Edwin's "Almost as Intense as My Life" Top Ten Albums of 2025

I know the Revenge of Riff Raff faithful have been wondering where their awesome album and show reviews have gone! Where are those meandering articles with run-on sentences that have so many damn words that they often make me forget I’m even reading a music review?

Well, 2025 has been a wild year for me. On ONE hand, I got engaged to Rachel Lanis, who in spite of her being Ukrainian and my being Russian — an interracial relationship if there ever was one — we somehow manage to make it work; and no, I’m not going to post a bunch of crude sexual metaphors involving Russian invasions and dropping bombs! I’m too sophisticated for such juvenile tomfoolery.

On the OTHER hand, my dad has been in the hospital since June thanks to a car accident which gave him a stroke, paralyzed half his body, and forced him to now have a trach in his throat. This entire ordeal is basically the proverbial one step forward, two steps back, where one day it looks like things are getting better, and the next we see no progress. On top of that, it raises certain ethical questions; like, does my dad even want to be tethered to a bed and fed through a tube, while my mom watches "Murder She Wrote" and "Matlock" by his bedside; only to have the nursing staff babysit him when she’s not there just in case he gets stealthy and pulls the tube from his throat

And, among all this, I still had to find a job, which I did, thank God. So now I’m gainfully employed and will soon sign up for a healthcare program, because this is the United States, and if you ain’t employed, you ain’t insured.

So you can see why writing about music wasn’t my number one priority. (Flimsy excuse ~ Ed)

However, that didn’t prevent me from still buying a lot of albums and CDs and going to lots of shows. Like in every year, I did my standard practice of buying one new CD or LP a week in my genres of choice. And, from those, I picked my top ten albums.

Before I list them off, I do want to say my biggest disappointment was that damn new ALICE COOPER album, The Revenge of Alice Cooper. The big gimmick behind that one was that it was by the original Alice Cooper band. There’s just one thing wrong with that; original Alice Cooper lead guitarist Glen Buxton died in 1997. So it’s actually 4/5 of the original Alice Cooper band.

But, even as cool as that seems, original Alice Cooper rhythm guitarist/keyboardist Michael Bruce, bassist Dennis Dunaway, and drummer Neal Smith are just a decent late 60s/early 70s garage-y hard rock band. While, I guess Dunaway and Smith hold their own as a rhythm section, Bruce is helped heavily by the session guitarists, leaving him to play basic three-chord riffs. So, yeah, the original living members are there, but so are a lot of other people.

And, on top of all that, Alice has ALREADY worked with his original band in recent vintage! Sure, The Revenge of Alice Cooper is the first Alice Cooper studio album since 1973’s Muscle of Love to feature Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway, and Neal Smith on every song, but Alice had already worked with his original bandmates on a handful of songs from his 2011 album Welcome 2 My Nightmare!

So, really, who cares if members of the original Alice Cooper band are on the new Alice Cooper album? I mean, I’m a diehard Alice fan, so I will buy every Alice Cooper release regardless of what it is, but I would much, MUCH rather have him make an 80s style shock metal album with guitarist Kane Roberts, who played on Constrictor and Raise Your Fist and Yell, than do this whole 70s Detroit rock nostalgia kick. Or as Alcatrazz/Warlord/Jack Starr/Dragonsclaw singer and fellow diehard Alice Cooper fan told me, “I love Bob Seger, but I don’t need Alice to be the new Bob Seger!” Hear, hear!

Especially since untouchable Alice Cooper classics like Love It to Death, Killer, and Billion Dollar Babies practically invented the majority of the tropes, concepts, approaches, conceits, and ideas that permeate throughout hard rock, heavy metal, punk rock, and well, all the derivatives thereof.

But, fifty-five years after inventing the wheel, I probably shouldn’t expect Alice Cooper to do anything more than put out a decent hard rock album, no matter who plays on it. At least there’s no Tom Morello this time!

And the latest HAWKWIND album is just okay, but I haven’t been expecting a real knock-out from them in nearly a decade anyway. Though, curiously, for some reason, There Is No Space for Us has been making all kinds of top-ten lists, so maybe I’m missing something. Also, some old, classic, success-averse heavy metal bands released some really solid new ones in 2025; specifically VICIOUS RUMORS with The Devil’s Asylum and HELSTAR with The Devil’s Masquerade, even though there's no devils on my top ten list this year.

