A-Z GUIDE TO OUR BEST ALBUMS OF 2025

A-Z GUIDE TO OUR BEST ALBUMS OF 2025

At Music and Riots, we’ve once again compiled our year-end list, drawing from staff favorites and community feedback to showcase the best albums of the past 12 months, highlighting a wide display of genres and celebrating everything from incredible debuts to long-awaited returns. Throughout our 60 main picks (plus some honorable mentions), we highlight a wide array of artists and genres regardless of popularity to bring you, the reader, the releases that have defined our year and stopped us in our tracks, each one of them worthy of everyone’s attention.

Like last year, this list also reflects the global and chaotic political climate that shapes the modern era: while the cultural landscape grows increasingly precarious and uncertain, this year’s releases proved again and again that great artistry still thrives even in challenging times.

Agriculture – The Spiritual Sound [The Flenser]

There’s a clear continuum running through Agriculture’s newest album, stemming from their black metal roots, while pushing toward something luminous. On The Spiritual Sound, they channel the familiar blend of sounds, at times a rebel one, with blistering vocals and astounding metal riffs, as well as blackgaze melodies. Side A extends the sound they established in their self-titled debut – cathartic – while side B marks a threshold, letting goof black metal briefly, to introduce a new, perhaps, spiritual sound, which transitions to “Dan’s Love Song”. The turning point comes with “Serenity”, where the album’s most intense guitar riff suddenly breaks into a new realm. The interplay between Dan Meyer and Leah Levinson’s distinguished vocals, creates space for hope amid chaos. Their voices and personal experiences create a space where transcendence and turmoil coexist, to create the spiritual sound of ecstatic black metal. As they say, even when ‘I’m totally out of control with a mouth full of water’, the answer is that ‘I’ll be born again, again’. — Inês Santos

Alan Sparhawk & Trampled By Turtles – Alan Sparhawk with Trampled by Turtles [Sub Pop]

Following the loss of Mimi Parker in 2022 and the subsequent end of Low, Alan Sparhawk had nowhere else to go but away from the tools he had forged over the last 30 years. White Roses, My God – his first batch of new music since Parker’s passing – chose to filter songs through electronic production, but it’s his collaborative effort with Trampled by Turtles that truly feels like Sparhawk’s most intimate document of learning to live with grief. By leaning into and subverting the americana roots of the backing band he’d long mentored and performed with, the songs heartbreakingly delve into the devastation, while also doubling down on how consolation from loved ones has helped Sparhawk stay grounded and build connection when isolation threatened to overwhelm. While "Get Still" and "Heaven" are reworked and cast in a gentler light, the other seven cuts are just as striking in their clarity and sonic restraint, every musician orbiting around Sparhawk’s sentiments and meeting the same wavelengths. A frankly daring attempt to stare right into the wound, With Trampled by Turtles undeniably holds many emotional gut-punches, but none are unleashed without a silver-lining in plain sight. It’s in this acceptance of both the hurt already felt and the healing that comes afterwards where the album shines the brightest, always allowing the pain to be present and carried by the music. — Rui Cunha

Algernon Cadwallader - Trying Not to Have a Thought [Saddle Creek]

Algernon Cadwallader’s comeback has been as humble as their departure unfortunately was. Their take on emotionally-charged experimentation can be heard all over the place during their career, and we must confess that we missed them over the past 14 years. There’s something cool happening in emo right now, far removed from the yearly, exhausting emo revival discourse, and the band’s return – with glimpses of post-hardcore everywhere - certainly proves that. Trying Not to Have a Thought is a pretty solid and mature effort that finds them rightfully furious, writing about the genocide in Gaza, the joke that is the US healthcare system, American colonialism, tech idiots and everything that goes wrong with capitalism. This is the first album from Algernon Cadwallader since 2011 and the first with their original lineup since 2008. The history is short, but pretty fucking straightforward: they came, they played and they sort of conquered. Bands like Algernon Cadwallader are still familiar; their sound doesn’t need any kind of essays, and in their humble and hardworking way, they don’t need much to be considered one of the most important emo bands of all time. Trying Not to Have a Thought is a gem with no further discussion needed, heavy and loud when it needs to be and by far their best album yet. — Fausto Casais

Anna von Hausswolff – ICONOCLASTS [YEAR0001]

ICONOCLASTS is the natural evolution of Anna von Hausswolff’s sound, more polished than previous works, the songwriting tighter and more concise. Produced by von Hausswolff and longtime collaborator Filip Leyman, the album marks a new chapter in her music and features appearances from Ethel Cain, Otis Sandsjö, Abul Mogard, Iggy Pop, Maria von Hausswolf and more. Her trademark, transcendent, almost celestial experimentation sounds more expansive and tense than ever, making these seven years in the making feel steeped in rumination, commitment and connection. Anna von Hausswolff crafted an epic work brimming with musical detail, an album that confronts the darkness of the world with her unique musical light. Avant-garde saxophonist Otis Sandsjö is everywhere on the album - even if his contributions are all but dominant - but there’s a lot happening everywhere on the album and we can’t ignore Iggy Pop and Ethel Cain’s equally brilliant contributions. ICONOCLASTS is von Hausswolff’s titanic sixth effort, an epic journey interspersed with shorter songs this time around, even if the title track is massive. It’s impossible to just pick one track as a clear favorite, every single one begging to be dissected and played loud, flowing and shaping throughout the runtime, each bursts of noise feeling cathartic. Album of the year? For sure! — Fausto Casais

aya – Hexed! [Hyperdub]

London-based Aya Sinclair’s sophomore album is as visceral as its earthworm-infested artwork suggests. Conjured during the early phase of her substance abuse recovery, hexed! is packed to the brim with face-melting songs that seize the listener by the throat, forcing them to inhabit and be haunted by her hellish dystopia through some of the most abrasive and ingenious sound design on any electronic record this decade. Riotous UK-bass is slammed onto drone pieces and clattering PC Music-era club beats through her plastic, vaporizing production, all for the sake of building an intensity that simulates Sinclair’s own explosive, hardcore-adjacent screaming vocals. No matter the horrors that come with learning to live in your own flesh, Sinclair rages and pounces her way through the soundtrack of her own metamorphosis, with no divine intervention in sight and only herself left to face the meltdown. — Rui Cunha

Backxwash – Only Dust Remains [Ugly Hag]

When Zambian-Canadian rapper Backxwash closed the chapter on her harrowing conceptual trilogy back in 2022, the need for release was evident. Coming into Only Dust Remains, Ashanti Mutinta doesn’t shy away from the impending doom, but tries to reconcile it with the desire to rise from the ashes. It’s a reawakening on all fronts that stretches the framework she’s built without dismantling its core, shifting between the cataclysmic and the existential to carve out space for a survival marked not just by pain, but by the possibility of peace. Only Dust Remains is her most nuanced and reflective work yet, but it’s by no means light in its approach. The roles of death, suicidal thoughts, self-hatred and faith still linger on, this time feeling less belligerent and more like objects of reckoning. When she interrogates the violence outside of her control, her words are no less commanding, even if there’s a restrained quality to her delivery. The production across its ten tracks is also more expansive than ever. The dense, industrial edge hasn’t vanished, but there’s more air to breathe between the aggression, more room for melody, contemplation and conventional hip-hop customs (by Backxwash’s standards). Her beats fully lean into sample territory, often letting a single loop shimmer until it expands into something different altogether: 9th Heaven’s drum and bass section, "WAKE UP"’s gospel choir finish, the shoegazey guitars bursting through "DISSOCIATION". If Only Dust Remains introduces a different kind of heaviness, it’s equally true that it still holds the weight of struggle. Backxwash’s music has always excelled in that front without being totally bleak in its dissections, and although those inner demons are far from defeated, her newest record beautifully doubles as her greatest ode to hope and resilience in the face of burden. — Rui Cunha

billy woods – GOLLIWOG [Backwoodz Studioz/Rhymesavers]

billy woods’ fascination with the Golliwog dates back to age nine, when he wrote a story about the anti-black rag doll. His mother, an English literature professor, initially dismissed the piece as derivative, but the haunting symbolic weight of the caricature itself has permeated the margins of his music ever since. Decades later, the figure resurfaces as the conceptual nucleus of what may be woods’ most uncompromising project to date. The 18 tracks on GOLLIWOG unfold like a grim, densely layered nightmare, one that denies resolution or relief, even when woods deploys his trademark dark humor to cut through the album’s grime. A longtime chronicler of heavy subjects, woods serves as both an active narrator and witness of decay and disillusionment, wrapping cinematic, razor-sharp imagery around the dissonant instrumentals of tracks like "STAR87", "Corinthians" and "Lead Paint Test", brought to life by a first-rate team of collaborators. His observations – driven as much by horror tropes as by comedy and satire – lay bare woods’ elusive presence and grieving vulnerability amidst the surrounding warzone. The never-ending cycle of torments he eloquently triggers may be twisted, but GOLLIWOG’s unflinching interactions with evil yield plenty of room for revelation. What emerges is a surrealist reckoning of macabre tales of humanhood, turning terrors (both banal and extreme) into a poignant excavation of the roots, wreckage and responses to cultural trauma and the violent state of society. — Rui Cunha

