Hello! It's Eden. I'll never get over my need to write that, even though it should be pretty clear at this point. Anyway! The calendar reads July and so it is time to recap the year so far. It is decreed. The ancient laws demand it. However, you might remember from last year, that we are shrugging off the yoke of the rules which dictate the form that said recap must take. We are not, I repeat not, doing one big list of "the best" albums of the year because...well, you know why by now - it's pointless, you don't need it, it reduces art. Instead, over the next two weeks or so, we will be exploring the first half of the year from all sorts of perspectives - personal stories, encounters with genres, and stand out albums that cut through the noise to grab our hearts.
That's what this post is. It is the most "traditional" of the entries in this 2025 So Far series, in that it consists of a list of albums. They are not "the best" and we don't claim they are. Instead, they are the albums that leapt first to our fingers when we sat down to look back at the year. They're top of mind, because they're great or because they struck us deeply or probably both, in most cases. Enjoy! We'll be back soon with more stories and ideas of what 2025 meant, so far. In the meantime, here's a bunch of great music!
Calyces - Fleshy Waves of Probability
You’d think I’d run out of words to write about this album. Then again, why would you? Fleshy Waves of Probability is my album of the year and, as is only right for such an esteemed release, easily commands waves of passion within my heart. Seriously, it’s pretty incredible how much this album has maintained its lustre for me. Usually, “bright” and “open” albums like this (often described as “melodic” but that word just doesn’t cut it for me) tend to wear out for me. They rely on this explosive sort of passion which they elicit in me and that can run out pretty quickly, worn down by exposure. Not so with Calyces’ offering this year, which stands head and shoulders above their already excellent, previous release. Somehow, Fleshy Waves of Probability moves me almost like it did the first time I heard it.
How does it achieve that? The answers are many but the one which I am most drawn to is how this release is balanced. By that I meant that those melodic, scintillating vibes are not the only tool in Calyces’ shed and not the only way in which they made this album excellent. There’s also heft and heaviness here, to balance out the brighter moments. My favorite example is how the opening track, “Swirling Towards the Light” (still my favorite track on the release), works with its follow up, “Boneshatter”. When listening to the album for the first time, I expected the second track to continue the chromatic vibes of the opener, to keep unfurling what was promising to be an expansive album focused on atmosphere. Instead, I got a groove-laced rager, motivated and propelled by a chunky, thick riff and lots of aggression.
These couplings continue all through the album and also move past the “light/heavy” binary by including even more expansive and psychedelic tracks on the release. This means that Fleshy Waves of Probability does not wear down its welcome, instead presenting different facets to you depending on your mood and attention. This means that the album can stay fresh, always offering a new approach through which you can arrive at its tasty and emotive core. For this reason, alongside many others, I see it maintaining its top position in my list well past the first half of the year and all the way to its completion. I simply don’t see any other album both checking off so many of the boxes which I love to hear and do it in such a dynamic and agile way.
-EK
Kaschalot - Anemoia
Unlike the other album I am writing up for this post, I can’t really explain why I still love Anemoia just as much as I did when I first heard it. Don’t get me wrong, there’s always the easy answer of “it’s really fucking good”. OK, but why? What is it about this album that makes it not only very good but which makes it weather the test of time? I’ve listened to it countless times over the past few months (see my other entry in this post about repetition for more) and yet, it still sparkles with something fresh every time I put it on. This entry to this post is going to be short, as a result of me just not being able to explain why this is but knowing it so hard and so deep in my bones that I had no alternative other than writing this album up. Kaschalot were already one of my favorite bands in the realms of non-crescendo based post-rock, in the fields of explosive, emotive, groovy post-rock, but Anemoia is something completely different. It is an album that bursts with life and energy and that is the closest I can come to explaining why it has stayed so crisp to me. It feels like the first day of Spring, forever.
