Battle for the Ballot: Best Dramatic Presentation 2026

The two Best Dramatic Presentation categories are among my favourites in the Hugos, because I consume a lot of SFF media and have a lot of thoughts and feelings about them. Since my post last year about why I had wanted Loki S2 to win a Hugo in 2024 (which I was working on for a while but ended up not posting it in time for it to sway anyone), I’ve been toying with the idea of producing more writing around some of my favourite things from each year, in case it helps anybody—least of all me, in getting it all out of my system.

I know I’m posting this with one day to go before nominations (these take so long for me! I must develop a better system for next year 🤔), but I’m really writing this to sound out my own thoughts about the DP categories this year, because it is absolutely bananas with how stacked they both are. There have been some truly great speculative television shows and films, stuff that I’m sure we’ll still be talking about for years to come, and making decisions to boil my favourite media down to just 5 per category—especially given the fiddliness of Long Form and Short Form where TV is concerned, which I’ll get to in a sec—is going to be excruciatingly difficult for me.

So come along on a journey with me as I parse my thoughts, and who knows! Maybe I’ll argue my way to your heart about some of this, or tell you about something you hadn’t heard of before—some of which I’ve already written about before, but I’m getting ahead of myself!

Let me know what your ballot looks like, and if you’re nominating any of the below shows, films, and other dramatic works, or if you’re including other things entirely. I’m curious!

TV series and the Long Form/Short Form debate

A big question for many fen every year is “do I nominate one episode from a TV series that stands on its own or that adequately represents the show in Short Form, or do I nominate the whole season in Long Form because it’s one complete narrative, and isolating one chapter of it would be unfair?”

Understandably, it’s a tough one; when a show inevitably gets votes in both categories, it can lead to headaches for the Hugo Administrating Team as they have to sift through the numbers and ultimately decide which category it should be nominated in1, which I don’t envy at all. But at the same time, as a voter, I have to go with what my heart says and name my favourite episodes in Short Form, regardless of whether I’ve also named the show/season as a whole in Long Form, because if enough others have put that same episode down, then that’s what’ll make it through to the shortlist, and I would want my vote to count towards those totals.

All that to say: if you expected a clear stance from me on this, HA! I’m afraid I don’t have one 😇—and to be perfectly honest, this is exactly the sort of thing where people’s mileage will vary the most.

My personal method of deciding whether to nominate entire TV seasons rather than one specific episode is purely based on ~vibes~, on whether or not I thought the season works better in its totality than through its individual parts, versus cases where one outstanding episode eclipses all the others for me. Not all shows are written the same, of course, and those that favour a longer narrative arc (as a lot of prestige TV does nowadays) tend to find their way on my long form ballot more often than not, as opposed to the more episodic writing that isn’t as popular now but used to be ubiquitous in the pre-streaming era.

Ultimately, you may agree or disagree with me on my reasoning for some of my choices below, whether on the LF/SF question or my actual opinions of the various media, and that’s fair enough. I welcome discussion in the comments, but please keep it civil!

Jump to:

• Long Form: Entire TV Seasons
• Long Form: Films
• Long Form: Non-Film/TV
• Short Form: TV Episodes
• Short Form: Non-TV

Long Form: Entire TV Seasons

You might see episodes from some of these further down in the episode/short form discussion.

Andor, Season 2+

This is kind of my front-runner among the TV seasons for the Long Form category. Overall, I enjoyed it slightly more than season 1 for a few reasons: first of all, the pacing was much more even, with a little bit more action and intrigue peppered throughout the season as opposed to having several quieter mini-arcs that slowed things down in places; and crucially, there was a lot less dithering from Cassian Andor, our reluctant protagonist, who finally comes into his own as a rebel after being passively tossed about this way and that in the first season. The agency he has in this one makes him much more interesting as a character, and brings him on the same level as other players in the budding rebellion front, like Mon Mothma and Luthen Rael. In fact, with all the different character arcs completed, Andor finally becomes what Rogue One always wanted to be: a testament to the great sacrifices necessary for revolution to take root.

I liked a lot of what went down in this season as tensions continued ramping up between the Empire and the Rebellion; the Ghorman subplot was outstanding, especially with Dedra and Cyril’s journeys as instruments of Imperial oppression and violence, as was Mon Mothma’s arc from quiet resistance financier to full-on political rebel on the run, with her heartbreaking arc where she realises the personal cost of rebellion. None of the individual episodes in season 2 came even close to the intensity or narrative brilliance of One Way Out, which was hands down my favourite episode of season 1, but that’s okay—I think this season works so much better in its totality, that I’ll be happy to nominate it wholesale.

I still need to re-watch Rogue One actually, to see if my (very mid) opinion on it changes at all, but ultimately I’m just really happy this show was made, and that it looked and felt amazing throughout. It’s probably my favourite Star Wars story, period, and I am so chuffed that so much of it was filmed in the UK (in locations I know and visit all the time, including my old workplace!2), and is full of incredibly talented and classically trained British theatre actors who fill the space with their physicality and make their performances memorable even in the smallest of roles3.

Severance, Season 2+

Another really strong contender for this category. If you ask me which TV show might win the LF Hugo between this, Andor, or Pluribus, my money would probably be on Severance, even if I personally prefer Andor thematically and Pluribus cinematically. There’s no doubt Severance is an absolute masterpiece of television—nay, of cinema—and the fact that the most anti-capitalist story of our time is coming directly from the big tech megacorp Apple is an irony that is as delicious as it is hilarious.

Aside from its bonkers world-building (which still has so many unanswered questions!), this season of Severance also dove pretty deep into its characters, whom we only got to know a bit in season 1. I don’t want to get too spoilery here, but there’s a handful of moments in this season that go SO HARD—particularly that one slow episode that everyone else hated for some reason, where we follow Patricia Arquette’s character as she goes to her dingy home town and fills us in on the cult lore around Lumon Industries, and of course the team building episode in which our intrepid heroes actually go outside, but it’s all weird in that trademark Lumon way where nothing really fully makes sense, and it leaves the viewer feeling uncomfortable, like something’s not quite aligned right.

But yeah, the world-building, man. It’s something else. I was glued to my screen and my mind was running a mile a minute trying to join the dots and figure out the answers to the show’s mysteries, much like our heroes consolidate memories refine macrodata—remember, the work is mysterious and important—and the excitement of getting it just before the show confirmed it was super fun. Yet, finally understanding what macrodata refinement is was actually a really tragic moment, and everything that happens after that made my heart break for the innies who are stuck living a half-life they can’t escape, on pain of death.

Ultimately, what I loved the most about the second season of Severance is its staunch anti-capitalist messaging that speaks to the average office worker today regardless of where they may be in the world, because corporate manipulation knows no borders:

• A job is a job, not a family.
• The company you work for does not deserve blind, cult-like loyalty.
• Your life is more than just work, and compartmentalising your work self and your out-of-work self might be a band-aid solution, but it doesn’t really work in the end.
• You are you, with all your complex layers of self, even if your corporate overlords (…or just your line manager 🤐) want you to think otherwise, or to act otherwise so you can fit into their office culture.
• Basically, it’s all dumb, and you deserve to live, not just to survive so you can punch your clock card and get meaningless little bonuses like finger traps or waffle parties.

This relatability is what keeps me hooked, and what I think elevates the show from pretty sci-fi to a classic of our times. It’s definitely got my vote.

Pluribus, Season 1+

God, talk about another cinematic masterpiece. When Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul‘s Vince Gilligan said he was working on a new show (which he was writing specifically for Rhea Seahorn to star in), I was crossing my fingers and my toes that it would be sci-fi, and Pluribus has completely blown my expectations out of the water. Not only does it mark Gilligan’s return to science fiction for the first time since The X-Files, but he brings his now-trademark cinematic visual language to it, full of tight choreography and nuanced subtext through visual and music cues, which is what made BB & BCS so special.

The result is an unnerving combination of horror, absurdist humour, and subtle world-building, centered around a complex character named Carol Sturka, who is one of only a few humans not to join the weird hive mind connection that takes over all other human beings on the planet, and doesn’t want to even entertain the idea. I’ve seen many reviews call her unlikable and unrelatable, and while the first part may be true (I was really tired of her contrarian nature in the first half of the season), I think there’s something more going on here than just a selfish white American woman who expects the world to move just for her.

The thing is, Vince Gilligan does not talk down to his audience; he expects us to keep up and to pick up what he’s putting down, whether that’s subtle digs at the publishing industry (it is truly hilarious to me that the protagonist of this show is an actual romantasy author!), not-so-subtle digs about community building and the harm humanity has done to the planet and to each other (particularly around resource distribution, iykyk), and questions about human nature that we are left to ponder: would you trade world peace for the complete flattening of human culture? Are we capable of retaining what makes us human while not actively harming the world around us, or each other? What is humanity, really, or human nature even?

Big stuff coming from an Apple TV show, once again; should I even be surprised at this point?

