “Viribus Unitus”
⚔️ Release date: November 14th, 2025

🩸 genre/tags: black metal, sludge, death metal

 
5).

⚔️ Artist: Veilburner
🩸  Title: “Longing For Triumph, Reeking of Tragedy”
⚔️ Release date: November 19th, 2025

🩸 genre/tags: avant garde death metal, dissonant death metal, experimental death metal, progressive death metal

4).

⚔️ Artist: Conjurer
🩸  Title: “Unself”
⚔️ Release date: October 24th, 2025

🩸 genre/tags: post metal, doom, sludge, hardcore

3).

⚔️ Artist: Oromet
🩸  Title: “The Sinking Isle”
⚔️ Release date: November 7th, 2025

🩸 genre/tags: atmospheric doom, funeral doom

 
2). 🥈

⚔️ Artist: Blindfolded and Led to the Woods
🩸  Title:“The Hardest Thing About Being a God is that No One Believes Me”
⚔️ Release date: October 10th, 2025

🩸 genre/tags: progressive death metal, technical death metal

1). 🏆

⚔️ Artist: The Acacia Strain
🩸  Title: “You Are Safe From God Here”
⚔️ Release date: October 24th, 2025

🩸 genre/tags: metalcore, deathcore, post metal, sludge, doom

          

MONTHLY RECAP: THE SLUGELORD's monthly metal picks #11, November 2025

 

⚔️🩸 My favourite track (s) & artist (s) from November 2025 
 
 
⚔️ Total streams: 800 ↓ 47% vs. last month
🩸  Total Artists streamed: 35 ↓ 50%
⚔️ Total Albums streamed: 39 ↓ 56%
🩸  New Tracks streamed: 227 ↓ 55%
⚔️ Total Listening Time: 2 days, 19 hours ↓ 49%
🩸  Average Streams: 27 per day ↓ 44%
⚔️ Most Active Streaming Day: 83 on 14th Nov ↓ 30%

 Top Artist: The Acacia Strain (143 streams)

🩸  Top Album: The Acacia Strain – “You Are Safe From God Here” (130 streams)

⚔️ Top Track: The Acacia Strain – “A Call Beyond” (12 streams)

🩸  Top 30 tracks of the month

PLAYLIST: THE SLUDGELORD’s Weekly Hitlist #46 November 14th, 2025 to November 20th, 2025

⚔️🩸 My biggest tracks from November 14th, 2025 to November 20th, 2025
 
⚔️ Total streams: 179 ↓ 38% vs. last week
🩸  Total Artists streamed: 9 ↓ 31%
⚔️ Total Albums streamed: 11 ↓ 22%
🩸  New Tracks streamed: 64 ↓ 24%

⚔️ Top Artist: Enragement (50 streams)

🩸  Top Album: Enragement – “Extinguish All Existence” (50 streams)

⚔️ Top Track: Rolo Tomassi – “Dead Language” (9 streams)

⚔️🩸 Top 30 tracks of the week

PLAYLIST: The Sludgelord's Weekly Hitlist #45, October 31st, 2025 to November 6th, 2025

⚔️🩸 My biggest tracks from October 31^st, 2025 to November 6th, 2025

⚔️ Total streams: 213 ↓ 23% vs. last week
🩸  Total Artists streamed: 7 ↓ 54%
⚔️ Total Albums streamed: 7 ↓ 57%
🩸  New Tracks streamed: 60 ↓ 32%
 
⚔️ Top Artist: The Acacia Strain (62 streams)

🩸  Top Album: The Acacia Strain – “You Are Safe From God Here” (62 streams)

⚔️ Top Track: Conjurer – “Hang Them In Your Head” (10 streams)

⚔️🩸 Top 30 tracks of the week

ESSENTIAL METAL ALBUM(S): WK45 Monday 3 November, 2025 to Sunday 9 November, 2025

 
Week 45 is here, and THE SLUDGELORD’s weekly selection of Essential Albums brings you seven crushing releases from the underground. Each record offers its own unique vision of heaviness—ready to shake foundations and melt speakers.
 
Kicking things off was an easy pick for my Album of the Week: The Acacia Strain return with arguably their best and heaviest record to date. Since the release of 2019’s “It Comes in Waves”, The Acacia Strain have absolutely crushed me—and this album is no different.
 