-EK
Cytotoxin - Biographyte
I know too many people say this about too many bands, but there really is no one doing tech death like Cytotoxin. This is a band that is firing on all cylinders literally all of the time — constantly punishing, lightning-fast, and completely unapologetic about it. While their arguable closest contemporaries Archspire started out similarly before exploring prog and neoclassical influences on newer records, Cytotoxin just continue doubling down on tech death that’s more Brain Drill than anything else you’ll hear out of the genre in 2025. Biographyte has it all: absurd twin-guitar leads, note-dense riffs that sound like Process-era Gorod but even faster, barrel-chested harsh vocals, and things you didn’t even know were possible with the diminished scale (see: the first 20 seconds of album opener “Hope Terminator”).
Outside of two short interlude tracks, there are no slow buildups or dramatic prog-adjacent intros — songs like “Behind Armored Doors” immediately explode into chaos and just never let up. Biographyte is somehow even more over-the-top than its excellent predecessor Nuklearth, leaving behind the weighty riffs of cuts like “Dominus” and “Soul Harvester” for some of the most consistently unrelenting guitar work out there. This is tech death at its absolute best, precision and virtuosity meeting sledgehammer brutality — and it’s still good months post-release for an instant shot of adrenaline to the dome, administered directly via your gas mask, of course.
-Ahmed Hasan
Värttinä- Kyly
What happens if, as a young child, one is lovingly submitted to the ebbs and flows of a hugely eclectic but still wonderfully unpretentious taste in music? While of course there are many other factors, and within the contextual confines of this blog I’ve come to the somewhat sobering realisation that my taste in the context of our bricolage of audiophiles might actually be somewhat basic, apparently I happen.
One of the more idiosyncratic artists I was exposed to as a malleable infant was Värttinä, and I went through the wonderful experience of almost forgetting about my childhood foray into their unique stream of Finnish art-folk (is that a genre?) before re-discovering my deep appreciation of them, aided by my equally deep appreciation of one of my best friends who happens to be Finnish, and our mutual delight and surprise at discovering we both know and love Värttinä.
This april, Värttinä unleashed a wave of comfort and nostalgia on my unsuspecting faculties by breaking a ten year silence and releasing their latest album Kyly, and while I pine for the maximalist, intricate glory of Ilmatar, this album hits the spot in an entirely different way. On Kyly, frontwomen Mari Kaasinen-Paasso, Lassi Logrén and Susan Venhovaara have graced us with another feast of folk, vocal excellence and Karelian cultural homage. Kyly is a much more accessible album, mixing Värttinä’s intricate progressive tendencies with a comforting, warm and cottage-appropriate helping of indie folk. The catchy choruses of “Maaruska” and “Igäne” are welcome to live rent-free in my brain on cozy, lazy Sunday mornings and will continue doing so for the foreseeable future. It’s not all fluffy cottage-core and kantele care-packages though: on the title track these three inimitable Yoik-witches pay homage to the darker and stranger inflections of “Aijö” by casting another dark and intoxicating spell through a raspy, rapidfire rendition of an intricate incantation.
There are pockets of gorgeous melancholy in this lush, folky forest as well. Between the gorgeous, plaintive melodies of “Kuuhullu” and the goosebump-inducing closer “Kazvatti Minuo muomoin” Värttinä comfortably show their emotional scope. The latter especially has quickly constructed and cemented a monumental edifice in my heart, with its gorgeous harmonies sung in Karelian dialect, sad, lilting melodies and painfully short runtime.
I’ve chosen to cover this album here, as it doesn’t really go in any of our regular columns or slot into the heavier side of music. It does, however, absolutely deserve mention, as do Värttinä as an artist as whole and as a catalyst for my personal love of Finnish language and music. There’s something in Finnish (folk) music, and the language as whole that just gets to me on a deep and instinctive level. I hope you will let Värttinä take you on a whimsical, wistful dance through the Karelian forest with Kyly, and if you decide to dive into their back catalogue and are looking for something more proggy, make sure to give Ilmatar a listen as well.
