Album Review: Coffret De Bijoux - My Limbs Are Not Mine

Of all the tattered flesh shrouds and spectral shades she slips through, Coffret de Bijoux appears to be maturing into Alice Simard's most compelling and sonically adventurous manifestation. The vicious Québec-based virtuoso has quite the rap sheet, splitting her time and a swath of eardrums across a range of abominable aural bêtes noires; whether she is flexing her carrion-fed, brutal-death shredding chops with Codex Crudelitas, communing with the gods of inter-neuro-grid with the Lain-inspired cybergrind exe. FILESHAREMAIDEN, or gutting the idols of restraint with the dauntingly anointed goregrind sauvage Onchocerciasis Esophagogastroduodenoscopy- there is no height of extremity too lofty, or aquifer of dissonance too low, that to drill to its depths would be unimaginable. Which brings us back to Coffret de Bijoux; outwardly, it is a depressive atmospheric black metal project- the first releases under its mantle were ghastly and otherworldly, devoid of recognizable human warmth (or verbal expression) and submerged in the oily dew of void-burn existential perturbation, an orientation towards sound that culminated in the pinnacle of 2025's wen jalè jalè gunala, a fraying web of gossamer that shrieks and rends its own soft flesh in a fitful attempt at self-reorganization and recognition, tortured form that threatens to spontaneously combust through the friction of its interior traivol. There was perhaps a considerable dose of Damian Anton Ojeda's Trhä in the alchemist's vessel out of which Coffret de Bijoux emerged, especially in the way that emotion tends to leak out all over performance like black lacquer seeping from a cracked inkwell, but there is certainly more to its chemical composition than simply a reflective polymerization of her peers. Last year, Coffret de Bijoux also introduced this world to the project's emo chip-tune side with the sullenly angelic and blindingly enigmatic intablej' u ana, which could have convincingly fronted as a Weatherday and Këkht Aräkh collaboration and left me uncertain about its true origins. This willful and restless transmutation is again evident on my limbs are not mine, which, as far as I can tell, is Alice's first (mainly) English-language release with Coffret De Bijoux, as well as her first full and proper punk record- scraping together brisk, punchy third-wave emo-inspired grooves, pop-punk melodies, and early metalcore riffs to beat back the night with a force of resilience possessed only by the perpetually young at heart. Incredibly, the record retains enough of its black metal allele to not result in too dramatic or off-puttingly divergent a turn for the project on the whole, but rather offers an opportunity to comprehend the richness of the vein of influences and inspirations that conspire to produce the genius of Coffret de Bijoux's spellbinding cache. From the rattling rollick and arresting seraphic avowal of "i need to see" all full of loose screws and bent halos, to the sweetly venomous coo of "nuit d'automne," to the veiled hunger and agitatedly exposed decampment of "i never recollect," through to the quietly wounded, organ-transplanting, and giallo-stained lament of the title-track, and finally the crushing return to form on the tearful, ruminating spectre and closer "pillow poise remembering"- my limbs are not mine extends the tensile subluxation of Alice's spirit as embodied in Coffret de Bijoux in a manner that magnifies the luster and ethereal shine of its fractured intricacy and interior.

Album Review: Ikebe Shakedown - Kings Left Behind

Thrones are toppled, kingdoms laid to waste, histories are reduced to sand, and all roads lead to ruin... but not if you're Ikebe Shakedown. The seven-member instrumental funk band out of Brooklyn, New York, may seem like they've abdicated and gone incognito since their 2019 LP, but their legacy has yet to be turned to ash by the ravages of time. Their sound is horn-driven, highly cinematic, stylishly psychedelic, and inspired by the soulful charm of Curtis Mayfield, the weighty rhythmic pulse of Fela Kuti, and the epic scope of '70s spaghetti western soundtracks. Kings Left Behind (as previously alluded, released in 2019)is the band's fourth studio album (and most recent), recorded straight to reel-to-reel by the band's bassist, Vince Chiarito. The album unveils an oasis of melodious intrigue with "Not Another Drop," establishing the group's predilection for gonzo grooves, which is supercharged on the following smoky, hookah-haze-infused "Unqualified," and is fully realized with a vengeance on the mid-album stinger, the momentous, bongo-and-horn-driven spanner "Hammer Into Anvil." "The Witness" takes things in a more mischievous direction, with its quivering guitars and spit-and-pucker percussion, a track that would slot easily into the soundtrack of some lost supernatural western thriller, set in a traveling carnival where all the orphaned performers inexplicably have telekinetic powers and a predilection to deploy them in a zeal for vindication. The most retro-sounding tracks on the album come near the end, with the spy-thriller-esque "No Going Back" and the rose-tinted slow jam "Kings Left Behind," a worthy pair of companions to help mask the cry of a gunshot ringing out over shifting desert dunes. It's the kind of album Coalmine Records exists to put out into the world. They dig through the rough and excavate the gems, so you don't have to.

Ain't no diamonds without Coal(mine Records).

Album Review: DJ Ramon Sucesso - Sexta dos Crias 2.0

Democratic in origin, flexible but dictatorial in constitution, DJ Ramon Sucesso's second LP is a direct sequel to 2023's Sexta dos Crias, itself a deposition of his infectious virtual "bubble beat" demonstrations. The channeling of his style into the cast of an album is more of an extension of the experiment than a formal climax, though. In comparison and guided by this analysis, the resounding conclusion is that Sexta dos Crias 2.0 is demonstrably mad, cracked, loopy, unwound, and sublated- a contorted hip-hop engine that operates on oxidized hardware and a slime-warping logic board, blithely unfurled in a brambly drugget down a hall of bruised spoils and landing in the pit of an anarchic rubber-room only to shoot back up the silo of its descent to clear a near-perfect dismount before catching the wings of another precocious rhythmic laceration of logical succession. An impish and impractical-seeming chiding of sequential experience and sensory cohesion- a cartoonish illumination of divine dance-floor intervention- a fission of splintering sonic compounds whose scattering particulates pierce and recombine their neighboring resonances, driving them to implode, invert, and reunify upon impact into deranged but adaptive novel configurations. A nourishing primordial soup that replenishes as it is consumed- never expended, ever expanding, like the contents of a cup that runneth over with frothy inspiration. Everyone is working for the weekend, only some are working (and succeeding) at making the liberation we seek on a Friday night into the standard we enjoy every day of the week.

Como acima, assim embaixo (Lugar Alto).

