Another month of 2025 is in the rearview mirror, and it featured some ass-kickers. No big preamble today: let’s dig into Noob Heavy’s favorite listens of the month!
As always, albums we reviewed in full aren’t eligible to be picked as favorites. Here are links to those reviews for April releases:
Snooze – I Know How You Will Die
Buzzard – Mean Bone
Chestcrush – Ψυχοβγάλτης
Cytotoxin – Biographyte
Final Dose – Under the Eternal Shadow
Conan – Violence Dimension
And now on to the faves!
We’re gonna do this the way we always should have if I (Kep) were smarter, and start with our runners-up:
Kirk: The Riven – Visions of Tomorrow
Kep: Bubba – Cogwheels of the Pious Forge
Ellis: Ancst – Dominion
And now our top picks for the month!
Kirk: Eyes – Spinner
Noisy metallic hardcore from Denmark
Don’t let the offbeat sample and overall vibe of “OP1” throw you off; this album is absolute, unadulterated fire. Unapologetically chaotic, it’s the perfect tincture for what has been for most of us an unapologetically chaotic year (and it’s only April!). By the end of this whirling dervish of an album, you’ll feel like you’ve been put through a blender, an experience you will—oddly enough—want to go through again and again and again.
Kep: Dormant Ordeal – Tooth and Nail
Death metal from Norway
Dormant Ordeal‘s first endeavor without founding member Radek Kowal and their first under the Willowtip label (what a fucking tear Willowtip is on, by the way), Tooth and Nail is an utter triumph. True to their established form, this is far from your traditional death metal: hellacious blackened elements, aggressive tremolo picking, dissonance aplenty, bits of post-metal, and an uncompromisingly cerebral focus that makes the whole thing feel profound. It’s abrasive and ferocious but always feels carefully crafted, full of layers you could get lost in that each are as scorching as a racing wildfire. It’s more than just good; this is the best death metal album of the year so far.
Ellis: Speedway – A Life’s Refrain
Melodic hardcore from Sweden
You can go ahead and file Speedway’s debut full-length under Just Perfect Hardcore™. It’s got the same kinda spirit as all those great Youth Crew records from the 90s and a butt-load of other stuff that has come out on Revelation Records over the years (which is good because that’s the label this is on too), while also feeling very much of the here and now what with all the bands like Praise and One Step Closer and Restraining Order that are tearing things up at the moment. The energy feels impossible to contain and honestly just as hard to put into words so get on it if you haven’t already. 21 minutes, 12 tracks… just exhilarating from start to finish.