Black Country, New Road – Forever Howlong [Ninja Tune]

Black Country, New Road have always seemed allergic to outside expectations. Even when their Mercury Prize-nominated debut, For the First Time, brought them worldwide attention with its anxiety-boosted chaos, the band quickly moved on to the grandiose, confessional fusion of post-rock and chamber pop that informed what many claim to be their opus. That restless unpredictability soon felt like a necessity when faced with the sudden departure of Isaac Wood just days before the release of Ants From Up There, the former frontman whose voice often felt like the band’s very own spine. But when faced with the weight of survival, the now 6-piece chose something more radical: they dissolved the concept of a single leader altogether. Their grand return with Forever Howlong confirms what 2021’s Live at Bush Hall had already teased, with Georgia Ellery, Tyler Hyde and May Kershaw handling the vocals on rotation. The emotional immolation and orchestral arrangements of past works are now reshaped to accommodate the lusher textures and twee folk leanings. Between the riveting finish of "For the Cold Country" and the harmonic, Joanna Newsom-inspired title track, the group does everything in their power to avoid unifying itself under one identity, instead embracing its variety like a patchwork of sounds and perspectives. Forever Howlong unfolds as patiently as it asks the listener for open-mindedness, in what’s yet another reinventive left-hook from a truly generational band. — Rui Cunha

Black Eyes – Hostile Design [Dischord]

In 2023, Black Eyes got back together to play their first shows in 20 years. Later this year, the Washington, D.C. art-punk innovators returned with their first new album since 2004. Hostile Design was created with the one and only producer Ian MacKaye, the Fugazi frontman and Dischord co-founder who has also directed their two original albums. Black Eyes are not the kind of band that will give you comfort or any kind of uplifting pseudo mood just to make you feel good. Instead, they are here to mess with you, challenge you and make you feel uncomfortable. Since their inception Black Eyes haven’t shifted at all over the years, the band’s anguish about and rage towards the politics of the moment are still there, tackling global apathy, the normalization of genocide or even the generational clash of values. Hostile Design is a modern, one-of-a-kind art-punk masterpiece, their blend of punk, free-jazz, hypnotic noise and frantic drums presented as something absolutely top notch. Their message may hold little relief, but it does offer catharsis in trying times. — Fausto Casais

BRUIT ≤ – The Age of Ephemerality [Pelagic]

The Age of Ephemerality is an absolute benchmark in the realms of post-rock; it’s like a feverish gaze into a hypnotic instrumental landscape. This new album is also able to convey this message through an abstract and characteristic musical language, through which it induces a sense of hopelessness and anxiety that comes with the current state of world affairs. BRUIT ≤ as a whole are definitely innovating the post-rock genre and pushing it forward, and the way it builds, crashes and flows feels like life. It’s not easy for an artist or a band to communicate their message through their sound nowadays, but to create something that manages to be full of joy and triumph, while at the same time turning into a dirge-like siren call, lamenting the inherent corruption of our world, is outstanding. BRUIT ≤ leaves us in a final maelstrom of insane intensity, showing us how powerful a proper post-rock album should sound. In a world where the boundaries of sonic exploration are self-imposed like the colours of the palette, The Age of Ephemerality has expanded that to an unthinkable number of choices. — Fausto Casais

caroline – caroline 2 [Rough Trade]

Three years after their debut, the London eight-piece further pursue the slow-burn sonic meanderings that have come to define their creative spirit, while allowing for greater spaciousness through the patchwork experimentation and human fragility embedded in the more abstract spots of caroline 2. This time around, their blistering exercises in post-rock dynamics arrive with a sharpened sense of equilibrium, constantly balancing deliberate structures with moments of full-on spontaneity. In the incongruent and fragmented, the band navigates the tides between deliberate decision-making and their innate urge for improvisation, crafting songs that undulate through a blend of electronic and analog components that never repeat an idea twice. The subdued inflections on the Caroline Polachek-assisted "Tell me I never knew" that are as similarly elliptical to grasp as the heavily processed vocals pounding halfway through "U R UR ONLY ACHING", much like the agitating interplay of violins and clarinets on "Beautiful ending". The same elements that disjoint the experience of listening to caroline 2 are also what make everything render as cohesive, never allowing you to get too accustomed to what’s seeping in past the speaker, as it keeps shifting and reconstructing the contrasts being presented only to mold them beyond boundaries and land on something else entirely. — Rui Cunha

claire rousay – a little death / More Eaze & claire rousay – No Floor [Thrill Jockey]

After more than a decade of friendship, mary maurice and claire rousay’s latest EP revises their artistic bond to fit the ambitious landscapes of ambient americana. No Floor is undoubtedly minimal by way of collage, but the duo’s remarkable sonic restraint doesn’t allow itself to leave space for emptiness. Their background as innate experimentalists sure give No Floor its own unpredictable texture, but it’s nostalgia that turns Rousay’s collaborative and solo releases in 2025 into life-spanning celebrations full of sentiment. Vocal samples glitching through the auditory panorama, strings bending with the digital, pedal steel and static echoes that never quite fully settle. Much like no floor, a little death also whispers through fragments of the whole, each new composition lingering in the threshold between memory and sensation, rather than stretching their way to cathartic finishes. Rousay once again embraces impermanence in an era of all-consuming attention, and through the quiet loneliness of rural sprawl and dusky field recordings, No Floor and a little death offer an opportunity to endure the softness of sound in order to fully appreciate the wonderful comfort of silence. — Rui Cunha

clipping. – Dead Channel Sky [Sub Pop]

Experimental hip-hop trio clipping. stays forever committed to the hellscape. It has informed many, if not all, of the narratives that the multi-talented Daveed Diggs, alongside producers Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson, have brought to life in the past decade, their works constantly interlaced with the dystopian, futuristic ethos, but always grounded with just enough reality to make it all the more believable. Following the horror-themed twin albums released in 2019 and 2020, Dead Channel Sky chooses to layer their fueling sense of storytelling against a cyberpunk background. Using William Gibson’s novel Necromancer as its initial groundwork, the end result is unsurprisingly just as concept-forward and sonically progressive as previous outings, slowly embedding you into the trio’s foreboding matrix without ever letting the listener fully crack the code. It’s the pairing of Diggs’ assertive vocal precision with the album’s many techno and breakbeat-infused beats, however, that truly solidifies Dead Channel Sky’s grim portraits of an impending sci-fi dystopia, one made all the more potent and uncomfortably reminiscent of our own reality at the hand of the group’s dedication to facing the dreadfulness of everyday life head-on. — Rui Cunha

Clipse – Let God Sort Em Out [Roc Nation]

The empire of Virginia coke-rap legends Pusha T and Malice has always been built on integrity. Between 2002’s Lord Willin’ and their sudden hiatus eight years later, the duo aimed fire at street life and rap politics with the same precision and bravado that fueled their menacing tales of dirty money and gang violence. Every bar carried a traumatic backbone, which is why Malice’s pivot to Christianity after stepping back from the group amid a federal drug investigation felt like more than a simple change in priorities. "Birds Don’t Sing", the opener on their stellar comeback album, wrenches listeners into harrowingly vivid depictions of losing both parents within months of each other. For a duo defined by ruthless hustler mentality, it’s a staggering turn: grief laid bare with the same fearlessness that still animates their coke metaphors. That balance is essential to the hard-won assertion of Let God Sort Em Out, with longtime collaborator Pharrell Williams working as its vibe maestro. He largely preserves the edge that made the skeletal Neptunes sound so singular, while accommodating the cinematic albeit calculated spectacle that pushes most mainstream hip-hop releases today (ironically contradicting the record’s repeating tagline of being “culturally inappropriate”). It’s a proof to their status that, despite its few missteps, the long-awaited homecoming of Clipse is as monumental as their presence implies. Take the Kendrick Lamar-assisted "Chains & Whips", where each traded verse lands with thunderous conviction, or the more sparsely gritty "M.T.B.T.T.F." and "Ace Trumpets". When disciples Tyler, The Creator and Stove God Cooks rise to the occasion on "P.O.V." and "F.I.C.O.", when Re-Up Gang affiliate Ab-Liva makes his fiery return, or even when Williams slightly kneecaps the choir-guided "So Far Ahead" with his shaky falsetto, these moments rarely undercut the duo’s unflinching chemistry, gladly locked between Push’s demonic poise and Malice’s hard-earned serenity. Clipse, more than ever, stand as voices with the authority to document and celebrate the legacy they’ve built. And in that sense, Let God Sort Em Out carves out an emphatic monument, putting everything on the line and reaffirming their enduring devotion to the artform like there’s no tomorrow. — Rui Cunha

