Sub-Ed’s Albums & EPs Of The Year 2025
In today’s musical landscape there are no demands on an artist to find a label. They can DIY it by self-releasing their records and there are benefits in doing so: retention of creative rights; higher profits (assuming first breaking even); immediacy; a closer connection to fans, who can “buy into” a band’s formative steps; independent kudos etc. Labels offer a different experience: administrative, marketing and distribution support; a network of specialist and enthusiast know-how; a sense of community; start-up finance etc. There are downsides to both approaches too. An emerging artist can, however, realistically choose to remain independent today. All the necessary tools to try it alone are readily available, including platforms to get the music heard. And that’s why an increasing amount of self-released artists feature in these lists. There’s no “hit parade” limitations on entry to our lists; quality is all that counts once a release makes its existence known to us. So, it doesn’t surprise us this year to find more self-releases in this list (5) than which feature on any one label, the inevitable conclusion of a trend we’ve been monitoring for around a decade. Given the state of financial security in the lower orders of the music industry at the moment and it’s a trend only likely to increase too in our opinion. In any case, it’s great to see these independents’ bravery rewarded here with some great placings.
Here then is a summary of what I consider to be the best albums and EPs of the year – those that have stood out most from that which I’ve listened to. Some are new discoveries, some former favourites back proving they’ve still got it. The dark allure of post-punk is – as ever – never far away, so too the distorted haze of the still fruitful shoegaze revival (now entering its future-gaze stage). Dreamier, quieter moments shone through the very black clouds at times too, more experimental and coruscating sounds rounding out the roster as the year wore on.
Credit this year goes to the Fuzz Club label for having four of the top hundred entries on this list (and five last year!). And it would be remiss not to mention perennial favourites The Flenser, Sacred Bones, and Fire Records also for a very creditable three releases on this list too. Other statistical analysis shows that 91% of the artists in this top 100 entirely or partially call the US, UK, Ireland, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand home. The world now just a global village, it’s again pleasing to see entries from less common corners like Brazil and Mexico feature. Turn over enough rocks and good music abounds everywhere, though with so much new music available literally each week those that shout loudest across the six inhabited continents do tend to be the ones that get heard.
It must be said though that, as per every year, I have only one pair of ears, a set number of hours in the day and a bank balance that is far from inexhaustible, so there are, perhaps, certain omissions from the list below. Who knows what may have been, but here is what definitely was (rough genre given in brackets):
1. HEALTH – Conflict DLC (Industrial/ Dream-Thrash) [Loma Vista]
So confident were we in HEALTH’s latest that we reserved a top-20 spot for this laaate December release when starting work on this list. And for the second time in just three years the LA rabble-rousers have only gone and nabbed first place! How they keep finding new ways to go above and beyond is extraordinary, doubling down here with dark industrial shredders that hit like a maximalist NIN wet-dream. We’ll just save you the top spot next time, eh, lads?
2. The Men – Buyer Beware (Punk/Noise-Rock) [Fuzz Club]
No strangers to these pages, and keeping things noisy, The Men are up to about album number ten and these Brooklyn veterans’ strutting punk-rock simply keeps on giving. As unpolished as ever – few bands can sculpt scuzz quite The Men – stand back and admire the semi-aggressive Buyer Beware (spoiler alert: the buyer has nothing to be wary of) because it truly is another masterclass from a band that has a habit of doing nothing but.
3. Lathe Of Heaven – Aurora (Post-Punk/New Wave) [Sacred Bones]
While well-read, Brooklyn post-punk band Lathe Of Heaven’s dystopian debut cut its cloth in the court of Killing Joke, its successor, Aurora, prefers the relative calm of The Cure. Recorded as a “collection of sci-fi short stories”, its study and songwriting remain impeccable and memorable guitar lines tumble from the resultant misanthropy like diamonds from a coal sack. Lathe Of Heaven make it all sound so easy too.
