Photo by Joe Zlomek on Unsplash
It's April 2026, which means it's about time I posted my annual "favorite albums list" from the prior year, that being 2025. Remember 2025? It was almost 5 months ago, and while all the "Best of 2025" lists were out, dead, and buried by fucking Halloween last year, I don't play that game. I bide my time, reflect on my little curated list of choice cuts, then, when everybody has long forgotten what even happened in said year and are already chomping at the bit for their 2026 lists, that's when I strike, a thousand miles behind, right were I like to be.
Usually this means I just wait until January, the official death of the previous year, to post my long winded screed, which even then is considered by information superhighway standards to be exceedingly past the expiration date for these kinds of lists, but this year, the overall state of the world, and a family loss knocked the wind right out of my sails forcing me to wonder does the world (or the handful of people that constitute my email list, whom I am grateful for) even need the long-winded rambles of some unc-maxxing (as the youths would say) middle aged weirdo lamenting about niche genres of music as things continually go from bad to worse in a blink of an eye? If you're reading this it means that I decided yes, indeed it does, or at least, I needed to, if only to reassure myself that I do still enjoy music in a culture that's evaporating, and that we need to spread the good shit around while we still can before A.I. troglodytes and imbecilic, algorithmically curated short form "content" consumes us all..
HOME FRONT - Watch it Die
Speaking of dire times, I always imagined my end of the world soundtrack would be primed and ready with Heavy Metal. Particularly the music of Kreator, a band that's essentially been writing the German thrash metal soundtrack to the apocalypse for forty years. I envision the bombs falling, watching the beautiful city of Prague out my back window consumed in a blinding light of mass destruction as "Civilization Collapse" plays me off this mortal coil. What, you don't have an End Times playlist already planned? Weak fucking sauce, buddy. Imagine, then, my surprise as I spent 2025 watching the world crumble around me and it wasn't in fact Teutonic Thrash Metal that accompanied the disarray, but Post-Punk, the aptly titled "Watch it Die" by the genre amalgamating band Home Front, that recklessly, yet infectiously combines the heart wrenching ennui of the Joy Division flavors of Post-Punk with the danceable catchiness of New Wave, and the indisputable melodic swagger and tough guy stance of Oi! Punk. It sounds crazy on paper, but the combination ran rampant over me, introducing me to the upstart genre of Cold Oi!, (which should be called Oi! Division, and it's criminal that it isn't) the mostly French practiced art of smash-banging together Post-Punk and Oi! (more on this later). So, instead of banging my head furiously as a German man screams at me about the violent tendencies of humanity that have lead to my impending immolation, I find myself dancing to keyboard accompanied ditties, still about death, but at least I'm on my fucking feet. Home Front even has a song about the crumbling of an Empire. I wonder who that could be about?
Die Spitz - Something to Consume
Die Spitz wrote the best metal song of the year, "Throw Yourself to the Sword," complete with the most head-bangable riffing (a vastly important metric when rating metal music) and spat out some of the nastiest "UHs" this frosty side of Tom Warrior, and yet, they aren't a metal band, at least not by any unkempt bearded, battle-vested, stunted metal bros understanding of the genre. They have more in common with early 90's era Hole, alternative rock, and punk, but that didn't stop them from absolutely fucking crushing with said song, a testament to the strength of musical cross-polination in this endless field of tried and true. Something, my beloved metal genre, really needs to take note of.
Viagra Boys - viagr aboys
Viagra Boys constantly balance their eccentric artsy weirdness with a slobbish, self-deprecating sort of "vibe" if you will, which culminates in an overall, punk-rockish sleaze. A band that would fit right in with some of the great purveyors of weirdo art and depravity.
It's a fragile line to tow, plunging headfirst in to comedic satire, freeform poetry, and eclectic, post-punk experimentation while still maintaining musical integrity, to not end up as just a "joke" band, and whether or not Viagra Boys are serious (I read some critic say "they're the world's most serious unserious band) they're crafting some of the best creative rock adjacent music right now.
Sprints - All That is Over
Sprints' previous' 2024 album had me wistfully nostalgic for a time that didn't really happen, IE a high school-aged version of myself that had this band to listen to, because it would have been my soundtrack. This album, however, plants itself firmly in 2025, a darker, more aggressive, grungier, somber, bleaker outing, which pretty much sums up the kind of world we collectively live in currently.