Deafheaven – Lonely People With Power [Roadrunner]

Deafheaven’s long-awaited return to blackgaze brings them back to the charts after deviating from it in past projects such as Infinite Granite (2021) and Ordinary Corrupt Human Love (2018). Lonely People With Power channels the breakthrough of their wildly acclaimed record Sunbather (2013), except they sound better than ever. If it once felt like they had drifted from post-metal into full post-rock on their last album, their latest work presents a far more harmonious synthesis of both, with tracks like “The Garden Route” and “Heathen”, and then the drastic - yet entirely sensible - presence of “Magnolia” and “Revelator”. The record manages to intersect the sharp, towering vocal delivery of Clarke with some of the most dynamic and textured guitar work McCoy has offered thus far. Although Deafheaven have remained a felt presence, their latest release stands as their most mature work, both sonically and in terms of songwriting, with Clarke’s introspective and heightened awareness fully represented. — Inês Santos

Der Weg Einer Freiheit – Innern [Season of Mist]

The German black metal group returns to look inward on a record that intensifies their already glorious blend of atmospheric and melodic black metal. On Innern, much like their past projects, Der Weg Einer Freiheit step away from the predictable themes of the genre and instead lean into questions of what makes us human. The album opens with “Marter”, which immediately stands out as the most cohesive track, bringing together their strongest qualities: intricate and relentless drum work, soaring yet sorrowful guitar riffs, and Kamprad’s harsh vocals, yet somehow incredibly moving. His delivery captures the feeling of unheard torment that reshapes the soul, expressing that the only way through suffering is to accept the release that pain demands. This emotional clarity is what sets the German band apart from many of their black metal counterparts. Their willingness to speak to humanity, longing, decay, and rebirth - while surrounding those themes with gorgeous, melodic instrumentals and aggressive drums, guitars, and screams - forms a unique contrast that deepens their call to introspection. — Inês Santos

Die Spitz – Something to Consume [Third Man]

Something to Consume marks Die Spitz's transition from Austin's underground scene to Jack White's Third Man Records. Written against the clock, the band's debut album manages to incorporate influences ranging from grunge to punk, playing with thrash metal style riffs or intrinsically doom atmospheres, all meticulously wrapped in the production of Will Yip (Turnstile, Mannequin Pussy, Scowl, Code Orange, among many others), whom the band waited patiently for, postponing the album's release until 2025. It’s hard to find a group this heterogeneous that connects so seamlessly both in the studio and on stage. The band keeps its signature dynamic of swapping instruments and alternating vocals from song to song, highlighting their different influences and perspectives, and displaying a versatility of genres and thematic depth that is truly hard to match. — Miguel Santos

DITZ – Never Exhale [N/A]

Despite the consistency and recognition earned after their European tour with IDLES, it’s still surprising that a wider breakthrough feels overdue for DITZ. Never Exhale, the Brighton band’s sophomore album, was written almost entirely on the road, as opposed to the pandemic-bound isolation of their debut work, and reflects the physical and mental compression of relentless touring. The result is a tense, focused and, of course, loud record. Across ten tracks, the band leans into a familiar dark atmosphere, reinforced by a blunt, confrontational rawness with guitars that often abandon traditional roles to function as textures, noise, or rhythmic counterweights. The sequencing feels right and cohesive: if tracks like “Taxi Man” highlight the collaborative writing process of the quintet (it was ready-to-play in just two days), others were slowly shaped through a trial & error process, hardened by the intensive touring schedule. Defying its own title, I’d say that DITZ’s lung capacity is on point and they seem committed to continuing to create unsettling and aggressive music for the crowds. — Miguel Santos

Djrum – Under Tangled Silence [Houndstooth]

At the heart of Felix Manuel’s masterfully crafted third album as Djrum lies the enduring presence of the piano - an oddity for any album of its kind, but just another cornerstone in the UK producer’s long-lasting mission of meticulously constructing an emotional vision for electronic music as a whole. The instrument he was classically trained on – along with a palette of other traditional instruments woven throughout Under Tangled Silence – often transform and grow like a chamber composition, only to be perverted by microbeats, polyrhythms, glitchy fragments and distortion-laced effects when Manuel decides it’s time to apply a synthetic finish. In his explorations of sonic dichotomies, Djrum allows both of these vocabularies to share a natural, coherent middle ground. Between the solo piano sketches of "Unweaving", the kinetic dance energy of "Sycamore" and the sweeping surges of "Galaxy in Silence" and "Three Foxes Chasing Each Other", Under Tangled Silence’s hour-long runtime continuously gifts the listener with adventurous detours and fiery unpredictability. Manuel doesn’t flaunt his complex wizardry, instead moving with confidence between these disparate backdrops to weave fluid roots of mood and atmosphere. Under Tangled Silence stays perpetually lost in real-time improvisation, giving room for Djrum’s experiments to breathe, expand and reverberate, as the fabrics of sound reinvent themselves in a state of balanced, dynamic turbulence. — Rui Cunha

Eiko Ishibashi – Antigone [Drag City]

Having garnered international attention with her mesmerizing film scores for Ryusuke Hamaguchi’s Drive My Car and Evil Does Not Exist, Eiko Ishibashi returns to album mode with a sharpened sense of the intricate dynamics between pop and avant-garde, which have continued to shape her nearly twenty-year-old portfolio. Even though Antigone is her first vocal and lyric-centered release since 2018’s The Dream My Bones Dream, the Japanese composer and songwriter smartly lifts key elements from the language of cinema to fully capture the serene eminence of these new compositions. Drums tremble with brushed urgency as glitchy synths and accordions thread themselves into otherworldly harmonic weaves, all of it punctuated by orchestral flourishes from Ishibashi and collaborator-partner Jim O’Rourke. Channeling both ECM-style minimalism and ornate chamber pop, Ishibashi’s imprint becomes increasingly compelling to the ear the more she allows her musical forms to meander, as she projects an urgent longing for escapism onto the pieces themselves. Antigone’s restrained intensity – presented in a different lens from the reflections of family and heritage that inspired its predecessor – doesn’t overbear its presence, with quietude and instrumental serenity mattering as much as spacious climaxes at her hands. The deeper you listen and pay undivided attention to the full picture, the more Antigone’s intricacies and tonal flourishes come into focus, reflecting the disorienting unease of the present moment and, in doing so, arriving at a resolute beauty that’s distinctly Ishibashi’s. — Rui Cunha

Eliana Glass – E [Shelter Press]

Eliana Glass treats the piano as if it were a lumbering heirloom. The Australia-born, New York-based chanteuse first learned the instrument as a child and later studied jazz, but the discrete compositions of E owe as much to Nina Simone and Julie London as they do to folk mainstays like Sibylle Baier and Jessica Pratt. Crooning through the ghosts of memory with the nuance of a whispered confession, what Glass can bring out of the mostly spare instrumentation surrounding her warm, sorrowful timbre is downright chilling. The presence of her voice, as much as a double bass or brushed drums, doesn’t announce itself so much as drift gently into the sonic periphery, grained and cracked at the edges like twilight itself. Tackling both originals of her own and homages to Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou and Annette Peacock, E closely resembles the candlelit atmosphere of a café lounge performance, lingering on the golden standards of moody jazz balladry with a contemporary and almost arcane touch. It’s undeniably timeless in form and execution, but the true magnetism of Glass’ debut lies in her nuanced mastery as a songwriter, knowing when to hold back and when to strike with a gradual swell of slow-built intensity, more than enough to pull you in with an understated, magnetic stillness. — Rui Cunha

End It – Wrong Side of Heaven [Flatspot]