Of course the latest album from HELLOWEEN, Giants & Monsters, was a decent one too, but I wasn’t as taken by that one as their previous release, Helloween from 2021. And, if we’re talking about old school German thrash and speed metal bands, I enjoyed The Arsonist by SODOM and Bone Collector by GRAVE DIGGER quite a bit as well, even though neither of those made my top ten list either.

And I was pretty happy with the 30-minute-long, single song release from CATHEDRAL called Society’s Pact with Satan, along with the latest TODAY IS THE DAY album, Never Give In. And there are probably ten other releases that I enjoyed that escape me, but, as it stands, here are my top ten albums of 2025:

10. THE TRANCE DIMENSIONALS (featuring Nik Turner) – Space Angels

If you’ve ever read a Revenge of Riff Raff “Best albums of any year list”, you’ll know it will include (a) at least two new albums by also-rans, er, I mean “cult” metal bands that have been around forever but were never successful, (b) a token “extreme metal” release, (c) a token punk or punk-adjacent album, (d) a bunch of unapologetically dorky crap that hip people wouldn’t touch with a ten foot pole, and (e) at least one thing related to Hawkwind.

This list has two things related to Hawkwind; neither of which is actually by Hawkwind, whose latest album, There Is No Space for Us, is okay, but nothing I want to add to a top ten list. No, I’m talking about, Space Angels, the latest album by the Trance Dimensionals. First of all, I wanna say big ups to my boy Massimo Gasperini, the man behind Black Widow Records. If you picked up a niche release in the darker side of psychedelia, doom metal, space rock, heavy prog, or doomy heavy space prog, it might very well have the Black Widow logo stamped on it.

Secondly, the Trance Dimensionals is the latest project from long running guitarist and synthesizer guy STEVE HILLMAN, who has a bunch of albums going back to the early 80s, both as a solo artist and with his previous band RA RISING. His latest, the Trance Dimensionals, have been operating since 2016, and they do the driving, “motorik” riffs with wishy-wooshy space noises, the pretty, acoustic numbers with all them flutes, and, of course, at this point, the obligatory sexy female reciting outer space mumbo jumbo.

In this case it’s a girl who goes by the name of Angel Flame who also sings on the cover of “D-Rider” by Hawkwind and the album’s title track, where she sounds like an angsty teenage space brat, but is all the cuter for it.

On top of all that, Dave Anderson from Hawkwind and AMON DUUL II plays bass on the album! And, of course, Nik Turner, who co-founded Hawkwind back in 1969 with Dave Brock, and is “featured” on the on the cover, plays flute and saxophone and sings a bit on this as well.

There are also a bunch of credits to things like “fretless bass” and “cosmic oscillations”, but I think you get the point. If you want a new album that evokes classic, early 70s Hawkwind, you’re in good shape with Space Angels. I mean, the new Hawklords album, Faith, is no slouch either, but I can’t put EVERYTHING on my top ten!

9. H.E.A.T. – Welcome to the Future

Sweden killed it in 2025 when it came to producing catchy, fun, party-oriented hard rock; I’ve loved new releases from glam metal sleazoids CRAZY LIXX, AOR arena rockers THE NIGHT FLIGHT ORCHESTRA, straight-ahead traditional heavy metal band AMBUSH, and, of course, this here release I’m about to discuss by H.E.A.T.

I think I knew from the dance club synthesizer bursts opening the album on “Disaster” that Welcome to the Future would be a top-ten album of the year list contender. I mean, I kinda HAD to include the album because of that awesome 80s throwback cover art.

Also, for those who care, Welcome to the Future is the second H.E.A.T. album with returning original vocalist and Bruce Dickinson lookalike Kenny Lackremo; while the previous singer Erik Grönwall, who replaced Lackremo back in 2010, went off to sing for SKID ROW.

But, of course, you don’t care to know such trivia. You just want to know what makes Welcome to the Future the ninth best album of 2025. It just has twelve great, catchy, melodic, radio friendly songs across its 45 minute runtime. This is obviously the kind of music dudes made to get chicks back in the mid-80s until about 1992, when grunge came in and made everything depressing, and you were no longer allowed to have normal heterosexual desires that could be fulfilled by becoming a big rock star.