Album Review: Dream Machine - The Illusion

Feed your head popping poppies, chips of fractured pellucid fog, and scratchy heather to polish the crystal ball that hangs from the inmost concave of your dome. Dream Machine is a husband-and-wife duo, Matthew and Doris Melton, who miraculously arose from the once-still, tepid brew of Matthew's previous group, Warm Soda (which has been reformulated as of 2022). They combine the heavy, proto-metal grooves of bands like Iron Butterfly and Deep Purple with the murky psychedelia of the Doors and the larger-than-life hooks of Heart to create cascades of compelling psychedelic-garage pop. The Illusion (2017) is Dream Machine’s debut record, released on their good friend John Dwyer’s Castle Face Records, and later reacquired by Matthew's own Fuzz City. According to Matthew, the album is an antidote to the feelings of isolation and dislocation caused by social media and is meant to inspire people to share feelings and music face-to-face again, rather than through an ad-supported data mine. Unplug and unwind with the scaling, Deep Purple-esque guitars and huge, sonorous organs on “I Walk in the Fire,” the folding waves of organs and the relentless bass undertow on “Buried Alive,” the sparking jazz, adrenaline-pumping hooks, and ear-snaring chorus of “All for a Chance,” and the confident, toe-tapping, brick-house blues swagger of “Back to You.” Ironically, The Illusion is their most concrete and sincerely palatable work, having released two subsequent albums- Breaking the Circle and 2022's Living the Dream- both of which lack the punchy, raw panache of their debut and somehow fail to radiate the same potency of hypnotic magnetism as their initial pledge. Sic transit gloria mundi.

Album Review: Opal Vessel - Flesh Grinder

Subliminally caustic. Understated madness. Incomprehensible forms, with roots veining into the imaginary, as sepsis would leak from a rotten tooth into a pink-sheathed jawbone. Spreading as a wildfire, only as a brain fever of disconnected images, sounds, electric impulses, and tremorous anxieties. Violence in its final, most hushed permutation. Insidious, a poisonous aura with no taste or scent, encircling its prey without judgment or mercy. A finality colder than death. Not ruthless, but implacable all the same. Bubbling up from the pulpy bed of a blood-drunk akasha, inky and tenacious, but sobered from its feast of carnage, reflective in the depraved glow of its excesses—not remorseful, but one could be fooled. What more can be wrought from a mean horizon of esse but the lamentations which a thing such as it can inspire? The whimpering, the braying hatred, the orotund waves of sorrowful cries... a sweet symphony on some planes, but a hollow din on levels much higher. Hunger comes after the first course, of course, but it's a peculiar appetite that scrapes the guts even when the plates are clean, and it comes time for dessert. A silent expectancy and greed for a bounty richer than carnal comestibles can furnish, and yet blacker than the shade offered by six feet of grave dirt. When the Flesh Grinder has concluded its bladed dance, what satiation can the aurlization of a black hole continuum pursue to make whole the fullest deprivations of its sanguinary intentions? Where does the chthonic nadir of desire lie?

Album Review: Cerberus Shoal - Cerberus Shoal

Clipping and grafting the etching of an idea pilfered from a book of poetry written by Brown University students in 1893, Cerberus Shoal breached in Boston in 1994, before spawning up to Portland, Maine, to experiment on their ash-grey, half-pickled offspring in inky green hatchery jars. While hanging up their snaring tools in 2005, Cerberus Shoal invaerted and reemerged through a plethora of homely yet exquisite and adventurous phases over the course of their career, lumbering up from the fleshy bluffs of the human ear in the guise of a whisper-calm post-hardcore band before floridly unfurling into a powdered bone-dusted and warmly abstract folk band. Their precocious accession in planting a flag on the far shore of second-wave emo's sweetly caustic and bitterly gladsome Slint-mixed colluvium rim is still their most endearing work to these hairy old ears, though, and it's what I want people to hear most dearly from their revived catalog. The band's long out-of-print self-titled debut, recorded in 1994 and released in 1995 on Stella White records, and lovingly resuscitated by the applied sonic residency skills of Temporary Residence Ltd. (circa. 2018), documents the band's precocious beginnings and acts as an initial schematic whose architectures would be redlined, revised, and addendumed on later releases as the group increased the quotient of raw granola and thorium granules in their increasingly crunchy, amalgamed sound. In these early days, though, Cerberus Shoal embodied the marriage of rhythmically dislocated chord progressions characteristic of many Dischord Records signees and the progressive push, patient dynamics, and suppressed convulsions of slowcore dreamweavers ala Codeine, a fragily distilled formula which only occasionally tips its hand to spill into less equable fits of screamo-induced sensory disarray.

Out on Temporary Residence Ltd... I might have mentioned that already.

Album Review: Boko Yout - Gusto

Anytime I'm in a new town, I engage in various habits that are against my preferences towards longevity- one of which is picking up half a dozen donuts from one or more proprietors of such insulin-shock-inducing confections. Something I've noticed at many of the dens of these hip, sweet-salt-dealing devils is the prevalence of pink-frosted rings adorned with sprinkles on offer... something which leads me to wonder about the enduring influence of the Odd Future Collective. Sure, you could assume that these peony-painted threats to my gut health are downstream from the prolonged curse of Millennial arrested development and their senile Simpsons-mania, and nothing else, but I think you'd be wrong to jump to such conclusions. Who made such an iconic pastry cool after all? Not Al Jean, that's for sure. The Simpsons essentially became roundly and deservedly reviled under his stewardship. No, being reminded of Homer's indiscriminate sugar intake and the flailing legacy of a once celebrated sitcom is more likely to spoil one's appetite as we reflect on our own failures than to compel a joyous purchase. No, it's rather the opposite. The irony of adopting something completely uncool and popularly derided as a floating symbol of antagonism that I think makes the pink donut ironically VERY cool when ornamentally assumed by Tyler & Co., and which keeps it in the forefront of the cultural purview- an anti-symbol symbol, if you will- something that can be anything but is always an assertion of the self, even when declared in the negative... as well as a totem of one's (read: MY) future struggles with diabetes. Where else might you find Odd Future's resonance intervening remarkably out of the blue? Well, to answer this, you need to look no further than the Swedish band Boko Yout, whose album Gusto dropped late last year. For lead singer and creative keystone, Paul Adamah, the deranged reflection of late '00s LA as the site of a persecutory cataclysm and an endless moshpit on the rim of the abyss- which Odd Future divined- had the effect of cracking the carapace of his incarcerated figuration, eventually leading to the summoning of Dr. Gusto, a lwa-like presence that rises through the cracks in sidewalks, scurries up light poles, and tumbles northward, scaling pantlegs like a hairy spider up a sweating downspout intending to ride a cheval worthy of his emphatic tutelage. You can hear the incantation of drums beckoning Dr. Gusto to take the reins on the track "Shift," before the full force of his charisma seizes you in the bracing, rubber-skulled bounce and scrape of epi-biological recall on the preceding track that bears his name. Now smoldering, Blue Velvet-crushed-and-coated hip-hop is likely not the first impression that one would take away from Boko Yout's sound, as the group's hook-heavy and expressively groovy rock pedigree more immediately invokes the icy and cutting, yet fresh-faced and energetic '00s-ish British garage and indie revivals, splashing in the same youthful fountains as Bromheads Jacket and Maxïmo Park without sacrificing either sincerity or inborn inclinations towards spectacle—a playful kind of seriousness that resolves through sober internal inquisition into the phenomenon of the self and the fosterage of one's heritage, straining through this focus as if through an aspheric lens to uncover a sonic arterial lane that conjoins chaotic funk with slippery post-punk, and diasporic disco with confidently anti-fashion folk, making the wraparound rollicking and catchy call-up "Ignored," the wiry, gold-bug-busting and crypto-clay-soled manic clap of "9-2-5," and the motorik rev and waterslide-like groove of the courageously catchy "Imagine" come alive in a form that is both scientifically anomalous and yet ordained as inevitable by some dark sorcery accessible only through an oily globe that rotates like a molten core deep in the center of Paul Adamah's skull. What doesn't kill you makes you odder, and only the odd survive, so long as they have the appetite to chew through the chains that hold them back.

