2025 Album of the Year time begins on That's Not Metal, with our first lists from Perran and Elliot celebrating everything from synth-punk to goth-doom, power-goregrind to jazz-death, post-metal to metalcore, legendary rock icons to grimy dungeon crust bands that this year gave us.

This week we've got reports from My Bloody Valentine's first shows since 2018 as we see one of the loudest bands in the world, reaction to Alissa White-Gluz being out of Arch Enemy, and we tell you how to get involved in our 2025 end of year shows.

Releases:
The Algorithm - Recursive Infinity
The Pretty Wild - zero.point.genesis
Danko Jones - Leo Rising
Gasket - Gasket
Stryper - The Greatest Gift of All
Speedclaw - Stardust
Morbikon - Lost Within the Astral Crypts
Terror Corpse - Ash Eclipses Flesh
Flesher - Gore On Gore
Dome Runner - World Panopticon
Spanish Love Songs - A Brief Intermission in the Flattening of Time
The Halo Effect - We Are Shadows
ExitWounds - An Offering to Tragedy
Master’s Hammer - Maldoror Disco
male//gaze - Too Late Now
Excide - Bastard Hymns
Equilibrium - Equinox
Blut Aus Nord - Ethereal Horizons
The Ominous Circle - Cloven Tongues of Fire
Phobocosm - Gateway
Fessus - Subcutaneous Tomb
1349 - Winter Mass

2025's final reviews is a crazy bag of disco mania with Creeper's Sanguivore II, Pupil Slicer, Drain, Astronoid, Home Front, Lamp of Murmuur, and Master's Hammer, bid farewell to Svalbard on tour, a new single from Converge, and about half an hour before our record, doing cartwheels at the reunion of Black Breath.

Creeper 31:51
Pupil Slicer 1:09:19
Drain 1:24:17
Astronoid 1:35:08
Home Front 1:47:29
Lamp of Murmuur 1:59:08
Master's Hammer 2:18:05

The UK's biggest dedicated extreme music fest at Damnation Festival goes bigger than ever for its 20th anniversary with a bonkers two day line-up featuring Corrosion of Conformity, Napalm Death, Deafheaven, Perturbator, Anaal Nathrakh, Amenra, Warning, Wormrot, Castle Rat, and so many more to crack our skulls.

Releases:
Of Mice & Men - Another Miracle
The Devil Wears Prada - Flowers
Rise of the Northstar - CHAPTER 04: RED FALCON SUPER BATTLE! NEO PARIS WAR!!
AVVT/PTTN - AVVT/PTTN
Lamp of Murmuur - The Dreaming Prince in Ecstasy
1914 - Viribus Unitis
Bell Witch & Aerial Ruin - Stygian Bough Vol. II
Ragana & Drowse - Ash Souvenir
VoidCeremony - Abditum
Chairmaker - Leviathan Carcass
Vower - A Storm Lined With Silver

It's that week in November where every big festival announces their lineup so we assess the bills of Download, Outbreak, 2000 Trees, & Slam Dunk 2026, Turnstile come through Ally Pally, and finally one of the UK's great rock bands Marmozets return with first new music in over 8 years.

Releases:
Drain - …Is Your Friend
Pupil Slicer - Fleshwork
Astronoid - Stargod
Set It Off - Set It Off
Agnostic Front - Echoes In Eternity
Cold Steel - Discipline & Punish
The Devil's Trade - Nincs Szennyezetlen Szép
Drowned In Silver - Mothers
Omnium Gatherum - May the Bridges We Burn Light the Way
Novembre - Words of Indigo
Centinex - With Guts and Glory
Glorious Depravity - Death Never Sleeps
Dysentery - Dejection Chrysalis
Yellow Eyes - Confusion Gate
Waldgeflüster - Knochengesänge I & II
Qrixkuor - The Womb of the World
Primordial - Live In New York City
Recollection - Vivid Dreams
Alexisonfire - Copies of Old Masters Vol 1

For Halloween we take the time for some horror movie questions including our pitch for a 2025 Freddy vs Jason, discuss Dogma's fracturing and Megadeth choosing to cover Metallica on their final album, live trips to Common Thread and Igorrr with Imperial Triumphant, and there is a Hagar horror on the loose...