I think the long game of this show is going to be Carol’s character development from grumpy selfish miser to someone who genuinely cares about other people—a reverse Walter White, if you will. Gilligan is all about the narrative arc, and he has been known to deliver some of the best narrative arcs in TV ever, even if they take a while to stick the landing. I have faith that he is cooking something we haven’t even yet begun to poke at, if Better Call Saul is any indication, and between the already great writing and the show’s superlative production value, I think Pluribus is going to be a low-key modern classic. Vince has my vote, now and always.

My Hero Academia: The Final Season+

I wrote about this extensively in my Hugo ballot recommendations post a couple of months ago, so I’ll pull a quote from that as to why I loved it so much:

Y’all, what can I say: this has been my favourite anime of the last decade, and the fact it is ending has had me in my feelings for months. I’ve been deeply invested emotionally for many years, watching the simulcasts on the same day as the anime airs in Japan since around season 2, and this last season has been all payoff for almost ten years’ worth of story. Every Saturday from October 4th till December 13th, I tuned in and bawled my eyes out for 20 minutes straight, which for an anime aimed at teenage boys is an absolute feat. Defying every expectation, it stuck the landing for every little story beat, every subplot, and every theme set up over its ten year tenure perfectly, making it one of my absolute favourite stories in the superhero genre.

This is definitely one of those where context is essential, so I don’t think it can be viewed in a vacuum and appreciated to the same extent as having watched all previous seven seasons. You can try, but it wouldn’t be worth it just for the awards. Just watch the show so the ending can hit you like a ton of bricks in the best way possible, even if you miss the deadline. It’s fun, it’s moving, it’s made with so much love for American comics through a uniquely Japanese perspective. I can’t recommend it enough, and it’ll definitely be on my Long Form ballot even if I’m one of ten people who put it there 🤷🏻‍♀️

Honourable mentions/near misses+

• Silo, Season 2: It’s definitely not as tight as season 1, and it was missing some stuff from the books that may well turn up in season 3. For what it’s worth, there’s a lot I enjoyed about this season, but unfortunately it’s simply weaker when Rebecca Ferguson’s Juliette isn’t on screen, and there’s a lot of that unfortunately. I’m certainly looking forward to what season 3 will be adapting, and to see what format that will take, as I think they’re either condensing or axing the second half of book 2 to go straight to the dual narrative of book 3, which I have mixed feelings about.
• Murderbot: I never got into the books because of tonal whiplash (MB’s violence and misanthropy coated in dry humour just didn’t work for me), and while I thought the TV show was a little better in that regard, ultimately I thought the show was just okay. I didn’t actively dislike it, mind, but I watched most of it on a plane ride, didn’t finish it, and haven’t felt like picking it back up since. The story just doesn’t grab me, I think, and I never felt particularly attached to or compelled by any of the characters… and I’m okay with that 🤷🏻‍♀️. Not everything is for everyone! I expect it’ll be mass-nominated by all the book fans anyway based on the online discourse I’ve seen, so it won’t miss my vote.
• Invasion, Season 3: I didn’t even know this was out, lmao! I was deeply invested while watching seasons 1 and 2 (even though I disliked quite a few of the characters), but as soon as I was done with it I promptly forgot about it—and Apple TV didn’t even let me know that it was back on. Whomst can I shake until they fix the marketing situation over there?! Christ on a cracker!
• Stranger Things, Season 5: To my own surprise, I didn’t like this season nearly as much as season 4, let alone season 1, and so I will not be considering it for the Long Form category (including the last episode, which would qualify under Long Form on its own due to being 128 MINUTES LONG 🙄). It’s turned out to be one of those things where, while I enjoyed it a fair bit in the moment, the longer I think about it the more my feelings about it seem to change, and the ending has left me a bit… conflicted, shall we say. But it did have some great episodes in the middle especially, so I will consider a couple of them in the Short Form category.

Long Form: Films

Sinners+

This was probably my favourite SFF film of last year. Not only is it atmospheric, fun, and lush with cross-border folkloric world-building (Hoodoo magic and Irish vampires?! yes please!), but the story touches so many themes that a regular popcorn movie won’t even veer towards, and it does so brilliantly.

All the many layers of the Black and POC experience in the South during the Prohibition era (and beyond) are crystallised in the character arc of each ensemble cast member, with some absolutely outstanding performances by Hailee Steinfeld (whose character Mary is biracial, and torn between safety and belonging), Michael B. Jordan (who plays identical twins Smoke and Stack so well he walked away with an Oscar for it), and Wunmi Mosaku in particular as Smoke’s wife Annie (she’s such an underrated performer, but I’m so glad to see her actually flex her acting skills after her appearance in Loki). We’re talking themes like the push and pull of religion and its role in both keeping communities together and also oppressing them, the safety of BIPOC in a white supremacist society, and even the immigrant experience… the truth is your average blockbuster would never—but this is Ryan Coogler, and he won’t sugar-coat things for a mainstream audience, instead telling a story only he could tell, filled with truth, complexity, and nuance, something I really wish more filmmakers would embrace nowadays.

The film’s protagonist, Sammie (Miles Caton) has a preternatural gift with music, and the plot revolves around a juke joint Smoke and Stack put together, and the connection that music can create across time and even culture—with a wonderful supernatural twist.

One of my favourite moments is when the villain Remmick (an immortal Irish vampire played by Jack O’Connell) turns up at their juke joint and cries with joy at the emotions Sammie’s music has brought him after years of numbness. He talks about his own experience of colonialism at the hands of the British Empire and the subsequent erasure of Irish culture through the centuries, which is a very real thing—but he’s also a predator who has been making his way through the land trying to trap people and turn them into vampires, chased away by indigenous people who could tell he was a monster before attacking a couple who are Klan members. It’s clear that he doesn’t want Sammie’s music in order to connect people, but to use it as a tool on his quest to propagate a vampire race, and that seemingly sweet moment of connection is exposed as the performative allyship that it is.

There are some phenomenal action sequences too, with the last third of the film keeping me on the edge of my IMAX seat4. Genuinely, this film was such a breath of fresh air: delightfully complex but also fun, in ways that cinema just doesn’t dare to be right now. I was sad they didn’t win all the awards they were up for, but perhaps we can give it a Hugo instead.

Frankenstein+

I have a full review of this here, but basically: the SFF-ness of this is lush, as expected from a Guillermo Del Toro movie, and for the most part it works well as an adaptation of the book. As I mention in my other post, it doesn’t quite reach the heights of the NT’s theatre adaptation, which I still consider the ultimate version of this story, but it does similar things with the characters as Penny Dreadful, which is my runner-up favourite, save for the very end, and it’s that ending that makes the whole thing fall short for me, unfortunately.

To quote myself:

Why do we sing sad songs, when we know their ending is unhappy? When our instinctual yearning for a happy ending is met with the inevitability of human flaws getting in the way, that emotional release we experience is what my ancestors called catharsis. As the audience we accept that because of who these characters are, they would always make these choices and lead the story to the same outcome, time and again, even though we’d like them to change, to choose better, so they can be happy in the end.

What makes Frankenstein compelling in any iteration is its core conflict: Victor’s refusal to acknowledge the Creature as human, despite the fact that the Creature is deeply human, as much as his creator would like to think otherwise. We are invited to empathise with the Creature’s plight, to see how he thinks and feels, how he desires things we all do: safety, friendship, love. Victor is incapable of recognising this, and so the two clash eternally. Such is the tragedy, and no matter what minor changes are made to it, the good adaptations always recognise the impasse between the two at the end. It’s what makes the story tick.

My ultimate issue with the way Del Toro chose to end his adaptation of Frankenstein is that it ultimately robs us of our deserved catharsis by artificially resolving the incontrovertible stalemate between the two leads, giving us a happy(ish) ending in which Victor, at death’s door, forgives the Creature for the violence and destruction he’s wrought, apologises for what he did to him, and urges him to live on, free of guilt, yet completely alone. The Creature then walks off into the Arctic sunrise, liberated from his vendetta yet devastated at losing his creator.

It’s a lovely thought in principle, a Del Toro-ism about accepting one’s nature and walking away from one’s painful past, and if it were an original story without baggage I’d be all for it—after all, The Shape of Water had similar, pro-monster themes of letting go of trying to fit into a world that won’t accept you anyway, and I ate that up voraciously. But here, in taking a tragedy that is so classic and ingrained, loading it with a bunch of new traumas and subplots, and then resolving it all with a little monologue, the ending robs the story of its true conclusion, fundamentally missing the point of the source text, and doing a disservice both to Victor and the Creature.

I still think it’s a strong contender in the category, and definitely one of my favourite SFF movies I saw last year, despite my issues with it. However, given all my favourite TV shows above, I think I might eschew giving this one of my ballot spots, but I won’t be disappointed to see it on the final ballot, should it make it through.

Thunderbolts*+

I loved this movie A LOT, you guys, and it made me very sad that it flopped at the box office. I don’t blame people for being fatigued with Marvel’s mediocre superhero slop, but they should have given this movie a chance at the very least, because it might not have been the movie we wanted, but it was definitely the movie we needed right now.