 

Hoop springs (digs) eternal (Hoopdiggas Recordings)

Album Review: El Sexteto Tabala - Reyes del Son Palenquero

I promised that I would cover more African and South American acts in 2026 when I wrote my 2025 Invitational, and if you thought I was simply blowing smoke and all manner of noxious fury, then you'd better sit yourself down and get ready to house a full buffet of smoked crow. Today, I am introducing you to Sexteto Tabalá, a Colombian folk group whose African ancestry and diasporic connections are so tightly wound around their sound that such lineages and histories are synonymous with themselves in the same way a cat identifies with its own striped coat. Sexteto Tabalá boasts of playing the ONLY true form of Colombian music,* in that it is free from guitars and electric instruments, in addition to pulling from the rich and dearly specific past of their nation's heritage and their familial ties to rebellious maroons, and deploying only instruments that were available to sugarcane workers in centuries past; notably amongst them the marímbula, a plucked box instrument, inspired by African percussion tools, but which owes its origins to Cuba. Further, the sound of Sexteto Tabalá is largely credited to the influence of Cuban engineers hired to supervise the sugarcane industry in the early 20th century in an area of Colombia which had been granted its autonomy by the Spanish Crown since 1713, San Basilio de Palenque. In their off hours, these Cubans would play son montuno songs and teach them to the agricultural workers of the area, most of whom were still descendants of runaway slaves. Over time, these once Cuban sounds would acquire their own distinct character as they were adopted by the Palenque people and transformed into the particular hybrid of African diasporic sound and Caribbean proto-salsa known as son Palenquero, a style that invoked its practitioners' Angolan, Central, and East African roots, sung in a unique dialect Creole derived from Bantu, while remaining independent, flexible, and conspicuously unadorned with the extraneous din of modernity. Sexteto Tabalá hold themselves out as continuing the traditions of the style's best-recognized purveyors like Sexteto Habanero, while taking care to respectfully innovate on traditional workingman's songs when inspiration strikes with indisputable serendipity. Their LP Reyes del Son Palenquero was recorded in San Basilio de Palenque but reissued by the Bogotá-based Palenque Records in 2016. Rhythmic inspiration that proudly carries the wealth of centuries of history and the debts owed to generations of pastoral workers, a burden as weighty as a mountain, which they hold aloft as if it were as light as a feather.

Palenque Records, where history comes alive!

* I have no way of verifying this, and I'm not saying that I condone such an assessment, however, it is what they say about themselves, which for a band from such a culturally rich and musically inclined country as Colombia, these are really fighting words, and the unnecessarily antagonistic character of their self-assessment genuinely amuses me. Like, why do you have to be so savage, bro? Damn!

Album Review: Bucle Lunar - ¿Qué pasó en Medellín?

Moon gazing has been an enthralling pastime for much of human history. For instance, the names of the various phases of the moon in Japanese correspond with the suggested activity observers should engage in while waiting for the celestial queen to make her debut each evening. The moon that rises on the 17th, for instance, is known as "tachimachizuki," which means that you can stand and witness the moon on that night's ascent without fear of taxing your weary legs, while "fukemachizuki," the name for the moon that rises on the 20th, suggests that you're better off catching a few winks before Tsukuyomi's lantern lights up the sky. In South America, there are some who say that witnessing a lunar eclipse can leave beauty marks on the face of one's future children—a sort of permanent reminder of the lunar guardian's blessing and distant stewardship of the people below, even when it itself is subsumed by the dark, or cast out by the light of day. You might not always see the moon, but you can still witness its gifts each morning when you gaze in the mirror. Reminders of an absence are painful, but unavoidable in life. Sometimes the only relief from anguish is song. "Cry Moon" by Venezuela's Bucle Lunar gives voice to this amiable sort of lament, with plush melodies and pale loops of powdery tranquil groove. Waiting and pining for the return to some truant felicity or tranquil degree of composure appears to be a recurring theme on their debut album ¿Qué pasó en Medellín?, of which "Cry Moon" is only one of its many splendid shades of luminance. The steady thumping progression and subtle electricity of the lush dream-pop pulse of "Tachycardia, thump thump" and the affable push of "Me muevo" prove capable of dislocating one from the entropy of their angst, while the slow embrace of the languidly expectant swirl of "Atemporal" and the persistent undertow of enticement and tenacity of "Terca" resist any reversion into despair. Sympathies filter in from abroad to gracefully envelop one's ears on the motorik psyched-out-mirage and cumbia-infused flow of "La kumbia," as well as the whimsically consecrated closer "Miranda en Belén," a track that is soaked in tears, whether they are of joy or deep sorrow, which may be an oscillating facet of speculation. Like the eternal circuit of the moon's perambulation around our sphere, there is no true end to the state of things, only phases and new beginnings; nights are long but not bereft of solace, and any absence felt is only a yearning yet to be fulfilled.

Ain't no cure for Summerblue Records. 