A long time ago someone wrote: “How low can a punk get?”. There’s no answer to that, so instead the world gave us Bad Brains, Minor Threat, Circle Jerks and Black Flag. Fast-forward 40 years and you get End It, a hardcore outfit that has built a reputation through being unapologetically outspoken, with a hyper-speed formula of ripping songs and chaotic live shows. The Baltimore crew are the oxymoron of today, a novel cultural hybrid bringing back the middle class struggles with their own unique response to punk and hardcore. Wrong Side of Heaven encapsulates all of that: 15 songs with a clear objective of “spreading awareness of the change that’s coming to Americans, personal growth, and maintaining the ethics and integrity of hardcore.” Amen! — Fausto Casais

Ethel Cain – Willoughby Tucker, I'll Always Love You [Daughters of Cain]

There’s something undeniably special about Hayden Anhedönia, who, despite her star-level popularity, continues to drift further away from pop sensibilities, drawing as much from alt-pop textures as from slowcore, ambient and alt-country. It’s no surprise that her second full-length as Ethel Cain is just as adamant to the aura she has cultivated, further engulfing her dedication to the shadowy corners of her music despite the mainstream acclaim - truly bridging the gothic americana of Preacher’s Daughter with the drone-heavy left hook that was Perverts. Willoughby Tucker, I’ll Always Love You conceptually functions as a prequel to 2022’s Preacher’s Daughter, reminiscing on Cain’s first teenage love of the same name, rendered through songs of bittersweet devotion and flashes of passion drenched in melancholy. When the album goes fully instrumental, it expands the atmosphere around the remaining arc, in the same way Angelo Badalamenti did on the eternal Twin Peaks soundtrack. That same all-consuming pull animates Willoughby Tucker’s main tracks. "Fuck Me Eyes" comes closest to an outright pop anthem, while "Nettles" stands as Cain’s fullest tribute to its namesake love interest, tender in its twangy arrangements but brutally devastating in the lyrics department. The monolithic "Dust Bowl", which interpolates Duster’s "Star Will Fall" while gradually swelling towards a soaring climax of imposing proportions, drags its central, tumultuous relationship into the abyss of despair, much like the soaring crescendos of "Tempest" or "Waco, Texas". Every time Cain portraits her stories of devotion, death and tragedy lurk right around the corner, waiting to consume anyone enamored by her exploratory worldbuilding. — Rui Cunha

Faetooth – Labyrinthine [The Flenser]

Faetooth’s return after Remnants of the Vessel (2022) deepens their supernatural fairy-doom identity. With ghost, eerie-tinged vocals, slow, echoing sludge riffs and a gloom, motionless presence, we are welcomed into their maze. Their labyrinth forces us inward, toward the shadows we reluctantly run away from, hiding away like White Noise’s intense rawness. Their hypnotic sound gets us by the neck, and the album’s runtime of 55 minutes feels at times feverish and dreamlike. Reverbed guitars stretch time into a haze, creating a sense of peace while dead, decay and rot spread around, with Jenna Garcia’s layered and haunting vocals. This labyrinth doesn’t reveal answers, it opens pathways. We wander under moonlight, casting spells, putting salt in the wound, and dusting off the darkness smothering us. At times the lyrics sound like prayers and incantations, and just like there is green moss growing in graveyards, the darkness hidden within reflects light. — Inês Santos

Geese – Getting Killed [Partisan]

On the back of their frontman’s highly-praised solo outing, Brooklyn sensations Geese joined forces with none other than rap-leaning producer Kenneth Blume, who’s looking to branch out his repertoire, and turned Getting Killed into the fully realized statement of the young group’s potential. Far beyond the clear zeitgeist-dominant effect, the occasionally fiery, otherwise passionate tracks are bursting with personality, with the band often leaning into their loose jam-session chaos as the four members corrode their guitar music with unpredictable effects. Cameron Winter alone commands attention in his comedic insanity, every performance stretching the limits of his polarizing voice but perpetually ready to deliver airtight and even hook-heavy moments amidst the album’s progginess. Getting Killed isn’t afraid of driving towards a middle point between technical rock music and immediate songwriting, endlessly swapping styles and motifs like the car bomb on opener "Trinidad" is bound to explode. But whatever their minds are set, Geese’s magnetic third album comes at you with an undeniable force and little regard for immunity. — Rui Cunha

Gumm – Beneath the Wheel [Convulse]

Beneath The Wheel further refines their unique take on hardcore - or post-hardcore as some would call it. Gumm’s sound is like a lost son between Self Defense Family, Lungfish or Skinhead. It sounds fresh and the open-hearted lyricism is an absolute standout for the genre. Everything feels carefully made, with moments of burst balanced by deliberate breaths, giving this newest effort a depth that its predecessor only hinted at: raw but refined, loud but thoughtful. Gumm haven’t reinvented themselves, but they’ve polished their boundaries, learned their limits and mastered the balance between ferocity and finesse. Vocalist Drew Waldon says that "...really digging and uprooting your self-sabotaging impulse sometimes requires much more than just love and support,” he says. “It requires blood and sweat and tears. There’s hard work to be done.” We couldn´t agree more. — Fausto Casais

Hayley Williams – Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party [Post Atlantic]

Ego Death at a Bachelorette Party is an avant-pop triumph. On her most exploratory solo release yet, Hayley Williams explores depression, loss, religious hypocrisy, racism, status, and how the ego impacts us all. Stylistically, the record also has a surprising amount of variety, the instrumentals themselves pushing the purpose even further. More mature and introspective, Williams’ bold attitude and moody shifts land perfectly, every song feeling strong, each its own reflection of the musician’s exceptional sonic landscape. While her previous two solo records (2020’s Petals for Armor and 2021’s Flowers for Vases) did not quite reach the high bar set by her work with Paramore, this record is on a tier with the group's absolute best and is Williams's first solo masterpiece. — Fausto Casais

Home Front – Watch It Die [La Vida Es Un Mus]

Watch it Die is a stunning collection of music that sounds fresh and alive. The Edmonton band’s music has been a showcase for catchy songwriting and raw eclecticism. Never has post-punk sounded so expansive and genre-bending, with Home Front bringing punk’s confrontational attitude and even glitches of synth-pop into their very own dark vision of post-punk. The initial shock of hearing Games of Power back in 2023 is gone, unfortunately, but with Watch It Die, Home Front has created a stunning new chapter in what could become an unstoppable body of work. Thankfully, this new effort is still a gladly miserable record to experience in full, with only a few albums sounding this dirty and clean at once. Watch it Die is truly essential listening - not only listening, but feeling too. — Fausto Casais

Jefre-Cantu Ledesma – Gift Songs [Mexican Summer]

For the past 15 years, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma has commanded, expressed and treated sound at a respectful distance, letting it evolve and play out through its states of both loudness and delicacy. He doesn’t so much compose music in the traditional definition, but gently curates a living world, one that shimmers at the edges of perception and rewards those who get absorbed by the warmth of presence. Following 2019’s Tracing Back the Radiance, Cantu-Ledesma expands that record’s earthly horizons to better orchestrate Gift Songs’ garden of quiet lushness, subtly sprouting from the blending of organic tones and fleeting gestures until its flowers become withered. Across its three-movement suite and ambient-jazz drifts, the flowing ground of Gift Songs ages, strains and pulses to the loving enchantment of those who spectate, gliding through density and movement as a response to the spectral pianos of "The Milky Sea", the gentle percussion or the still drones that tenderly interweave the live instrumentation. As it ends on a near-quiet fade more poignant than any roaring climax, Gift Songs’ ornamented world carefully lets out its final breath before disappearing into the ache of absence, as Ledesma – perpetually working in muted harmony with the whole – crystallizes this heartfelt place of serenity for future blossoms. — Rui Cunha

La Dispute - No One Was Driving the Car [Epitath]

It’s been six years since the Michigan post-hardcore band La Dispute released their last album, Panorama. Partly inspired by the 2017 psychological thriller First Reformed, No One Was Driving the Car dwells with malaise in the shadow of the imminent day of reckoning, which has strikingly been worsened by the progression of tech. No One Was Driving the Car is beautiful and consistently gut-wrenching; the lyrics are equally outstanding, and this is their long-awaited return to their finest post-hardcore poetry. Jordan Dreyer’s urgent, poetic delivery is the perfect fit for La Dispute’s conceptual, intimate and cinematic sound. There’s melodic storm that explodes now and then all over the album; the way they break the album into acts, and what emerges from it is an often brilliant and eerie experience. No One Was Driving the Car is a compulsive and often poetic return to La Dispute’s signature style, getting your anxiety levels up while the whole narrative makes you tense. It rivals Wildlife as their finest release, their signature blend of poetic, cinematic post-hardcore with themes of religious exploitation, environmental decay, the point of no return regarding the effects of technology and existentialism resonating as the album moves through the chaos of Michigan’s Grand Rapids - touching on the pollution of Plaster Creek, an infamously dirty creek on the Southeast Side of Grand Rapids, and the damming of the Grand River. — Fausto Casais