I was very surprised with how deep it went into the trauma our various superheroes and anti-heroes have sustained through their previous adventures, and the level of empathy with which it treated them all:

• Yelena Belova, the last surviving Black Widow5, starts off depressed and morose, aimless, dissatisfied with running around and blowing things up for people with nothing to show for it except a path of destruction.
• Her and Natasha Romanoff’s father figure, Alexei Shostakov, is facing the music that his “Red Star” superhero persona is nothing but a figment of a bygone era, and is living a meagre life as a limo driver while reminiscing about his glory days.
• John Walker, the temporary Captain America replacement later dubbed “U.S. Agent”, is dealing with guilt after slaughtering innocent bystanders using Cap’s vibranium shield during the events of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, all while struggling through early parenthood.
• The Winter Soldier—Bucky Barnes—is running for office, in an attempt to turn his newfound and shaky inner peace into something productive. Yet, something keeps niggling at him about the power vacuum left in the wake of the Avengers disappearing, and he can’t help but get involved in ways political candidates really shouldn’t. See: taking a huge machine gun and riding a motorbike out to the desert to find out who is behind these shenanigans. Tut tut, Mr Congressman.
• Oh, there’s also Ava Star/Ghost from Ant-Man and the Wasp, probably my least favourite Marvel movie to date, whom I completely forgot about before watching this movie and while writing this review. Oops! Her thing is that she is constantly phasing in and out of a solid existence, and she has to keep shouting about how traumatised she is with no need for subtext because they know we’ve all forgotten about her and need to be reminded of her struggles. Normally I’d be mad at that, but they are not wrong this time 😅

And then, there’s Bob.

Bob is a new guy, recruited to be experimented on in hopes of becoming a superhero. He seems normal, average even, and he reluctantly joins our motley crew as they escape from a trap set by their employer—but under the surface he carries a deep wound, a gash that opens up to swallow him whole and turns him into The Void, his mysterious alter ego who awakens when Bob’s absolutely OTT superpowers kick in. The rest, as they say, is plot.

There’s a lot of (predictably dark) humour in this, and I was surprised with how much I liked these characters once they were given enough room to be protagonists, rather than minor antagonists in someone else’s story. While they haphazardly join forces into a makeshift team, their trauma is taken seriously, coalescing into the film’s climactic battle that pits the reluctant heroes against The Void, who weaponises each of their subconscious against them. The Void is Depression, by any other name—it’s the dark voice inside that tells each of our anti-heroes that they are worthless, unlovable, guilty, and alone. In order to beat him they have to reach out with empathy to themselves first and then to each other, and literally hold each other in a tight embrace as a reminder that they are not alone. What wins the day is friendship, empathy, and love, not unlike the last season of My Hero Academia, which I also loved last year, or Superman, which I’m about to get into below.

I cried BUCKETS while watching Thunderbolts* in the UK’s largest IMAX screen alongside my Bucky Barnes-obsessed friend, who has since made this film her entire personality (affectionate), and honestly, I’ve also been thinking about it ever since. Again, it’s a delightful little irony that the megalithic Disney/MCU would come out with a narrative so introspective and empathetic, especially at a time that loneliness and isolation is rampant among the film’s core audience of young men. I really hope that watching this film inspired people to reach out and be less alone in their struggles, and that the financial hit Disney took with it won’t keep us from seeing more of these characters in the future.

Also! A fun fact I noticed while listening to the soundtrack was that the film’s main theme is a reversed version of the main Avengers theme; just listen to the first few seconds of both themes and you’ll hear it:

https://youtu.be/inP7DDlxsDY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-Jzgp1jNiQ

Superman+

A good Superman movie?? In this economy?? Hallelujah!

I love a lot about what this film does with the core Superman premise. It gets Clark right, down to his farm boy roots and dorky kindness. It gets Superman right: his power isn’t unbeatable, and it isn’t even the most powerful thing about him (spoiler: it’s the dorky kindness). It gets Lex Luthor right—especially for our times—by having him be a smart but petty tech billionaire with an overinflated ego, someone who funds an invasion and even starts a pocket dimension on a whim, without once thinking of the consequences. It even gets Jimmy Olsen right simply by bringing him out of the margins where he’s been relegated for the last several Superman adaptations—and it’s actually really funny that he’s the one guy with the most game in this film, and that that’s how he gets to help out.

The structure of the film is an absolute delight, too. From the very start, we are thrown into the midst of a losing fight for Superman, which is a bold choice, as is having Clark’s relationship with Lois Lane already set up (and she even knows about him being Superman!). We don’t spend any time whatsoever on origin stories, budding relationship exploration, or long-winded exposition—we simply hit the ground running, and find out the particulars as we go along. It is assumed we know who Superman is, because… we all know who Superman is. And the themes around identity, responsibility, community, and how we should treat each other are laid bare without pretence, very directly speaking to the audience about contemporary problems we’re all facing day to day. It’s a genuine breath of fresh air not to be treated like an idiot, frankly.

There are a couple of things I don’t like about it though. For one, the film feels very busy, with so many characters and subplots and easter eggs thrown in, that if you blink you’ll definitely miss something. Relatedly, not all of those characters or subplots are treated equally, because there simply isn’t enough screen time to go around for everything. So the Justice Friends get the short shrift, as do Papa and Mama Kent, as does Krypton6, so that we can focus on the personal and political stakes that Clark/Superman has to overcome.

This is another superhero story with empathy at its heart, where the answer to even the most cosmic problems is… just be kind. Kindness is punk rock. As one of my favourite YouTube video essayists put it, this Superman is the American hero we desperately need right now. Someone who will stand up for what’s right even when the rest of the world tells him not to, someone with an unshakeable moral compass that only points to goodness. Watch that whole video actually, Dove does such a fantastic job analysing the cultural geography that plays into this film, and how it all ties together to bring us this ray of f*cking sunshine:

All this to say, I love that James Gunn can make a superhero movie that aims to appeal broadly but doesn’t feel like it panders to the lowest available denominator, and that he had the guts to (a) make the story feel relevant to our current times, what with all the invasions/”wars” going on right now that are purely happening for profit and that no one is doing anything to stop 🙄, and (b) leave us with a message of hope, that we can imagine a kinder world and that we can be the instruments of making that vision a reality. That kindness can be punk rock.

Dare I say, this was the movie that made me go, “huh, maybe the genre isn’t dead yet”, which… please, let it not be dead, I really like superheroes!

Honourable mentions/near misses+

• Mickey 17: I enjoyed this a lot, particularly for its world-building and Robert Pattinson’s performance. Unfortunately I think the Bong Joon-Ho-ness of it all kind of undercuts the story in favour of very on-the-nose political commentary, which was fun in the moment but in retrospect kinda leaves me a bit… “meh!”, probably because the current climate is so much worse than when this movie was made, and making fun of things/people just isn’t enough right now. So I don’t think this will be getting one of my spots, but it’s still totally worth seeing, if you haven’t!
• Fantastic Four – First Steps: I also enjoyed this a lot, especially in light of B-Mask’s excellent Fantastic Four video from a few years back which explained the classic comics and got me up to speed on the characters. It’s an honest-to-God decent, good Marvel movie, which as I keep saying is a rare sight these days, but that being said… I liked the stuff I talked about up top way more than this one, not to mention the TV seasons, so I just think it gets edged out by the competition.
• Hamnet: Technically an SFF movie! The trailer had me weeping, but the movie left me cold somehow, perhaps because it’s a little too obvious in its attempts to make people cry (Mark Kermode said it best! The bit with the song at the very end irked me too because I recognised it, and the moment was actually completely ruined for me.) It does have some wonderful and atmospheric visuals where it comes to the speculative aspect of it, and the soundtrack by Max Richter is predictably phenomenal (if only they’d used his original song for the climactic ending of the film!!), but it just didn’t move me in the ways I thought it would, so it’s a miss.

The “I haven’t seen these yet” caveat+

• K-Pop Demon Hunters: Yes, I know, somehow, I still haven’t seen this movie. I’m assuming it’ll get nominated to high heaven, so I’ll watch it ahead of voting, I promise.
• Weapons: I’ve heard fantastic things about this, and my husband is a big WKUK fan, so I might be watching this soon and revising my thoughts.
• Wicked: For Good: I liked the first film well enough, and I hear that a LOT happens in the second half of the musical, so I’m tentatively putting this on a hold list until I watch it. I don’t know if it would edge out any of my favourites, realistically speaking, but I suppose there is always room for surprises!

Long Form: Non-Film/TV

B-Mask’s “The REAL Thunderbolts Story: Marvel’s Greatest Scam“*

This is a 2.5 hour love letter to comics, and the first in a five-part series that tells the story of the real Thunderbolts from the comic books (a team that bears very little resemblance to the one portrayed in the recent MCU film discussed above). It features complex animations drawing from the original comic book art, as well as a full cast of voice actors bringing the characters to life with their performances.

* I’m personally torn on whether this would qualify for BDP-LF or BRW (seeing as it is technically a fanwork, and not an original work), but either way it is nothing short of a masterpiece—I wrote more about it in my 2025 underrated Hugo picks post, if you’re interested.

Short Form: TV Episodes

A caveat: my reasoning around nominating a particular episode is kind of like nominating my favourite chapter of a novel. Especially with how a lot of the prestige TV shows are made nowadays, individual episodes function as chapters in a longer story, so they have to be considered in the context of the wider narrative they’re a part of. If they are from a second, third, or even last season of a long-running show, even more so.

