Does anyone read these intros? Doesn't matter; much like the blog itself, I am writing them for myself. As time goes on, I like coming back to Editors' Picks in general more and more; again, for myself. It has become clear over the past, oh let's say eight years, that what people crave more than anything is curation, voices that will help make sense of the noise. As everybody likes to point out, the blog is dead. But is it? Is not the function of the blog, and of posts like this on it, to help cut through the insanely massive number of albums out there and give you the few we think were exceptional?
And you listen to us because you know us, you know our taste. And you can be 200, 500, 1,000 people. Probably not more. I mean, the blog does a lot more traffic but honest to god people who read these words? I'll take 200 any day of the week because, guess what, I also need help to cut through the noise, through the pressure of finding your audience in the accursed year of our absent lord 2026. Guess what (again)! That's you. Good job. Let's listen to some absolutely sick music together, shall we?
-Eden Kupermintz
Phoebe Bridgers - Lost Weekend
I was introduced to Phoebe Bridgers’ brilliant debut Stranger In the Alps the week after it released back in 2017, winding down for bed and looking for some new music to listen to. After listening to it, staring into the void in awe of how incredible it was, I sent it to the Heavy Blog editors and a true love affair was born. Since then, her profile has risen exponentially. I saw her live in Denver in a small, intimate venue and now she’s playing major festivals and selling out stadiums. She’s got herself a high profile boyfriend, an also great sophomore album, and plenty of cultural influence under her belt since then. That being the current situation, hype for her third record Lost Weekend was incredibly high across the music criticism spectrum. Does it hold up under the weight of those expectations? The short answer is hell yes it does.
Lost Weekend feels like a culmination of sorts, blending her newfound penchant for sonic experimentation and CinemaScope stadium bangers with heartfelt acoustic crooning in a manner that is both strange and perfectly in keeping with her aesthetic. Tracks like “Lost Boys” present arena-ready vibes that match well with the expectation she established in Punisher, but there’s plenty of old school softness to be had for fans of her first album. “Kill Me,” “The Governor’s Waltz,” and the absolutely gorgeous “As Above” feel like even more fleshed out versions of tracks from Alps, with the latter in the running for the single best song she’s ever written. There’s a very personal bent to her songwriting as well, almost to an uncomfortable extent. It’s her most heart-wrenching album by a pretty wide stretch, which makes her already intimate style feel all the more palpable.
Her sonic experimentation is both refreshing and a bit inconsistent, and the portion of her songwriting growth that probably needs the most work. I could absolutely do without the strange interlude “Never Going Back!” but her principal strength is adding new bells and whistles to songs that exist within her more traditional structure. Album opener “The Outside” is a much better example of the highs she’s capable of reaching in this regard, with the juxtaposition of her robotic auto-tuned vocals mixed with her clean, fragile clean vocals as an exposition on grief works incredibly well, and I’d love to see her follow this path more steadily as her career continues.
While Alps will always be closest to my heart when it comes to her discography, Lost Weekend comes awfully close to eclipsing it in many ways. It’s a special album that has several genuinely gorgeous and potentially career-defining tracks that are among the best of her career, and I have been enamored with it since it dropped. There’s a high likelihood that this ends up as a high-end lister for me in December, and I can easily recommend it to folks who’ve enjoyed her output thus far and anyone who’s into the sad girl wave of the 2020s. Brilliant stuff.
-Jonathan Adams
Mastodon - Marrow Deep
Knowing when to walk away from a band is an important skill to master, not only because it saves you from wasting your time on music you don't like but also because it keeps a chance alive that you'll ever return to said band. If you just keep forcing yourself to give their music a try, you'll develop resentment. This will keep you from enjoying any future release, even if quality rebounds at some point. Luckily, I am well versed in this skill, honed by years of listening to bands I once loved grow stale. Therefore, on the rare occasion that they do end up figuring things out and going back to making great music, my ears are fresh and I can enjoy these better releases, unburdened by resentment.
I deployed this skill on Mastodon years ago. Don't get me wrong, Emperor of Sand is fine, even good, and Hushed and Grim had some great ideas hiding within its monstrously long runtime. But yeah, to state the obvious, they're no Blood Mountain or Crack the Skye or...you get it. And that's exactly the point, who wants to read me write that sentence release after release? Certainly not me! So I let bygones be bygones and didn't much listen to new Mastodon releases beyond a single or two. Until Marrow Deep where, suddenly, my ears were able to pick up on the fact that Mastodon is fucking BACK baby! It's not that the sound is so different to Emperor of Sand or H&G. Rather, the balance is back. The album feels tight, essential, devoid of fat, heavy hitting in its insistence to not choose between groovy stoner metal and more progressive sounds.
Which is the whole fucking point of Mastodon, right? The whole idea is that they invented, or helped popularize really, progressive stoner metal, that they were masters of walking the tight beam between big, rocking riffs, and winding, complex compositions. Even if you loved the last two releases, you can't really argue with me when I say that was mostly gone in favor of the Big Riff. Which, if you love Big Riff, is great but it's not why I listened to Mastodon, thanks very much. And so, Marrow Deep returns Mastodon to exactly that - why I listen to them. It's definitely not the early releases and it never will be and I don't want it to be. I just want to hear Mastodon make good, interesting music and now, they have again!