Lucrecia Dalt – A Danger to Ourselves [RVNG]

Following up the esoteric and puzzling Latin futurism of 2022’s ¡Ay! with yet another transformative record, A Danger to Ourselves resculpts Colombian-born, Berlin-based Lucrecia Dalt’s boundary-pushing artistry into a more cinematic and equally intimate form, in order to suit her newfound meditations on desire, physical attraction and human connection. Recruiting her partner David Sylvian as co-producer and guest vocalist, Dalt’s voice becomes a fluid resource of atmosphere, fully and freely adapting itself to the album’s chameleonic soundscape, whether in the sparse, jazz-tinged "divina", the amorphous and slow-burning "stelliformia" or the ominous undertones that run through "no death no danger" and "mala sangre". And for every burst of art pop, electronic textures or industrial percussion that A Danger to Ourselves chooses to employ, Dalt continues to shape these living vignettes as a means of continuing to court improbability. Even when trading fervent, back-and-forth vocals with Camille Mandoki on caes or channeling Juana Molina’s contributions on the common reader to heighten its sinister tension, her emotional core stays paving the way forward. Dalt surrenders herself fully to probing both the beautiful and ugly depths of the human body, weaving them into her own idiosyncratic realm and emerging with an album even more intricately constructed, intangible and unpredictable than its predecessor. — Rui Cunha

Maria Somerville – Luster [4AD]

The quiet shores of County Galway’s Connemara have long served as a wellspring of solace for Irish singer-songwriter Maria Somerville. The ambient-folk songs on 2019’s All My People (written during her time in Dublin) emerged from that deep sense of longing, as if her eventual return soon after had been inevitable all along. Far removed from urban life, Somerville’s home studio became a vessel through which the surrounding landscape shaped her newly evolved sound, with the guiding hand of Suzanne Kraft and Lankum’s own Ian Lynch. On Luster, that rural expanse doesn’t merely nourish the spaciousness and texture of the songs, but also their mysticism. With songcraft and otherworldly ambience blurring more seamlessly than ever, 4AD’s stamp of approval feels fated, as Somerville’s artistic growth unmistakably inherits the dream-pop lineage the label has helped immortalize. Listening to the effect-heavy basslines on "Garden" or the mist-like vocal lines on "Spring" echoes the same sentiments and edgeless proportions found in any number of classic cuts by Cocteau Twins, Pale Saints or Mojave 3. Yet the droning abstractions of "Halo" and "October Moon" are more akin to the framework of Grouper, while the submerged drums that permeate "Projections" and "Violet" hint at a trip-hop undercurrent. Somerville’s reflections, drenched in a sea of reverb, barely hover above the soundscape, ultimately serving the larger dreamstate in motion. Whether in hushed moments or expansive exhales, Somerville gracefully conjures her own kind of spring, a lush echo chamber where the sorrows whispered into a field of ethereal instrumentation project a phenomenon as timely and minute as a windblow. — Rui Cunha

Marissa Nadler – New Radiations [Bella Union]

Marissa Nadler’s New Radiations transports us into a hushed, outer-space vastness, a type of calm that reaches us after the storm. Nadler’s haunting yet weightless voice drifts like a 
signal across the cosmos, guiding us through a journey of introspection, longing, and ache. Writing, producing, and performing most of the record herself, she crafts a consistent, ethereal sound of spectral folk and subtle gothic elements. Contributions from Milky Burgess and Randall Dunn expand the album’s horizon, adding an out-of-body dimension that is soft like a lullaby, yet still expansive and immersive. Intimate, unearthly, spellbinding, the tracks dive into the foreign realms of the human experience. In a soft whisper, Nadler reveals fragments of her inner world paired with an idyllic sound and cinematic songwriting. She departs on “It Hits Harder”, singing ‘Ice on the wings, I said all of my goodbyes’ looping into “Sad Satellite”, where she murmurs, “Travel through time / Just to say goodnight.’ — Inês Santos

Maruja – Pain to Power [Music for Nations]

Fueled by their energetic live performances and fierce mosh pits, Maruja has been steadily gathering followers since their first singles. The band chose 2025 to release the first full-length record, Pain to Power, a step aside from what you’d expect from a post-rock record. It’s fresh, innovative, creative and immersive, very much in the spirit of the band’s previous work. Yet, it manages to bring a darker and more groomed sound, infused with the jazz-punk that so strongly defines them. The debut album is deliberately political and radical, clearly expressing these unrestrained feelings through intense, unleashed rhythms, which are alternated with longer instrumental passages and spoken-word interludes for meditation and reflection. The world isn’t always the best place to be, but with strong offerings like this, we can become more self-aware and, perhaps, move forward to create something better out of it. — Miguel Santos

Messa – The Spin [Metal Blade]

After the aggressive output of Close (2022), Messa are back with yet another cohesive and enthralling album. Unlike most doom metal bands, Messa’s unpredictability stands as their most interesting quality, as well as their ability to surprise even their most devoted fans. The Spin departs from the sheer aggressiveness we heard on Close and instead traces evident influences from Sabbath to iconic group Sisters of Mercy, and the darker, more atmospheric side of post-punk. Sara Bianchin’s voice is as clear as it’s ever been, and her vocals interlace beautifully with the chaotic instrumentals unfolding in the background. Although The Spin runs for roughly 42 minutes - a surprising length for a doom metal group - the album encompasses their best qualities, from the cutting guitar riffs to the jazzy inflection of “The Dress”, a track that distances itself from the rest while remaining strikingly harmonious to the album’s core character. Messa’s ability to return and firmly establish themselves as one of the most exciting groups of our time is unmistakable. As Bianchin sings on “Thicker Blood”, they are so ready to be their fate. — Inês Santos

M(h)aol – Something Soft [Merge]

The raw way M(h)aol expose their themes, mainly about feminism. and their defiant and sarcastic stance, used as a form of purging, is mesmerizing. Before the release of their sophomore album, the band went through line-up changes and saw Connie Keane stepping up to take on most of the vocal duties while also remaining the band’s drummer. These changes didn’t shift their focus, the lyrics are as acute and sharp as ever. There are songs born from serious questions such as, “Do men think about whether the shoes they wear on a night out are good for escaping danger?” or “Why are musical instruments associated with a certain gender?” but also some unserious questions like, “How many crop tops did Vin Diesel use while filming Fast & Furious?” which spawned a song about ethical consumerism, and “What if there was a catchy anthem about ghosting?”. It's the mix of approaching important themes in a humorous yet denouncing way that draws me to M(h)aol’s music, that, the walls of noise and the dense, almost suffocating atmosphere set in motion by Sean Nolan’s guitar distortion and Jamie Hyland’s bass “witchcraft”. — Francisco Lobo de Ávila

MIKE – Showbiz! [10k]

As if a near-decade long prolific run hasn’t proven his talents as the bright, new leading voice of New York’s modern-day underground hip-hop, MIKE’s latest album further calibrates his commandingly refined sound with vibrant, impassioned snapshots of an artisan at the top of his pen-game. The brevity of the 24 songs presented on Showbiz! – glossed by a varied patchwork of sample-heavy beats with an underlying blend of soul, trap and jazz - only adds to the haziness of the rapper-producer’s laid-back delivery. His stream-of-consciousness meditations on community, personal growth and the everyday life of a working musician frequently blur into one another as the 47-minute runtime goes on, with plenty of flashy chops and hard truths to boast. “The prize isn’t much, but the price is abundant.”, MIKE poses on highlight "Artist of the Century", contemplating the scarring path that brought him to where he stands, only to remind you right after of how consistency and quality are guaranteed at the hands of a grounded force. — Rui Cunha

Militarie Gun – God Save the Gun [Loma Vista]

Along with Turnstile, Militarie Gun is one of the bands that are changing hardcore as both a music genre and a scene, even beyond that. The band's sophomore, God Save The Gun, is a solid, strong and still very fucking cathartic effort, going into a more melodic indie-punk territory this time around, while still keeping their hardcore roots intact. Their merciless brutalism and heartfelt honesty are what makes this record genuine and hopeful. To see a hardcore band flirting with Guided By Voices’ trademark sound and bring the pop sensibility of Jimmy Eat World to their sound without losing their identity is quite something, making God Save The Gun one of the most exciting records of the year and an absolute banger of an album. Militarie Gun don’t care what you think about them, they’re not selling out and they’re not getting soft. This is a band that needs to be appreciated properly and with care. Fuck you if you don’t understand that! — Fausto Casais 