Album Review: 1349 - Massive Cauldron of Chaos

Like most people who claim the ignoble mantle and nerd de plume of audiophile, I'm still catching up on releases from 2025 (formerly the dumbest year on record, a record that was subsequently surpassed by the first week of 2026). Of the things that I'm glad that I've scooped out of the eye of the abyss is 1349's live record Winter Mass. Recorded around the time that the lockdowns were lifted in (presumably) Oslo (or some other godless, frigid plateau), this live record is a raw but vital procession of ugly and void-gouging sound that demonstrates pertinently just why the band has been able to maintain an audience for close to three decades on this cursed ball of dirt we call a planet. Unavoidably (at least for me), hearing Winter Mass has made me nostalgic for the album that introduced me to the band in the first place, 2014's Massive Cauldron of Chaos. It's not, as far as I know, considered one of their better albums, but it's also not one of their worst- it just tends to be the one that I think about most whenever I'm reminded of 1349... which is any time the subject of medieval diseases comes up (which in my life is more than you'd think for someone who is neither a physician nor a historian, but who does watch an awful lot of Apothecary Diaries). Named for the year that the black plague finally overtook Norway, 1349's most obvious references stylewise are groups like Mayhem and early Satyricon, although there are instances of Kreator-esque thrash riffage, most notable on the clamoring gnaw of gothic angst “Slaves,” the second song off the album I'm presently examining. In general, MCoC is a return to the band’s coldly masterful, blood-nourished roots. The previous decade was one of experimentation for the group, releasing boundary-pushing albums Revelations of the Black Flame in 2009 and Demonoir in 2010, both of which were received with hyperbolic consternation by corpse-painters who prefer to keep things fast and nasty. This superfluous ire was mostly quelled by MCoC’s return to form though, with Ravn’s raspy forked-tongue vocals, Archaon’s peeling shred torrents, and the super-human speed of drummer Frost’s legendary percussion laying waste to the expectations of their audience, and further treating them to a dip in a bubbling lake of acid swirling with a crimson foam of vicera-churned froth on “Cauldron,” rending them like a rag doll in a tug of war between two competing zombified pit bulls on “Exorcism,” disfiguring them beyond recognition on the bruisingly unshackled melee of “Chained,” and then mercilessly desecrating their remains on the groovy gang press of “Postmortem.” 1349 would indulge in more abstract forms of expression on subsequent releases, 2019's The Infernal Pathway and 2024's The Wolf & the King, but the stewing malignance of MCoC was undoubtedly the odious succor needed to  breathe fresh hellfire into the group, rallying them to carry their campaign of darkness into the 21st Century.

Bringer of a long dusk of discord (Season of Mist).

Interview: Post-Trash + 2025 Recap

You get through your first full week of 2026? Good! Glad the year hasn't killed you yet (not for a lack of trying, I'm sure). Before you finally kiss 2025 goodbye and drop it in the dustbin of history, take a look back with Dan and Pat of Post-Trash and myself as we chat about some of our favorite albums of the past year. 

If you don't already know, Post-Trash is an incredible resource for underground and alternative music coverage with a flexible coverage philosophy and a genuine openness to fresh critical voices. I used to contribute to Post-Trash back when I was just starting my illustrious music writing career (pause for applause/laughter/rain of rotten vegetables), and I'm forever thankful for Dan being willing to give a hopeless weirdo like me a chance to air out his errant opinions. 

Listen to the conversation here:

Albums covered in this episode (in order of appearance): 

Grace Rogers - Mad Dogs

Nyxy Nyx - Cult Classics Vol. I

Hiver & Jason Koth - Offers

Danny Brown - Stardust

Prewn - System

Wombo - Danger in Fives

Militarie Gun - God Save The Gun

Hedonist - Scapulimancy

Album Review: TrndyTrndy - Virtua

About a decade and a half ago, Vektroid raised it as a beacon and magnet for recognition of the existential ennui gripping those carried out to sea in the first wave of America's lost decade (still ongoing) in the wake of a major financial crash, and then Fire-Toolz optimized it to supercharge her caustic, rainbow-stained death spiral, leading to a badly realized and spotty cottage industry of extreme metal and punk bands trying to sound like the prime reference for their riffs were modernist watercolor prints found on the walls of dental offices nationwide (imitation is flattery, but it's also facile), and now it comes to this... all the hip, audacious, and circuitous routes have been trodden to the point that they have carved bleak, cavernous trenches and lightless, fallow gouges of no-man's-land into the culture; yet, it remains! So what to do with it? The only remaining ingress to the bounty of this small, fertile pasture is to step over the gate and waltz in like Big Chungus Bugs Bunny waddling into a vegan bakery with a hankering for a slice of cruelty-free carrot cake. The only thing in stock, though, is jazz- sweet, blithesome, impossibly pearlescent new-age fusion jazz, that's it! As the stars would have it, the kind of jazz that Rochester's TrndyTrndy curates and composes on Virtua was always the Fiddler's Green you pined to chart-wheel, thrown barefooted in your less guarded and honest moments of reflection- a plateau of fountainous mirth and charismatic intrigue, where knowledge is abundant and the future is as wide open as the horizon at dawn. TrndyTrndy is able to be the architect of this sonic encarta of bright, flawless forms, malleable flesh-marble, and dazzlingly synthesized auditory-tactile synesthesia despite being in their early twenties, and therefore likely never directly experiencing the era of Eyewitness CD-ROM guided tours of natural phenomena and archaeological investigations which serve as the aesthetic womb and inspiration for the project. They've dauntlessly condensed, extracted, and purified its primary essence, meaning that through the internet, all time is flat and abstract. You are 12, you've just hopped off the bus and are returning from school, your parents aren't home so you blow off your assigned school work and boot up the family computer, run a DOS executable from a digital encyclopedia, and spend the next two hours exploring a Smithsonian-sized archive of facts and photos about large jungle cats. You are 78, the young woman who brings you your pills in the afternoon has a playlist streaming on her phone and it is feeding music into the wireless headset in her ears, you accept the paper cup she hands you when she stops at your room, you pause and examine the contents of the cup, "Do I get the red pill today?" you inquire, she takes one of the earbuds of the headset out of her ear and asks you to repeat your question, the music pulsing out of the soft nub of the headphone is loud enough that you can hear it ring through the doorway without adjusting your cochlear implant, the sounds are sweet and comforting, familiar even, your memory is jogged but the recollection is so buried and long-forgotten you doubt its veracity as it has the clingy fuzziness of a hallucination... something... something about tigers? These worlds coexist, yours and everyone else's timelines have folded, and Virtua is the seam of the hinge where time and space collapse on their premises. It's all coming back to you now, isn't it? 

2025 Year-End Invitational

Ah, another year, another year older, another year closer to kissing dirt. I should be less glib in my introduction for this year's list because this year was not so bad on my ears. Many artists of note, prestige, and accreditation that I've managed to keep a bead on had releases. Melody's Echo loaded a hot one into the Chamber, and Stereolab made themselves heard again with a fresh sonic assay. Billy Woods dropped an album in the same year that he and Elucid ignited a heater with The Alchemist, and then The Alchemist daisy-chained that dish with a second serving of Alfredo along with Freddie Gibbs. La Dispute crashed back into view with No One Was Driving the Car, White Reaper showed they still have something left in the tank with Only Slightly Empty, and Deftones shared some Private Music with the public. Also, Turnstile released Glow On again for some reason. It's all fantastic, and you won't hear a disparaging word from these lips as far as the quality of any of it, but...  why do I still feel underwhelmed? Am I just spoiled for choice? Spiritually sick? I can't say for sure, but I just can't muster the will to commentate on any of it. 