4. Model/Actriz – Pirouette (Noise-Rock/Post-Punk) [True Panther/Dirty Hit]
Brooklyn’s genuinely exciting Model/Actriz and their shapeshifting dance-punk/noise debut made a real impact back in 2023 and its follow-up, the punk cabaret of Pirouette, is just as sleazy, just as pleasingly scandalous as it is vulnerable. Taming the exhilarating live show and submitting it to physical media was never going to be easy, Cole Haden’s natural effervescence threatening to bulge here through the plastic at any given minute.
5. Zig Zags – Deadbeat At Dawn (Thrash-Metal/Punk) [RidingEasy]
Regular [sic] list botherers Zig Zags aren’t doing any fixing to their grab-bag of punky speed-metal with Deadbeat At Dawn because there simply ain’t nothing broke. For every smash-and-grab hard-rocker, accordingly there’s a snotty hardcore skate anthem. For every bout of biker fuzz, straight-up black thrash on its back. Fully expecting to see the LA trio’s cartoon violence nominated for Best Animated Feature at the next Academy Awards.
6. Die Spitz – Something To Consume (Punk/Hard Rock) [Third Man]
Ever found a kick-ass playlist you wish you could, like, own? Something To Consume is Austin band Die Spitz’s loud, long-playing debut and it encompasses hardcore, alt-rock, thrash, pop-punk, grunge, riot grrrl and more, bending the confines of genre until they break. This dive-bar Blondie duly rage against today’s breakdown in social, economic, and political contract, sounding like the world is on fire. Funny that.
7. Dog Race – Return The Day EP (Neo Post-Punk/Goth) [Fascination Street]
Posturing London neo-goths Dog Race hit with an impressive strike rate on their tremendous debut EP, Return The Day, winning time and again by way more than a nose as the five-piece alternate between whispery-yet-pained howls at the moon and straight-up, kohl-lined seduction. Jammed full of sociable hooks, Dog Race are the rarest of all Goths … those who know how to work a room.
8. Slow Crush – Thirst (Shoegaze/Post-Rock) [Pure Noise]
If we’d have listened to Belgian band Slow Crush’s oppressive debut, Aurora, in its year of release, rather than the following year, there’s a good chance this would be the heavy ‘gazers second top-ten AOTY placing over here at [sic]. Anyway, exploiting the contrasts of Isa Holliday’s soft float and their brand of doomy (but dreamy!) blackgaze, Slow Crush again go hard here, applying the extreme pressure their name demands.
9. Makeshift Art Bar – Lackluster Writing Makes Fundamental Reading EP (Post-Punk/Noise-Rock) [Dinked]
Despite the Atlantic between them, Belfast’s improbably skinny Makeshift Art Bar seem to be suckling from a similar teat to Model/Actriz (see above), all be them less theatrical, their infectious and elastic post-punk grooves playing out on their breathless debut EP as a tellingly sophisticated product way beyond the precocious band’s years. There’s really nothing lacklustre here at all. Don’t rush the LP, guys!
10. The Tubs – Cotton Crown (Indie/Jangle-Pop) [Trouble In Mind]
Welsh indie-rock outfit The Tubs made quite an impression on their 2023 college radio-honed debut and up the ante here on their devastatingly emotional second, Cotton Crowd. Honest-to-goodness, scrappy jangle-pop perfection, and all so achingly familiar (think R.E.M. covering Hüsker Dü), these are songs from the heart straight into your heart. That’s lead Tub, Owen Williams, on the artwork in his late mum’s arms by the way, aww!
11. Humour – Learning Greek (Post/Art-Punk) [So Young]
Arty post-hardcore punks Humour inhabit a scene where nothing is orthodox (vocals ranging from the crooned to the screamo) and everything, all the time (buzzsaw guitars, manic switch-ups) is a given. Learning Greek is about how to be Greek as a second-generation immigrant, Andreas Christodoulidis’s relationship with his family culminating in reading the work of a Greek poet with his father on the title track. Dumb punk this ain’t.
