It's been a great start to the year for metal, with Gojira winning a Grammy and Black Sabbath returning. Paying closer attention to new releases, February was filled with eclectic, hard-hitting metal of all shapes and sizes. February is traditionally when things begin to heat up, and everyone from established acts to bands putting out their first releases is responsible for elite material this month.
Taking in hardcore, mainstream, and black metal from arty acts, Knocked Loose's new label mates, and the dumbest metal song you will hear all year, no stone is left unturned. These are the nine great metal songs you must hear from February 2025.
9 Spiritbox - "No Loss, No Love"
For Fans Of: Meshuggah, Architects, Polaris
The third single from Spiritbox's new album is their nastiest to date. Forgoing melody almost entirely, this is a grinding, snarling track that screeches with industrialized riffing and pulsating electronics. It's great to hear Courtney LaPlante taking no prisoners on a vocal that only deviates from fury to sound like M3gan after you've spilled her drink.
It's an exciting time for Spiritbox, who were Grammy-nominated for a second time in the first part of 2025. The band's profile shows no sign of slowing down with a huge U.S. headline tour and a prestigious festival slot on the horizon too. Crucially, the noise that seems to surround a band's "difficult second album" is almost non-existent. Tsunami Sea is out now, and it's well worth the wait.
8 Church Tongue - "When It Betrays"
For Fans Of: Knocked Loose, Pain Of Truth, Kublai Khan TX
g to Pure Noise Records to stand alongside Knocked Loose, Terror and SeeYouSpaceCowboy, Church Tongue are set to be one of hardcore's hottest bands. Trading in fat, textured riffing and an incredible production job that sounds enormous and heavy as a truck full of amps, Church Tongue's EP You'll know It Was Me contains six songs of spite and carnage. This heaviness simply should not be possible from a band this early in their career.
There are guest performances from critically acclaimed darlings Deafheaven, as well as underground heroes in Initiate, and Colin Young from Twitching Tongues lends his goth-tinged vocals to "When It Betrays." Frontman Mike Sugars writes about love in various ways across this crushing EP, and his union with Young is the peak of the whole record. Or it could be the riffing in "The Fury Of Love." Or the bleak melancholia of the title track. Either way, Church Tongue's name.
7 Jinjer - Duél
For Fans Of: Gojira, Arch Enemy, Alien Weaponry
One of metal's most satisfying minor success stories, Ukrainian metallers Jinjer return with their first album in four years, Duél. Rolling out their distinctive brand of titular, angular riffing that sounds somewhere in the middle of Tool, Gojira and Meshuggah, Jinjer are one of the more complex metal bands to find success in recent years. "Duél" is another slice of that particular flavor.
By having a purposefully obtuse musical canvas to draw upon, Tatiana Shmayluk weaves an enticing mystical vocal, loaded with power and off-kilter greatness. The title track to the band's fifth album, "Duél" may feel like more of the same to unimpressed ears, but Jinjer's already sizable fanbase will lap this up.
6 Black Label Society - "Lord Humungus"
For Fans Of: Mad Max, Pantera.
The glorious thing about heavy metal is that we, the fans of this wonderful and life-affirming genre of music, are allowed to point out how ridiculous the whole thing is occasionally. Black Label Society are one of those punchlines, and we are allowed to laugh at their willingness to write a biker metal song about the villain in this summer's disappointing Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga that opens with the lyric "WHEEEEEELS OF ROLLING THUNDER!!!!!" If someone in a Hozier tee did it, they'd be told to shut up.
In truth, if you've ever heard Black Label Society before, you already know what this song sounds like. This is four-to-the-floor, chugga-chugga, high-quality biker metal for those who know what they like. Black Label Society are out here representing the old school, and it would be really weird if they deviated from that plan now that they're over 25 years into their careers.
5 SpiritWorld - "Oblivion"
For Fans Of: Slayer, The First Four Metallica Albums, Power Trip.
In a fair and just world, people who flood comment sections about their favorite old-school metal bands would use that energy to make SpiritWorld one of the biggest bands in the world. Boasting the muscle and energy of early Metallica, an opening riff that would be at home on South Of Heaven and more chug than your local train station, "Oblivion" is a home run aimed squarely at those who love straight-up heavy metal.