Turnstile - Never Enough
A band that is actually worthy of all the hype that surrounds them, Turnstile broke the stubborn, braindead rule of hardcore, and punk, by experimenting with their sound, heavens to Betsy, and in doing so have seemingly energized an entire generation of young folk around their music. For further proof just type into whatever data harvesting, A.I. encrusted web browser you prefer "TURNSTILE BIRDS LIVE" and watch how entire arenas of kids go off to the break down in that fucking song. Or, if you're a goofy ass middle aged dude like myself, the same song as they performed it on Tiny Desk, with saxophone accompaniment, that caused the show's first ever stage dive. It's probably the banger of the year, if not one of the best in all of hardcore history.
Creeper - Sanguivore II: Mistress of Death
Horror and Punk have long been cozy bedfellows, but Creeper, not content with just merrily continuing that tawdry relationship, introduced a big ol' heaping helping of Jim Steinman era MeatLoaf rock drama and excess into the mix. The result being something rock music desperately needs, over-the-top bombast and ridiculousness with overwhelming drama student theatrical flair. And it fucking rules, so hard.
Ethel Cain - Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You
Even though, technically, Ethel's follow up to her previous album was this year's "Perverts," an aggressive, bleak, noise album, one that I think, thematically makes perfect sense in her trajectory, and a form of experimentation I wish more musicians would indulge in, it's one of those rare occasion albums due to it's heft and overall abrasive construction, and frankly deserves to be talked about more in all the list entries online where "Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You" has shown up.
Willoughby is more of the Ethel that captivated me so on "Preacher's Daughter," the similarly saddened and troubled folk adjacent singer/songwriter style that she's imbued with her own brand of gloom and doom.
It's 2025. We're all out of smiles. Peddle that shit elsewhere.
Orville Peck - Appaloosa
Orville's last album, while fun as an experiment, was a duet album, which meant less overall Orville, and with a voice like his, god damn, I never want less of it.
"Appaloosa" corrects that, almost entirely, letting Orville shine, even razzle and dazzle a bit on a cover of "Maybe This Time" from "Cabaret," which is so on brand I'm surprised it took him this long to get to it.
Tangentially, Orville is set to star as Vega in the upcoming Street Fighter movie, in a casting decision I'm sure was based entirely on the fact that both Orville and Vega are devotees to masking their visage, the kind of movie making lunacy choice that I think will only benefit this crazy ass movie.
Rosalía - LUX
Rosalía followed up her 2022 pop, reggaeton, flamenco, dance fusion album with, oh geez, an almost entirely classical album about martyred saints, flowered funerals, and doomed romances, sung in something like twelve different languages, backed by, seemingly, the entirety of the London Symphony Orchestra, and one Bjork, and I dunno, that's fucking rad. That's metal as fuck, and the whole thing slays, from front to back.
To top it off, while promoting the album she spent most of her media circuit denouncing AI in music, and extolling the virtues of humans making music with their hands and the power in that. Be still my blackened heart.
Rancœur – Fatalité
I don't claim to know what's going on with the French - socially, politically, but musically, they hit me harder than any other country with Cold OI!, the burgeoning genre that's been bubbling up (mostly) within it's confines. Not content to let the street-smart, working class, melodic punk rock of OI! continue on without smashing it directly into the undistorted, bass heavy melancholy of post punk. It's kind of funny, well maybe funny isn't the right word, but it's certainly something that post-punk started as a way to break off of from the noisy chaos of late 70's punk, and now is being folded back into the mix. I listened to so much Cold OI! in 2025 (and post-punk for context, clearly a genre I've sorely overlooked) and Rancœur came out on top for this year, deftly combining both genres so that neither loses anything in the mixture. C'est magnifique.
Elway - Nobody’s Going to Heaven
You know those jabronis that no matter what is happening will look you dead in the eye (or muster up the strength in their little typing fingers) to tell you "things aren't actually that bad - there's no point complaining about it." Those people suck. Suck a big fucking fat one. I'm not saying give in to despair, but boy howdy, sometimes it's cathartic to commiserate with others who aren't as willfully up their asses, because as Limp Bizkit famously once said, when they accidentally stumbled into something profound while whooping and gorilla slapping their chests, "everything is fucked/everybody sucks."
That's where we meet Elway on their latest album, one that doesn't shy away from the bleak reality in which we find ourselves. One that fully acknowledges the level of fucked we've reached, but also offers a helpful and human perspective of hope if we can all get our shit together and maybe, just maybe, stop thinking only of ourselves, because as it stands, nobody's going to heaven.