12. These New Puritans – Crooked Wing (Avant/Art-Rock) [Domino]
A supremely refined affair, These New Puritans’ luxuriant fifth LP, Crooked Wing, is a melancholy masterpiece bedecked with chimes, and actual bells and whistles. Lush, textural, pensive, it references previous highwater marks without retread, Jack Barnett’s baritone as rich as it’s ever been, all combining for an album on which the Southend band sound like themselves again (and, weirdly, like Matt Berninger too, but that’s another story).
13. Lifeguard – Ripped And Torn (Garage/Post-Punk) [Matador]
Bringing drainpipes back again (again), Chicago’s Lifeguard come from the snappy corner of post-punk that intersects with shadowy but energetic garage, their debut full-length, Ripped And Torn, treating The Strokes’ – and Television’s before them – swagger to a rude dose of noise that really invigorates the sound, a whiff of 20-year-cycle punk-funk sticking a firecracker into every crevice it can find so as to depth-charge every triumph.
14. They Are Gutting A Body Of Water – Lotto (Shoegaze/Noise) [ATO Records]
Unflinchingly challenging for the genre tourists, and dubbed the “most important modern shoegaze band” by some quarters and “your favourite band’s new favourite band” by us back in 2022, what’s clear is that Lotto is TAGABOW’s most immediate and also their heaviest statement to date, one which pushes the canonical MBV blur of their bedroom-bound fidelities forward into static, DIY clatter and electro-fired idiosyncrasies.
15. Glixen – Quiet Pleasures EP (Shoegaze) [Wichita]
Distorted by the unrepentant Phoenix heat, Glixen’s latest EP (and first for Wichita) is another swoonsome ‘gazing encounter that sits tremulous, mirage-like on the edge of intangibility before the arrival of powerful electric storms, tender melodies defiled by heavy guitar noise. The sun-bleached band’s debut LP, when it lands, promises to be blistering, sure to toast your speaker-cones and EQ to their very limits.
16. Shearling – Motherfucker, I Am Both: “Amen” And “Hallelujah”… (Noise/Post-Rock) [Mishap]
Shearling is Alex Kent and Sylvie Simmons of the dearly departed Sprain and alarm bells should already be ringing. Easily the toughest listen on this list, Motherfucker needles the pain centre for psychological punishment, challenging even the concept of music as a one-hour, one-track suite. Endurance rock of the highest order, stamina is required to even scrape the surface of its endless detail and allusion. And reportedly this only part one.
17. MOBBS & Susu Laroche – Zero EP (Goth-Dub) [Modern Love]
What a witchy little oddity this near unclassifiable and totally excellent EP is! UK producer MOBBS and French-Egyptian shaman Susu Laroche bring together otherworldly ritual, sensual dub, and lurching trip-hop into a sexy package that draws as much from someone like Salem as it does the Cocteau Twins, and almost everything in between. There’ll be little else in your collection like it; there’ll be little else ever like it, just trust us.
18. Gloin – All Of Your Anger Is Actually Shame (And I Bet It Makes You Angry) (Noise-Rock/Post-Punk) [Mothland]
We came late to Gloin’s 2022 album We Found This, and glad we were indeed to have found its harsh electro-noise earworms – their barbed form ensuring one-way passage only into the brain, and this new album of preposterous title is no less thrilling when it starts to windmill its limbs, which is often. And encouraged. And inevitable, thanks to thick basslines and filthy grooves. You’ll only stop pogoing when you’re permitted to.
19. Deafheaven – Lonely People With Power (Blackgaze/Post-Metal) [Roadrunner]
Hurrah! The least metal of black-metal bands has rediscovered metal, at least in part! Confused? We’d be surprised if you weren’t! The much-misunderstood San Francisco group Deafheaven never conform so this noisy pivot back towards convention, albeit via post-rock grandiosity and blunt-force thrash immediacy, is as unexpected as it is welcome from a band who have nothing left to prove to anyone.