Psychonaut strike the perfect balance between sprawling, kaleidoscopic psychedelia and monolithic doom, while Old Year emerge as one of the doom genre’s most exciting discoveries, offering a dissonant and bleak template of riffs reminiscent of genre heavyweights Primitive Man. Soulfly continue their sonic onslaught with a succinct yet lethal injection of groove-ridden noise and a rather surprising blackened edge
 
Meanwhile, Drofnosura literally blew my mind with their new album. Arguably more restrained compared to my other picks and yet they deliver something with immense weight and ferocity, interspersed with grunge soaked vocals, making this one an auditory synesthesia. Bonginator bring chaos and I shit you know, they play a wild mix of death metal fused with 80s action flicks, horror vibes, and retro video game aesthetics. Finally, Scorching Tomb unleash a blistering blend of old-school death metal injected with hardcore intensity—a true throwback with teeth.
 
This is THE SLUDGELORD’s Essential Albums of the Week, WK45. Plug in and black out. The ‘Lord has spoken.

⚔️ 🩸 Album of the week:
 
#310 
 
⚔️ Artist: The Acacia Strain
🩸  Title: “You Are Safe From God Here”
⚔️ Release date: October 24th, 2025

🩸 Genre/tags:  metalcore, deathcore, post metal, sludge, doom 

🩸 Essential Release (s)
 
#307 
 
⚔️ Artist: Psychonaut
🩸  Title: “World Maker”
⚔️ Release date: October 24th, 2025 

 🩸 Genre/tags: post metal, psychedelic, progressive metal 

#308 
 
⚔️ Artist: Old Year
🩸  Title: “No Dissent”
⚔️ Release date: October 24th, 2025

🩸 Genre/tags: doom, sludge, death doom 

#309 
 
⚔️ Artist: Soulfly
🩸  Title: “Chama” 
⚔️ Release date: October 24th, 2025 

🩸 Genre/tags: thrash metal, death metal, groove metal 

#311 

⚔️ Artist: Drofnosura
🩸  Title: “Ritual of Split Tongues”
⚔️ Release date: October 24th, 2025

🩸 Genre/tags: psychedelic, atmospheric, black metal, sludge, doom

#312 
 
⚔️ Artist: Bonginator
🩸  Title: “Retrodeath”
⚔️ Release date: October 24th, 2025

🩸 Genre/tags: death metal, synth death 

#313 
 
⚔️ Artist: Scorching Tomb
🩸  Title: “Ossuary”
⚔️ Release date: October 24th, 2025

 

🩸 Genre/tags: death metal, osdm, hardcore 

ALBUM REVIEW: The Acacia Strain, "It Comes In Waves"

By: Chris Markwell

Album Type: Full Length

Date Released: 26/12/2019

Label: Closed Casket Activities

“It Comes In Waves” CD//DD//LP track listing:

1). OUR

2). ONLY

3). SIN

4). WAS

5). GIVING

6). THEM

7). NAMES

The Review:

Longevity is a key factor to most things these days.  The ability to keep going, keep innovating, and keep enthusiastic about what you’re doing as the years drag on are difficult things to maintain, especially in this dark new millennium of ours. 

It’s heartening, then, to discover that US metalcore quintet The Acacia Strain are still with us.  Not only with us, but still creating music that shatters windows and brutalises your brickwork.  Nice to see that, even in these tumultuous times, some things remain the same.  

At the tail-end of 2019, Vincent Bennett and company released “It Comes in Waves”, through record label Closed Casket Activities.  This is their ninth album, following on from 2017’s “Gravebloom” (check it out as well, it’s great).  Unlike previous offerings, however, “It Comes in Waves” feels like the band casting off from the port of metalcore, and exploring the Seven Seas of Metal.  Intrigued?  You have every right to be.  

I’m by no means saying that The Acacia Strain have abandoned their roots: not at all, in fact.  What I am saying is that they’re taking their own style, and combining them with new elements, to create what feels like a concept album.  At seven songs and just about thirty minutes long, it’s designed to be listened as one piece of music; even the track names themselves spell out the sentence ‘Our Only Sin Was Giving Them Names’.  Your listening experience won’t be impeded if you just have one song on the go at a time – they all rip – but it’s better if you give “It Comes in Waves” the time it deserves to crash against your eardrums.  

After 19 years of the full-on, laser-guided metal attack that The Acacia Strain normally puts out, to have this piece of work created by them is not only surprising, but heartening.  It’s a piece that deals with the themes of deities, of quantifying the unquantifiable aspects of gods, and the overall belief that gods happily play games with the lives of humanity for their own twisted amusement.  

Throughout the album, elements of doom, death, and even prog metal are present in the metalcore mix.  The music created is that strange, invigorating blend of audio assault that makes you excited to find out what twists and turns your eardrums will be subjected to next.  If you’re expecting 2010’s “Wormwood” (like I was), prepare yourself for a shock.  A nice shock, at that.  

Invigorating and, dare I say it, innovative, “It Comes in Waves” is The Acacia Strain traversing new waters and finding fresh depths to not only their musical style, but also to their own creative abilities. 

“It Comes In Waves” is available HERE

Band info: facebook