-Boeli Krumperman
It’s My Mania, and I Want It Now!
In 2023, The Armed completely blindsided me with Perfect Saviors. It hit me at the perfect time, and I’m talking at the quantum level, that primed a primordial hyper fixation for a full calendar year. I was breathing, eating, living this album, finding its DNA stuffed behind old clothes in the closet, in the grocery aisles, in the glance of a stranger. This album consumed me. This year however, started with a crawl. I was in a hell of a pickle (more on that later). I found myself yearning for something that would similarly rattle my cage and send me into another stint of manic preoccupation. I kept scouring recommendations from peers, siphoning from the funnel of “tailored” new release playlists, all of it, and nothing was scratching my itch. Fast forward to now. That yearning has been quelled by the likes of music in all capacities - live, recorded, writing it, recording it, passively, actively, audibly, spatiotemporally. My expectations have been exceeded, my preconceived notions completely obliterated, and my ideas of music fortunately continued to expand.
-Josh Fields
Cream of the Crop:
Snooze - I Know How You Will Die
The fourth installment from Chicago’s happy heavy masterminds in Snooze is truly astounding. I realize we’re only halfway through the year but I am definitively stating that this is not only my album of the year, but it is the album of the year. There is cunning homage to their prior work throughout, building upon an already impressive catalog and musical approach. This album is nearly impossible to describe accurately without just experiencing it. At any rate, IKHYWD satisfies the “keep it the same” crowd just as much as the “do something different” crowd - a feat rarely achieved, let alone authentically.
The replay value here is immense, due largely to an incredible production that buries treasures in the mix and retains humanness in an otherwise stale production era. The vocal hooks are otherworldly, inspiring, and beg the question “how the hell did you come up with that?” Instrumentation and musicianship across the board are phenomenal. Michael Stover’s ambiance that’s most often seen live is given a new spotlight throughout nook and cranny. Demetri Wolfe is a literal glue for the album, holding complexity and feel with equal importance. Alex Kennedy’s technical prowess and subtly shine. Logan Voss’ lyrics, direction, and composition excel in this, their most elaborate output to date.
The Callous Daoboys - I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven
This was the year I finally turned the Daoboys into a band I’d actually heard instead of just heard of. They’ve been a phenomenon since Die on Mars, I’m well aware, but I just never gave it the time of day. I knew their overall formula was whacky, unorthodox (pun intended), instrumentations and compositional juxtapositions. However, I was not prepared to be so thoroughly impressed at how well they’ve crafted their formula, and probably advanced it (I still haven’t visited their back catalog). I absolutely adore the immersion and thematic elements that bookend the album. The introduction to the body of works as museum artifacts is the kind of campy creative I’ve come to love this band for. The heavy-hitters of the album were quick to digest and easily hooked my attention, namely “The Demon of Unreality Limping Like a Dog” and “Idiot Temptation Force.”
The slightly off kilter rhythms and ironclad riffage in both hit like the last mile in a century long bike ride, balanced by the sugary relief of a Gatorade swig chorus (“don’t be embarrassed, I just wanna be what you like”). The easier listening artifacts are a breath of fresh air. They are indulgent, they recontextualize what it means to write pop choruses (Distracted by the Mona Lisa), and to write a curveball that ends up being a homerun (Body Horror for Birds). The interplay between the gnashing mathcore elements jutted up against pop, jazz, electronic, and whatever else I’m missing is indubitably interesting. To have it wind up adding value is a true work of art. Many of my favorite albums prioritize strong dynamics (see above) so it should be no surprise to me that IDWTSYIH is positioning itself into my all-time list.