20. Meena – Different Now (Trip-Hop/Shoegaze) [S/R]
One of several records on this list escaping easy pigeonholing, Different Now is just that. Peddling a dreamy form of warm, electronic shoegaze with a backbone of stuttering trip-hop beats, Meena have made something endlessly interesting yet still very much in its infancy – who knows where their washes of distortion and whipcrack drum-machine could go from here? RIYL: The Knife, Cocteau Twins, Massive Attack.
21. Maria Somerville – Luster (Slowcore/Dream-Pop) [4AD]
Still upset that 4AD releases don’t sound like they used to? Well, Irish spellcaster Maria Somerville sets a course for that classic, early-to-mid 80s sound on her intangible second album and her wispy dream-pop is very much at home. Conjuring the windswept vistas of her native Connemara, Luster takes ethereal ambience and coaxes whispers and drones out of the mist, compelling them to stand the hairs up on the back of your neck.
22. Jennifer Touch – Aging At Airports (Coldwave/EBM) [Fabrika]
Undoubtedly a product of her environment, Jennifer Touch was born in Dresden where the utilities lie above ground for all to see and is now based in Berlin, her particular strain of cold synth-wave giving the come-hithers via dominatrix industrionix, acidic synths arpeggiating with wry playfulness, Aging At Airports the calling card of rafter-dwelling members-only clubs haunted by the likes of Boy Harsher and Zola Jesus.
23. terraplana – Natural (Shoegaze) [Balaclava]
Dreamy Brazilian shoegazers terraplana study at the DIIV school of smothering fuzz, and this second album of theirs is intermittently spectacular as it picks killer guitar lines out of the maelstrom. As trad a shoegaze album as comes around these days, what Natural may lack in originality, it compensates for with passion and a clear-headed approach to pedals that sees them deployed only when necessary. Pretenders take note.
24. Jehnny Beth – You Heartbreaker, You (Alt-Rock/Post-Punk) [Fiction]
It’s been a long time since Jehnny Beth last fronted dormant post-punk band Savages and this surprisingly beefy solo record is testament to how much she’s grown since. The guitars bite. The drums pummel. And there are flickers of 90s era PJ Harvey – Ms. Beth damn near commanding someone to come lick her injury as she prowls the front line in the immediate aftermath of some meltdown at an industrial smelting plant.
25. Preoccupations – Ill At Ease (Post-Punk/New Wave) [Born Loser]
Back with a bang, Ill At Ease is the best Preoccupations album since their spiky debut. You already know the drill though. Taught guitars and sharp melodies. Matt Flegel’s preening mew. Driving motorik. But it’s all so well executed, the very opposite of being Ill At Ease in fact. Add to that the band’s lighter touch in tone and instrumentation (keys, synths) and, by their standards, it seems they may finally be having fun!
26. The Infinity Ring – Ataraxia (Post/Experimental-Rock) [Profound Lore]
As repellent as a best-of Swans sounds in both principle and sequencing, Ataraxia plays out like a condensed form of all things Michael Gira in just 40 mins flat, or, you know, two average Swans’ tracks (and don’t forget The Infinity Ring did already collab with Jarboe). What use then a pocket-guide to this elemental universe? What use the Rosetta Stone to the ancient world? What use really a single acorn in the forest?
27. Pixel Grip – Percepticide: The Death Of Reality (Darkwave/Synth-Pop) [S/R]
In case you hadn’t noticed, the modern form of dancefloor-indebted synth-pop that borrows from EBM and darkwave tends to be a bit raunchy. At least in its imagery and attire anyway, which uniformly give off red-room rubber vibes, or so it seems (check also Ultra Sunn and, to a degree, Sextile – see below). Pixel Grip’s over-the-top dirty beats and equally forward (we’re being diplomatic) lyrics fit the template only too well.