Also—and this might be a slightly spicy take—I personally don’t like that a lot of Hugo voters seem to only watch the individual episodes on the eventual shortlist without any context, and then complain that they didn’t get what was going on. That’s because context matters, and while I understand that it would take a lot of time to watch an entire season (or even several!) to be able to appreciate a single episode… if you want your vote to be informed, that’s the job, innit?

This has happened several times to me, where there’s an episode on the shortlist from a show I don’t watch (and have no intention of watching—sorry Lower Decks), so I just skip it and don’t put it in my ballot at the end, or rank it below my own favourites. I do the same with sequels to books I haven’t read, out of respect for the work itself as well as its author, but that’s just me I guess! 🤷🏻‍♀️

Anyway, here are some thoughts about my favourite episodes of speculative TV from this year, under spoiler tags for obvious reasons.

Two episodes from Stranger Things, Season 5+

‘Chapter Four: Sorcerer’

I loved, loved, loved this episode. The moment Will uses his new power… it gave me goosebumps, it was so good—and the fight sequence in front of the gate to the Upside Down is incredible. Rather than the writing, though, I want to praise the actors’ performances and the work of the crew who worked on the practical effects, stunts, and complicated cinematography in this episode. Especially given more recent revelations about how the Duffers went into production with season 5 without having ironed out the ending, and the stress that added to the poor production crew, I think any flowers should really be going to them for making such an outstanding piece of TV despite the challenges.

‘Chapter Six: Escape from Camazotz’

Yes, the scene in this photo feels a little ludicrously long considering they’re both on the run and about to be caught by the Big Bad, but I loved the heart of this relationship and the character development for both Holly and Max in this episode. I had also seen the Stranger Things play in London a couple of years back, and this episode eliminated the issues I had with the world-building in that, which at first had seemed to contradict the revelations in season 4 about Vecna/Henry Creel’s agency as a villain and his role in shaping the Upside Down… I was glad to see that in fact all the loose threads from the various seasons did connect, and that the strands from the play were relevant too.

Various episodes from Severance, Season 2+

S2E4: ‘Woe’s Hollow’

I mentioned this episode in my discussion of the series earlier, but let me get into it here: this is one of the best episodes of TV ever made, period, and I will fight you on this. I don’t know if it would stand alone in any capacity, considering the weird tone is already a lot to deal with and there’s a lot of plot and character interaction that picks up from where the last season left off, not to mention a big-time betrayal that ends up echoing through the rest of season 2.

I spent a good chunk of the beginning wondering if this was a simulator or a dream sequence because it didn’t fully make sense for our protagonists to be outside the Lumon offices, and the uncanny doppelgangers guiding them through the forest seemed almost dreamlike, but the reality was much more sinister in the end, which tracks. If there’s a single episode from this show I’d nominate, it’d be this one.

S2E8: ‘Sweet Vitriol’

People hate this episode because it’s slow and follows an unlikeable antagonist whom we are invited to empathise with, and that’s precisely the reason I like it. First of all, we get way more insight into the Lumon cult corporation from Harmony Cobel, who ostensibly grew up in the cult and has invested her whole life into the company’s welfare. This is also where we begin to see cracks form in her resolve as an antagonist, as she has realised that the company sees her as an expendable cog despite her lifelong investment and dedication, and so she decides to fight them, to prove that this little cog is actually so important, it might well bring the whole house down.

It’s interesting also for thematic reasons, outside of the show’s world. On an individual level, the image of someone who grew up in poverty while idolising a particular company, then making their entire life revolve around it so as to gain favour and socioeconomic mobility, gaining that and then losing it when the company no longer sees them as valuable, is unfortunately too relatable. So is seeing a small town that once had its own industry and community be taken over by a mega corporation and become completely dependent on it, eventually falling into destitution once the corporation pulls their activities out of the town. The actual commentary here is silent, but extremely powerful.

I don’t think Cobel’s about-turn is enough to fully make her an anti-hero, but I really enjoyed this episode for all the insight it gave us both into her and the world of Severance outside of Lumon HQ.

S2E10: ‘Cold Harbor’

There is a strong argument to be made that the season two finale is absolutely worth a nomination as well, making this a really tough choice. Two seasons’ worth of mystery solving and internal corporate espionage culminate in this one-hour episode where our protagonists clash with one another and with the antagonists, and it’s just adrenaline all the way down.

While the big questions have been answered (where is Mark’s wife? what is Cold Harbor? what are they doing with all those sheep?), so many more remain. Is there a way to save the innies at all, if Lumon ends up falling? Can Mark S. and Helly R. ever hope to have a life outside these walls? And what happens to Gemma now that she’s out, even though she has 24 distinct, hand-crafted personalities inside her?

There’s actually a great take I hadn’t come across before I sat down to write this, and that is that the finale actually inverts the Orpheus & Eurydice narrative of Mark and Gemma, by having Mark’s innie actually choose to stay behind in Lumon so he can be with Helly. It’s less of a lack of faith and more of a conscious decision, which perhaps makes it even more tragic as Gemma watches her husband (sort of) run toward danger and another woman, leaving her alone at the exit, screaming for him to come back.

Having written about the other episodes already, I do think ep4 is a stronger contender purely from a craft/vibes standpoint, whereas the finale is more typical in many ways, as it focuses on exposition and plot and is faster paced. YMMV here, for sure, but I’m inclined to pick ep4 over this one, now that I think about it.

Two episodes from Pluribus, Season 1+

Episode 1: “We is Us”

It’s not often that a TV pilot stands on its own two feet well. It’s even less common for the film-making to be so good that one must gasp in awe at the choreography, cinematography, and editing, multiple times throughout the course of the episode. One of my biggest peeves is when a TV pilot is so mired in exposition that there is no room for characters or atmosphere until the next episode because they simply have to give you the setup quickly—it ends up feeling flat and boring and frankly, it puts me off more than it entices me to keep watching until it gets better.7

Well, this episode does none of that.

Gilligan’s forte is silent scenes that actually speak volumes. There is so much storytelling in this episode that has no words; we watch an intergalactic viral hive mind sequence take over the Earth in perfectly synchronised movement, and the storytelling is in the silence, the perfect unison, and the eerie smiles as the hive mind consciousness flattens the individuals inside. A lesser writer would put exposition in dialogue, possibly giving too much information for where we are in the story, but Gilligan knows that less is more. We get just enough to hook us in, and the rest is pure atmosphere and of course, character.

Carol is introduced as a grumpy romantasy author, a lesbian in a loving relationship who constantly finds reasons to be miserable, much to her partner’s chagrin. When the hive mind sequence is spread via planes in the air, Carol loses her partner, and simultaneously the world. The panic that ensues is completely understandable, and it gets worse at every turn as she is met with more and more hive mind people, but no one else like her. What a place for a pilot to leave us in! Aren’t you hooked just by reading this?? GO WATCH THIS SHOW!

Episode 7: “The Gap”

The title refers to a real place that Manousos (pictured) has to cross, but also I suppose to the gap between Carol and others at this point in the show. This is another masterfully crafted episode with a dual narrative point of view, where Carol continues her life in Albuquerque while Manousos is making his slow way up through South and Central America towards Carol, crossing cities, climbing mountains, and trudging through thick, treacherous jungles, all while refusing the hive mind’s help at every opportunity.

At first, it’s admirable; he won’t even take gas without paying for it somehow, even though everything he comes across is at his disposal. Soon enough, however, his steadfastness turns into stubbornness that does more harm to him than good. When he gets seriously injured in the jungle (something that was completely preventable, had he accepted the hive mind’s help and transited through safer means),

Meanwhile, Carol stoically endures complete and total isolation for a long time as a result of the hive mind evacuating the whole metro area of Albuquerque, which happened when Carol hurt one of them (and by extension, all of them) quite badly while trying to find answers. She is given resources and sustenance remotely, and for a while enjoys her peaceful environment, going around town and doing whatever she feels like… until she finally cracks under the pressure of extreme loneliness, and asks the hive mind to come back.

It’s an incredibly powerful moment actually, seeing someone as stubborn sturdy as Carol finally admit that she can’t live her whole life completely cut off from other people, even though she hates the hive mind on principle, and can’t wrap her mind around accepting this status quo. In fairness, she makes it to about a month and a half, which is pretty long, but her isolation was also so complete that there were zero people around her for that whole time—an unfathomable experience that’s so well depicted on screen. I personally love the rooftop golf scene as an example of how utterly devoid of people the landscape is, a mundane sort of post-apocalyptic image.

This is probably my favourite episode in season 1, and even think it could be presented without context and still mostly work alright for new viewers… Though I’d still hope that people would watch the whole season anyway. If I had to pick one episode to represent the series as a whole, I’d say it’s this one.