Model/Actriz – Pirouette [Dirty Hit]

The Brooklyn four-piece has done it again! Marking their return in a more danceable fashion than before, Model/Actriz deliver songs that would fit into a clubbing scene while maintaining a heavy veil of noise. Their pure noise rock has given way to what feels more like an industrial brand of dance punk, filled with pop hooks that’ll stay in your head for days. The band’s signature theatricality shines even brighter here, with sections where harsher sounds give way to softer moments, alongside a showcase of Cole Haden’s wide range of vocal techniques. Pirouette is both a coming-out story and an essay about being seen and perceived by the world and how intimidating that can be. Throughout the album, there are several key moments: the confessional story about wanting a Cinderella themed birthday party for his fifth anniversary before changing his mind, the spoken-word song “Headlights”, the lyric “You can call me a small business owner living in America, while trapped in the body of an operatic diva” and the line that ties everything together at the end: “It can be strange knowing I’ve been a person like you are to me, sister”. — Francisco Lobo de Ávila

Nourished By Time – The Passionate Ones [XL]

Now signed to a major label, Marcus Brown’s ambulatory music continues to make a convincing argument for heartfelt balladry as a coping mechanism for modern dystopia. The Baltimore native draws upon his synth pop sensibilities to fit a contemporary and nostalgic realm in his idiosyncratic brand of R&B, further fine-tuning his instrumental prowess to fit songs that proudly lay their emotions bare. His latest, The Passionate Ones, trades the bedroom pop minimalism of Erotic Probiotic 2 for soaring, expansive echoes of longing and connection. On "925", Brown boasts over dreamy piano keys and new jack swing beats, addressing the everyday struggle of balancing a day job with a creative one to secure financial stability while trying to transform the crushing monotony of the routine into something else than just barely survivable. The groove-heavy "BABY BABY", on the other hand, takes aim at consumerism and social unrest, with searing declarations that “if you can bomb Palestine, you can bomb Mondawmin”, a neighborhood in his hometown. The songs that fully lean romantic are made just as urgent, with Brown letting his production swell and saturate the soundscape before somber melodies and hooks cut through. The album’s most gargantuan statement arrives in the form of "Max Potential", where psychedelic guitar lines mesh with sampled Labi Siffre vocals before dissipating into Brown’s blistering chorus. In his hands, passion itself becomes both a risk and a triumph well worth embracing. — Rui Cunha

Oneohtrix Point Never – Tranquilizer [Warp]

A few years ago, Daniel Lopatin came across a massive collection of 90s sample CDs on the Internet Archive, only for it to have vanished by the time he got around to doing something creative with it, before eventually resurfacing later on. It’s no coincidence that the groundworks for his most wonderful work in years share an obvious parallel to the origins of his masterpiece, 2011’s Replica (assembled from bootleg DVDs of old TV ads). And while it’s true that Lopatin is tracing back to familiar territory in concept, his approach to Tranquilizer burns with the mastery he’s acquired since - through his deepening run of Safdie film scores, producing work for other artists and, of course, his increasingly referential and nostalgic solo repertoire. If, on one hand, his greatest work as OPN in a minute builds a staggering monument out of preserving once-lost data through his own musicmaking, it also poses to reflect and capture, in his own words, “the emotional register of an era where everything is archived but perpetually slipping away”. Whether the liminal spaces of Tranquilizer bloom to be melancholic, Fennesz-esque glitchy or even exhilarating, Lopatin extracts feeling out of each and every piece of digital memory he can find, puzzling through the dystopian hazards of the computer era in order to make a gala out of its possible (and probable) impermanence. — Rui Cunha

Pelican – Flickering Resonance [Run For Cover]

Flickering Resonance marks Chicago post-metal instrumental heroes Pelican's first album in six years and also sees the band reuniting with founding guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec, who amicably departed the fold more than a decade ago. Let’s say it’s a thrill to have the original lineup together once again. For this new venture, Pelican’s thick sonic backbone remains intact, actually reinforcing the boundary-pushing aspects of their early work, but without the need to go back to their trademark sound. Pelican was always timed to perfection, stridently pushing forwards, powerfully and brilliantly to new peaks of creativity in their sound. Flickering Resonance is all of that, an explosive cocktail of genres that is both fresh and remarkably cohesive. There are bands in every genre that make an indelible mark on a generation of fans and musicians alike. — Fausto Casais

Planning for Burial – It’s Closeness, It’s Easy [The Flenser]

Thom Wasluck’s long-awaited project arrives after eight years, landing with a quiet yet prominent presence. It’s Closeness, It’s Easy embraces the bleak and hopeless aspects of life, while also forcing us to confront the beauty embedded in our pain. With a more mature sound that still honours his earlier work from Leaving (2010) to the more recent Below the House (2017), Wasluck reflects on what once was. The album fuses doom, slowcore, blackgaze and ambient textures, creating a sonic landscape that mirrors memory itself: layered and disintegrated. Even when consumed with sorrow, Wasluck’s emotional and striking vocals remind us that ‘When you’re living this hard / You’re hardly living’. The repetition we find throughout the album works as a personal reminder that in our shadow self, there’s light. Tracks such as “A Flowing Field of Green” embody this duality of longing and survival, asserting that there’s a hole in everything but that we have the power to resist it. Planning for Burial expresses perseverance in the face of inevitable decay, in every note and nuance, Wasluck reminds us that grief is the evidence of life. — Inês Santos

Ragana & Drowse – Ash Souvenir [The Flenser]

Doom duo Ragana and slowcore artist Kyle Bates, known as Drowse, gather for a striking album where the noisy, harsh nature of Ragana’s guitar riffs meets the gloomy, atmospheric shoegaze textures that define Drowse’s work. This collaboration arises in the context of the Roadburn Festival in 2024, yet it never feels like a one-off experiment. Instead, it leans into both artists’ strengths while creating something that neither could have fully reached on their own. An album of dislocation, moving, and in-betweenness, it occupies a space where post-metal weight, slowcore fragility, and shoegaze haze fold into each other without collapsing. Sonically, it seamlessly represents the sensation of drifting from place to place: long stretches of calm, almost meditative instrumental movement evoke the suspended quiet of a long drive home, while sudden eruptions of harsh vocals cut through with a desperation that feels both intimate and overwhelming. On “After Image”, we hear “I am ungrounded / Unknown opal smoke / Across 22,000 / Square miles that are not home.” The record lingers in those transitional emotional states - restlessness, mourning, brief flashes of clarity - capturing the unstable nature of being caught wishing to be everywhere and nowhere at once. — Inês Santos

Rafael Toral – Traveling Light [Drag City]

Rafael Toral’s latest wonder sees him drawing further from the spiritual core of 2024’s Spectral Evolution, the album that managed to revive Jim O’Rourke’s long-discontinued Moikai label and condense three decades of sonic experimentalism into his most widely celebrated work yet. For Traveling Light, the Portuguese musician set out to deconstruct a series of jazz standards and fit them in his evolutionary musical language, placing the melodies front and center, stretching them out in time, leaving both enough room for traditional recognition as for the formation of cinematic, drone-heavy patterns for the six pieces at his disposal to take shape. Toral’s guitar, guiding the path ahead with traditional jazz theory in mind, frequently acts as an anchor through his own carvings of old and new, tangling together each one of his ensemble’s contributions (Clara Saleiro on flute, José Bruno Parrinha on clarinet, Rodrigo Amado on tenor saxophone and Yaw Tembe on flügelhorn) to match the full nightly resonance of these standards, revealing once more just how much margin for discovery still exists in the music we may call dated and familiar. — Rui Cunha

Rún – Rún [Rocket]

A trio of significant like-minded artists, all essential to Ireland’s leftfield scene, Rún brings together vocal artist Tara Baoth Mooney, Dublin composer/performer Diarmuid MacDiarmada (Nurse With Wound co-conspirator and brother of Lankum’s Cormac) and drummer, sound designer and engineer Rian Trench. Rún’s self-titled debut is one of the most ambitious efforts of the year, their blend of folk, avant-garde, drone, layered noise, the intensity of sludge-metal or even cosmic jazz forming one of the year’s most indispensable soundscapes. There’s an ugliness in Rún’s sound that aligns perfectly with all the darkness we’ve witnessed over the years across the planet, while still being able to bring elements of ethereality into their snatches of melody. Rún’s sound is very rooted in the real world, yet sounds fresh, strongly emotional and striking effective. — Fausto Casais