28. Glazyhaze – Sonic (Shoegaze/Dream-Pop) [S/R]
Glazyhaze – the clue is in the name! – offer up no-messin’ shoegaze daydreams out of Venice, Italy in which fragile female vocals run into indistinct waveforms that surge with the crystalline enormity of a calving iceshelf. True, the four-piece’s sophomore album may be a touch too on the nose for the first-wave fetishists (mainland European nu-gaze often is), but frankly – given Sonic’s sweet sheen – that’s their loss.
29. Planning For Burial – It’s Closeness, It’s Easy (Post-Rock/Black Metal) [The Flenser]
Heads up Jesu and Have A Nice Life types, one-man post-metal phenomenon Planning For Burial is back and Thom Wasluck’s on particularly downhearted form as he captures the “drift of time”, “creeping changes in mental health”, and “the slow-motion grief of watching friends self-destruct” all in insidiously building, entirely identifiable detail. Best avoided as a stocking filler, a hoot a minute It’s Closeness, It’s Easy is not.
30. Intensive Care & The Body – Was I Good Enough? (Black Metal/Power Electronics) [Closed Casket Activities]
Long-time readers of these lists need no introduction to The Body, but if you’re here for one of the experimental metal duo’s more “people friendly” moments this ferocious collaboration that scours the depths is not it. Chip King’s tormented howl is infernal incarnate, the grinding noise, leaden doom drops, and screaming power electronics that accompany it nought but tortured dressing on your procession through the seven circles.
31. Shaki Tavi – Minor Slip (Indie/Shoegaze) [Felte]
Splitting the difference between jangle pop and indie-shoegaze, this second Shaki Tavi record turns the volume up to max and keeps it there. Dreamy guitars duly collapse into scuzz; bright pop melodies are corrupted by rawk riffs and biiiig drums. Hiding in the fuzz come joyous noise-pop nuggets left like a rewarding trail to follow as you choose your own adventure inside these labyrinthine walls of dissonance.
32. Ritual Howls – Ruin (New Wave/Goth) [Felte]
Ritual Howls are now some distance from their industrially inclined beginnings, leaning more and more heavily in recent years on an atmospheric, Gothic brand of theatrical, almost comically camp (and catchy!) synth-wave. Don’t go searching for a tongue-in-cheek nod or wink though; Ruin – like its predecessors – is deathly serious, dead-eyed drum machine pumping the blood around its cold, cold heart.
33. Bedridden – Moths Strapped To Each Other’s Backs (Alt-Rock) [Julia’s War]
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again. Contemporary alt-rock is getting massively shafted (even, remarkably, grunge too!) as the “shoegaze” revival tag continues to get misapplied to anything 90s sounding that isn’t rehashed Britpop. Back to business though, for MSTEOB’s is a meaty slab of raw Smashing Pumpkins-style straining delivered through gritted teeth. Be assured that it rocks with eyes firmly, definitively aloft.
34. Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs – Death Hilarious (Hard-Rock/Sludge-Doom) [Rocket Recordings]
More than a decade since they first crawled out of the North East’s pub/toilet scene, prolific hard-rockers Pigs x7 keep bringing the sludgy goods with the deliberately hostile Death Hilarious. Back in the mine where the seams of Black Sabbath and Motörhead meet, there are riffs aplenty, but … come on now, you weren’t really expecting a few bars courtesy of El-P of Run The Jewels, were you?! Checks notes … errrm, moving on!
35. Total Wife – Come Back Down (Shoegaze/Electro-Noise) [Julia’s War]
In the same lo-fi, hybrid/future-gaze bracket as They Are Gutting A Body Of Water (see above), Total Wife’s current pedal-peppered brew combines breakbeats, hyperpop, and hard techno (all very foreign, of course, to their native Nashville). The warped whole then plays out like a sun and static-damaged Blade Runner VHS, melting-pot multi-culturalism writ large in technicolour. Do keep up at the back, grandad!