The question is, why would a band make such music NOW? I mean, H.E.A.T. seems to be doing pretty well in the touring circuit and getting plenty of attention from various rock publications, so it would stand to reason they actually LIKE this music. And I bet, even in our modern times, there are still some loose sluts who throw themselves at musicians. But, to be sure, every single one of the songs on Welcome to the Future seems geared for a commercial, top-40 radio that no longer exists.

But, hey, bully for me! If you just want song after song after song of heavy, chugging metallic riffage and blazing solos from Sky Davids, very 80s synthesizer tinklings from Jona Tee, a basic but reliable rhythm section in bassist Jimmy Jay and drummer Don Crash, and, of course, big, singalong choruses from, well the whole band, with such insightful and original song titles as “Bad Time for Love”, “Running to You”, “Calling My Name”, “Rock Bottom”, and “Losing Game”, and which kinda sound like DOKKEN meets DEF LEPPARD meets SURVIVOR meets FOREIGNER meets WHITESNAKE meets JOURNEY, then you should go listen to those bands.

And, then, when you’re sick of those bands, but need more bands that sound like them, listen to Welcome to the Future, or anything by H.E.A.T., really.

8. IMPERIAL TRIUMPHANT – Goldstar

I actually became a fairly recent fan of the avant-garde, experimental, and progressive extreme metal trio Imperial Triumphant when I saw them perform early in 2025 on a bill headlined by black metal legends MAYHEM; Imperial Triumphant was second on the lineup with some weird goth-glam rock band called NEW SKELETAL FACES opening the night and former EMPEROR bassist Mortiis doing a dungeon synth set right before Mayhem.

But who was this trio in gold masks and black robes, who played this jazzy brand of black metal, where the guitarist tickled the guitar strings with a trombone slide? Well, they’re obviously just another group of music geeks from New York – specifically guitarist/singer Zachary Ezrin, bassist/keyboardist/singer Steve Blanco, and drummer Kenny Grohowski – who wanted to do their unique and quirky take on black metal. But is there more to Imperial Triumphant than just being weird?

The answer is, they covered “Experiment” by VOIVOD and “Happy Home” by the RESIDENTS on their 2020 album Alphaville, which was named after the Jean-Luc Godard neo-noir classic from 1966, and they decorate all of their albums in a 1930s art-deco style.

I really don’t think I have a right to NOT like this band.

What’s kind of crazy, to me at least, is how NOT trendy Imperial Triumphant is. Sure, they have their fans like me, but I have neither seen the hipster-y people like Anthony Fantano go bananas over them, nor have I seen the metal people express much interest beyond saying, yeah, they’re okay. I would think, given all these references to cool, arty stuff, that people would be drooling over them like they do BLOOD INCANTATION. Yet, I remain the guy shouting at the wind about the virtues of Imperial Triumphant!

This latest album, Goldstar, is just as good a place to start your Imperial Triumphant journey as any. At only 38 minutes long, its nine songs condense and encapsulate the Imperial Triumphant worldview in shorter, more digestible doses than the band’s earlier, longer albums. You get the brutal riffs and scary, demonic vocals, but you also get jazzy bits, odd time signatures, cool noises, trombone and trumpet blasts, tribal percussion, old-timey radio jingles, cryptic speeches, some psychedelic and spacey moments, and David Lynch movie lounge music.

And the last song, “Industry of Misery”, sounds like a warped, demonic version of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)” by the Beatles, while “Newyorkcity” is just 43 seconds of noisy hardcore with lots of reverb and some broad called Yoshiko Ohara shrieking all over it.

Also, after reading through the lyric sheet, I think the band might have a message buried under song titles like “Eye of Mars”, “Gomorrah Nouveaux”, “Lexington Delirium”, “Rot Moderne”, “Hotel Sphinx”, and “Pleasuredome”, but I’ll be damned if I know what it is!

And, I’ll be double damned if I pretend to care what it is!

7. THE BIG DEAL – Electrified

I refer to the Serbian band the Big Deal as "Slavic wedding metal." I mean, they’re technically a metal band, and guitarist/songwriter/guy-who-basically-put-the-band-together Srdjan Brankovic is a metal shredding guy who also plays in the Serbian progressive metal band ALOGIA. But, with the added keyboards and vocals of his wife Nevena and second chick vocalist Ana Nikolic, the music just sounds like a heavier version of the pop music being played at a Slavic wedding or a dance club.