"Saying thing is your job! You have one job! Why you no do job good?!?" I hear you shrieking at me (hypothetically). Firstly, no, my actual job is much less interesting than writing about music (and incidentally pays much better too [emphasis for exaggeration]), and secondly, none of the "big" releases this year are of the kind that I even entertain for coverage here, normally. They're all either on major labels (or on labels that are large enough that they can run in the same pack as the majors on occasion), and they all have large enough audiences that my throwing 2 cents into the coffee can doesn't do much for either of us (emotionally, commercially, artistically, etc...)  

Then there is the fact that they're all huge la discourse artists, aka music makers that you have to have an opinion on (mandatorily sanguine btw unless you're carving a niche brand as a "discerning" contrarian [ie a fussy little bitch]) in order to build a reputation as a take-haver, taste-contriver, and cultural instigator (read: gatekeeper). None of that interests me. I'm not looking to become a marketable personality, one who imposes a canon on people, enforces a listening regimen, or gives people anxiety about what they are or aren't committing brainpower to enjoying (however low voltage). My goal here is to share what I find interesting/invigorating with you as a supplement to your other habits of listening and engagement, as a personal labor of love and expressive outlet, and hopefully in a way that is enough off the beaten path that you escape the dehumanizing torrent of algorithmic optimization- at least for the one minute to an hour or so it takes to read/listen one of my reviews/interviews (hey, a minute of fresh air in the prison yard a day helps reduce stress and illness in inmates according to leading studies on the subject, so you can think of me as providing a similar benefit). 

The other thing about all these big, crucial names in music (really any flagship standard-bearers in the moment) is that even when what they're doing is good, worthy, and platinum standard (which, in my estimation, it mostly is), emotionally, for me, it just lands like more "content." Like, I like what they do, but keeping up with them kind of feels like being on a treadmill long after the buildup of lactic acid in my system has caused my organs to begin humming with a concerning arrhythmia. As in, "Oh, so-and-so has a drop on the way, I should probably know what that's about," instead of IDK, giving my brain a break, or whatever... Continuing as before, it often feels like running an extra mile after I've already completed a 5k. I have to ask myself, am I doing this for my own health, or am I doing it because other people are going to run that extra mile, so I should too...? It's a paradox I've wrestled with for a while without a clear or satisfying resolution. 

Something that Danny Brown (whose LP, Stardust, was an essential release for me this year) said in an interview recently that resonated with me is that there are "too many artists, and not enough fans." This was in response to a general question about why it's harder than ever to find fresh-sounding music, and it's a sentiment I understand deeply. Everyone is trying to sell you something and no one is happy with what they've got. Too many proclaimers, and not enough people to hear their pronouncements. Too many profits, and not enough disciples. Too much butter and not enough popcorn. Especially as someone who considers themselves both an artist (don't laugh) and an avid listener (ok, fine, laugh), I think I have to get better at being the latter and be more comfortable with modest ambitions towards the former. In other words, I need to focus on listening more deeply and thoughtfully, and being more selective about what I hear, while having fewer expectations as to my status as an indie/DIY/punk/emo/blowhard/etc...etc... blogger. After all, appreciation is the point, and if something doesn't call out to me, it's alright to leave it unexamined, resting, at peace where it lies. I've already started to do just that, filtering more of what I hear and not chasing things down if they don't immediately grab my attention. But as far as content here, I'm definitely looking to make a notable pivot in coverage- after I clean out the current backlog of albums angling for my assessment (said list is about 900 albums long btw). 

It might be a minute, but where I'd like to direct my focus in the future is at more international artists, specifically those coming out of Africa and South and Central America. For various reasons, these parts of the world are on the rise and rapidly more self-sustaining, and these trends are going to result in a cultural output in the coming years that I'm excited to see blossom into maturity. I've already received two emails in the last week of this year from publicists promoting amapiano artists, so the shift might be easier than I realized, as the universe may be pulling me in that direction with or without my conscious assent. 

In sum, my goals for 2026, for this blog and my life, are to be more chill towards myself and music, and to be a better listener, appreciating what I have and looking towards a brighter future (even if the brightest stars are not shining nearest to my home). As for 2025, below is a list of 25 albums I thought were rad as hell and/or touched my soul but didn't get around to writing about in the preceding 12 months. Have at them and have a Happy New Year!

Weatherday - Hornet Disaster (Topshelf Records)

2025 really was off to a good start when Hornet Disaster dropped in March. I had no idea it was on its way until Top Shelf emailed me about it, and it's been at the top of my mind since. There are some top-notch emo elegies here (naturally, again, issued on Top Shelf), and some that will affirm and ensure Weatherday's status as a seminally influential underground artist for decades to come, tracks such as "Hug" with its dreary sense of yearning and crawling, as well as the anguish-sickened passages, biting blizzard-y feedback swells of "Blood Online" and the wired-warp and seething surge of alienated implosion that is "Nostalgia Drive Avatar." Funnily, even though its predecessor Come In was only released in 2019, Hornet Disaster has the feeling of a revival album for the artist, which is understandable, as the impact that Weatherday has had on the modern underground music scene at an international level is almost incalculable, and frankly, that meant that they had a lot to prove with this release. It's not as overtly reclusive or peculiarly scratchy and experimental as what we've come to know Weatherday for, but it's just as daringly sentimental and compelling in its wounded gait, maintaining its shadowy eminence without sacrificing its emotional core. Despite everything, Weatherday is still themself. Forever.

 

MJ Noble - Songs From My Castle Tower (Doom Trip)

The immediate and insistent impression that I was seeded with upon beholding the cover of MJ Nobel's third album, Songs From My Castle Tower, was that it was the vessel of a cybernetic current and celestially radiant flow of ethereal inspiration, cascading over and between the battlements of an Avalonian spire, pouring down on the teeming mass of mortals below like cool, molten starlight... Now, it may be somewhat anticlimactic to acknowledge, but these initial impressions, gleaned from appearances alone, were impeccably precise. An elfin excursion into a vespertine grove of dark illumination is exactly what this album is- emancipation in a fantastical world of blissfully incarnate passion, rendered in arresting fidelity at the nexus of wondering daydreams and fiber-optic fanned eudaimonia. Folk music for a digital dynast with root privileges to your heart.

Citric Dummies - Split With Turnstile (Feel It Records)

My esteem for Feel It Records grows by the day. Sam's work with the label became a gold standard in my personal punk headcanon after splunking into Why Bother?'s catalog; now it's going platinum with this Citric Dummies LP, Split With Turnstile (which, ironically, is more vital than the album that the actual Turnstile released this year). A bio that I read of them alludes to their sound jumbling and interlocking odds and stray crumbs from Barely Legal era Hives, the Dwarves, and the buzz-bomb of contemporaries Dark Thoughts, and while that's all enough to stake your life on when it comes to this record, in essence, it's a vindication of that classic early hardcore style as a means of liberating your crown clean off your dome- fast, irreverent, catchy, and uncontainably hostile- they're like a dog that bites your leg and, via a metastatic psychic mutation, is able to inject a scathing and scandalous rejection of the human condition in its current-year craven state, directly into the mainline of your arteries like snake venom. This record is the good kind of sick!