Oklou - Choke Enough
If music can be a liminal space, this is a phenomenally fresh take on all that is nebulous and eerily familiar. There is a clear sonic palette of ambient, house, and hyperpop, woven together that induces a vivid daydream of a blissfully simpler time. The opening track, “Endless,” approaches slowly with a trembling roar from a distance, building into an ethereal reflection of identity that sets the tone for much of the album. Along the way, I can’t help but contemplate my own relationship with adolescence and maturity, and how those interplay into our ever-evolving world. Oklou’s spacious, breathy delivery and whimsical lyrics are just inherently infectious. The album has been referred to as “wallpaper” by one critic in particular, due to the overwhelming ambient nature of the album. but I have to disagree. Variety is abundant here in both form and instrumentation. Tempos sway throughout, ranging from the bed-like comfortability of “Endless,” sitting around 80 bpm, to more traditional dance/house tempos around 140 bpm in “Harvest Sky.” Guitar shines in “Blade Bird”, the hyperpop-ified dembow beat drives well over the speed limit in “ICT,” and minimalist composition on "Family and Friends” highlights effective simplicity.
Noteable Hype
I’m still not entirely sure where I land on the new phenomenon of dropping stand-alone singles that hint at a new body of work coming. It’s usually equal parts excitement and frustration. Cut to the chase, give me a release date, give me an album, give me an EP at least! At any rate, there have been a few stand-alones that have my jimmies rustled in a good way.
Loathe - “Gifted Every Strength”
This was a total surprise on all fronts, having debuted live for some folks (including myself) before streaming. There, the song was able to sit amongst a stellar set list composed heavily of their best tracks from I Let It In and It Took Everything. Birthing their new material with such confidence is worthy of excitement alone, but digesting it further after its streaming debut, their growth and progress are undeniable. The new bit crunchy and EDM adjacent textures push their extended range tunings in a refreshing direction, putting them in a lane all their own. They retain their insatiably catchy choruses and earworms just as they perfected in ILIIAITE. Perhaps most impressive is their compositional skills on this glimpse into the next chapter of Loathe. A sprawling and wandering guitar solo hadn’t been on my bingo card, but the execution goes to show their prowess in venturing into unfamiliar territory.
Johnny Booth - “Get Well Soon”
A fresh track from one of the swiftest and hardest working bands at the moment. Johnny Booth has been unrelenting in their ability to put out ass beater after ass beater since 2019’s Firsthand Accounts. Get Well Soon conjures the ferocity of songs like “Rebuttal,” “Left Hand Assurance,” and “Fever Dreams” from the aforementioned album, and they keep expanding upon vocal melodies as found in Moments Elsewhere i.e. “Collapse in the Key of Fireworks.” Their blend of high octane metalcore and anthemic vocal epochs is in full show here and I can’t wait for more. How can you hear the scraping guitars in the closing breakdown and not spin kick your house down? You can’t.
Caroline Polachek - “On the Beach”
Ok, so full transparency, I don’t think I particularly like this song all that much, but it is Caroline Polachek, so I do love it. This is for the new Death Stranding game? Movie? I’m not really sure I guess. My attention lies solely on the fact that she’s still busy, still creating, and is continuing her success. I adore Caroline and will use any opportunity to gush about her artistry that I can. Golly, am I blushing?
Totorro - “Bernard Guez”
I had thought the world's greatest math rock band (Totorro) had called it quits a few years ago. Much to my surprise and pure elation, they dropped a brand new song earlier this month. It’s a 5 minute dopamine ride with cute, angular rhythms, slow dramatic builds, expert dynamics, perfect guitar tone, lush post-rock chords, and some of the best happy halftime this year has seen.
Town Portal - ???
Technicality alert: Ok, so the world’s other greatest math (post?) rock band (Town Portal) hasn’t actually released a new single, BUT, there is confirmation the band has tracked for their next release which will surely be another jewel. Please take this opportunity to familiarize yourself with their back catalog. Malik Breuer Bistrup has the most unique approach to drums that I know of. It’s both circular and linear, that ends up aligning with remaining instrumentation (bass, guitar) in a cog like fashion. If groove is a machine, Town Portal makes the gears that churn it forward.