And, just look at this band. Other than Srdjan Brankovic, the other two male members of the band – drummer Marko Milojevic and bassist Nikola Mijic – look like the “bling” wearing tough guys at an Eastern European dance club. Actually the two chicks look more like club girls than rocker chicks themselves. Hell, check out the cover for their first album, First Bite. They literally look like they’re hanging out in a posh dance club with expensive ass drinks and people doing coke in the bathroom!

And I do wonder how much of a metal chick the singer Ana Nikolic was before she joined the Big Deal. Hell, I wonder how much she is one AFTER joining the Big Deal! According to Srdjan Brankovic, Ana IS “another rock lady” and an “r ‘n’ r lover.” So there ya go.

Still, I prefer the Big Deal chicks over gimmicky female fronted metal bands like SAVAGE MASTER, CASTLE RAT, or VICIOUS BLADE, with a stereotypical metal chick that guys simp for. I’d rather see a band like the Big Deal use the much better and more obvious gimmick of having its two female members wearing slutty clothes and getting drenched with water.

It is wild to hear the soft, pretty 80s pop vocals juxtaposed with the crunching chugga riffs on a song like “Fairy of White.” But, yeah, overall, this is arena AOR rock and traditional heavy metal with non-metal female vocals and 80s style keyboards. In fact, Nevena Brankovic looks about as hot as anyone can while jamming the heck out on a KEYTAR!!!

Basically, on one hand, you have “Burning Up” and “Coming Along”, which are classic, speedy power metal with lotsa guitar and keyboard shredding, along with the galloping, sorta progressive “They Defied”… well, at least, until the tango part comes in. And then, holy shit, you have songs like “Don’t Talk About Love”, which is literally just an 80s dance pop song with crushing guitars, or “Break Down the Walls”, which could be in the Flashdance soundtrack. And they’re AWESOME!!!

I know, maybe we should hire this band for our wedding.

6. BIOHAZARD – Divided We Fall

I was actually pretty annoyed and disgusted by the way Angry Metal Guy reviewed the new Biohazard album, Divided We Fall. He basically made it seem as though Biohazard is a band you grow out of on your journey to discovering more "intellectual" music; while also claiming the album is way better than it has any right to be in his three-out-of-five star review.

And I’m wondering if I missed when it became uncool to like Biohazard. I suppose the fact that Biohazard is often seen as such a big influence on nu-metal might make some people cagey about checking out their early/mid 90s classics like Biohazard (1990), Urban Discipline (1992), and State of the World Address (1994), but to me Biohazard has just been a metal band that incorporates rap style vocals into their sound.

Okay, they’re obviously heavily influenced by hardcore as well. But, damn, son, if you can’t rock the heck out to the gangsta metal of “Tales from the Hardside” or “Wrong Side of the Tracks”, you just too damn full of yoself, dig?

Divided We Fall is the first Biohazard album since 2012’s Reborn in Defiance, and the whole hype behind it is that they’re back with the classic, original line-up. But, then, they had that line-up on their last album. I know, I know, in the thirteen year interim between albums, there be some drama or some sheeyit where Evan be comin’ ‘n’ goin’, and Billy had his other band POWERFLO, but it’s all good in da hood again.

This new Biohazard album smokes. But I’m warning you; it’s about as subtle as an oncoming freight train. Basically, if you’ve never heard Biohazard, Billy Graziadei and Evan Seinfeld take turns yelling at you, as the music alternates between speedy hardcore, slow ‘n’ heavy breakdowns, and crushing chugga-chugga metal riffage, all of which are accentuated by excellent lead guitar work from Bobby Hambel; and the singers cuss a lot, and there’s occasionally rapping.

And some might guffaw at the opening cut “Fuck the System” with what appears to be its somewhat outdated sentiment about a broken system, while not explicitly pointing fingers at any side. But I appreciate that Biohazard haven’t tried to alienate large swathes of their audience because of who they pulled the lever for.

Then again, with lyrics like “We all believe the nonsense they put in the news/we accept propaganda as the absolute truth/we all forgive the promise that they make and break/we never question the news that we know is fake”, it gives me ideas about who THEY pulled the lever for.

