DEI Metal: Vol. 7
A lot of great queer and antifascist metal came out in 2025. No doubt in large part to the fact that this year has been a shit show. But I don’t want to spend time on the horrors of the world as there are too many to list. There are also too many great metal releases to list, but here are some that are definitely worth checking out.
Artist: Transgressive
Album: Not Like This
Song: “The Way the World Ends”
Transgressive make anti-fascist trans liberation metal. And if you think those words sound fucking awesome strung together, wait until you actually hear the band. (If for some reason you haven’t heard the band yet, what the fuck are you waiting for? Stop reading this and go listen immediately. Nothing I can possibly write is worth delaying your experience of Transgressive’s aural onslaught even a moment further.) Not Like This is Transgressive’s latest EP featuring 5 songs written by the incredibly talented and badass Alicia Cordisco. She has, in fact, written all of Transgressive’s material dating back to their first EP, 2021’s Seize the Means of Reproduction, which raised money for National Network of Abortion funds. A full length, Extreme Transgression, was released in 2023 (and I regret not buying it on CD when I had the chance, though Cordisco has indicated that it might get released on CD again and I eagerly await that day, thus am putting it in writing). Not Like Us has Bethany “Beef” Pitts on vocals and it’s a huge step forward for Transgressive’s sound. Pitts has a very dynamic voice with growls that open seismic cracks in the earth and soaring highs to shatter every window within a 10-mile radius. “The Way the World Ends” shows off both. “Despite all odds humanity is still alive. But at what cost?” Pitts sings. A truly apt question for our times.
Artist: Love Spiral
Album: Minotaur’s Teeth (Cherub Dream)
Song: “The Fifth Sense”
On Love Spiral’s Bandcamp page one of their supporters used the term “hopeful anger” to describe them and that is, truly, the perfect term. Love Spiral describes themselves as a “4-piece crossover screamo band singing about sad stuff and trans liberation” and they say that Minotaur’s Teeth is “a response to the fear forced on us, the laws imposed on us, and is ultimately meant to demand liberation and celebrate joy for the trans community.” As I am an unapologetic fan of real feelings and trans rights, Love Spiral definitely gets the DEI Metal stamp of approval. I have to admit I cannot understand most of the lyrics, but it’s okay because the vocals have an emotional intensity that transcends language. I do, however, hear “don’t be so hard on yourself” repeated multiple times in “The Fifth Sense” and it is so fiercely sincere I can’t help but take it personally. For fans of Mares of Thrace, Hypomanic Daydream, Flummox.
Artist: Davghter
Album: Mask Casket
Song: “Hide In Plain Spite”
Being in the closet fucking sucks. It’s like being in solitary confinement inside your own head. You’re afraid all the time, you’re lying to everyone, and you feel completely alone. It fucks you up. That’s what this song’s about. Well, in part. It’s also about the violence transgender people risk, especially transgender women, if they don’t hide. “If I hide who I am, will it keep me alive?” vocalist Izzy “DeadName” Bale sings in an icy rasp. UK back metal band Davghter, whose Bandcamp bio reads, “Trans rights are human rights,” understands this fear well. “Davghter is a band that we don’t want to exist. Davghter is a band that takes that misanthropy and the hatred of black metal and says, ‘This is what it’s like to live, particularly in the UK, as a trans person.’ It is an existence where you are consistently hated,” Bale said in a recent interview. “This is music that we believe needs to be put out there for ourselves and for other people.” By the time you’re reading this, their new EP Mask Casket will be out. Buy it.
Artist: Bergfried
Album: Romantik III (High Roller Records)
Song: “Tears of a Thousand Years”
It’s so exciting to get a rockin’ new Pat Benatar release in 2025. What? I’m sorry, I can’t hear you because I am busy singing “Tears of a Thousand Years” at the top of my lungs. Whew! This song has got me dancing. Okay, what were you trying to say? Oh, it’s not Benatar? It’s Bergfried? While their name sounds like an Econ professor at a state school, Bergfried is Anna de Savoy and Erech III. von Lothringen and they make catchy-as-hell hard rock-metal-pop. Sing it with me: “We’re on the edge of falling apart. Is it love or just obsession?” Try to get this song out of your head. I fucking dare you. “Tears of a Thousand Years” is a single from the newly released Romantik III, which follows their first two releases Romantik I and Romantik II. The songs are supposed to tell some kind of epic romantic saga, but I am new to Bergfried and have yet to sort all of that out. Nor do I know why they are called Bergfried. All I know is that I’m a born again Romantik now. I sure hope it’s not a cult.
