It's that time of the year again - the end of it is on the horizon. But there is still so much amazing music being released that it feels silly to start to think about summing it all up. But that's on the horizon and cannot be avoided. For me at least, that combo causes my ears to prick up even more, radar signals sending across my networks to capture every single amazing album that's being released, to make sure I get as much as I can before the year wraps.
And so, here are some amazing albums from the back quarter of 2025. See you soon for the big lists. For now, let's listen to some fantastic music together.
-Eden Kupermintz
Waxwolf - Magic Madness Sadness
Another month, another incredible instrumental album with an Helvetica Blanc cover. Seriously though, I might take this as an opportunity to finally sit down with Blanc and talk to them about the process behind creating these pieces of art. However, I very much would like to keep the focus of this entry on the album itself because it really is one of my favorite releases in a long time. Categorizing it is challenging; on one hand, it's an instrumental progressive metal album made primarily by one person, Federico "Waxwolf" Di Cera. This lends out a whole bunch of sounds, structures, and tropes. But on the other, it features none other than Hannes Grossman and Linus Klausentizer, making it adjacent to that entire scene of German progressive death metal. But on the third hand it has elements of chiptune (yes) and jazz. But on the fourth hand, it has the DNA of a progressive rock/fusion album.
You get where I'm going with this. Magic Madness Sadness is a lot. It has heavy segments, shred, jazz quasi-improvisation, blastbeats and yeah, electronic breaks, heavily chiptuned interludes and intros, and a lot more besides (like clarinets, saxophones, violins, and flutes). But here's the thing: it is expertly put together. This album really shouldn't work as well as it does. I should be using adjectives like "grandiose", "busy" or "ambitious" but, instead, the album flows incredibly well together. All of the instruments are arranged along common themes and are communicating the same musical ideas; nothing has been added just to have another instrument. It all serves a purpose, which means that even if the album is many-noted and definitely complex, it affords the listener with a lot to hang on to, a lot of musical check posts to orient themselves with.
It's also a lot of fun, which is really not something that is common with this type of release. When it explores leitmotifs (and its main motif is really a joy), when it call backs to earlier ideas, when it explores electronic takes, guitar licks, and grooves, Magic Madness Sadness really bursts with the enjoyment of the people who composed it and made it. It gives the album such a unique, light sound that really sets it apart from anything else, even on top of the uniqueness of its genre tags and overall mix. I really encourage you to give this one whirl; its a ride and a half and one of my favorite musical journeys of the year.
-EK
Igorrr - Amen
Gautier Serre’s musical passion project Igorrr is a great many things. But above all, it’s weird. Like, really fuckin’ weird. I’ve not had a single conversation with anyone about this wondrous project where that word wasn’t thrown out at least once. For all the baroque pop, triphop, harsh breakbeat and manic black metal Serre and co mash together in a glorious heap, the cornerstone of Igorrr has always been its distinct lack of convention. Which made the slightly more straightforward, hardened metallic core of the band’s fifth full-length endeavor Amen one of its biggest curveballs to date. That isn’t to say Igorrr have lost their identity and penchant for high strangeness. To the contrary, in my view. Amen instead represents a natural progression, a distillation, and a batshit reverie of metallic insanity that, perhaps for the first time, feels like… a predictable move.
And it absolutely rules.
Perhaps no track on the album best encapsulates its general aesthetic than opening track “Daemoni.” A dark, propulsive slab of sonic strangeness that includes Nine Inch Nails electronics, gorgeously utilized live choir work, operatic vocals, demolishing riffs, excellent kit work and some truly diabolical harsh growls… all in perfectly legible 4/4. It’s emblematic of the record itself. A blend of the project’s standard multitudes of instruments and sounds, wrapped in what may be their most easily digestible presentation yet. It’s still super weird, but god damn if it isn’t listenable as all hell.
This more palatable format also shows its face in absolute bangers “Headbutt” and “Infestis,” two of Igorrr’s most punishing metal tracks to date. The guitar work takes center stage here, with each track building on musical themes that are firmly planted in the sonic world of extreme metal, and the results are glorious. If you aren’t banging your head to the central riff of “Infestis” you may be dead. But while metal itself serves as the sun around which Amen orbits, the band’s expected batshit lunacy shows itself most readily in the excellent Mr. Bungle-featuring “Blastbeat Falafel” and the electronic gonzo nightmare of “ADHD,” which remind listeners that while Igorrr may be more metal than even before, they will always exist on the fringes of sanity.
Amen is a punishing, listenable, still unpredictable and ultimately beautiful record that is perhaps the darkest Serre and his merry band of misfits have concocted. It’s entertaining to fault, unpredictable even in its simplest moments, and quite frankly among the best records of Igorrr’s already illustrious career. I’ve listened to this thing at least a dozen times and each new spin reveals a new facet to sink my teeth into, an unrealized revelation to relish and enjoy. It’s one of my favorite records of 2025, and a surefire year-end lister.