I’m just glad their record label didn’t slap that stupid “Parental Advisor/Explicit Lyrics” stamp onto the album cover to warn the kiddies about all the f-words, like they did in the 90s. Because done nobody under the age of 40 be buying this thang anyway!!!

5. CORONER – Dissonance Theory

Since I first became a diehard Coroner fan, I’ve always said that they’re the epitome of substance over style. They have the five most boring album covers of all time decorating albums with the five most boring titles of all time; R.I.P. (1987), Punishment for Decadence (1988), No More Color (1989), Mental Vortex (1991), and Grin (1993). In fact, am I the only one who thinks Punishment for Decadence has a rather conservative title? As in, you’re being punished for your decadence?

Actually, now that I think about it, if I’m raising questions about the title, maybe it’s not so boring after all. I’ll have to rethink that point.

Otherwise their lyrics are the epitome of inoffensive. I don’t mean like they’re hyper politically correct or anything. I mean, they wouldn’t offend ANYONE. They’re just like philosophical musings about free will, existence, and reason; boring crap like that. Okay, the first album R.I.P. is just wanton death, war, and destruction, and they have some other kinda cool ‘n’ scary sounding songs like “Die by My Hand”, “Masked Jackal”, and “Read My Scars.” But, with an album title like Mental Vortex, it’s like, we get it; you’re not just violence-obsessed thrash metal knuckleheads; you’re actually thoughtful individuals who have lots of deep insights (eye roll).

Anyway, if you didn’t know, Coroner is a power trio that formed way back in 1983 in Zürich, Switzerland and the classic lineup of the band featured bassist singer Ron “Royce” Broder, guitarist Tommy “T. Baron” Vetterli, and drummer Marky “Marquis Marky” Edelmann.

It IS pretty damn cool that they got Tom Warrior to sing on their 4-track demo recording ‘Death Cult’ in 1986, but it would have been way cooler if Coroner whisked Tom Warrior away from his baby and made him the singer of Coroner; because, otherwise, Ron Broder’s voice is also boring. It’s kind of scratchy, horse, and robotic like Denis “Snake” Belanger of Voivod, but it’s neither particularly aggressive nor melodic, and his vocals are often buried in the mix anyway.

So, if you’re listening to Coroner, you’re most likely just listening because of the cool and badass music, which is just riff-filled, complicated-as-all-hell progressive thrash and progressive metal. Yeah, yeah, on Grin, they grooved and industrialed it up a bit, but it was the 90s, so give ‘em a break!

Anyway, Dissonance Theory is the band’s first album in thirty whole years. I’m counting their self-titled compilation from 1995 as an album, since it has a handful of original songs on it.

AND IT RULES!!! If the ONLY thing you care about is cool ass metal riffs, lotsa time changes, and some oddball jazzy chords, this ten-song, 47 minute long CD will totally do it for you. But, just putting this out there: it’s not 80s-throwback progressive thrash metal evoking the first four albums. In fact, quite a bit of the album is medium tempo. If anything, Dissonance Theory is closer to the Grin sound, but with less of the 90s groove.

Ahhh, who cares? It’s awesome!!!

Oh, I didn’t mention that the drummer Mark Edelmann is no longer in the band… and he used to write all the lyrics. So, did Ron Broder, Tommy Vetterli, and drummer Diego Rapacchietti (who replaced Edelmann in 2014) learn proper English so they could replace him? NOPE!!! Writing lyrics about sheeyit is boring. They just hired SOMEONE ELSE to do it; specifically, a certain Kriscinda Lee Everitt and Dennis Russ, who do their best to write vaguely interesting, deep, and topical lyrics that you can relate to the matters of the day, but which still feel “timeless.”

So, does it really matter what “Oxymoron,” “Consequence,” “Sacrificial Lamb,” “Crisium Bound,” “Symmetry,” “The Law,” “Transparent Eye,” “Trinity,” “Renewal,” and “Prolonging” are even about?

Spoiler alert: “Oxymoron” and “Prolonging” aren’t about ANYTHING!!! THEY DON’T HAVE WORDS!!! But the latter has a neat 70s prog keyboard jam-out that I wasn’t expecting!