36. Self-Immolation Music – Strange Worship (Psych/Stoner-Rock) [Cardinal Fuzz/Feeding Tube]
This latest Self-Immolation Music record is a real throwback as Strange Worship is the type of unadulterated rock ‘n’ roll that’s supposedly just not made any more. A drugged-out ride through fuzz and drone via stops marked Loop, MC5, and Hawkwind, it’s an album that hits slow and low but burns inside of you for what feels like a lifetime thanks to peeling guitars that rise from the mire with an almost primal power.
37. Glare – Sunset Funeral (Shoegaze/Dream-Pop) [Deathwish]
You have your shuffling indie shoegaze, your abrasive jet-engine variety, and – these days – your lush, laptop hybrids too. A diaphanous haze caught in updraft suspension, Sunset Funeral is trademark widescreen, Texan shoegaze with alt-rock attitude, guitars set to shimmer under the fierce desert sun until the heavy smother of heatstroke causes it all to crush downward under those endless pink skies.
38. Rats On Rafts – Deep Below (Post-Punk/Goth) [Fire Records]
Desolate Dutch goths Rats On Rafts have a breakout record on their hands with their ear-catching fourth album, Deep Below. Obviously, there’s no hiding their love of The Cure, but even Robert Smith would approve of their brilliant cribbing of the band’s prettiest post-punk patterning. It’s all done in sparkling monochrome too, icy chimes and slow synths blowing cold across the ruffling pages of the sheet music.
39. Florist – Jellywish (Singer-Songwriter/Alt-Folk) [Double Double Whammy]
Superlative, stripped-back singer-songwriter Emily Sprague has made a career of weaponising intimate minimalism and the soothing Jellywish bolsters her arsenal of tearfully sweet missives no end, its near ambient swells rising and falling like the chest when engaged in conscious meditation. It’s honestly so effective that is should be on prescription. A long walk somewhere beautiful with Emily for company is what life is all about.
40. Wisp – If Not Winter (Dream-Pop/Shoegaze) [Interscope]
Dreamy San Francisco shoegazer Wisp (Natalie Lu) here pleasingly follows up last year’s spectacular debut EP with a (possibly slightly rushed) more-of-the-same full-length. Downright bathing in celestial lappings, it’s another strong offering that goes some way in further cementing her place in the pantheon of modern greats. Let’s just pretend that ill-advised cover of Coldplay’s wet anthem “Yellow” never happened, yeah?
41. Oceanss – Bioluminicent (Industrial/Psych-Noise) [Weird Beard/Echodelick]
Forming under abyssal pressure, the rarefied lifeforms that inhabit these Oceanss off the coast of Mexico knock out a form of bleak, electro-industrial psychedelia on this profoundly deep debut. Biomechanical noise sources call out across the otherwise lifeless plains, eruptions from the inner core breaking the oceanic crust with chemical plumes. Pray they remain below the waves and a land invasion never comes.
42. Laveda – Love, Darla (Indie/Noise-Rock) [Bar/None]
The allure of Sonic Youth is all consuming when you move to NYC and so it proves for indie outfit Laveda who embrace the dark side of harmonic distortion and subway-car screech here on their third album, Love, Darla. It’s not an album defined by feedback and no wave guitars though, rather by the strength of its scrappy melodies and solid song-writing. With a core this resolute, Laveda are free to let their DNA loose.
43. Cold In Berlin – Wounds (Goth-Rock/Post-Punk) [New Heavy Sounds]
Underground Goth stalwarts Cold In Berlin are up to album number five and the hard-rocking London band have never sounded more confident when riding rumbles of doom and flourishes of motorik precision out of the shadows. Wounds is all about the gloom though. Well, that and its generous hooks which glint here ghoulishly like Jack The Ripper’s knife under moonlight. Black never goes out of fashion.