Short Form: Non-TV

‘Songs No One Will Hear’ by Arjen Lucassen (music album)

I wrote a fair amount about this pre-apocalyptic concept album in my underrated Hugo recommendations post; here’s a snippet:

The result is an album that grapples with the essence of the human condition (something Lucassen is very adept at), asking what makes life worth living from the perspectives of a bunch of different characters as they try to come to terms with the impending end of the world—including those who think it’s all a hoax, those who embrace it, and those who rage against the dying of the light. It straddles a weird and fun line between diegetic/in-world music that’s on the radio and telling the story as a sung-through musical, which is a little different than what you might expect, particularly for a progressive rock album. But that’s the Arjen Lucassen guarantee: big questions, big emotions, and a sound that isn’t afraid to change dramatically when necessary, even mid-song. Full of theatricality, Songs No One Will Hear is in some ways very similar to Lucassen’s Ayreon albums, but retains its own identity both musically and thematically.

We’ve been known to nominate SFF music albums when they arise, and on occasion those musicians have even responded to being recognised by fandom—seeing Clipping live in Helsinki was fun!—so this wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility, though perhaps it is a bit of a left field suggestion for most Hugo voters as a progressive rock concept album.

While he’s extremely popular in his own niche, most of Lucassen’s fans aren’t in SF fandom and vice versa, something that I would love to help shift by talking about his work more to Hugo voters and talking to Ayreon/Lucassen fans more about joining our community and coming to Worldcon, especially as the next few years are looking quite international. Lucassen’s very obvious Golden Age influences are bound to have pointed many of his fans to the genre, so the bridge is already half-built.

I’m sure that I’ll be one of very few people longlisting this album, but 🤷🏻‍♀️! I really think If you see just a single, solitary vote for it in the full data, know that it was me!

Footnotes

Arjen Anthony Lucassen’s Star One en Dino Jelusick – The Year Of ’41

Every year has been shitty for a while, and in some ways, 2025 was the shittiest of them all. The widespread sense that the End Is Nigh is what I would charitably call our zeitgeist.1 And I feel comfortable saying, it’s a shitty zeitgeist. But in defiance of the shit burger we’re all eating every day while we wait for the AI drone war to start, 2025 was my best year in a while. It did, in fact, see me more involved on the front and back ends of AngryMetalGuy.com than I’d been in a long time. And like those lists we’ve already published, AMG, both as a persona and community, has been a refuge for me during difficult times. The joy of discovery and the eclecticism inherent in what we do here have been a major part of why I love this blog. So, honestly, that’s been nice.

In terms of the blog’s health, AngryMetalGuy.com is holding steady. We’ve got a growing team of n00bs covering some of the holes we’ve had in the schedule.2 I worked very hard on training them in combination with Druhm, and it’s fair to say we were both happy with the result. We had some of our best candidates to date, and that made me proud and happy. There’s still room for a few more, so we might dig into the pool in the early part of 2026. So if you applied, all hope is not lost. We continue to attract around 1.25 million views a month, and that’s held steady for three years running. Obviously, we would like to continue to grow. But I have a sneaking suspicion that we’re actually seeing a slight downturn in visitors because of Generative AI. There are, of course, a lot of people who go to Google and write “My Favorite Band – New Album Review,” and they will be greeted by an AngryMetalGuy.com link that tends to place pretty highly on the Google Machine and awaits their complaints with open arms. But I suspect there are other kinds of views we’ve accrued – those which end up in people grabbing album art or looking for release dates – that disappear when people are requesting that ChatGPT do that for them. And while LLMs will link you after plagiarizing you, they’ll only do it if you let them, and we do not. And so any conversions of people checking linked resources are probably lost.3 There have been some weird months here and there with seemingly anomalously low numbers, so who even knows.

The active n00bs have allowed us to revive the three-posts-a-day pace,4 and we only went dark for five days during 2025. As a collective, we posted 699 posts—down from the very peak of 2019’s nearly 1,000 posts!—but in line with where we’ve been since Covid. And, our posts continue to be longer than they were in 2019, averaging 901 words for a total of 629,905 words that we produced for free in 2025. That’s a 2600-page term paper—Times New Roman, 12 point font, double-spaced on A4 paper.5 This dedication to quantity derives from the whip of an analytics-driven Steel Druhm, but wouldn’t be possible without our amazing staff putting their shoulders to the Eternal Boulder ov Metal™ and rolling it uphill every day, saying “One must imagine Sisyphus happy. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

We continue to have international appeal, as well, though the country rankings haven’t changed much from 2024. Like last year, our top five is made up of the English-speaking world (US, UK, CAN, AUS at five) + Germany (at four).6 Weirdly, we are getting a sizable amount of traffic from China, which clocks in at six for the first time. There are almost certainly shenanigans at play with those numbers, as I am not aware of any influx of Chinese fans here recently. Maybe that’s AI traffic. Maybe that’s VPN traffic. Maybe we’ve been infiltrated and are now a communist honey pot. Maybe Druhm is buying traffic. Or, maybe, Winnie the Pooh has finally discovered how excellent the realm of heavy metal really is, and China is going through a different kind of cultural revolution! Regardless, 7-10 is made up of the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, and France, with Spain and Finland dropping out of the top ten. The biggest news, however, when it comes to our international readership, is that signs point strongly to Pope Francis having been our solitary reader in the Holy See. The venerable Franciscan passed away in April of 2025, and I don’t believe it’s a coincidence that no one appears to have made the pilgrimage from the Vatican to Angry Metal Guy this year.

It’s worth noting that we lost more than a few stalwarts along the way in 2025,7 largely due to the #Cursed-Boomer-Posting chat on Slack, which has torn us apart. There may also have been some other influences, such as marriages, having high-paying jobs, running TV shows, having actual lives, or resenting me.8 Regardless, for all those who have worked hard to make AngryMetalGuy.com go, but who are not here with us anymore, I just want to say thank you. Despite my autistic isolation and standoffishness, I do love you all and miss you. The door is, of course, always open. And I am happy to see some special little guys who’ve been in deep freeze popping their heads out of the sand and grabbing promo. It’s a wonderful sight to behold, and maybe we’ll see some newfound productivity from old friends in 2026.

To close, I want to thank everyone – readers and writers alike – for your enthusiasm, your dedication to AngryMetalGuy.com as an institution, and your undying fealty to me, Angry Metal Guy.9 I know I can come off as harsh. And I know that some people grumble that I’m too hard on them when I read their texts or when they have divergent opinions in the comments, but that’s only true if you’ve never met a passive construction you didn’t love or if you’re wrong about metal. And, as I tell my students, we’re a team. Our goal is to make sure that AMG produces the very highest quality writing, while covering as much of the scene as possible.10 And given the loyalty of our readers, your comments, and “the eye test,” as it were, we are achieving that goal consistently. I’m still very proud of that and, if I stop to think about it, humbled by it, too.

While it feels like there’s a lot to dread after the 2025 that was, we still have a lot to be excited about here. So let’s hope that 2026 isn’t all like it’s felt in the first five days or so. Anyway, I have gone on far too long, have a wordy, overwrought list.

#(ish) 3: Helms Deep // Chasing the Dragon [June 20th, 2025 | Nameless Grave Records | Bandcamp] — Chasing the Dragon is super fun. It’s fun, it’s loud, and it’s a little stupid in a way that I find endearing. And, as I remarked in June, while US Power Metal has been getting a lot of love around these parts, Helms Deep has not been on the receiving end of nearly enough of that love. While other bands showed up to a back alley knife fight, these Florida men showed up with a bejet-packed dragon and a collection of songs that burned hotter than dragonsfire, melting the competition down and shaming their lineages for decades to come. And joking hyperbole aside, Helms Deep doesn’t feel like a novelty act. They aren’t just good ’cause I find them funny. Chasing the Dragon features playing that’s sharp and vital across the board, with guitars that never stand still, a singer who sells every chorus with the right balance of chops, cheese, and buckets of swagger. Said differently, Helms Deep is just dudes playing good, honest heavy metal while having a great time. What more do you need?

#(ish) 2: Vittra // Intense Indifference [September 19th, 2025 | Self-release | Bandcamp] — Vittra’s Intense Indifference shows up hungry, plays fast, hits hard, and gets out before you have time to get bored. Thirty-three minutes of riff-first, bethrashened melodeath go by in a blur; the hooks are sticky, the harmonies are sharp, and the energy is manic and adventurous. While the At the Gates lineage is obvious,11 Vittra pulls in enough Soilwork polish and Mors Principium Est flash to songwriting that’s focused on momentum rather than atmosphere, and the result is addictive. And what really pushes this record from really good to great are the flashes of the unexpected: honkytonk piano, bluesy acoustic passages, and classic rock phrasing that shouldn’t work, but does. It’s great listening to an album this full of piss and vinegar. I get excited when bands pop up that make the kind of thrashy, intense melodic death that never begs for an Insomnium comp. And sure, these guys have room to grow, but Intense Indifference caused me to feel anything but.