4. BRAINBOMBS – Die

Ya know, since I’ve been working in an office that deals in parts for heating and cooling systems, box cutters don't seem all that threatening anymore. So it's nice that Sweden’s kings of unpleasant, slow, grinding, repetitive, and ugly noise punk could use one for the “I” of Die on the cover of their latest album.

But writing songs about using sharp tools to mutilate human body parts has been the primary shtick of this here Brainbombs band, going all the way back to their humble beginnings in Hudiksvall, Sweden in 1985. See, I’m not obsessed with all things gross and morbid. I don’t enjoy looking at autopsy videos or reading true crime stuff or perusing endless case files on serial killers.

And Brainbombs formed out of this group of “transgressive” weirdos that had its real heyday in the 80s and 90s, where hipsters took a sort of detached attitude towards everything a normal person would consider sick, perverse, and repulsive; there was tons of this stuff, from the RE/Search and Answer Me! zines to books like Apocalypse Culture, Apocalypse Culture II, and Cult Rapture from Feral House publishing, to the photocopied and self-distributed trash of Peter Sotos.

In fact, many of the Brainbombs’ songs were inspired by the writings of Sotos. And, if I wasn’t into their music and didn’t enjoy what they did, I wouldn’t be so forgiving about it.

Basically the Brainbombs do this repetitive, but surprisingly catchy and engaging brand of noisy rock, that’s often as simple as the riff from “I Wanna Be Your Dog” by THE STOOGES. But they layer it in white noise, curtesy of the superb guitar duo of Lanchy Orre, who plays in a bunch of punk and hardcore bands you can google, and Jonas Tiljander, who plays in the experimental space rock band BREMEN with the Råberg brothers from the Brainbombs. And, of course, there’s Peter Råberg’s sleazy-ass speak-singing and Dan Råberg’s trumpet squawks which add some aural texture to the din.

And, it’s obvious, with song titles like “Midnight Slaughter,” “See You Cry,” “Cooking You,” and “Kill Again,” along with four other less exciting sounding song titles, the latest Brainbombs album is just more of the same. But it’s a good “the same”! And, within that “same”, there’s some interesting variation, different types of rhythms, experiments with different instruments, etc. It’s just that Brainbombs fans know exactly what they’re getting on every release.

In the case of their latest album, the cleverly titled Die, the vocals do seem buried in the mix, and with no lyric sheet, it’s really, really hard to tell what Peter Råberg is singing about. But, then, I probably don’t want to know.

3. GUNSLINGER – Amped Up

Ultra-prolific former Hawkwind bassist Alan Davey’s Gunslinger band represents an alternate reality where MOTÖRHEAD actually released On Parole way back in 1976, and both Larry Wallis and Lucas Fox remained in the band; thereby altering the course of rock ‘n’ roll history, as Motörhead remained this bluesy and psychedelic biker rock cult band, and didn’t become the reason METALLICA exists.

Davey had started Gunslinger way back in 1979, but he had to put it on hold when he joined Hawkwind in 1984, and to be sure, he was a total Lemmy acolyte; right down to playing the Rickenbacker in a similarly aggressive style, with lots of distortion, string-bends, hammer-ons, and bass chords.

After Hawkwind, he released a bunch of solos albums and worked on a bunch of other projects and bands, including the mighty Gunslinger, who he brought back from dormancy with 2008’s awesome Earthquake in E Minor. And, now Gunslinger is back again… sort of. None of the musicians who played with Davey on the original Gunslinger were involved on 2025’s Amped Up. Instead you just have Davey on all guitar, bass, and vocals, and Lucas Fox on drums. Oh, and for what it’s worth, DEEP PURPLE drummer Ian Paice plays on the title track.

But, hey, if you want On Parole-era Motörhead, this is the next best thing you’re gonna get. After some spaghetti Western music to kick off the album, you get punky hard rock with that weird psychedelic production that was originally considered too bad to release commercially by United Artists way back in 1976, but I guess now has earned a cult-following all its own among the Ladbroke-loving space rockers who wish time stopped in 1975.

Plus, obviously, Alan Davey literally sounds like Lemmy; so much so, a less trained ear might mistake him for the legend himself.

Hey, speaking of Lemmy, I think “The Ace” might be about him; it’s hard to tell with lyrics like “he was the king of speed/he rode the silver machine.” Hahahaha, haha!