-EK
Killing Of A Sacred Deer - Encephalic Angels
While the old-school deathcore revival sound has grown a lot of momentum in recent years, many bands seem more focused on trying to replicate what was done before rather than trying to make something that's actually fresh and original. Even that Thus Spoke Zarathustra album from last year that was well executed and widely acclaimed was arguably too much of a homage, with several riffs nearly copy-pasted from As Blood Runs Black. This year in particular hasn’t offered a lot to get excited about for us fair-weather deathcore fans. That is, up until the latest album from Killing of a Sacred Deer, Encephalic Angels. Put simply, they understood the assignment. It feels influenced by that “myspace scene” without worshipping it, combining this with the strengths of modern bands in the genre, death metal itself, and dashes of mathcore. This is easily the strongest deathcore record of 2026, and one those apprehensive of the genre might just want to give a shot.
It’s impossible to avoid talking about production with deathcore discourse, so let's start there. Encephalic Angels bring some of the noisy roughness from the roots of the genre, while keeping enough of a punchy sharpness and booming low end to convey that sense of heaviness that modern fans have grown accustomed to. The snare still sounds like one of those big red bouncy gym balls, but it’s not drowning out a Line 6 Spider. This combined with plenty of variation across their tracks allows for a reasonably dynamic listening experience. It has the riffage and violent frenetic energy of Through the Eyes of the Dead, combined with the earth-shaking heaviness of modern groups like Brand of Sacrifice. It’s not shocking to learn that this band shares members with Alberta mathcore group Abrupt Decay, as the technicality and time-signatures get appropriately spastic and unpredictable, avoiding that feeling of overstaying it’s welcome that deathcore albums can sometimes fall into. There’s a certain unhinged viciousness. Things feel uncalculated, untethered, just unfolding chaotically in front of you. Yet they’re not afraid to bask in the vile. Tracks like “Cognitive Reconfiguration” capture this really menacing, suffocating atmosphere in its relentlessness. A lot of that has to do with their aptitude for writing death metal, and the way that leeches into this release is a big factor in its quality.
The vocals here do less of the heavy lifting compared to most deathcore, but still serve a prominent role and fulfill that in stride. They’re not training for the deathcore vocal olympics, and in a more death metal fashion, are fit in to serve the instrumentation, and the songwriting itself. They range from moments of higher-pitched, almost Knocked Loose like wailing which are much more digestible in the short doses here, to more typical lower deathcore gutturals. Killing of a Sacred Deer has shown steady growth since their formation two years ago, and now with three releases in that short span have truly cemented themselves at the forefront of a genre that has been desperate for some fresh faces.
-Trent Bos
Further Listening
Papangu - Celestial
Most works of music get better with time but that's doubly (or even triply!) true for progressive music. Papangu's Celestial has so much going on in it, like all of their releases, that I have been spending the last few weeks unravelling it slowly in my head, like a good glass of scotch. I think I have about 40% of it figured out and I can't wait to spend even more time getting that number up.
-EK
Warforged - The Grove | Almanac
After several line-up changes, this is not quite the same band who brought us the blackened tech death of their debut EP or the progressive death metal brilliance of their 2019 LP. What it is, is a surprisingly unique take at progressive deathcore, showing refreshing incorporations of post-metal into a dissonant atmosphere-driven release with a continuously murky and haunted aura.
-TB
Dorena - Kvar
If you need to take a break from dissonant brutality, I can’t recommend a better new release than the comeback album from Sweden’s Dorena. Their first in 13-years, Kvar is the perfect “running through flowers” album of late summer. Stocked full of gorgeous instrumental post-rock melodies and cinematic build-ups, it encapsulates everything that I come back to this genre for: the full spectrum of the human-experience sinking in from your ears to your heart.
-TB
Perpetual Paradox – May Misery Befall You (thrashy tech-death/core)
Gorod – The Ember Gone (progressive tech-death)
Besvarjelsen – Till Glömskan Ad Oblivionem (stoner prog)
Dreamwell – Hymns For The Denial Of God (sludgy hardcore)
Ninth Realm – Damnation's Veil (blackened death-thrash)
Russian Circles – Nine (post metal)
Sev Lezu – Blood Conscript (black metal)
Squid Pisser – Throat Slave (weird noise/math-core)
Denzel Curry and Kenny Beats – II (hip-hop)
Faerie Ring – Faerie Ring (prog doom)
Shabti – Haze, Cacophony, And White Light (weird/blackened prog-death)
Exist – Beyond Purpose (proggy prog-death)
Coma Control – Shed the Sleep (progressive metal)
Dead Tired – Hornets Of Fall (hardcore)
Open Mike Eagle and Kenny Segal – Doomed! (hip-hop)
TTNG – Juggling Moves (Beginner) (jazzy math-rock)
Avocado Pornujo – The Best Grind in the World (whacky/slamming goregrind)
Christian Cosentino – Tick (post prog/classical)
Citizen – Halcyon Blues (post-hardcore, emo)
Hulder – Verbolgen (black metal)
Kyrios – Blood Constellation (weird/blackened death metal)