#(ish) 1: Arjen Anthony Lucassen // Songs No One Will Hear [September 12th, 2025 | InsideOut Music | Bandcamp] — Arjen Lucassen has been a favorite of mine during the time that AngryMetalGuy.com has been up and running. The “poofy-haired cheesehead”12 behind many of my favorite albums during AMG’s time is still a gem even in 2025. Crazily, Arjen’s first ‘solo record’ Lost in the New Real was released in 2012,13 and Songs No One Will Hear is its direct successor. A true concept record—with Toehider’s god-tier singer, Michael Mills, voicing a radio DJ talking to listeners about impending doom—it reflects both our End Is Nigh Zeitgeist and Arjen’s particular… idiom. Thoroughly enjoyable from start to finish, Songs No One Will Hear is both tongue-in-cheek and yet deeply aware of the nature of information, grifting, and societal collapse, while still displaying the kind of referential goofiness that made Lost in the New Real such a charming record.14 The thing that dinged Songs No One Will Hear a little for me is the sense of uncanny familiarity. At times, it sounds like Arjen was working specifically to emulate the structure of Lost in the New Real. That created a bit of cognitive dissonance that I have never quite gotten over. It also drove a lot of replays of its under-the-radar predecessor rather than the album I should have been reviewing. But is Songs one of the best 11 records o’ 2025? I certainly think so.

#10: An Abstract Illusion // The Sleeping City [October 17th, 2025 | Willowtip | Bandcamp] — The Sleeping City had two strikes against it. First, it had the unenviable task of following Woe, a record that could easily have been the template on which they built their sound. It’s hard to break away from an overwhelmingly popular sound, yet these Ore Islanders took a left turn, exhibiting a level of daring I admire. The shift in aesthetic is the story of The Sleeping City in a lot of ways; the synths, the vibe, and the mood lean into dystopian sci-fi, and it’s a choice that works. What I love about The Sleeping City is that it’s detailed and detail-oriented without distracting from the expansiveness of the songwriting, which remains evocative and carefully structured. And while they sound comfortable letting songs breathe, they never get lost in the quest for “atmosphere” that undermines many modern releases. Second,15 the real gripe about The Sleeping City was the mastering job. But even a mastering job that clips peaks and fills valleys shows just how strong the raw material is. And so, finally, The Sleeping City feels like the product of a band choosing growth over safety while being true to themselves. And that’s an admirable trait that I hope they never lose.

#9: Fallujah // Xenotaph [June 13th, 2025 | Nuclear Blast Records | Bandcamp] — Fallujah landing on my list came as a genuine surprise to me, mostly because I really had quietly written them off. I used to like them, but they never carried that In Flames-style of eternal hope for me. Xenotaph pulled me back in by doing a deceptively simple thing: reintroducing attack. Everything about this record feels more immediate; guitars cut, compositions move with purpose, and songs are taut and sharp. The atmospheric elements remain, but they’re now integrated into something heavier and more immediate. I love the balance Fallujah finds, combining that late-Cynic energy with the aggression of brutal and technical death. And the deeper I got, the more Xenotaph rewarded me. Repetition revealed interlinked ideas and layered guitar work that shoots like a web throughout, creating a sinuous structure on which everything rests. As I wrote in my Record o’ the Month blurb, “Fallujah has achieved a conceptual evolution on Xenotaph that feels true to their origins and yet develops their sound in ways that make it accessible, and yet, truly unique.” It isn’t exactly br00tal death metal, but it’s not so drenched in “atmosphere” that it lacks tension. Most importantly, it worked.

#8: Scardust // Souls [July 18th, 2025 | Frontiers Records | Stream or Buy at Qobuz] — Scardust landing at number eight sans review is another casualty of my 2025 Stack o’ Shame, though this was less neglect than simple overextension in a year where too many heavy hitters landed at once. July, yo, what a month. Unfortunately, I missed the review window, then I missed the window to pawn it off responsibly, and by the time I circled back, it was late. However, Scardust’s third full-length is a sharp, confident 42 minutes of symphonic power/prog that feels fully aware and unique. While it doesn’t quite lock together as tightly as Strangers did at a conceptual and compositional level, Souls more than compensates for that with sheer craft. The orchestral and choral arrangements are some of the strongest I heard all year, and Scardust’s chemistry is ridonkulous. The rhythm section especially deserves accolades, with basswork that should be forcing its way into “best of” conversations. As a band, Scardust exists in the interstices of genre, where comparisons kind of work but can’t capture their unique voice. And while the band is impressive, the compositions feel so coherent because of Noa Gruman, who carries the album with control, range, and an incomparable soprano. Her extreme register (that is, growls) stays mostly holstered here, but her presence—and sheer talent—is on constant display, balancing different styles, moods, and feels. And her vocal performance isn’t the only standout vocal performance on Souls. The closing “Touch of Life” trilogy finds Ross Jennings (Haken) popping up in full “weird Ross” mode, which ends up as the cherry on top. The result is smart, muscular, and memorable; an album I’m ashamed to have missed.

#7: Aephanemer // Utopie [October 31st, 2025 | Napalm Records | Bandcamp] — Aephanemer’s Utopie landed, as I mentioned in my Record o’ the Month blurb, squarely at the top of my Stack o’ Shame. I was honored to be able to get access to this and start listening early, and I was immediately impressed. Yet, I got sick. Darkness took me, and I strayed out of thought and time, and stars wheeled overhead, and every day was as long as the life age of the earth. Meanwhile, Utopie sat there reminding me of my failures until Grin Reaper saved my ass and gave Aephanemer’s newest opus the unhinged tongue bath it so rightfully deserved. Utopie takes everything these French melodic death metallers have been doing over the past couple of albums and tightens the screws until the whole machine purrs with confidence. The neoclassical elements have become a perfect blend that helps everything work perfectly. Utopie flows; songs connect, ideas develop, momentum carries everything forward, and yet Aephanemer does not sacrifice the immediacy and energy that makes melodic death metal such a fine dopamine mine. While I haven’t sat down and learned the parts, I feel like the guitars are more fluid and more expressive, resulting in special melodies propelled by a buoyancy reflected in the theme. And you know me, what I want from great records is a holistic sense of greatness. Happily, Aephanemer accomplishes just that on Utopie. Had I been operating at full capacity when it dropped, I would have written a review that kids would call “extra.”16

#6: Insania // The Great Apocalypse [June 13th, 2025 | Frontiers Music | Stream or Buy on Qobuz] — The Great Apocalypse, contrary to its name, is sneaky. It doesn’t gallop in and smack you in the face with shock or novelty, but instead, it reveals its strength through confidence, craft, and an almost unfair level of replay value. What initially feels like—and has been so often written off as—a solid, familiar Europower record gradually opens up to be something richer and more rewarding. And it’s kept paying dividends the longer I’ve been sitting with it. Insania sounds, as I noted when I wrote the review, like a band fully aware of their lineage and completely at ease with it. But the truly confident understand themselves enough to think differently. The resulting record is full of massive, sticky hooks, choruses that hit with power metal optimism and momentum, and electrifying guitars throughout. In fact, while investigating their discography, I was struck by how much Insania upped their game on The Great Apocalypse. And key to that is the guitar, which elevates the record by resisting predictability and yet coexisting on a meta-level with the genre that they know so well. Songs evolve instead of looping, melodies get reshaped rather than repeated, and familiar ideas or tropes are nudged just enough off-center to stay engaging but familiar. The Great Apocalypse approaches with intention, and Insania performs like a band that’s rediscovering why they love playing this kind of music in the first place. This record is exhilarating, memorable, and deeply satisfying, which is why it belongs among these other great releases.

#5: Kalaveraztekah // Nikan Axkan [May 2nd, 2025 | Self-release | Bandcamp] — In what I’m pretty sure is a first for me, an Ünsïgnëd Bänd Rödëö contestant has made my Top Ten(ish) list. I’ve had plenty of unsigned bands on my lists, but I walked into Kalaveraztekah’s masterful Nikan Axkan utterly unprepared for what I would find. Like a kid buying music in the ’90s, I just looked at that amazing cover art and decided that I was going to join the team reviewing this record instead of the other one. And that twist of fate has earned Mexico’s finest Aztec-themed death metal band a spot on the End o’ Year Metal List o’ Record™.17 As I cleverly wrote in my Record o’ the Month blurb: “There’s no sense that these Hidrocálidos are some kind of novelty act. They aren’t a Mexican Eluveitie, just playing Dark Tranquillity riffs while putting a Ritual Death Flute over it for 40 seconds in every song.”18 Rather, Nikan Axkan is chock full of muscular riffing and the kind of grindy death metal that I’ve always associated with the Mexican scene. Combined with a high-concept connecting to Mexican pre-history and the judicious use of a fucking death flute, I just never quit listening to Nikan Axkan.19 And so here they are, in the Top 5 of my Top 10(ish) of 2025,20 and it couldn’t be more deserved.