-Jonathan Adams
Crippling Alcoholism - Camgirl
America's most appalling band has returned with another bold full-length blurring the lines between depravity and genius. Crippling Alcoholism and their provocative goth rock are three albums deep now, and they’ve all had similar but evolving conceptual themes to them resembling something from a depressing psychological horror. From the musings of psychopaths and degenerates, to brutal self-loathing, sexual depravity, and substance abuse, both their lyrics and the songs themselves feel like voyeurism into the parts of humanity we pretend don't exist in reality. The things cropped outside the photo. Despite this being their least heavy and perhaps most “approachable” release song-writing wise, their vulgar misanthropy has not let up with their latest CAMGIRL, focusing on the dark side of sex work. Who knew the catchiest song of the year would have the chorus “yeah I hate the way I look, yeah I look like a fat fucking scumbag.”?
This album marks the first without guitarist Tyler Tremblay, replaced here by Alyce Smith, the vocalist of a pretty good blackgaze band called Deafening. The roots of this group, (named after a now deleted subreddit, if you were wondering) lay initially in the jazz and mathcore scenes, when Tyler’s other band Needle Play played a show with drummer Danny Sher of the mathcore group Thin (and avant-math band Horse Torso) and decided to collaborate. This project was eventually filled out with the distinctive harsh crooning vocals of Tony Castrati. Bits of the mathcore dissonance seeped into what could be called a heavy emotive noise rock project to start, but with Alyce coming on board the sound has shifted further to a brooding synth-filled darkwave influenced goth rock.
While some may miss the distorted heaviness of their earlier work, there are still walls of swirling noisy dissonance such as the bridge in “Pretty in Pink.” Yet, it rarely approaches the chunkiness of some more metal leaning noise rock of another band documenting the rot of America, Chat Pile. Rather, the heaviness of this release is more grounded in its lyrical content, relentless and complex drumming, suffocating atmosphere, and vocals, especially those provided by guest contributor Luxury Skin. The end of the title-track brings in some impassioned shrieking over what is the album’s most black metal adjacent section. These moments are fiery and abrasive, bringing more contrast to the ear-worm inducing choruses. They’re not afraid to mix in some pop sensibility either, as the layered vocals during the extremely infectious chorus of “CAMGIRL” are sure to get hauntingly stuck in your head. It’s a really impressive and distinct combination of sounds wound together with creative songwriting that pushes their sound far beyond the easy comparisons of Swans and Nick Cave.
The synths and eerie atmospheric ambience give it this almost Lynchian fever dream feel. It strikes a unique contrast between calming romantic ethereality, and unsettling terror. It's hard to think of another album that is as bleak, lewd, and obscene as this while being so catchy, engaging and oddly beautiful. WIth Camgirl, Crippling Alcoholism have crafted one of the standout albums of the year, the daring anthems for the worst of us.
-Trent Bos
Peelingflesh - PF Radio 2
Perhaps the worst part of being a music fan today is the tyranny of sameness. Streaming platforms, led by Spotify, are increasingly moving away from editors and curators in favor of algorithmic dystopia. In the case of Spotify, always ready to find a new level of evil, platforms have been caught promoting AI-generated slop and other content farm garbage over real music created by actual artists. Spotify doesn’t want us to love music, it wants us to mindlessly consume the auditory equivalent of ultraprocessed foods in order to keep their fees low. And their model is spreading. Walking around my neighborhood, a planned community operated by a mall megachain, random speakers dispense remixes of covers of popular songs, processed to the point of unrecognition. Originality is too uncomfortable, creativity too expensive.
This pervasive push to sameness is what makes PF Radio 2 so damn excellent. Continuing the concept established in their 2023 EP, the slamming deathcore bulldozer that is Peeling Flesh returns with the heaviest tribute possible to FM radio and the aimless joy of surfing the airwaves. After a few moments of scanning stations – jazz, commercials, static, rock, R&B, unidentified voices – we enter the realm of PF Radio. Just like the cozy comfort of a favorite radio show, we return to the familiar baritone of DJ Hazy Haze, who rolls us into vicious grooves and pig squeals spliced with samples from the original PF Radio. Which brings us to the second reason Peeling Flesh is so special: even as they’ve built out the concept of PF Radio, they haven’t lost an ounce of brutality. The same signature combo of beatdown and slam that made their 2022 debut EP, Human Pudding, so addictively disgusting is still the meat and bones of PF Radio 2.