On top of that, you get lots of Western themes with songs like “Smoke Wagon,” “Someone’s Got You in the Gunsights,” “Like a Bullet,” and “20 Paces.” Though, I’m guessing “Berlin Wall” and “Living Like a Viking” are not about Western themes.

Holy shit! And the song “Black Glamdring” literally sounds like the original, bluesy, TWANGY version of “Iron Horse/Born to Lose”!!! Arrrrghghghgh!!!!

2. PAGAN ALTAR – Never Quite Dead

HOW DO YOU REPLACE TERRY JONES??? DO YOU KNOW TERRY JONES, FORMER LEAD SINGER OF THE LEGENDARY NWOBHM/DOOM METAL OUTFIT PAGAN ALTAR, WHOSE DISCOGRAPHY IS SPARSE, BUT 100% AWESOME???

Okay, yeah, I said that a little facetiously, but not really! Terry Jones IS a great a singer with a powerful, kinda weird, nasally, haunting voice, and if you followed Pagan Altar, you WOULD be like, can you REALLY replace Terry???

Here’s another band like SATAN, PENTAGRAM, CIRITH UNGOL, and NASTY SAVAGE, who thanks to the internet and diehard old school heavy metal enthusiasts, has been given a second (or third?) shelf life, when in older times, they would more or less be mired in the ghetto of utter obscurity. Okay, it’s not like Pagan Altar is HUGE. But, then, neither are Satan, Pentagram, Cirith Ungol, and Nasty Savage. All three of those bands’ second (third?) shelf lives involve performing for fifty people in dumpy clubs and the odd festival.

But, apparently that’s just enough to make sure that we have new albums by all these bands. And, so here we are with this brand new release from the criminally underrated Pagan Altar. And, just like Satan, Pentagram, Cirith Ungol, and Nasty Savage, the Pagan Altar discography isn’t enormous and has gaps of many years between albums; and this very easy to collect in full.

Formed in 1978 by the father/son team of Terry Jones on vocals and Alan Jones on guitar, Pagan Altar were and weren’t part of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. They were in the sense that they had a recording out right about the time when a bunch of other bands under the banner of the New Wave of Heavy Metal were putting out albums. And they weren’t because, well, they played slow, spooky, SABBATH-y heavy rock, which of course was considered the old, outdated brand of heavy metal in a world of IRON MAIDEN, DEF LEPPARD, ANGEL WITCH, DIAMOND HEAD, and TYGERS OF PAN TANG.

One thing the Joneses had in common with Brian Ross of BLITZKRIEG, Satan, and AVENGER, however, was a love for Doctor Who; hence the group’s earliest recordings featuring a song called “The Time Lord.” But, otherwise, Pagan Altar’s big contribution to the metal world at the time was a heavily bootlegged 1982 demo tape that eventually received an official release in 1998 as the super creatively titled Volume 1 before being re-released again under its intended title Judgment of the Dead.

And, for all of Martin Popoff’s condescending talk about “poverty metal”, if Judgment of the Dead is being poor, I don’t wanna be rich! It’s THAT good. Again, like those aforementioned bands, it’s a little different, a little weird, and therefore failed to catch the attention of the important metal tastemakers…

…until it didn’t and Pagan Altar was baaack baby with two stupendous follow-up albums of melodic, doom-y, 70s-style, occult and folklore-themed heavy rock; Lords of Hypocrisy (2004) and Mythical & Magical (2006). Then things slowed down to a crawl until it was revealed that the senior Jones had died of cancer in 2015. The group put out their final recording with Terry Jones as another excellent album called The Room of Shadows in 2017.

And then I pretty much thought that was it for Pagan Altar. But then I heard that Pagan Altar was coming back with another new release. Alan Jones dug up a bunch of unfinished Pagan Altar songs, wrote up a couple more, and voila, here we are! The group never really had a “classic” era lineup; it was always just Terry and Alan Jones and whoever they have on rhythm guitar, bass, and drums this week.

And, while both bassist Diccon Harper and drummer Andy Green had already played on the previous album, the REAL question was, of course, who would step in the shoes of the late, great Terry Jones???

And, that, my friends is THE ONE, THE ONLY, BRENDAN RADIGAN!!! What? You’ve never heard of the singer of such well-loved, ultra-popular, household names as BATTERING RAM, SAVAGE OATH, STONE DAGGER, TORTURE CHAIN, and MIND ERASER??? That’s right, all your faves.

