Were you missing the 2025 Mathcore Madness list? Miss no MOAR!
![Dear Hollow’s Mathcore Madness [Things You Might Have Missed 2025]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/DH_HC_Compilation2025_01-2048x2048.jpg.webp)
Avant-garde Black Metal
Diespnea – Radici Review
“A black metal album bent on re-orienting the genre away from a frostbitten North and towards an imaginary sun-bleached South, the saguaro being perhaps the most resilient (and, tellingly, clichéd) symbol thereof. Ambitions often crumble against this landscape; the schemes of miners fall through, the hopeful homesteads dry into rubble, at the bodies of desperate migrants collapse in the canyons. Beauty and hostility, available in such great measure here, produce the romance of the desert, the basis for Radici.” Like a cactus in the snow.
Dawn of a Dark Age – Ver Sacrum Review
“As 2025 winds to a close, the depleted promo pit growls with hunger, eager for the new year and a fresh bucket o’ chum. As I sift through the meager mid-December hopefuls, I detect a flash of black and silver. Snatching the promo, I discover clarinet-wielding Vittorio Sabelli and his project Dawn of a Dark Age, along with ninth album Ver Sacrum.” At the end of the year is the Dark Age.
Lychgate – Precipice Review
“Dense, dark, and demented, Lychgate’s Precipice breaks nearly six years of silence with music as unsettling as the concept it’s built upon. The album’s primary inspiration draws from E. M. Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops,” a dystopian tale first published in 1909 that cautions against over-reliance on technology. In it, The Machine enables people to govern their lives from isolated chambers, interacting virtually rather than in person after the Earth’s surface becomes uninhabitable. Integrating notions such as blind obedience to technology, instantaneous communication, and climate change furnishes a lavish backdrop for London’s Lychgate and their fourth LP.” Throw open the gate!
Zeal & Ardor – GREIF Review
“There are bands you want to love and you know—I mean, you just know—have a great album in them, which they … continually fail to deliver. If you could just grab hold of their ankles and shake them upside down, you might even shake it out of them. Witchcraft is one such band. Zeal & Ardor was another. The black-metal-meets-delta-blues-meets-slave-gospel project, led by Swiss-American mastermind Manuel Gagneux, understandably caught a lot of people’s attention with 2016 debut, Devil is Fine. It offered something pretty well unique but it also suffered from bloat, unnecessary interludes and half-finished ideas. Its follow-up, Stranger Fruit, was actually my application to write in this hellhole and I suggested there was an absolutely gold-plated EP in there but, as an album, it failed to hang together.” Zeals in the safe harbor.
Stuck in the Filter – November/December’s Angry Misses
2023’s cleaning protocols are finally complete, and here comes the Filter scrappings from November and December. Taste them all, then consult a funeral director.
![Theophonos – Nightmare Visions [Things You Might Have Missed 2023]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/a4256426977_0-768x768.jpeg)
Theophonos – Nightmare Visions [Things You Might Have Missed 2023]
“Nightmare Visions is a blackened grindcore debut from Michigan’s Theophonos, the brainchild of Jimmy Hamzey (Serpent Column). If that genre label sounds unappetizing, don’t let that deter you. Theophonos took every hard rock and metal song released since 1967, crammed them all into a woodchipper, and assembled the mangled output into a blackened 30-minute hydra. Miraculously, it works.” NightmareER!!
Ôros Kaù – Thanatos Review
“You may know Ôros Kaù’s sole member CZLT from experimental-free-jazz-black-death-drone project Neptunian Maximalism, or perhaps one of the half-dozen other extreme metal projects he’s part of. In his solo work he takes a distinctly more blackened and aggressive approach, though it’s not exactly your straightforward black metal. Thanatos—the first half of an announced diptych, with Hypnos to follow shortly—channels reflections on death and spiritual freedom through occult imagery and echoing avant-garde death and black metal. It’s about as impenetrably menacing as you might expect, perhaps more atmospheric, but denser than predecessor Imperii Templum Aries.” Neptune unbound.
Dødheimsgard – Black Medium Current Review
“If you were to ask me how to do avant-garde black metal, I would point straight away to Dødsheimgard. The trajectory of their sound from raw second-wave fury to electronic, industrial, jazzy, experimental black has been nothing short of thrilling to witness. 2015’s A Umbra Omega—my personal entry point—set a new standard in the avant-garde metal scene, demonstrating the weird, wonderful depths DHG could conjure, fully realized.” Odd fellows unrest.
![Zeal & Ardor – Zeal & Ardor [Things You Might Have Missed 2022]](https://www.angrymetalguy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/a0216729942_10-768x768.jpg)
Zeal & Ardor – Zeal & Ardor [Things You Might Have Missed 2022]
“Zeal & Ardor have always been a band of “buts” (with only one “t”!): individual songs have been great but previous albums haven’t quite coalesced into a consistent whole. The live show is fantastic but the energy is lost in the recording studio (compare the scintillating live performance of “Baphomet”—with its classic “Right hand up! Left hand down!” chorus—to the tame studio version). Their schtick of combining slave gospel with black metal is great but it’s also limited in its options and will become overdone soon. Which meant a great deal rode on their third album, Zeal & Ardor. Was the band going to fulfill its promise, or remain an interesting, if flawed, mishmash? A “but” band, if you will?” But rock.