Shallowater - God's Gonna Give You A Million Dollars (Self-Released)

With one of the most Coen brothers-esque titles I may have bonafided with these tired eyes, Houston "dust-gaze" bowlers Shallowater grant a sip of succor to the people lost in the godless desert of 2025 with their second LP God's Gonna Give You a Million Dollars. Much has been made of the "country" side of this record, and while it does have quite a bit of twang tucked in around the trim, it's really only "country" in the way that an old windmill left in a fallow wheatfield to oxidize into an indigestible cereal of sharp, coarse particulates could be considered "country," or an old barn cat caught in a snare laid for a fox outside the henhouse- a dark reflection and a fateful and justly cruel metaphor for the silent, progressive decay and barrenness of spirit and soil that has exhausted the heartland. That kind of "country."

life - we won't say a word until tomorrow (Self-Released)

It's been a banner year for Damián Ojeda. Ok, every year is a big year for Damián, but between his various black metal, shoegaze, emo, and skramz marquees, he's dropped something like 40 separate albums- the majority of which I have not heard because I have a job and a wife—but more than life simply getting in the way of bingeing on his output, I'm frequently stricken with an awe-induced paralysis by his work, wherein I feel compelled to spend long stretches of time simply wallowing in and soaking up the vibe and nuances of each release, incapable of moving on until I've wrung all the serotonin I can out of it. Case in point: I haven't been able to step past his summer release, we won't say a word until tomorrow, under the life honorific, to get a taste of the other three or four other life titles he's dropped since. It's just a beautifully painful listen. Conscious and cathartic, patient and devoted, bleak and blissful. Most bands are lucky to come within spitting distance of something this compelling in their entire career, and yet, this probably just felt like another Friday to Damián when he unveiled it to the world. Now, this is a fantastic record; I've already said as much, and the semi-final track "allusion to summer distance" was literally my song of the summer, but what really wins it a bushel of roses from me is the locket-shaped snippet on the cover of this album which encloses Nana Osaki and Nana Komatsu in an eternal embrace and whirl of intractable kismet. Ai Yazawa is a genius, an inimitable talent, and her manga about tragically fated love and diehard friendship vibes so hard with this album that it almost feels like they were made with each other in mind. It's all the heartbreak you can handle- sealed with a kiss.

Menace4Hire - With All That I Know Now (Self-Released)

On With All That I Know Now, Chicago MC Menace4Hire invokes a nostalgic and contemplative frame of mind, weaving observations and hard-wrung conclusions together like a colorful ribbon that connects the sun-faded images of a life in reflection as they lie static in a heavy photo album. Dust-tripping skips and loops rotate under Menace's studious reels of commentary, and lissome yet graceful flow like the treadmill of his mind, propelling him forward and sparing him from stagnant complacency, as the wheels turn and epiphanies emerge like daylight pouring over the horizon. There will be plenty more for Menace to come to know, as he is still young and the world has yet to put its full weight on his shoulders, but he's already got sure footing, clear eyes, and wisdom to bank, and that counts for a lot.

Flora Hibberd - Swirl (22Twenty)

Lucky you that you get to share a planet with Flora Hibberd. And what good fortune that she has an album out this year, called Swirl. And while we're counting our blessings, there is a song on that album titled "Lucky You," a peppy and sardonic twist on Americana and a tender take on garage-pop that sizzles with impulsive fluorescence- kind of like the record on the whole. Swirl was recorded by the London-born, Paris-palisaded guitarist/singer/songwriter in the Northwestern city of Eau Claire, which since at least For Emma, Forever Ago has garnered a reputation for sublating the traditions and trappings of standard American playing styles- in other words, Flora Hibberd, who on this LP exhibits intersecting qualities of Haley Fohr and Cat Power, happens to find herself at ease and in good company in her circuitous yet delicate evasion and amendment of orthodoxy

Superdestroyer / Leave (Nelson) B - NCTV Vol. 2: Negative thoughts about myself and people I love dearly (Lonely Ghost Records)

Superdestroyer and LNB are moots irl. That's pretty much it. That's why this album happened. You can learn more about its precursor in this interview I did with the guys last year. Ok, bye! *shoving noises, muffled commotion* Alright, fine! So my editor (ie my conscience) is telling me that I need to say more about this record, because it's made by good people, who happen to be two of my favorite emo/DIY personalities, and it's a very fun and edifying listen... which is exactly why it's hard to come up with things to say about it... Like, have you ever looked at that panel of Dr.Manhattan sitting ponderously on the surface of Mars, gazing longingly starward, and thought to yourself, "yeah, same." Alright, now imagine there are two Dr. Ms, and they both just lost someone irreplaceable to them. That's the vibe of this LP, only less forlorn and crowned with a finish of stardust and cosmic dynamism.

they are gutting a body of water - LOTTO (ATO Records)

They Are Gutting a Body of Water... what, do they live near a data center or something? You think I'm just being funny, but there is something somewhat prophetic about this Philly group (who everyone insists are shoegaze, though to my ears they're doing a grunged-up version of Sunny Day Real Estate, but WHAT DO I KNOW? I'm only an expert when it comes to these sorts of things) and their album LOTTO, a distorted, weathered tome and sonic manuscript, depicting a world drained of vitality and its sense-making structures, where people filter in and out like flames in the dark, choked to a snuff by a high wind. Apparitions glide around the periphery of a séance circle, a distant zone blighted by a spiritual fugue of amnesia. It's bleak enough of a setting that it could almost be mistaken for our own broken system of sinking pirate-ocracy. Don't you feel fortunate to have lived long enough to witness a fanatical state of parasitism, once only imaginable in fiction, become grounded reality? Maybe fortunate isn't the right word. But only the depths of irony can do justice to the inheritance of such a wretched windfall.

Cola Boyy - Quit to Play Chess (Record Makers)

Look at this photo of Matthew Urango, aka Cola Boyy. Look at this little pimp! Bro looks like he's got the world at the end of a yo-yo string- give it a flick and let it ride like a platinum disco record at a late-night house party. Quit to Play Chess is the gold-hearted, neo-disco-funk auteur's final record, unfortunately, as he passed away earlier this year, but it contains his best realized efforts to date. "Abundant" is a term I would use liberally to describe the passionate and distinctive confluences of crunchy Caribbean rhythms, surfy chop chords, drum and bass rattle, equitable yacht rock, and big hairy disco grooves that generously extend over the whole of this album and breathe a technicolor authenticity into its plentiful vision of the world's potential. You'd have to have a piece missing from your heart not to vibe with the pure mood manifest on this record. RIP Matthew. Thank you for this solid gold send-off.