Ryan Davis & The Roadhouse Band – New Threats From the Soul [Tough Love]

Ryan Davis has always been the kind of artist who puts his lyrics first. Long before New Threats From the Soul cemented his gifts alongside the freewheeling Roadhouse Band, the Louisville songwriter had already developed a knack out of turning the delirium of a wicked world into sharp and witty alt-country epics. On one hand, he had the late, great David Berman lauding him with praise, calling him the “best lyricist who’s not a rapper going”. On the other, rising star MJ Lenderman was eager to learn directly from him. Years later, Davis would eventually open shows for his protégé’s Manning Fireworks tour, being introduced to a brand-new audience while pushing his pen-game into freer terrain. Constantly straddling the border between fever dream and reality, Davis’ ruminative narratives require patience, but once he starts firing off incisive turns of phrase and sketching the surreal landscapes that bind these songs together, it’s hard not to wish the trip lasted longer. The Roadhouse Band helps him build this carefully rendered world by employing everything from sweeping strings and woodwinds to the clattering breakbeats of "Monte Carlo/No Limits", all underscored by a sense of theatrics that emphasizes Davis’ tongue-in-cheek humor and the vulnerable weight beneath it. At its sharpest, his gift is unmatched: cutting deep and still managing to make you laugh through the sting, as the protagonists in his stories (much like himself) grapple with middle-age and youth’s slow departure with a twisted smile in sight. — Rui Cunha

Skinhead – It's A Beautiful Day, What A Beautiful Day [Closed Casket Activities]

Undoubtedly one of the most underrated efforts of 2025, It’s a Beautiful Day, What a Beautiful Day is 9 songs and 22 minutes well worth your full attention. The new album stays true to the straight-ahead, fists-up quality of the band's music. Along with a sense of community, the album also offers a refreshing take on several issues, mixing introspection, working-class themes and a feel-good attitude about life. There’s also a mystery around this project: some say that someone called Skull (played drums for Black My Heart and Criminal Instinct) started what seemed like a one-off solo project called Skinhead, and released Fuck Fake Skins, a demo full of songs about calling out fake skinheads. These days, the band consists of members of hardcore bands like Terror, Haywire, and Conservative Military Image. Taylor Young from Twitching Tongues, God's Hate, is part of Skinhead now, and he also produced the album. Skinhead sounds like an angrier version of Drug Church with the rage of the beginnings of Toronto’s finest Fucked Up, but every once in a while, a band comes along that truly just clicks immediately. It’s fairly straightforward Oi!-influenced punk/hardcore, but it’s catchy, funny and frankly honest. Essential listening! — Fausto Casais

Soul Blind – Red Sky Mourning [Closed Casket Activities]

Soul Blind returns with one of the most chilling efforts of the year. On their sophomore effort, the band proved that they weren't simply another hardcore band with hints of grunge and lost memories of nu-metal. Instead, they push the envelope with a no-fucks attitude about what they’re inspired by and create something huge and distinct. The comparisons to Alice in Chains are just begging to be made here, with some tinges of early Deftones, the all-embracing vibe of Helmet and even a bit of Quicksand. Red Sky Mourning sounds angry and heavy. They’re not at their full potential yet, but they’ve achieved something highlight-worthy with this new effort. The growing pains on a sophomore album are always there, but we should address the elephant in the room and say that alternative/nu metal doesn’t just belong in this modern era, it booms. Even their most hardcore instincts fade into their softest ones, blending gorgeously and contrasting even better. Red Sky Mourning drops onto the scene and floors you from beginning to end, an album that makes you drop everything you’re doing just to give it your full attention. — Fausto Casais

SPELLLING – Portrait of My Heart [Sacred Bones]

After perfecting her trademark formula with 2021’s The Turning Wheel, Chrystia Cabral knew the time had come for a major reinvention; and given how non-conforming her music tends to be, it quickly rose from a question of if to a matter of when. How an artist known for spectral, baroque pop would boldly pivot into the sounds of post-Y2K, stadium-sized rock anthems is enough to make Portrait of My Heart her boldest record yet, with a newly assembled band to back up her everlasting ambition. The polish of SPELLLING’s previous outings is retained in full, with the ornateness, ethereal romanticism and vocal-bending theatrics of old now channeled through thunderous guitar riffs and punchier compositions. The songs on Portrait of My Heart may turn the noise of messiness into something pristine and cohesive rather than unpolished and careless, but it’s precisely this juxtaposition of musical tropes – which informs her boundless tales of sound every step of the way - that turns Cabral’s genre-clashing and surprisingly accessible left hook into yet another testament of her prowess. — Rui Cunha

Stereolab – Instant Holograms on Metal Film [Duophonic/Warp]

After 15 years without any brand-new studio material, Instant Holograms on Metal Film finds Stereolab stepping back into the realm of familiarity. The soft and plucky analog synthesizers, krautrock-infused guitars, 1960’s french yé-yé touchstones, cadenced motorik rhythms and Laetitia Sadier’s velvety vocal passages are all kept purposefully sacred right from the first seconds of their blissful comeback album. Never does the legendary groop, however, resign from diving further into the retro-futuristic soundscape they meticulously began exploring in the 90s, layering textures (both complementary and discordant) and melting song structures to create newly improved musical motifs that still feel reminiscent of what can only be labelled as the core Stereolab sound. The absorbing twists and turns that take the listener through the fully instrumental "Electrified Teenybop!", the three distinct movements of "Melodie Is a Wound" or the heady riffs of "Esemplastic Creeping Eruption" are softened by the enveloping of breezy melodies, with Sadier’s razor-sharp social commentary left to build confrontation in an almost detached demeanor. Where Stereolab continues to shine the brightest, nevertheless, is when melody and harmony are at their lightest and warmest. The arrangements of "Transmutted Matter" or "Immortal Hands" are given just enough liberty to float aimlessly amidst the ambience, the rewards of powering through each deliberate, cerebral progression boundlessly enthralling. To maintain this level of defiance more than three decades into the band’s mythos is a feat in itself, but to continue sounding like nothing else and still have more to build on shows precisely why Stereolab remains one of the most unique and groundbreaking bands to ever do it. — Rui Cunha

Swans – Birthing [Mute]

Swans’ continuous relevance somehow prevails and even intensifies with each new release. Birthing often feels like the literal birth of something new: seven expansive tracks stretching nearly two hours, the longest surpassing twenty-two minutes. What anchors the record is a continuum of sound that is unmistakably Swans, even as their palette - still steeped in post-rock, noise, and drone - expands into a looping, hypnotic harmony. Michael Gira’s deep, raw voice opens the album with “I am the mother of our daughter”, and the vocals, paired with a swelling choir and vivid lyrical imagery, create a ritualistic, folk-like atmosphere characterised by neofolk and gothic undertones. Swans cemented their identity long ago with projects like The Seer (2012) and the two subsequent trio records, yet it remains unexpected - and almost surreal - that a band of this longevity continues to maintain its relevance through a sound only they could make. Birthing reads as a farewell to Swans’ all-consuming sonic world, and once again they prove that decades of transformation built atop a stable foundation can yield a renewed sense of importance. On a record Gira openly describes as a parting gesture to this era of Swans, we witness the final birthing of something: captured on “(Rope) Away”, where he sings, “we’ll drift away in dreams tonight / away, away, away.” — Inês Santos

The Armed – THE FUTURE IS HERE AND EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE DESTROYED [Sargent House]

Much like its title suggests, The Armed’s new album is loud, incendiary and bluntly urgent, if we want a tomorrow the foundations of today need to be torn apart. After bending their sound into something experimental on ULTRAPOP (2021) and Perfect Saviors (2023), the band returns to the feral volatility of Only Love (2018), except now they are more impatient than ever. The record rages against societal rot, not wasting time with embellished metaphors. From the opening “Well Made Play”, the band plunges us into a sonic overload with ragged guitars and throat-ripped vocals calling out the targets: ‘Fools, liars / heathens, traitors’. In a collision of hardcore punk and dissonant noise-rock textures, The Armed claim to channel the Weltschmerz, reminding us that in the face of despair we need to stand firm and ‘don’t let them make you go numb’. The Future Is Here And Everything Needs To Be Destroyed doesn’t offer solutions, it detonates the silence with insurgency. — Inês Santos

The New Eves – The New Eve is Rising [Transgressive]