#4: Impureza // Alcázares [July 11th, 2025 | Season of Mist | Bandcamp] — I admit, I have tried to lead by example. I have attempted to become a servant leader. Rather than eating up a ton of oxygen and making everything actually about me (instead of just in jest) and what I want as Angry Metal Guy, I have, with time and wisdom, tried to allow others a chance to spread their wings. One of the things that means is that I can’t just bogart other writers’ “discoveries,” and I try not to block them if they grab something before I do.21 So, in that context, you’ll understand that I got pretty excited when I realized that I could review the newest Impureza without poaching it. The band’s approach to metal—infused with flamenco and semi-fantastical alternate-historical high concepts about colonial history—had entranced me previously, but I always felt like they were leaving a lot on the table. Their sound had not quite blended the flamenco and the metal, but rather, the genres sat side by side. Alcázares changes that. From start to finish, Alcázares is addictive, creative, musically impressive, and just a lot of fun. The artful ability of these Orléanais-via-España to marry such disparate styles with genuinely unique approaches to music that run as deeply as the very notion of meter is one of the most impressive feats accomplished in metal in 2025. But it’s not just a meta-concern of the artistic feat that excites me. Alcázares is a fucking banger that can stimulate your intellect, or that can leave your neck sore. Take your pick!22

#3: Phantom Spell // Heather & Hearth [July 18th, 2025 | Cruz del Sur Music | Bandcamp] — Phantom Spell has the benefit of being a genuine surprise. My happy place, when I can afford to be there, is digging through the promo bin and listening to everything I can get my hands on. I have made so many fantastic discoveries there, just immersed in my own little world, listening to samples to get a feel of what we’re being sent. Heather & Hearth looked like classic Steel Druhmcore: Cruz del Sur Records, retro metal, D&D Basic Set art. I popped it in, got dragged in, and totally distracted from the rest of what I was doing. I know that this might seem incongruent, but Heather & Hearth sounds fresh. In a world of hypercompressed, hyper-reamped, extremer-than-thou metal, the act of writing good songs with tons of vocal harmonies, instruments that sit in their sonic corridors, and—despite being recorded by one single dude—a convincingly live vibe feels “like a radical act.”23 I quickly grew to love Heather & Hearth, shared it with all the normies I know who love Ghost (“Isn’t this so much better?”), and began singing its praises. And I’ve been happy to see it popping up on lists throughout list season. It means a lot to me that people can hear just how good Phantom Spell is. And Phantom Spell also proved to be quite generative, in that I wrote the Spotify post as a response to a discussion about why Heather & Hearth wasn’t available there. Easily one of the best records I heard in 2025, and I’m looking forward to hearing so much more.

#2: In Mourning // The Immortal [August 29th, 2025 | Supreme Chaos Records | Bandcamp] — When a record is truly exceptional, the hardest part is often articulating why it has transcended other things without reducing it to a checklist. In Mourning’s fantastic The Immortal resists that kind of accounting in the best possible way. Its melodies are lush and emotionally evocative, capable of landing with equal force whether they’re carried by aching vocals or unfurled through long, expansive, yet intimate, trem-picked guitar passages. The riffing is punishing but disciplined, balancing weighty chug with sharper, blackened melodies, creating a constant tension between death metal heft and sadboi atmosphere without fully committing to drowning the production in reverb. And yet, none of this marks a radical departure from what In Mourning has done before—has been doing since 2008. The crucial difference here is in execution: every compositional choice seems to land exactly where it should be. In a sense, this calls attention to the role of probability, as much as inspiration or songcraft, in composition. Some records feel blessed from the outset, where one can go through the same process again and never produce the same results. The hooks here stick without feeling forced, climaxes are perfectly placed, and the pacing across the record gives each track room to breathe while contributing to the kind of flow reserved for only the best albums. Even moments that might feel familiar hit differently on The Immortal, like everything snaps into place. The Immortal succeeds, then, not just on craft but on feel: it feels heavier, sadder, and more resonant than its predecessors; and it stands comfortably among the strongest melodic death metal releases in years.

#1: Calva Louise // Edge of the Abyss [July 11th, 2025 | Mascot Records | Bandcamp] — Edge of the Abyss ran away with my listening this year in a way I genuinely don’t remember happening before, and that probably tells you most of what you need to know. The record is frantic, restless, and overloaded with ideas, moving between genres and feels with the speed of fast-cut editing; shifting at the drop of a dime. That both makes the record fun to listen to and keeps it surprising and fresh even after dozens of listens. The pace and density line up uncannily well with where my own brain tends to live, and I suspect that’s a part of why it lodged itself so firmly in my rotation. Calva Louise writes songs that feel driven by impulse and curiosity rather than caution or genre boundaries, and that creative energy and freedom are contagious. Jess Allanic’s pop instincts and melodic sense anchor the chaos, lending the lighter passages real emotional weight and memorability, rather than merely serving as connective tissue. Edge of the Abyss’s incorporation of Latin rhythmic elements and melodic sensibilities ended up also being a personal bonus; Latin music has been a refuge for me from musical monotony for years, and hearing them integrated naturally into Edge of the Abyss was exciting, and it generated affection for this wayward Venezuelan and her French and English bandmates. What really sealed the deal for me, though, was how committed the band sounds to its vision. The songwriting is ambitious and fun, but it doesn’t feel scattered. The album has a cinematic feel – complemented by literally cinematic music videos – but doesn’t feel bloated or melodramatic. And Calva Louise sports a swagger unique to bands who are just doing exactly what they want to be doing. Since July, I’ve kept coming back to Edge of the Abyss and forgetting I had even enjoyed other records this year. There’s a real sense of becoming here; of a band pulling its influences together into something that feels unique. And I also feel invested in Calva Louise in a way I haven’t been with many bands. I really am so happy to see them growing and succeeding. I love seeing them landing on people’s lists here and elsewhere. They have so much potential, and I am so eager to see what they do next. But should the worst befall them, I’ll always have Edge of the Abyss, and it already feels like an all-timer.

Honorable Mentions

Sarastus // Agony Eternal [July 1st, 2025 | Dominance of Darkness Records | Bandcamp] — Stolen from me by one Kenstrosity, Sarastus was a joyous discovery by me in the depths of the promo bin. One part black metal with a touch of death n’ roll for vibes, Agony Eternal strikes hard at modern conventions of black metal and sounds fresh by playing fast, unapologetic, engaging music with razor-sharp riffs. Melodic, without being sickly sweet or cheesy, with a ton of attack and great songwriting chops, Sarastus really threads the needle on Agony Eternal, making something that is driven and addictive, but undeniably black metal.

Wytch Hazel // V: Lamentations [July 4th, 2025 | Bad Omen | Bandcamp] — I’ve been back and forth with Wytch Hazel in the past. I have enjoyed what they do, but in the past I’ve been more skeptical of specifically nostalgiacore records that don’t feel like they’re adding much “new.” First, I think I’m just getting past that problem, as the “new” in metal is emphasizing things I don’t love about the scene. But second, I think V: Lamentations is just a more engaging record. From the word ‘go,’ Wytch Hazel writes with a kind of urgency that gives their brand of ’70s-tinged metal an extra kick, and the energy sits so well with me. Maybe the songwriting is just a bit tighter, maybe it’s faster, I don’t know—I didn’t write the proper review. All I know is that I keep circling back to Lamentations in a way that I haven’t done as much with their earlier albums. And that made it easy to put in the running for Listurnalia and to give my personal Angry Stamp o’ Approval™.

Mors Principium Est // Darkness Invisible [September 26th, 2025 | Perception/Reigning Phoenix Music | Stream or Buy on Qobuz] — Probably the grower of the year, Darkness Invisible surprised me by sticking around. When I started reviewing it, I expected not to like it much. I had been a big fan of the band’s previous output and of their former guitarist’s solo record from last year. But with familiarity—and time spent dissecting it—I became increasingly impressed with the album. While the production is busy and pulls it down, the writing forges a new path that better represents the vision of MPE’s founding member, Ville Viljanen. And that vision is bleak, blackened, and surprisingly sticky. No matter your opinion on the end of the previous incarnation, Darkness Invisible at least demonstrates that there is still a vital future for Finland’s most underrated melodic death metal powerhouse. And that’s a future to which I look forward.

Blackbraid // Blackbraid III [August 8th, 2025 | Self-release | Bandcamp] — I have a Gollumesque distaste for modern black metal. I am physically incapable of starting a review or blurb of a black metal band without reminding readers how much I hate “atmosphere” in the post-Cascadian black metal era. “Give it to us raw and wriggling!” I growl at all the fat hobbitses who try to feed me empty, overcooked “atmosphere.” Blackbraid doesn’t want to feed me atmosphere. Instead, Blackbraid’s III trembles with a vibe that brings me back to discovering black metal; at times blistering, at times introspective, but rarely overstaying its welcome and never feeling like its primary goal is to be the band that defanged black metal for good to make it okay to listen to for kids in the suburbs. I’ll be listening to III for a long time.

Tómarúm // Beyond Obsidian Euphoria — This record is too long. It’s got too much hype among the staff. And also, it’s too damned good to be an honorable mention. And yet, there are only so many #(ish)es, and I got to Beyond Obsidian Eurphoria too late to really give it the kind of sustained love that it needs to properly list. Still, once I started listening, I’ve been swinging past it every day. Sometimes twice. The songwriting is a bit wandering, the album is a bit overwhelming, and yet there is an undeniable vibe that Tómarúm traffics in, and that’s sneakily sticky. Combine that techy Death with something akin to Disillusion, and maybe you’ve got your comp. The only complaint I have is that some of the melodies end up intentionally arch in a way that makes me think that they are actively trying not to give the ear something to latch onto. That’s dumb, but it’s also very 2025. And hey, at least there’s a really easy trick for them to sell out with.