Artist: Cemetery Sex
Album: Cemetery Sex (Violet Hour Transmissions)
Song: “Leviathan”
Washington D.C. may be a dystopian nightmare, but at least it has Cemetery Sex. The band, not the activity. Though there’s probably some of that, too. Cemetery Sex is “a POC- and female-fronted goth rock band” that, according to their Instagram, is “serving cunt in the form of raw deathrock.” The band is fronted by singer Anastasia Noire who has a dusky, bluesy, sexy voice that reminds me in some ways of Oceans of Slumber’s Cammie Gilbert. As I was looking around online for more information about the band, I stumbled upon an interview from last year with Sounds and Shadows. And lo and behold the guy interviewing them is a guy I went to high school with. (Hi, Ken!). When asked what song best represented their sound, they said “Leviathan,” and no wonder. It’s super heavy with deep gothic roots and a hell of a showcase for Noire’s vocal range. It’s also the first Cemetery Sex song I heard and I bought their album on CD before the song was even over. In other words, I was seduced. You will be, too.
Artist: Witch Fever
Album: Fevereaten
Song: “Safe”
I have a confession: I slept on Witch Fever’s 2022 album Congregation. I remember listening to some of it, but it didn’t stick with me, so I moved on. Going back and relistening, I don’t know how that happened. Maybe I was in a bad mood. Maybe I wasn’t really paying attention. Or maybe I just needed more than one dose to do the trick. Regardless, consider me born again. Witch Fever refuse “to be confined by gender or genre,” and to that end I don’t know their preferred pronouns nor do I know exactly how to describe their sound. Radical doom punk, maybe? Similar to Congregation, themes of religious oppression and liberation are explored throughout Fevereaten, but this time around Witch Fever let their guard down from time to time. “Safe,” for example, is an extremely vulnerable exploration of a failed relationship. “I was safe,” sings Amy Walpole, “wrapped in the touch you once meant. I was safe from rosaries hung ’round my neck.” It’s meant to be absolutely gutting and it delivers. My vital organs are on the ground as I type this.
Artist: Eudaemon
Album: Spiritual Anguish
Song: “Basalt”
2025 has been my Black Metal Year. Previously, it wasn’t a genre I was super familiar with and that made me kind of wary. I didn’t want to give any time or attention to “the bad black metal.” Then I discovered anti-fascist black metal. I realized that my problem with black metal was that I didn’t know how to listen. I’m a big fan of nuance and melody and, at first blush, I just didn’t get that from a lot of black metal. The more I listened, though, the more I found that nuance and melody was there all the time (though some of it still sounds like a hair dryer being fed into a garbage disposal to me). It was often subtle, with beauty beckoning under a dark surface, kind of like a geode. From the outside it just looks like a rock. But when you crack it open, holy shit. Spiritual Anguish is something I would’ve completely missed not long ago, thinking it wasn’t for me. On Bandcamp, vocalist Andie Landsem describes the album as “processing negative emotions I’m feeling as a shout into the void and falling into the cathartic release of emotions in intense music.” In “Basalt” Landsem sings, “We will become rock.” Whether that refers to growing stronger in life or to death and decomposition, both feel possible and trve.
Artist: Sölicitör
Album: Enemy in Mirrors
Song: “We Who Remain”
On the evening of September 24, 2023, I turned to my wife and said, “I have to leave. Now.” A quick change of clothes later and I was pulling out of the driveway. No, I was not abandoning my family. I was doing something even more consequential. I was going to see Sölicitör at a little bar on the edge of Detroit and Hamtramck. The thing is, I had no idea that Sölicitör were in town. I’d just happened upon the information, I think on Instagram, shortly before the show started. Sölicitör’s Spectral Devastation was one of my favorite albums of 2020 and missing my chance to see them would have been, well, devastating. The show was great. I was inches away from singer Amy Lee Carlson, who is basically a beast-goddess from another dimension. So you can imagine my excitement when I heard the news of a new Sölicitör album. Enemy in Mirrors, their second studio album, is a worthy follow up. Carlson’s vocals simultaneously soar above the ether and pummel you in the face, transforming Sölicitör into ’80s speed metal-worshipping perfection. “We Who Remain” appropriately pays respect to Doro and Judas Priest, not only in sound, but also in the lyrics, “We keep the flame burning bright. Forever warriors, defenders of the faith.” A reminder and a promise that metal will never die.
