April 2025 Best Heavy Metal Albums

Here are our picks for April 2025’s best heavy metal albums.

1. Messa – The Spin (Metal Blade)

Italian band Messa‘s fourth album The Spin toes the lines between rock and metal. Vocalist Sara Blanchin stars with her ethereal vocals that help to open the album on “Void Meridian,” complete with drums that give off a post-punk vibe. One of the biggest standout tracks on the album is one of the songs that tops the 8-minute mark, specifically “The Dress,” a song that hits the listener immediately on the first listen. There is enough subtlety present, but this could well be the best vocal performance on the entire album.

Messa do an incredible job of interspersing sections of rock, metal, jazz, post-punk and goth rock all in under 45 minutes, with twists and turns around every corner, making for their best album to date, even more so than their 2022 breakthrough, Close. Blanchin’s vocal performance is evocative of Anneke van Giersbergen’s on The Gathering’s 1995 classic Mandylion, which is not something to take lightly, considering it is one of the gold standards for vocals on a metal album. The Spin is an unparalleled success and one of the best albums of the year so far. It’s our pick for April’s best album.

2. Kardashev – Alunea (Metal Blade)

The word beautiful seems too flowery to describe death metal; that is, until Kardashev’s third album, Alunea. The band sees their music as “progressive deathgaze,” a fluidity of progressive death metal, deathcore and shoegaze. It’s a style that as enchanting as it is undeterred, tethered in place by a top-notch vocalist in Mark Garrett. His roars are unmatched, while his singing is dramatic and awe-inspiring.

Alunea is the continuation of a story that started way back in 2013 with their Excipio EP, the next piece of the puzzle following 2017’s The Almanac EP. Even if the fictional language and philosophical musings aren’t one’s preference, the magnificent final 90 seconds of “Reunion” and the thoughtful closer “Below Sun & Soil” are metal at its finest.

3. Employed To Serve – Fallen Star (Spinefarm)

For their fifth album Fallen Star, Employed To Serve bring in some high-profile guests, and also keep evolving musically. Metalcore is the predominant style, but they also incorporate other genres including hardcore, alt metal and even some death and thrash metal. Their diverse style is encapsulated on the title track, which shifts between passionate harsh vocals, smooth melodic singing and plenty of catchiness.

The songs that will garner the most attention are the collaborations. “Atonement” with Lorna Shore’s Will Ramos features his potent aggressive style along with some surprising clean vocals. Killswitch Engage’s Jesse Leach guests on the groovy “Whose Side Are You On” and Svalbard’s Serena Cherry appears on “Last Laugh.” This is a varied record, encapsulated on songs like “Breaks Me Down” that smoothly shifts from mellow to extreme. The vocal performances from Justine Jones and Sammy Urwin are top-notch as always, but Urwin and David Porter raise their guitar work to a higher level. Employed To Serve are never stagnant, bringing something fresh to every album without losing their core identity, and in contrast to the album’s title, with Fallen Star their profile should continue to rise.

4. Ghost – Skeletá (Loma Vista)

Ghost have ascended to be one of the most popular and commercially successful hard rock bands. They are now easily able to fill arenas, which is appropriate for their latest album Skeletá, which embraces ’70s and ’80s arena rock. Giant hooks and singalong choruses along with plenty of guitar solos can be found throughout the album. Bands like Journey are inspirations, and you’ll hear a section similar to “Separate Ways (Worlds Apart)” on “Peacefield.”

Ghost doesn’t leave their occult rock roots behind, with hints of it sprinkled throughout, especially on tracks like “De Profundis Borealis.” They bring some prog mixed with glam on “Umbra,” with some gothic flavor on numbers such as “Satanized.” This time around, Tobias Forge is lyrically more introspective, giving the album some emotional depth. Musically, Skeletá explores a variety of styles while remaining unequivocally Ghost.

5. Ancient Death – Ego Dissolution (Profound Lore)

It only took Ancient Death five days to record a stellar debut album in Ego Dissolution. Their cosmic death metal has echoes of what bands like Death and Morbid Angel were doing in the late 1990’s, or what more current groups like Tomb Mold and Sweven are cooking up.

There’s no shortage of ear-splitting guitar solos, especially extended sections of them on the title track and “Breaking The Barriers Of Hope.” Songs like “Journey To The Inner Soul” and “Violet Light Decays” dive into progressive realms with atmospheric-driven interludes. They reign in the abstract spaciness that was on their 2022 EP Sacred Vessel, letting it coexist with the masterful musicianship.

6. Epica – Aspiral (Nuclear Blast)

When a band has been around for a while, they can fall into familiar patterns in creation and execution. For their latest album Aspiral, the veteran Dutch symphonic metal group Epica decided to change up their process, both in writing and recording, resulting in more collaboration and an effort to capture the band’s live energy in the studio.

Epica’s sweeping symphonic style is fully intact with their combination of heaviness, melody and atmosphere topped with Simone Simons’ ethereal vocals contrasted by Mark Jansen’s harsh vocals. It’s challenging to balance cinematic atmospheres and complex arrangements with good old fashioned riffs and hooks, but Epica make it look easy. More focused tracks like “Cross The Divide” “Apparition” are contrasted by lengthy opuses like the three “A New Age Dawns” songs. With Aspiral, Epica showcase the songwriting chops and musicianship they’ve honed over the past two decades while also maintaining the passion and emotion that connects them so seamlessly with their listeners.