
The Best, Most Ruthless Death Metal Bands of 2025
See last year’s chart! Death Metal Leaderboard of 2024
How It Works
Here’s how this unholy alliance works:
- Our secret, all-seeing algorithm determines the rankings—unpredictable and powerful, like a guitar solo from interdimensional Vikings.
- Play your favorite or new band on Spotify or read our review on their latest album.
- Nominate new bands to join the fight or hire The Hitman below to banish the unworthy from the rankings.
- Upvote to lift your heroes into the top 10 or downvote to send pretenders into the pit.
Join our Reddit community and help shape the evolution of the chart.
Hire The Hitman

Hire The Hitman to whack a band from the charts.
Changes will reflect within 24 hours.
Once a band is canceled from the rankings, it’s gone for good and won’t feature in the annual year in review roundup. That’s just straight up evil, isn’t it?
Set the initial ‘hitman fee’ and pay; the next person to cancel a band will have to outbid your fee. As more bands get ‘canceled,’ the ‘hitman’ fees will keep rising.
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Current hitman fee: You decide
*All hitman fees are donated to help improve and maintain the Heavy Metal Rankings.
Eliminated bands:
- No bands have been eliminated yet