The New Eves rise from dust with their debut album, released in August. From the opening track, “The New Eve”, their manifesto unfolds as spoken poetry, drawing from classic punk, while delivering a sermon-like warning of what lies ahead. Their sound feels both ancient and immediate, fusing modern folk, punk, and spoken-word elements. Violet Farrer’s violin and Nina Winder-Lind’s cello weave layered instrumentals around pounding drums and chiming guitars, creating a sonic depth that is visceral. While echoing archaic pagan tones, the four-piece reframe these sounds for the present, stating in their manifesto that ‘The New Eve fucks if she wants to’ because ‘There is no God to save you if you don’t listen’. The album conjures images of Mary and Eve as empowered women, giving the record a ritualistic, almost sacred undertone. In doing so, The New Eves carve out a sound that is simultaneously familiar, ancient, and unexpectedly modern. — Inês Santos

Tortoise – Touch [International Anthem/Nonesuch]

Nine years after Tortoise’s last opus, a lot has changed. They’ve partnered with International Anthem and recorded the new effort in various locations (a first for the band with each member now spread across various parts of the US). Touch has a bit of everything, but Tortoise’s comprehensive, ever-expanding world is expressed through a wider lens, with the group doing well at drawing from every part of it. Tortoise are tighter and more precise than ever, sounding challenging, right-angled, rhythmically cohesive and very entertaining all throughout Touch. The Chicago post-rock pioneers don’t need much to sound like themselves and still bring new context to their very own exploration and sound improvisation, where the listener is easily sucked into black holes and different soundscapes. In 2025, it’s quite fair to say that Tortoise are no longer simply a post-rock institution, having climbed the ladder into a post-everything world, a place they will never leave and that fits them perfectly. — Fausto Casais

Turnstile – NEVER ENOUGH [Roadrunner]

In 2025, hardcore has finally going mainstream. It’s quite weird, but it’s a sign of the times. People are angrier, anxiety is here to stay, there are conflicts, genocide and wars everywhere. Fascism is a trend, stupidity is the law and ignorance is bliss. Turnstile managed to make the same thing Nirvana did in the 90’s, where their blend of noise rock and punk rock connected the outcasts with the masses and changed a whole generation in the process. 2025 was indeed the year hardcore broke, the Turnstile Summer, and it’s with no surprise they’re our band of the year. Hardcore is more than music, always has been since the 80s, where it became a political and social movement as much as a strictly musical one. Hardcore clashed with mainstream society, a minor subculture that generated a lifestyle stripped down to the bare bones. NEVER ENOUGH is the natural evolution of Turnstile’s sound, which started with Time and Space and then the mind-blowing GLOW ON. It’s quite fair to say that this latest effort sounds like part three of that journey: sometimes it’s a brilliantly celebratory, genre-bending rock experience, changing the scene itself as much as the audience. It's not like they’ve left behind their hardcore Baltimore roots, however. They will still invite you to join them on stage, pump your fists, scream at the top of your lungs and jump into the void. Songs like “Birds”, “I Care” or the lead single “Never Enough” are just a few examples of how they explore their own sonic boundaries and creativity. There’s nothing out of the ordinary or fancily exquisite to be found on NEVER ENOUGH, it’s just simple rock songs from a humble hardcore band. It’s a non-pretentious effort that says a lot about the odd, singular place Turnstile have ended up at. They are the biggest and most exciting band in the world right now, just doing their thing. I just want to say, thank you for letting me see myself once again. — Fausto Casais

Water From Your Eyes – It’s A Beautiful Place [Matador]

At under half an hour, Water From Your Eyes’ latest release darts between styles with the volatility of mood swings. Contrived, disconcerting and nonsensical as ever, the shape-shifting world of Rachel Brown and Nate Amos mirrors the one we live in today, crawling through the present haze and showing little concern for coherence in their jolting musical shockwaves. “It’s so sad in this beautiful place”, Brown laconically murmurs on lead single "Life Signs", over jagged guitar lines that hint at slacker rock fundamentals, before the off-kilter arrangements around the chorus warp the song’s panorama beyond recognition. What soon follows maintains no intention of slowing down or falling in line with expectations. The distorted, power-pop gloss of "Born 2", for example, is succeeded by "Spaceship"’s sprawling psychedelia and the club-ready backdrop of "Playing Classics". Always relying on humor to tether their high-wire flights afloat, It’s A Beautiful Place’s textural vignettes expand on the subdued surrealism of 2023’s Everyone’s Crushed with broader instrumentation and experiments in mind, so much so that it becomes easy to forget they were pieced together in Amos’ bedroom. By the time the album’s central, alien motif returns to close things out, It’s A Beautiful Place has run its course thriving on fractured contradictions, reaching toward new sonic and existential planes without ever drifting entirely off this earth. — Rui Cunha

Wednesday – Bleeds [Dead Oceans]

Right after finishing an exhausting tour cycle and with the end of Karly Hartzman and MJ Lenderman’s six-year romantic relationship still kept under wraps from the remaining members, Wednesday headed back into the recording booth for the spiritual successor to their 2023 breakthrough, Rat Saw God, with the urge to feed off the blistering foundations that earned its predecessor wide acclaim. If anything, the end results heard on Bleeds stand as their most heartfelt collection of tracks thus far, leaning into the same piercing songwriting that has made their sound so unique while expanding it through a wider sonic patchwork. Reflecting their noisier beginnings on "Wound Up Here (By Holdin On)" or the full-on hardcore bruiser "Wasp" as well as the twangier sweetness easing "Elderberry Wine" or "Phish Pepsi" into the memory frame, Hartzman’s vivid tales of the south encompass the beauty, the rot and everything in between in equal measure, colliding alt-country croons and guttural screams to perfectly accommodate her lived-in narrations of life on the margins of North Carolina with as much nuance and humanism as the dynamic performances backing her up. — Rui Cunha

YHWH Nailgun – 45 Pounds [AD93]

There’s no time wasted on 45 Pounds. YHWH Nailgun’s debut lives and dies by that ethos, putting its twenty-one-minute pressure cooker to good use with relentless, erratic swings of tension and release - each executed with the force of a detonating bomb. With a clear discernment for both polish and principle, the New York quartet is the living embodiment of pure, unfiltered fury, but the appeal of that same reverence also stems from an unwavering commitment to defy accommodation. Just as an idea begins to settle or cohere, another sonic assault crashes through, obliterating it to shreds without warning. The sensory overload saturating every inch of 45 Pounds is largely fueled by Sam Pickard’s explosive, hyperactive drumming and Zack Borzone’s feral shouts (delivering fevered, musing poetry in a tone that feels like it’s been exorcised from the PA system of an abandoned parking garage), both constantly jostling for dominance in the sonic foreground. Adding to that the well-timed arrivals of sharp, post-punk guitars from Saguiv Rosenstock and Jack Tobias’ dissonant work on synths, these 10 songs turn exact in their storm and perfectionist in their ambition. There are nods to industrial and no-wave foundations on highlights "Pain Fountain" and "Iron Feet", but those references are torn apart as quickly as they’re sketched, like on the dance-punk inspired grooves of "Penetrator" and "Castrato Raw (Fullback)", where even a traditional chorus relies as much on Borzone’s vocals as it does on the disruptive surfacing of a steel drum or a jagged synth stab. The thrill to an act of YHWH Nailgun’s nature – still clearly in an incubating phase – lies precisely in their complete lack of restraint, going way beyond the goal of brutalizing the listener and instead offering something lawless and, most of all, truly refreshing in this day and age. Disorientation is guaranteed while 45 Pounds is on, orchestrating a chaos of its own. The abrasion that’s ignited might not let you breathe for long (and a lengthier runtime would probably hurt what is perhaps its greatest appeal), but it will make you want to relive and replay it to the point of exhaustion. — Rui Cunha

Xiao – Control [Twelve Gauge]

Control takes power violence to new extremes, standing as Xiao’s uncompromising testament. In just 14 tracks over roughly 23 minutes, they deliver a relentless rage of hard vocals and urgent, punchy lyrics. The band’s signature intensity hits with full force fusing classic hardcore elements with a sharper, more mature fury drawn from the rising political frustrations. From the opening track, “No Fiction”, they stake a daring stance, and with most songs under two minutes, each burst of sound maximizes tension, enhancing their need to spit everything out in the fastest and most effective way possible. Every track feels like a concentrated explosion, where blast  beats and shouted lyrics collide in a very raw confrontation. Control echoes the never-ending inequalities present in today’s world, with tracks like “End of Times”, saying ‘Europe’s burning / A big mistake / We live in a fascist state’. Xiao’s Control unapologetically consolidates modern hardcore, while taking an extra step toward the urgency of our times. — Inês Santos

Honorable Mentions:

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