The consistent delivery of viscerally satisfying chugs, breakdowns, and blastbeats can only come from a true love of the slam game, something that’s obvious across the rapidly growing discography of Peeling Flesh. Less purists and more mad scientists, hip hop (and even a glimpse of gospel) is fused into the very DNA of their sound as they find common ground between beats and blastbeats. PF Radio and PF Radio 2 are time capsules from the golden age of music where artists and DJs obsessed with their art engaged in open discussion on the airwaves. DJs curated the latest underground gems and offered new interpretations in that curation, creating flows and remixes across their shows that revealed new or different layers to songs. Casual and obsessive listeners alike could find new sounds by simply twisting a dial, each new frequency a revelation. Entire genres and cultures were born on those airwaves, flowing from centers like New York, Atlanta, Oakland, and Los Angeles to create iconic sounds and personalities that become known around the world. PF Radio 2 channels that golden age into slam, mixing the manic violence of slamming deathcore for a new memory of the magic of radio.
-Bridget Hughes
FURTHER LISTENING
Der Weg einer Freiheit - Innern
I’m officially convinced that these German post-black masters can do no wrong. Their sixth full-length record Innern is an absolute masterpiece, and one of the best albums in this musical space I’ve heard in years. The riffs rip, the melodies are forlorn and sublime, and the kit work is beyond exceptional. A true work of art that I cannot stop listening to.
-JA
Wounds of Recollection - I Found the Love that I was Looking For
Eden initially had this tagged as “graduation blackgaze” and I wasn’t entirely sure what they meant by that (EK: credit for this genre tag actually goes to Joshua, over on RDR), but the more I listened the more that clicked. It has this oddly-suburban-springtime bittersweet coming of ageness to it. Tempered with the finest of midwest emo and screamo’s emotional regret, guilt, and yearning, all in a finely composed blackgaze package.
-TB
Sundrowned - Higanbana
Higanbana is the sound of beautiful tragedy, of bittersweet memory, of a tearstained face on a sunny day. Their blackgaze-meets-post-metal sound merges dreamy haze with soaring crescendos, capturing the moments of emotional fury and catharsis. Harsh howls and strident riffs are woven with gentle melodies for the perfect storm of pain and healing.
-BH
Alicia Cordisco – The Burden of I (progressive black metal)
Mors Principium Est – Darkness Invisible (symphonic/blackened melodeath)
Revocation – New Gods, New Masters (technical death-thrash)
After Earth – Dark Night of the Soul (melodeath)
Amorphis – Borderland (powerful/progressive melodeath)|
Dying Wish – Flesh Stays Together (metalcore)
Elder – Liminality / Dream State Return (progressive stoner)
Paradox – Mysterium (prog/power thrash)
Peeling Flesh – PF Radio 2 (slamming nu-deathcore)
Shiner – Believeyoume (post/progressive alt-rock)
The Vintage Caravan – Portals (prog rock)
Wounds of Recollection – I Found the Love that I was Looking For (graduation blackgaze)
Brotthogg – Ved Veis Ende (black metal)
Ancient Thrones – Melancolia (progressive/blackened tech-death)
Deaf Club – We Demand A Permanent State of Happiness (mathcore, noise punk)
Heretoir – Solastalgia (post-black metal)
Krigsgrav – Stormcaller (meloblack/death)
Many Eyes – Combust (ETID-core)
Novembers Doom – Major Arcana (mellowdoom)
Paradise Lost – Ascension (goth doom)
Species – Changelings (prog-death thrash)
Ville – A Bottomless Curse, A Bottomless Sea (progressive deathcore)
Maruja – Pain to Power (progressive jazz-punk)
Solshade – Proxy (progressive djent-core)
Crippling Alcoholism – Camgirl (deperessive post-goth)
Gnaw Their Tongues – The Genesis Of Light (noise drone)
Heruvim – Mercator (old-school prog death)
Ho99o9 – Tomorrow We Escape (nu metal, electro/rap core)
Intercourse – How I Fell In Love With The Void (posty mathcore, noise rock)
Lorna Shore – I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me (brutal/symphonic/samey deathcore)
NecroticGoreBeast – Brute (slamming brutal death)
Nicolas Cage Fighter – I Watched You Burn (death/metalcore)
Unaligned – A Form Beyond (progressive blackened-death)
Year Of The Goat – Trivia Goddess (doom metal)
Primal Fear – Domination (heavy/power metal)
Bent Sea – The Dormant Ruin (weird death metal, grindcore)
Bodyweb – Deadwired (alt-core)
The Color Of Cyan – As Human (post-rock/metal)
Cult Burial – Collapse Of Pattern, Reverence Of Dust (blackened disso-death)
Esoctrilihum – Ghostigmatah: Spiritual Rites of the Psychopomp Abxulöm (weird/excessive black metal)
Falling Leaves – The Silence That Binds Us (goth/mellow-doom)
Imperialist – Prime (sci-fi black metal)
La Dispute – No One Was Driving the Car (post-hardcore, emo)
Modern Life Is War – Life On The Moon (hardcore, punk)
Nailed To Obscurity – Generation Of The Void (posty/progressive mellowdeath/doom)
Tallah – Primeval: Obsession // Detachment (weird nu-metal/core, aliens)