Lealani - Beep Bop Boop (Self-Released)

It's a tale as old as... well, AOL chat rooms. Girl goes online. Girl falls in love... with a machine. What, you think she was going to get a boyfriend? Well, sure, ok, but what can a man do for you that an optimized hard drive and fiber optics connection can't? Ok... I'm hearing something about... jars? Jar opening can be automated. What can't be automated is girls (well, a girl in this case) leveraging their love of technology to approximate sonic encounters with extraterrestrial travelers party-crashing from digital destinations unknown. Beep Bop Boop is Lealani's second solo LP, a neon-aura glam bath of leisurely gratifying and marginally disquieting, petite pop-epigrams and escapist codas that function like little trap doors in the floor of a stuffed animal factory, which drop into recesses of dayglo laughter and pots of harmonizing amphibians. AI could never match what Beep Bop Boop is rolling out, and if it tried, Lealani would likely glitch-prompt it into oblivion with the chaos seed of her psyche.

Faetooth - Labyrinthine (The Flenser)

Personally, I'm psyched that bands are starting to describe their music as distinct and definite genres of their own making more and more often. It shows a real clarity of vision and a desire to control one's own narrative. Take Faetooth: they're calling their style "Fairy Doom." There are a number of ways that you could interpret said designation, but it gets the point of their sound- a combination of the earthen whimsy of Chelsea Wolfe, the witchy desperation of Ragana, the avant-chaos of Thou, and the ambient fury of Show Me the Body- across to you like a flaming bolt to the breastplate. The cold majesty of their latest LP, Labyrinthine, feels best appreciated in the absolute, most dismal spans of winter, the periods during which it genuinely seems sane to ponder whether a thaw will ever grace the land again. We haven't hit that point quite yet in the Midwest as of this writing, but when we do, I'll be thankful to have the frigid solace of this album to keep me company.

Johnny Football Hero - Contingency Plan (Lonely Ghost Records)

Johnny Football Hero sounds completely pissed off on their LP, Contingency Plan. Their outrage and the outpour of grievance is at such an extraordinary, heated degree of fervency that it's transformed them into an entirely different band. The thing that makes them somewhat recognizable on this release, when compared to their '21 EP, Complacency, is the subject matter of their songs, which remains a reflection of the near-ubiquitous batter-thick spread of suffering that blankets the swelter of our modern hell world. It's all post-hardcore, incoming like a cloud of Nerf-footballs strapped with c4- whistling, blazing, and hot with intent, striking with precision and spreading the fever of their indignant fervor like a plague of premeditated epiphany and motivated malcontent. Emergencies call for action, and action is what Johnny Football Hero aims to inspire.  

84 Tigers - Nothing Ends (Spartan Records)

I'm presuming that the Reed brothers zeroed in on the name for their band because '85 Bears would have been too traitorous and '83 Lions would have been too obvious for the proud Motor City denizens, and for a project birthed to examine themes of nostalgia, loss, and maturation, you don't want a nom de plume that distracts too much from the subject matter, or the music for that matter. 84 Tigers’s second LP, the affirmatively titled Nothing Ends, offers a tightfisted, sober strain of melocore that raises the gut-plunging introspection of Chuck Ragan's repertoire, with a deservedly grungy afterburn to its headstrong chord crunch, and possesses a bitter acidity in the absorbing plateaus of its marrow that stings in nettling distinction with the pragmatic yet replenishing assurances of its lyrical content. A tyrant and a confidant, folded into one.

Samba Touré - Baarakelaw (Glitterbeat Records)

Literally the last time I wrote about a blues artist was when I interviewed Deludium Skies back in February. So, for this next pick I'm going to be discussing a tribute to the Rolling Stones' Sticky Finge—NAHHHHHH, psych! Screw that Boomer-slop impostor Americana- listen to Samba Touré's Baarakelaw. It's better for you, it's more soulful, it's got more heart, it's real; it's about the sweat and scratch required to dust up the dough to make a loaf of bread, and the blood and clay that build the foundations of communities. Transcendent, rhythmic guitars woven in poetic patterns, pulling threads and mosaic imprints into a tapestry of contemporary life in conversation with the traditions upon which it is founded. It's not technically the blues, but it's how you can best translate what Samba is up to if you're not Malian.

Liaam - Dancing With My Clothes On (Self-Released)

There is something about Liaam that makes me think he'd thrive in a standard-cable package slot where he's allowed to make surrealist skits with sock puppets... but maybe that's entirely because he reminds me of another twiggy, wiggly man with a similar-sounding name. It has nothing to do with his music, which sounds like he's afflicted with an itchy case of Half Japanese, with a far more terminal secondary diagnosis of Swell Maps... I'm afraid it's inoperable, ma'am. The best thing we can do for him is let him dance with his favorite collegiate blazer and tapered slacks until the friction starts to spark and he goes out in a puff of pyrrhic glory. I think it's what he would want, ma'am... that and his own TV show...

Sallow Moth - Mossbane Lantern (Lilang Isla)

The Sallow Moth saga continues with Mossbane Lantern, named for a vegetated artifact of either profoundly magical or obscure technical origins that rests discreetly hidden in an icy inlet and grants its possessor the ability to teleport long distances, or even interdimensionally... It would probably be helpful if I mentioned that Sallow Moth is a conceptual sci-fi sound project by super-industrious metal master Garry Brents, in which he explores a universe set into chaos by mutant celestial moths who have degenerated from their positions as cosmic gardeners and naturalist stewards into a force that threatens the fabric of reality itself. Mossbane Lantern is Garry's only LP with this project in 2025 (the other releases under the Sallow Moth banner being a demo and a pair of EPs) and is technically a continuation of the Vial EP from 2024. This all might sound crazy, but it really pales in comparison to the actual music on this beast, which sounds like Cynic performing some manner of manic, fungus-flavored jungle-jazz to appease a disturbed Quetzalcoatl-like apparition. It's the farthest thing you can imagine from normal and restrained, and that's why it rules!

Bones Shredder - Morbid Little Thing (Sunken Teeth)

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah! What the actual fuck?!? This record makes me feel like it’s 2002 again! Dark, bruisingly catchy and beguilingly haunting pop-punk is not something I ever thought I'd hear with fresh ears posterior to the Bush-era implosion of everything charmingly irreverent about punk in the daunting umbra of perpetual imperialism and economic disarray. I guess things just had to get bad enough for people to stop worrying and embrace the terminal glissade enough to welcome morbid make-out anthems like the sanguinely pining "Let Me In" and tuneful tug of "Pulling Teeth" into the crypt of their heart chamber. It helps that there is as much Pinkerton as From Here to Infirmary in this venomous brew, helping to balance out the persistent allusions to tragedy with an obliging antivenin of hope.

