“Abstracted have been a band since 2013, and their long-gestating debut record, 2022’s Atma Conflux, was an effective and varied slab of djenty progressive death metal, marred by tepid production and less-than-stellar clean vocals. More than anything, though, it showed potential as a record brimming with ideas that was so close to being great. With Hiraeth, can the Brazilian group finally unify their influences into something more than the sum of their parts?” Add and Abstract.
![Species – Changelings [Things You Might Have Missed 2025]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Species-Changelings-01.jpg.webp)
“About once a year, I find a technical thrash album I utterly adore. 2023 graced me with Xoth, and 2024’s Dissimulator debut was my favorite album of the year. In 2025, the premiere thrash platter belongs to Warsaw, Poland’s Species. Unfairly or not, thrash is an oft-maligned genre accused of being unserious and trite or stale and stuck in the past. On Changelings, Species’ sophomore offering, the band nimbly threads the needle between paying homage to thrash’s heyday while shaping a fresh sound that’s enchanting yet familiar.” Speed into the future.
![Sallow Moth – Mossbane Lantern [Things You Might Have Missed 2025]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/Sallow-Moth-Mossbane-Lantern-01.jpg.webp)
“I don’t know if Garry Brents is the busiest person in metal, but he’s active enough that I worry for his work-life balance. In 2025 alone, Brents cranked out releases for multiple projects, including Sallow Moth’s latest platter, Mossbane Lantern. This is death metal for purveyors of the unrepentantly weird, especially those who indulge in sci-fi and fantasy.” Leave the lantern on.
“Whatever mood suits you—perhaps none at all if you prefer deathly excursions of the older and fetid variety—Fallujah’s alien guitar identity consistently earns them a notch on the altar atop many a post-The Faceless tech death connoisseur’s mantle. Yet, the path that Fallujah walks has not always been one of extreme innovation. Rather, in spindly idiosyncrasies and heavyweight melodic ripples, the California riffslingers have whipped their way from roots in crushing yet entrancing death metal, through increasing gazey atmospherics, and into a flexed, teched out expression of all their past lives.” Palette shifter.
“Creation, evaluation, iteration—art lives and transforms an untold number of times before its flesh lays bare for a dissecting audience. Thus, the album runs on a path of turns sharp, around, back again—whatever it takes—before the artist declares it enough. Tom Geldschläger has worn many musical lives, both under his given moniker and “Fountainhead” with acclaimed acts like Obscura and Ingurgitating Oblivion, and as a performer/engineer. And now, with Changeling, Geldschläger seeks to express a culmination of his works, partnerships, and curiosities in a grand exploration of his unique fretless guitar stylings amongst progressive, orchestral, and deathly conjurings.” Grow, evolve, MUTATE!
“It’s a bird! It’s a plane? No! It’s a Frogg! Hailing from the festering urban sprawl of New York City, the upstart amphibian clan skews modern in influence and modernER in attack. Pulling the rip to progressive twist of Between the Buried and Me with the focus of tight structures and virtuosic play, Eclipse as a debut full-length, spins scales and riffs in only the way that a driven tech death band can. In this day and age, of course, tech alone can’t make the only splash. But something’s in the water where Frogg dwells” Riffit.
“As an institution of modern death metal, Obscura albums arrive to eager metalheads with anticipation, accolades, and, well, a little controversy. The German workhorse Steffan Kummerer (Thulcandra) and his assembled (and frequently flushed) roster of seasoned and sensational performers continue to deliver bombastic material while deviating down paths of structural simplification. Though the path of increasing hippitude often appeals to aging, progressive musical minds—think the Cynics and Devin Townsends of this world—Obscura has emerged from a snaking and deeply-arranged past into a nature barbed with Björriffed hooks and piercing, melodic peaks.” Older, still obscure.
2024 will not die (because we won’t let it). Now you must sort through the flotsam and detritus of the November and December Filters before you can properly experience 2025. Embrace the suck pumps.
“For every Metallica or Slayer, there are thousands of good bands that never made it nearly as big. Blood Feast are one of those bands. Formed in the thrash metal heyday of the mid-1980s, these New Jersey natives came out swinging with their 1987 debut, Kill for Pleasure. Showcasing a dirty and unrefined take on thrash, that album earned some underground acclaim with its manic vocals, primitive riffing, and pugnacious attitude. But greater success was not to be.” Jersey trash and old school thrash.
“Metal identity often rests in the tongue curling, the glottal fluttering, and the breath-rendering prowess that mic-holders abuse to fuse music with a unique enough mouth power. We even segregate genres based on the level of distortion and ill-advised technique that these brave souls apply—the shout-bark to the core kiddies, the shrieky wail to the frosty tones of LARPing black metal enthusiasts, the septic gurgle to death metal. Then, do we call it brave when a band like Dysrhythmia thinks to conjure the same riff-led drive and drama without verbal assistance?” Hush, hush, keep it down now.