Béton Armé - Renaissance
The French are killing it so hard with their reinvigorating take on Oi! that even their Canadian counterparts needed to get in on the action.
Béton Armé keep it simple: raw production, nasty vocals, straight-forward punk aggression with the melodic side of Oi! front and center, and wrap it all up in about twenty three minutes. The perfect punk album recipe.
Spiritual Cramp - RUDE
Taking a Clash-like exploratory approach to punk, Spiritual Camp set the stage via a fictional radio broadcast that apparently plays the raddest music. Not a single second is wasted during the 30 minute run time. Spiritual Camp wear their influences on their sleeves, proudly, but it never feels like simple homage. The self deprecating, slightly satirical tone of the lyrics help, lyrics that would fit right in on a Viagra Boys album, but feel less sleazy when coupled here with a Ramones back beat.
Sharon Van Etten - Sharon Van Etten & the Attachment Theory
Not that Sharon always hasn't been a bit dreary and bleak, but she really leans into that ennui this time around, veering ever so slightly into a bit of that darker post punk sound. There's a ghostly, lingering quality to her voice that echos through the whole album, and when she really lets loose, oooooh, the goosebumps sure do rise.
Dark, foreboding, haunting - a perfect soundtrack for 2025. Are you picking up on a fucking theme here yet?
Messa - The Spin
The punks weren't the only ones getting in on the post-punk melancholy in 2025. There was enough ennui going around for the Doom metal heads to pick up and slather all over their grimy, sludge-filled stylings, which is exactly what Messa did. Never a band to be shy of experimentation, they push the post-punk-ness elements even further, careening into goth rock territory, which as we all know, Goth and Doom make for a potent combination, but take all that misery soaked bleakness and filter it through the bluesy swagger of vocalist Sara Bianchin and you've got something that sways and slithers with bleak grooviness.
Agriculture - The Spiritual Sound
Agriculture, if you go by genre determination, is labelled as "black metal," which may conjure up images of nerds running around a winter-locked Scandinavian forest, doused in corpse paint, shrieking into a broken microphone, and while there's a glimmer of that, it does the album an injustice to be so simply labeled.
I often espouse on how I'm particularly enthralled by this newer generation of musicians that are "genre fluid," as some may say. That aren't satisfied working in the confines of staunchly held genre tropes, instead vie for mixing and matching all sorts of influences and sounds. While Agriculture keep their feet in the cacophonous realm where black metal dwells, they're also swirled around with indie, almost emo, shoegaze soundscapes, abrasively chuggy Nu-Metal guitars, and moments of sheer transcendental beauty. One might dare compare their black metal approach to that of Deafheaven, who dared extrapolate on what black metal could be, and received high praise, and deep scorn from the metal CHUDs. To me, it's not interesting to just sound like another black metal band. The real intrigue is in bands/musicians that can form their own sound. That when you hear their music you know, undeniably, who is making it, lest you be easily replicated by the greedy glutinous whims of the goon squad plunging their weak-willed fingers into the keyboards fueling the A.I. engines, and that, my friends, is balls. Agriculture is not.
Lambrini Girls - Who Let the Dogs Out
Imagine Idles intensely English, disjointed and caustic take on punk rock but full of disdain for the patriarchy, wait, Idles is already kinda like that. Scratch that...
Lambrini Girls play a similar form of punk rock that Idles do, an aggressively rhythmic, repetitive, angular, driving style that builds intensity while the lead singer's seething animosity for all the bullshit men have put her through simmers over in a boil of rage. Coupled with a dash of Crass' performative art punk, Lambrini Girls are a force to be reckoned with.
In the Company of Serpents - A Crack in Everything
Perhaps my favorite band from my old stomping grounds of Denver, In the Company of Serpents, like many of their local contemporaries, forged a sound entirely their own. Awash in gloom and doom, with weighty, sludgy riffs to bombard your ear canals, Serpents also inject this stomp and twang, Americana vibe to their music, made more potent with a sombre, Leonard Cohen-like poetry, of whom this album's title is a reference to.
Paradise Lost - Ascension
As a Paradise Lost connoisseurs, I find enjoyment in all eras of the band. From their earlier, more death metal leanings, to their soon thereafter ground breaking combination of Death and Doom metal securing them a spot in the legendary group of the "Peaceville Three" (look it up, you have internet), to the more danceable and theatrical run through goth/rock metal (which produced my all time favorite Paradise Lost song "Say Just Words" (are you still on the internet?) to now, which puts the band several album cycles into their blending of all their eras. "Ascension" is a highly enjoyable album, but at this point in their career, and having aged like a fine wine that must only be drunk from an archaic goblet in a dimly candlelit room, Paradise Lost gets legacy addition into my coveted top 25 list simply because they fucking rule.
