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