Releases:
Soulfly - Chama
Mammoth - The End
Dayseeker - Creature in the Black Night
Downswing - And Everything Was Dark
Action/Adventure - Ever After
Spiritual Cramp - Rude
The Acacia Strain - You Are Safe From God Here
Psychonaut - World Maker
Aleksi Kii - Varjokuvia
Rolo Tomassi - In the Echo of All Dreams
Coldrain - Optimize
Heavensgate - A Heart is a Heavy Burden
Mastiff - For All the Dead Dreams
Krallice - No Hope
Creeper - Sanguivore II: Mistress of Death
Avatar - Don’t Go in the Forest
Despised Icon - Shadow Work
Spite - NEW WORLD KILLER
Witch Fever - FEVEREATEN
Gumm - Beneath the Wheel
Chat Pile & Hayden Pedigo - In The Earth Again
Primitive Man - Observance
Anna von Hausswolff - Iconoclasts
Believe In Nothing - Rot
Barren Path - Grieving
Grave Ghoul - Gruesome and Macabre
One of Nine - Dawn of the Iron Shadow
Thron - Vurias
Outlaw - Opus Mortis
Runemagick - Cycle of the Dying Sun (Dawn of Ashen Realms)
Trivium - Struck Dead
Going Off - Kill List II

With autumn chill in the air we plunge into a stacked October reviews bunch of new AFI, Thrice, Miltarie Gun, Conjurer, Perturbator, Sanguisugabogg, Tribal Gaze, & Agriculture.

AFI 24:01
Thrice 47:28
Militarie Gun 59:04
Conjurer 1:11:12
Perturbator 1:23:08
Sanguisugabogg 1:33:37
Tribal Gaze 1:44:21
Agriculture 1:50:37

Perran and Mark catch up to talk about some of 2025's massive event tours with both Parkway Drive and Blood Incantation blazing trails to put on some of modern metal's most ambitious shows.

Releases:
All Time Low - Everyone’s Talking!
Sabaton - Legends
Battle Beast - Steelbound
Militarie Gun - God Save the Gun
Biohazard - Divided We Fall
84 Tigers - Nothing Ends
Coroner - Dissonance Theory
Tribal Gaze - Inveighing Brilliance
Internal Bleeding - Settle All Scores
Evoken - Mendacium
Tombs - Feral Darkness
Afsky - Fælleskab
Wolvennest - Procession
Czart - Czarty Polskie
:Skull & Dawn: - The Harvest
Unto Others - I Believe In Halloween II
Spaced - No Escape
Sunn O))) - Eternity’s Pillars b/w Raise the Chalice & Reverential
Carach Angren - The Cult of Kariba

We're drowning in news with Oathbreaker and Rush both coming back, Alex Bent stepping out of Trivium, Bleeding Through & Darkest Hour hitting the UK, and a slew of new metal songs from Lamb of God, Ice Nine Kills, and Megadeth revealing their favourite game show.

Releases:
AFI - Silver Bleeds the Black Sun…
Thrice - Horizons/West
Orbit Culture - Death Above Life
50 Lions - New Reality
Author & Punisher - Nocturnal Birding
Today is the Day - Never Give In
Agriculture - The Spiritual Sound
Wode - Uncrossing the Keys
Hooded Menace - Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration
Impure - The Devil Sees My Dreams
Ephemeral - Envisaged Human Collapse
Cathedral - Society’s Pact With Satan
Suffering Hour - Impelling Rebirth
Corpse Pile - In the Beginning…
Yellowcard - Better Days
Perturbator - Age of Aquarius
Testament - Para Bellum
Dead Heat - Process of Elimination
Greyhaven - Keep It Quiet
Soul Blind - Red Sky Mourning
God Alone - The Beep Test
Sanguisugabogg - Hideous Aftermath
Frayle - Heretics & Lullabies
Terjiz de Horde - Our Breath is Not Ours Alone

For this week's show Album Club returns with an eye once again on this year's Damnation Festival with Warning's monument of misery Watching from a Distance, Wormrot's early 10s grind detonation Dirge, Devil Sold His Soul's innovative post-metalcore A Fragile Hope, and Code's bizarro black metal genius on Resplendent Grotesque.