Propagandhi - At Peace
Speaking of maintaining integrity, Propagandhi. 8 years between albums is an eternity but that time seems to have only sharpened and honed Propagandhi's absurdly structured, and scathingly leftist punk rock stylings. Sure, this album is slower, overall, but what a weird criticism to level at a band like this that is plainly more than just speed. People are weird.
Catharsis - Hope Against Hope
I saw a post recently, well, a repost I, guess (gross). The original post was a response to a Zoomer posed question: "what's your most old-coded opinion?" which was replied to by some inane complaint about some fancy luxury electronic, but the repost's response was simply: "kids should start listening to crust punk again," and that, generally, is how I feel about most things. Good thing Catharsis unthawed their crusty-asses from their 1999 cryo-freeze and picked up where they angrily, and passionately left off 26 years ago and dropped the crust punk album of the year.
Cult of Fire - The One, Who is Made of Smoke
What I find so engaging about Cult of Fire is that they play a very melodic, sweeping sort of black metal that is based entirely around concepts and ideas from Hinduism, and Vedic rituals, despite the band being firmly Czech. Whereas other bands dabbling in cultures they're not geographically a part of would incorporate sounds, instruments, and styles of that culture, Cult of Fire doesn't do that, they just kind of fold it into their very Czech, very dramatic form of black metal and let it stew until it bubbles up in some grandiose, almost beautiful moments.
Deafheaven - Lonely People With Power
I wonder what it must be like to be a Deafheaven fan that found them through some other means than being entrenched in the multiple nuances of the various metal genres, particularly black metal. Like, maybe they heard them on a playlist, or some promo, and were like "oh, this is cool," and just became a fan, enjoying their music, album after album, paying no mind, or perhaps not even having an awareness that just out of earshot is a swarming, seething horde of butt-hurt metal CHUDs, foaming at the mouth with hatred for Deafheaven, ready to pounce on any social media post about the band, fingers at the ready, to inform anybody who will listen that Deafheaven sucks for committing some sort of unspoken black metal agreement to not sound like utter shit made by a deranged teenager in a dumpster.
How I envy that person.
When "Sunbather" came out 13 long, arduous years ago, I, like so many, was captivated by the bands blending of black metal, post-rock, and shoegaze, and consider it a watershed album of extreme music. Having followed the band since, and while I'm a constant proponent of bands throwing caution to the wind and just doing whatever the fuck they want, especially in extreme metal, I can't say that their return on the latest album to the heavier, black metal stylings wasn't a big part of why this album made my list this year.
Sure, they can come across as a bunch of pretentious snobs, but fuck, I'm aching for more pretension in art. More extremes. That equates to passion, and I'd rather listen to a bunch of artists pontificate about obscure nonsense and have something to fucking say other than "it's not that deep bro," then put on whatever the current band is doing their take on death metal that was already done infinitely better 35 years ago.
Coroner - Dissonance Theory
33 years ago, when Coroner released their last album, they wrapped up at the tail end of an era in extreme metal where bands across the spectrum were pushing the bounds of what metal could be and genres were expanded, or given birth to left and right. Coroner being one of the originators and driving forces behind a more technical expansion to Thrash Metal metal's blistering speed.
Fast-forward three decades and the order of the day is a steadfast determination to stay true to the sounds of old, a genre defined by extremity and experimentation, now mired in stubbornness, pretending that sounding and looking like the ghost of metal's past is innovate, which actually makes it refreshing when one of the stalwarts pops up out of the blue and shows them all how it's fucking done.
Militarie Gun - God Save the Gun
I don't even know what "hardcore" as a musical genre means anymore. One casually bats around the label in reference to older bands like Sick of it All and Earth Crisis in the same breath as Turnstile, Drug Church, Drain, and Militarie Gun, none of which sound anything like each other, or what was once considered hardcore. Militarie Gun would find comfortable footing on the same perch as Weezer, The Pixies, or other alternative bands from a time when "alternative" was actually a good metric for a band's style, and not just a catch-all for when you don't know what else to call them. I'm not saying genre labels are the only tried and true way of defining music but when it comes to something as stuck in the mud as hardcore, it helps as a starting point. If that's the way hardcore has gone, then I'm all in because this album right here, this fucking rules.