YHWH Nailgun - 45 Pounds (AD 93)

The last time I encountered NYC quartet YHWH Nailgun was when I stumbled across their 2022 EP while killing time in an Airbnb in Louisville. I have such a vivid memory of that place, as well as the way YHWH's ricochet and recoil contrasted with its pseudo-Victorian decor, dark-shrouded interior, and sturdy but ancient furniture, shattering the idle calm of that place as if it were a radiation-laden satellite tumbling back in time to Deep Impact the house Wuthering Heights was based on. Their LP 45 Pounds eternalizes the freak energy that captivated me initially, while continuing to be just as incongruously alien within the modern setting of my home as they appeared to me while I was hibernating between the folds of an Emily Brontë novel. On this album, YHWH articulates something sonically akin to a lobotomized David Byrne, whose frontal lobe has been partially replaced with an outdated TV antenna that only picks up scrambled broadcasts of West African variety shows and rejected episodes of Later... with Jools Holland from an alternative dimension where Xiu Xiu had pivoted to become a particularly bizarre and brazen, hemp and barbed-wire necklace-hawking jam band. It's called 45 Pounds, but to me it's as dense and massive as a black hole caving in God's forehead.

Summer 2000 - Blue Meringue (Self-Released)

What is a Blue Meringue? According to Summer 2000, it's something along the lines of a wake pool filled with tar- an undulating state of paralysis where you're somehow always propelled forward while simultaneously sinking deeper into place- like trying to use a bungee cord to escape a whirlpool, or a Toyota pinned in place by a block of cement gouging into its undercarriage while it spins its wheels. It's a good metaphor for the necessity of growing through one's experiences while still feeling inadequate with the results. In the end, you can't really ever escape yourself due to the inertia of your flaws; you can only ever learn to live with and accept yourself and make the best of the consequences, even if you're perpetually aggrieved by how far you have fallen short of expectations. You're only human after all, and even when you've run over the median barrier and bent up your axle, as long as you're alive, you can always call a tow and get back on the road... eventually. Your insurance agent and/or SO might not be too happy with you, but as long as you're trying your best, you run a good chance of being forgiven for your roadside mishaps... probably. That's what I'm getting from Summer 2K's Blue Meringue, at least. A simple reminder of your inescapable humanness from a deeply thoughtful album.

Bug Moment - The Lazer Collection (Self-Released)

The first (and actually only) time I've seen Milwaukee's Bug Moment was when I caught them opening at a show at the Cactus Club where Blind Equation, Hey, ily, and Heccra were also playing... It was one of the most stacked lineups I can recall seeing outside of Chicago this year, and it's still one of my 2025 highlights. Being in that kind of company should give you a good idea of what to expect on their EP, The Lazer Collection, but then again, they're their own breed of shimmering, polychromatic anomaly, separate from their peers. Bug Moment certainly favors twinkly guitar antics, extreme metal vocals, and micromusic-esque infusions of electronics, but they also have this huge, whirlwind quality to their music, as well as perfectly calibrated pop-punk and alternative songwriting instincts that make comparisons to Paramore and Flyleaf unforced and positively apt. I like this album a lot. You could even say I've got the Bug Moment bug! ...at least for the time being.

La Rat - La Rat (South of North)

Sometimes to find the good stuff you have to dig deep... or look in the gutter. That's where I presume La Rat spends most of their time (although I found them via my Bandcamp feed, which, seeing as it mainly consists of solo noise and ambient projects at the moment, could be considered part of the internet's sanitation drainage system and digital superfund site, and might require government intervention to regulate accordingly). The Amsterdam-based duo's self-titled LP is a strange and vibey hip-hop volume detailing accounts of urban scavengery, that pack-rats together sooty soul samples and rough-cut R'n'B grooves into clumpy tangles of dirty delights, which vocalist Goya van der Heijden burrows into and gnaws to pulp with the scissors-like incisors of her squeaky but breathy, hushed but boldly furtive flow. This one is all cheddar, hold the cheese.

El Michels Affair - 24 Hr Sports (Big Crown Records)

I don't have to shout it out every time Leon Michels releases an album, but then again, it feels like I do, as I find them so compelling. To me, Leon is re-engineering the soul album one effort at a time, understanding the influence that soul had on hip-hop, and then working backward from hip-hop back to soul while conserving the marrow of each: the cool swelter and richness of sentiment from soul, and the scrappy, pioneering drive of hip-hop, and forging something unique and unpredictable in their fusion. For his 24 Hr Sports LP, Leon drops the Ghanaian hand-painted movie poster shtick in favor of '80s-uncle's-parlor nostalgia, with a soft-focus photo of a giant trophy adorning the cover. He certainly earned the reward pictured here for past efforts as much as for present ones. We should really give the man a medal every year in an Olympic-style ceremony. Maybe if we start saving our change in a coffee can, we'll have enough to put on that kind of production in time for his next LP in '27-'28 or so.

Mildred - Pt. 1 (Dead Mothers Collective)

Does the apocalypse need a prequel? I guess every disaster has its stages. LA's Milred jumped right to the conclusion of their conceptual drama in a hymn to a tragedy of errors and eras with Pt. 2, and now follows up with this year's Pt. 1, a significantly more involved piece of work spanning more than two hours in run time and incorporating the talents of more than 23 musicians. Still, even at the length of a Golden-Age Cecil B. DeMille biblical epic, this noisy eruption of Birthday Party-esque provocation and Kakotheos-oriented post-hardcore will likely feel shorter and less dyspepsia-inducing than your average Sunday sermon- especially if you have the misfortune of being dragged to one of those houses of "worship" that have incorporated bespoke addresses from a Kirkified-AI prompt into their liturgy- an accepted state of affairs in this country, despite it being outwardly more blasphemous (and unintentionally surreal) than the band Liturgy's entire catalog- not for lack of trying, of course.

Dikembe - King (Skeletal Lightning)

If there was any doubt that I'd save the best for last, fear not, for "best" is a subjective concept, but actually, the King EP from Dikembe is an unexpected delight this year. Not because Dikembe isn't in the habit of delivering catchy, heartfelt, and momentously urgent melodic hardcore, but because it's so effortlessly straightforward and on-point. They really do make it look easy, and that's really what you need after a long year: something that can throw the emergency brake on during the spin-out and give you about 20 minutes or so of breathing room. If that doesn't earn them the right to unilaterally appoint themselves "king" for the moment, then they should stop handing out crowns because they're passing them out to all the wrong people for all the wrong reasons. Long live the squatchy sonic sovereign!

That's it! You made it to the end. Congratulations! Now get out and seize the night! Good luck out there bud. Onward to 2026!

Pictured: Me trying to enjoy my evening.