When the middle of the song begins to feel like a cannibalistic ritual, it goes alongside the spooky, "rootin' tootin'" first single "Abeline Grime" from their Western-themed new album Helldorado to show SpiritWorld have an incredible knack for conjuring cinematic imagery. If you've never heard them before, you owe it to yourself to change that.
4 Bloodywood - "Tadka"
For Fans Of: BABYMETAL, Electric Callboy, System Of A Down.
The increasingly global feel of metal's most popular bands has felt like a breath of fresh air in recent years. We've seen Japan's BABYMETAL fusing elements of J-POP, The Hu including Mongolian throat singing as part of their arsenal, and Germans Electric Callboy bringing Euro Disco to metal's party, and it feels like the face of metal is finally changing to reflect the global cultural shift in music over the last decade.
Bloodywood are here to represent India and their sound is fresh and recalls System Of A Down flipping the sound and rhythm of metal on its head. And the band take their art more seriously than their album title, Nu Delhi, suggests.
Against a backdrop of shehnai and all manner of Indian percussive elements, and with the very distinctive rap style of that region, Jayant Bhadula has a richly soulful voice that puts a new flavor on what it is to be a powerful metal singer. He combines the wail of Ronnie James Dio, a sense of fun with the flow of his rapping, and a band behind him willing to shake up the stale sound of U.S. rock radio. Bloodywood will not be stopped, and, frankly, "Tadka" rules.
3 Your Spirit Dies - "In The Depths Of Grief"
For Fans Of: Trivium, Unearth, Sylosis
Your Spirit Dies are one of underground metal's best kept secrets, with a sound that believes in the power of riffing and furious rhythmic accompaniment that feels contemporary yet relatable to fans of the heavier side of metalcore's past.
It's always refreshing when a song opens with a riff that's enough to peel your face straight off. The first song from Your Spirit Dies' debut album, "In the Depths Of Grief" manages just that. The track contains more tempo changes and rhythmic deviation than most bands manage in an entire album, as blistering blast beats and thrash breaks are backed up with riffing that sways from old-school chug to modern tech flare on the turn of a dime.
The crowning achievement of all of this is that everything Your Spirit Dies tries feels daring, cohesive, and satisfying. Their 2022 EP Our Saints Drown in Ash was sensational, and now, their debut album sounds like it could be even better.
2 The Callous Daoboys - Two-Headed Trout
For Fans of: The Dillinger Escape Plan, Faith No More, Papa Roach.
It's not always a key ingredient to being a great heavy band, but The Callous Daoboys are the smoothest band in metal. Slick and sexy vocal melodies, bass grooves that'll put swing into hips everywhere, and a dizzying, staggering lead riff combine to continue the band's run of special material on "Two-Headed Trout." Any band that dares to be subversive runs the risk of being taken down by the metal police, but if you like your heavy music to be ungovernable, The Callous Daoboys are definitely for you.
Unbelievably, the I Don't Want To See You In Heaven will be their fourth album. Having adorned magazine covers on their own and created albums that feel unrestricted without ever veering into "wacky" territory, the band's May 19 release already feels like it's going to be another eclectic affair.
The second single from the album, "The Demon Unreality Limping Like a Dog," features jazz drumming, bongos, anarchic blasts of electronic noise, and barking like a dog (seriously). It's the kind of cocktail that insists you abandon all conventions and one of the most exciting heavy bands on earth on their journey of wonder.
1 Deafheaven - "Magnolia"
For Fans Of: Deafheaven When They're Black Metal
It was a left-turn to see Deafheaven leave their heavier side behind on Infinite Granite, the band's 2021 album that have more in common with Fontaines DC and The Smiths than it did anything in the world of heavy metal. "Magnolia" sees Deafheaven returning to black metal, where the guitar tone sounds like a rusted chainsaw, the opening riff is as "rock star" as a black metal riff can be, and George Clarke's vocal is back to sounding like he just crawled out of a crypt.
Through sheer quality, Deafheaven have cultivated fans willing to let the band stray, meaning "Magnolia" may be no indication whatsoever of the direction of their sixth album, Lonely People With Power. The craft and class in the layers of what Deafheaven are capable of continue to impress, as when the damn bursts and a riff from the bowels of hell dominates the track around the 2:25 mark, the moment hits with fury. Who knows what the album will sound like, but Deafheaven have already just provided one of the best metal songs of the year so far.