And, now he’s in Pagan Altar, and all is right with the universe.

Never Quite Dead rules. That is all. What? You want me to describe all the songs to you? Some are more straight-forward rockers, some are slow and dreamy, some are downright doomy, and all feature Alan Jones’ terrific guitar work. But, after reading the liner notes, I learned that “Well of Despair” was written as a spoof of doom metal for those who complained on internet forums that Pagan Walter weren’t doomy enough. Zing! Got ‘em!

Oh, and the last song is a pretty, bouncy, sentimental folk song with harmonica meant to make you feel all fuzzy inside.

1. DIRKSCHNEIDER & THE OLD GANG – Babylon

It’s downright CRIMINAL how little people in the world of rock and metal pay attention to Udo Dirkschneider! And I get it; 2025 was the year OZZY OSBOURNE died, and most people see guys like Rob Halford and Bruce Dickinson as eminently more “important” than raspy voiced Udo Dirkschneider. But, come on, why does GEOFF TATE play the big, thousand-seater clubs, and Udo gets my local 200-capacity joint, only for the place to be downright EMPTY? I felt so embarrassed for the Detroit metal scene the night we saw U.D.O. Meanwhile, ACCEPT, who are down to ONE original member in lead guitarist Wolf Hoffman, can pack my same tiny club!

Sometimes I literally feel like the only person who listens to ANYTHING by Udo! Okay, there’s one other guy. Hi John!

Like, here is this absolute legend of heavy metal who goes all the way back to the 70s – actually possibly earlier, since apparently the seeds for Accept were planted in 1968 – who sang with Accept for fourteen years on some of the best, most influential heavy metal of all time and then led his own band U.D.O. since 1987 (albeit with a four year break when he rejoined Accept from 1992 to 1996), and released album after album after consistently awesome album of heavy metal greatness on a nearly yearly basis, and then his spectacular new release, the best album of 2025, barely gets a mention on any of the best albums of the year lists!

And, unlike Accept, Udo’s band features THREE members from the classic Accept line-up! Udo took a break from U.D.O. proper and started this here Dirkschneider & the Old Gang band with former U.D.O. guitarists Mathias Dieth and Stefan Kaufmann. And, if you weren’t already aware, Stefan Kaufmann also played drums with Accept before riffing and shredding in U.D.O. The rest of the band is rounded out by, of course, Peter Baltes of Accept and U.D.O. on bass and some vocals, Udo’s son Sven on drums, and this really cute chick named Manuela Bibert on vocals and keyboards.

They had already teased us with a three-track EP called “Arising” in 2021, but now DATOG have delivered a proper album with 12 songs and 61 minutes of music. Now, before you balk at the 30s-ish art deco cover art, Babylon is PURE Udo-tastic HEAVY METAL. Udo does his usual Udo thang, shrieking in his Brian Johnson-but-German voice to the metal riffs, as two masterful axemen unleash brilliant riffs and stunning solos; the only difference here is that the formula is tempered by the lovely and gorgeous vocals of Manuela Bibert.

And her pop vocals sound so darn cute on “Dead Man’s Hand”, and she sounds terrific moaning and groaning all over the Middle-Eastern-tinged title track, and she’s having so much darn fun on the goofy, but totally fun opener “It Takes Two to Tango”, where the chorus goes, “It takes two to tango/it takes six to rock.” Oh, and to make matters even more awesome, the last track, “Beyond the End of Time,” seems like the band was trying to replicate the mid-tempo, epic, fantastical journey “Princess of the Dawn” that was at the end of the Accept album Restless and Wild, but with Bibert’s and Baltes’ additional vocals.

There are also a couple ballads; the adorable “Strangers in Paradise,” complete with a flamenco guitar solo that will make you feel like you’re on a romantic honeymoon, and “Blindfold,” which is actually not a new song, but a remake of a song from the 2020 U.D.O. album, We Are One, that Bibert also sang on.

Plus you just have straight head-banging tunes like “Hellbreaker,” “Metal Sons,” and “Batter the Power.”

I guess it’s also fun to point that Udo looks like my dad. So, if you’re curious what my dad looks like, he looks like Udo.