…and Oceans // The Regeneration Itinerary [May 23rd, 2025 | Season of Mist | Bandcamp] —The Regeneration Itinerary was a lot more controversial among fans than I expected, but I really enjoyed it. As I wrote in May, “It’s always fun to watch bands defy Angry Metal Guy’s Law of Diminishing Recordings™, and while The Regeneration Itinerary isn’t their best record yet, 30 years after their debut, …and Oceans is still releasing vital music that’s impossible to overlook.” And that’s just true facts as stated by a metal-knower. While not quite the tour de force of its predecessors, this record is a solid bit of weirdo black metal with some of the best art in the biz. I recommend it highly.

Haxprocess24 // Beyond What Eyes Can See [July 25th, 2025 | Transcending Obscurity Records | Bandcamp] — Four songs, three of which are over 10 minutes long, and a combo of what I’d call post-Opeth songwriting with OSDM aesthetics, Beyond What Eyes Can See deserved more attention this year and ended up, instead, on my Stack o’ Shame™. This isn’t a reflection on them; they play vital death metal and deserve accolades for their expansive vision and the way everything flows. They just got eaten up by the July where everything got released. Sorry, boys, but here’s your fig leaf!

Majestica // Power Train [February 7th, 2025 | Nuclear Blast Records | Stream or Buy at Qobuz] — Back in like 2008, I saw a band called ReinXeed play a whole bunch of covers of Swedish dance/electronica “group” E-Type at a Culture Night in Umeå. I remember hearing from people in the local scene that they were “big in Japan,” and I listened to some stuff, but wasn’t super moved by it at the time. In 2019, ReinXeed changed their name to Majestica and got signed to Nuclear Blast. And damnit if they aren’t just a lot better than they were in 2008. Power Train, which is on our collective Stack o’ Shame™, is the band’s third full-length under the moniker, and it rocks the same kind of sickly sweet melodies, guitar gymnastics, and general sense of fun that makes power metal my go-to genre a lot of days. While not quite as sticky and addictive as some other things higher up the list, Power Train was a solid addition to the band’s discography and one of the better power records I heard this year. You’ve come a long way, baby!

Dormant Ordeal // Tooth and Nail [April 18th, 2025 | Willowtip Records | Bandcamp] — While not as high on this record as others on the staff, Dormant Ordeal is undeniably vital. And I’m just never going to write a better blurb than I did when they got Record o’ the Month for April: “This record hits a sweet spot inside of me, best described as the ‘oh yeah, that’s how death metal is done’ spot. The riffs flow, and my brain just opens up the spigots, releasing a veritable tsunami of dopamine. Every riff that cuts, every transition that seethes, and every recognition of the slick, skilled ways that these guys construct songs, I get a nice big kick of that Happy Chemical. Tooth and Nail is dynamic, punishing, aggressive, and better yet, it’s smart.” Man, that guy can write!

Aversed // Erasure of Color [March 25th, 2025 | M-Theory Audio | Bandcamp] — Last, and I guess technically least – but that isn’t taking into account that there were like 10,000 albums released in 2025 and there are only like 25 on this list – is Aversed’s Erasure of Color. Part of the reason for its late arrival is that, despite being our Record o’ the Month for March, Erasure of Color didn’t actually make it onto my personal playlist until quite a bit later. And damn, that was kind of a big miss on my part. Great melodeath with a unique flavor and great intensity; there’s something thoughtful and sharp about this record. Combine that with excellent album art and the Dolphin Whisperer seal of approval, and Erasure of Color has everything fans of melodeath need to carry them through this wasteland. I will need to keep my eyes on Aversed going forward.

Der sanfte Riese des Prog meldet sich zu Wort. Wir haben Arjen Lucassen gefragt, ob er steuerlos im All treibt oder gezielt auf Kollisionskurs ist. Spoiler: Es wird wie immer bombastisch. Das ganze Interview gibt es hier: ogy.de/mv5p

#StoneProg #Ayreon #ArjenLucassen

#FlamingRow - Keeper Of The Scriptures / Hüterin der Schriften

40€, and this is 4 CDs and a novel.

I don't know all the people guest appearing on this, but I'll drop a few names:
#MaggyLuyten #ArjenLucassen #EricGillette #MikeKeneally #MarcusSiepen #JimmyKeegan #BrendtAllman #LeoMargarit #JohanHallgren

Another Time, Another Space

With the world breaking down over ever more partisan unpleasantness, it seemed almost frivolous to make my way towards Tilburg last weekend. But as a self-confessed (and obsessed) “Ayreonaut”, I was compelled to take amazing flight to honour thirty years of phenomenal music.

AYREON is the Prog-Metal project of Dutch musician mastermind Arjen Anthony Lucassen (now Sir Arjen). For the past three decades Arjen has summoned vocalists and other artists from around the world to his Electric Castle studio nestled in the Netherlands, together creating a sublime collection of concept albums. Additional endeavours Star One and Guilt Machine further expand the scope of his sound, and it was a selection from across this catalogue that rewarded the eager attendees.

As with Roadburn Festival, the city of Tilburg opens its heart to visitors when Ayreon comes to town – a biennial event selling out within minutes. With thousands making the journey from over seventy countries, this was truly a cause for celebration. Banners greeted visitors as they stepped out of the train station, while many cafés and bars presented themed menus in honour of the occasion. With side-events, afterparties and tourist treats aplenty, all were made welcome.

Returning once more to Poppodium 013, the 3000-capacity main hall was swiftly filled, with the crowd showing no less enthusiasm for the Saturday matinee slot (the only tickets we could snag from five consecutive concerts). Although the nature of the stepped auditorium ensured an excellent view from everywhere, we cunningly sneaked up to Front of House. Eschewing my usual barrier-hanging for a view (and mix) befitting the spectacle ahead.

A spectacle remaining mostly undocumented here, as Ayreon alumnus Mike Mills (Toehider) stepped out from behind the pre-show curtain to personally and politely ask the audience to keep their phones in their pockets. Although I can understand the wish of many to shoot their own souvenir, (with some sneaking an occasional photo if not fully recording), the overall atmosphere was tech-free – at least on the floor.

The staging was a lot simpler than the multi-tier scaffolding of previous sets, with artists mostly at stage level behind a few rocks to break things up. Eyes were instead drawn to a full sized video screen covering the entire upstage, with smaller screens flanking the wings.

These screens displayed animated sequences inspired by the songs. Some of which worked really well, and others (such as Irene Jansen’s digital compère) not so much. Observers noted some use of AI content, which felt ironic given the emotionally authentic themes on display. Still, this did little to detract from the real reason we were here: the music.

Opening in 2084 with ‘My House on Mars’ (which may explain the rocks), the 150 minute journey was broken into two acts. The first showcasing songs which had never been performed live (not counting 2015’s The Theater Equation), and the second a compilation of classics. Exploring both Ayreon’s musical history and the mythic timeline woven through the albums.

It was interesting that some of the songs had been rejigged for the flow of the set; with unexpected cuts, re-arrangements, and vocalists taking different parts. This kept things fresh for the veterans, even if a few movements were sorely missed.

After a decade of live Ayreon shows, Arjen has secured a cadre of regular performers. Not least of which Anneke Van Giersbergen, fresh off her own 30th anniversary tour of The Gathering’s Mandylion; and of course the vocal talents of the indomitable (and omni-wardrobed) Damian Wilson.

But it was folk singer Heather Findlay (ex-Mostly Autumn) who stole the show for me. With songs from personal favourite The Human Equation guaranteed by her presence, I was already enthralled. Beyond that album, her rendition of ‘Valley of the Queens’ and especially ‘Dreamtime’ inspired many damp eyes and goosebumps. I hope she returns on subsequent occasions.

With tribute paid to absent friends, (and absolute respect to Edward Reekers), the show was soon over. Closed by an ensemble encore of album opener ‘Day Two: Isolation’ that subverted expectations. Two and a half hours passed by without even realising it, and I eagerly anticipate what may come for the next one.

An absolute blast of an afternoon was had with the best of company. Much gratitude as always to dear friend (and local) Lorraine for sharing the experience as she has since the start; as well as offering delightful conversation, company and crashspace while I was in town. Great to meet David (finally), and especially old friend Adrian who surprised us all with his own matinee attendance.

The world may seem doomed to a dark path of despair, but these moments of joy and togetherness should never be diminished. People can unite under shared passion as much as they may divide under strife, and in so doing create another space of hope and celebration…

… not to hide and forget the troubled times of the New Real, but to rise up and remember Forever.

https://heathenstorm.com/2025/09/17/another-time-another-space/

#arjenlucassen #ayreon #ayreonaut #heatherfindlay #livemusic #metal #music #netherlands #poppodium013 #prog #progmetal #thehumanequation #tilburg

Arjen Anthony Lucassen – Goddamn Conspiracy

https://www.metgitarenenzo.nl/2025/09/arjen-anthony-lucassen-goddamn-conspiracy/

#Video #ArjenLucassen

Arjen Anthony Lucassen – Goddamn Conspiracy

https://www.metgitarenenzo.nl/2025/09/arjen-anthony-lucassen-goddamn-conspiracy/