44. Just Mustard – We Were Just Here (Shoegaze/Dream-Pop) [Partisan]
Still drawing from the artier end of the early 4AD stable, Just Mustard’s dark dream-pop now includes club-ready subs, and they really anchor the band’s signature swirl with steely purpose. Once upon a time the Dundalk band felt lightweight. No longer. This is a band continuing to grow and doing so impressively. From here they really could go anywhere. Just Mustard? Time to start talking about Absolute Mustard.
45. Legss – Unreal (Math-Rock/Post-Hardcore) [The state51 Conspiracy]
Here’s an LP for the type of listener who cannot abide skipping tracks; there’s no dipping in and out here. Unreal only makes sense if played front to back, its mathy intricacies and post-hardcore intensity recalling fellow London ensembles deathcrash and caroline, but Ned Green’s uncomfortable lyrics structure the encounter more like theatrical improv, establishing a very real divide between performance and audience.
46. Prison – Downstate (Psych-Rock/Jam Band) [Drag City]
A much more concise version of 2023’s free-wheelin’, jam opus Upstate, Downstate takes all the freak-out distortion, guttural blues, blasts of hard-psych, and disorientating chatter of that ear-ringing album and crafts it into a coherently linear experience that somehow pulls order from chaos. An overwhelming proposition live, Prison are an absolutely existential rock ‘n’ roll experience when committed to record.
47. Oversize – Vital Signs (Shoegaze/Alt-Rock) [SharpTone]
Salisbury-based rockers (find another!) Oversize have clearly done their homework and don’t exclusively rely on the most obvious of 90s touchstones to fill out their more than decent debut album, incorporating instead the most rippling of alt-rock riffs as well as the wooze and noise of shoegaze and grunge respectively. Understandably the lean and muscular Vital Signs is quite the potent tonic as a consequence.
48. Body Maintenance – Far From Here (Post-Punk) [Drunken Sailor]
Remember that period of dark 80s post-punk that wasn’t quite Goth? Gloomy Melbourne outfit Body Maintenance certainly do, and if – like them – you’re thinking along the lines of The Chameleons or, perhaps, The Sound’s forlorn take on bleak romanticism at this point then you wouldn’t be far wrong. Sure, in the same breath you must concede that it doesn’t move the needle much, but who’s complaining?!
49. Freezing Cold – Treasure Pool (Indie-Rock/Punk) [Don Giovanni]
A tender, old-school indie record with shades of the likes of Krill, Treasure Pool is the sound of 2025 as heard through a 20-year-old filter, harking back to a New York post 9/11 but pre-financial crash, a time of high cynicism but when generally everybody still got a long and could afford to party. Freezing Cold’s simplicity is wistfully nostalgic as a result, an honest form of straightforward indie-rock almost impossible to dislike.
50. Manslaughter 777 – God’s World (Breakbeat/Industrial) [Thrill Jockey]
Two drummers, one rhythmic explosion! Manslaughter 777 are Lee Buford of The Body (see above) and Zac Jones of similarly full-frontal experimentalists MSC/Braveyoung and together they bring a Death Grips-derived assault on hip-hop beats and dub done over with a nasty noise edge. God’s World is a real work-out of a record that’ll leave you breathless and bruised from prolonged aural exposure alone.