Artist: abriction
Album: So Far Away In Time
Song: “Sunlight on the Sea”
Back in the day, I listened to a lot of indie rock. So when I heard “Sunlight on the Sea,” it tore open the bit of my brain where all of the Cat Power, Broken Social Scene, and Lord Huron I used to listen to is stored. Except with screaming. Which is definitely more my pace these days. It’s not that I don’t like indie rock any more, it’s just not my go-to music. That said, I really love this mix of metal and the music that was the soundtrack for my life before I was Metal-Aged. I don’t know what genre this is, but abriction’s Bandcamp page includes tags like “blackgaze” and “pop” and “electronic.” I also don’t know much about abriction. According to Encyclopaedia Metallum, abriction is Meredith Salvatori, who is located in New York. I don’t know much else aside from the fact that the earliest release I can find is from 2019 and there has been quite a bit of abriction music released between then and now. And I fully intend on listening to all of it. You can get So Far Away In Time on cassette and vinyl from Fiadh Productions.
Artist: Death Goals
Album: Survival Is An Act Of Defiance
Song: “Survival Is An Act Of Defiance”
Harry Bailey (guitar/vocals) and George Milner (drums/vocals) are Death Goals, a UK Queercore duo. Survival Is An Act of Defiance, their new EP, was released on August 29, 2025. Death Goal’s sound is thrillingly, viscerally alive with a punk heart that is not interested in your comfort. And yet, there is comfort in the chaos. Because right now we are living through a time that is acutely painful. For some, that is. This music is not for those who live in a state of oblivion and for whom suffering is only noticeable when it is happening to them. The comfort lies in seeing Death Goals take that pain, anger, frustration, and heartbreak that so many of us are feeling with every stitch of our brains and bodies and make them real. We are being gaslighted by those who are intentionally inflicting abuse with the goal of total emotional dysregulation so debilitating that we are incapable of fighting back. But Death Goals makes it all visible. Undeniable. “Love, solidarity, and compassion are our greatest tools against those who seek only to destroy,” the band writes on Bandcamp. “We must remember that none of us are free until we are all free and seek to help all groups who face oppression, not just our own. We dedicate these songs to all who are facing persecution by those in power.” Whether you know it yet or not, that means you.
Artist: Alicia Cordisco
Album: The Burden of I
Song: “The Burden of I”
For those of you keeping track, this is not the first Alica Cordisco has turned up in DEI Metal. Hell, this isn’t even the only Cordisco project in this very column. Before you accuse me of favoritism, let me just say this: If you were consistently putting out amazing metal spanning multiple genres and subgenres and you played guitar as well as her, you’d be a frequent DEI Metal flyer, too. So get busy. The Burden of I, black metal with crushing riffs and beautiful guitar flourishes, is Cordisco’s latest solo album. And when I say solo, I mean she did the bulk of this herself. Guitar, bass, keys, and songwriting, it’s all her. Powerhouse vocalist Vanessa Funke handles the singing. And “handles” is an understatement. Funke puts Cordisco’s lyrics into a glass bottle filled with jet fuel, stuffs it with a rag, sets it alight, and throws it through your front window. The Burden of I is a tour through various stages of grief. We’ve got denial (“I can’t do this”), anger (“You left me here when I screamed for help”), bargaining (“I wish there was more to life than this”), depression (“I’ve run out of my supposed resilience. Meet the silence”), and, yes, acceptance (“Perhaps then I could finally see the beauty that’s always been inside of me”). The Burden of I is a tour of the pain humans endure in our never-ending quest for love and acceptance. Good luck, because after listening to this you’ll never be the same.