The best of the rest (no particular order):
Kathyrn Mohr – Waiting Room (Slowcore/Ambient) [The Flenser]
The Murder Capital – Blindness (Post-Punk) [Human Season]
bdrmm – Microtonic (Dream-Pop/Downtempo) [Rock Action]
FACS – Wish Defense (Post-Punk) [Trouble In Mind]
Rose City Band – Sol Y Sombra (Psych-Rock/Alt-Country) [Thrill Jockey]
Bambara – Birthmarks (Post-Punk) [Bella Union]
The Horrors – Night Life (Goth-Rock/Industrial) [Fiction]
Rude Films – Rude Films (Post-Rock/Punk) [Sour Grapes]
Cassels – Tracked In Mud (Noise-Punk) [Human Worth]
Skloss – The Pattern Speaks (Noise/Sludge-Punk) [Fuzz Club]
Anika – Abyss (Kosmische-Dub/Alt-Rock) [Sacred Bones]
The Underground Youth – Décollage (Post-Punk/Goth) [Fuzz Club]
Sextile – Yes, Please (Electroclash/Trance) [Sacred Bones]
Bleed – Bleed (Emotive Hardcore/Shoegaze) [20 Buck Spin]
Mhaol – Something Soft (Post-Punk) [Merge/Tulle]
YHWH Nailgun – 45 Pounds (Noise-Rock) [AD 93]
Soot Sprite – Wield Your Hope Like A Weapon (Indie-Punk) [Specialist Subject]
Sarah Mary Chadwick – Take Me Out To A Bar / What Am I, Gatsby? (Singer-Songwriter) [Kill Rock Stars]
Swans – Birthing (Experimental Rock) [Mute/Young God]
Ty Segall – Possession (Singer-Songwriter/Garage-Rock) [Drag City]
University – McCartney, It’ll Be OK (Indie/Noise-Punk) [Transgressive]
The Reds, Pinks And Purples – The Past Is A Garden I Never Fed (Indie-Pop) [Fire Records]
All Seeing Dolls – Parallel (Neo-Psych/Psych-Folk) [A Records]
The New Eves – The New Eve Is Rising (Psych-Folk) [Transgressive]
Kombynat Robotron – AANK (Psych/Kosmische) [Fuzz Club]
Everything Else – Another One Making Clouds (Shoegaze/Dream-Pop) [Big Potato]
Osees – Abomination Revealed At Last (Garage/Noise-Punk) [Deathgod]
Pile – Sunshine And Balance Beams (Post-Hardcore) [Sooper]
Faetooth – Labyrinthine (Doom/Blackgaze) [The Flenser]
Matt Jencik & Midwife – Never Die (Slowcore/Dream-Pop) [Relapse]
Black Lips – Season Of The Peach (Garage-Psych) [Fire Records]
Jeff Tweedy – Twilight Override (Singer-Songwriter/Americana) [dBpm]
Nightbus – Passenger (Post-Punk/New Wave) [Melodic]
The Cutter – The Cutter EP (Post-Punk/New Wave) [Ramber Records]
bar italia – Some Like It Hot (Indie/Slacker-Rock) [Matador]
Elias Rønnenfelt – Speak Daggers (Singer-Songwriter/Dub-Punk) [Escho]
thistle. – It’s Nice To See You, Stranger (Post-Hardcore/Shoegaze) [Venn]
Snocaps – Snocaps (Indie/Alt-Country) [Anti-]
HighSchool – HighSchool (New Wave/Post-Punk) [PIAS]
Pictureplane – Sex Distortion (Darkwave) [Music Website]
Jessica Moss – Unfolding (Post-Rock/Drone) [Constellation]
Olan Monk – Songs For Nothing (Singer-Songwriter/Doom-Folk) [AD 93]
Yard – Yard II EP (Electro-Punk/Industrial) [Dinked]
Kite – Kite On Ice (Synth-Pop/Darkwave) [Year0001]
Grey Streak – Soft Courage (Indie/Psych-Pop) [Sink]
TTSSFU – Blown EP (Dream/Alt-Pop) [Partisan]
she’s green – Chrysalis (Shoegaze/Dream-Pop) [S/R]
Voyeur – The Burden Of Desire (Noise-Rock/No Wave) [S/R]
Julia, Julia – Sugaring A Strawberry (Dream-Pop/Ambient) [Suicide Squeeze]
Prostitute – Attempted Martyr (Noise-Rock) [Deadair]