Album Review: Demon Eye - Prophecies and Lies

In about 2017 or somewhere around then, all the little shops by me that are run by like one girl and sell mostly Sears catalog jewelry they picked up at estate sales, a selection of three interchangeable blouses, and tour shirts from the '90s at a 1000% markup also started offering nazar amulets in various guises and trinkets. I don't know why, but other girls who couldn't afford to run stores with a lower daily sales volume than your average yacht broker really seemed to dig it and pushed those purchases per diem up into the double digits. Presumably, the idea was that these concentric blue circles would protect you from the premonitional gaze of a roaming malocchio and help them find a boyfriend who is easily bullied or land a promotion to superintendent at the non-profit orphanage for wayward Victorian dolls they work at, but I actually think there was more to it. Calling yourself a witch became popular around the same time, and rather than warding off evil, I think decorating oneself with these charms was meant to place the world on notice that the forces of evil were at her command, that the maleficence of the world bent to her will. What's a bigger power play than flipping a reverse card on Father Brimstone himself, making life a game of Faustian Uno where the objective is to make the devil your bitch? As a metal fan, I understand this impulse. Metal musicians are adept at adopting the iniquitous and vile to lend power and potency to their sound, whether it be naming themselves after an unholy disease or giving their albums and songs the titles that align with various curses- evil flows through metal like blood through the gasping pumps of the human heart. More to the point of donning a malignant gaze to publicize one's perihic influence is Raleigh, North Carolina's Demon Eye. On their most recent (as of 2017) LP Prophecies and Lies, the group proudly performs a nostalgic and measured homage to Black Sabbath, with flashes of Iron Maiden's guitar heroics and Blue Öyster Cult's playful, psychedelic mysticism. This is very familiar, fuzzy, hooky, and muscular metal that is unavoidably charming in its brash display of unself-conscious depictions of might and wizardly wickedness. Early into this misadventure, the group tiptoes up to the altar of doom-shrouded Hecate before barreling over into Sabbath swagger on "In the Spider's Eye." Their outlandish outlaw nature takes on new dimensions of depravity on the blues bruiser "The Redeemer," and later the mystic, Deep Purple-worshipping "Vagabond" glides on a pungent lilac-tinted cloud as it scrapes the countryside in an endless quest for invigorating brushes with budding chaos. Is the sweep of el mal de ojo the harbinger of great misfortune, or a tiger yet to be tamed? For each of us, the answer is different, a rejoinder whose verdict rests solely in the eye of the beholder.

Souls are like Pokémon cards, the money is in the margins (Soulseller Records).

Album Review: Kadavar - Kids Abandoning Destiny Among Vanity And Ruin

Do you know what it's like to split your face like a dinner plate and serve the hot, fresh sponge cake of your reverie as it oozes out of your bone tin to an impregnable stranger as so much greasy spilled lava cake dumped directly into their lap? No? Well, Berlin's Kadavar does- so shut up and listen- if you're ever in a situation where you have to divulge the full nakedness of the putrid inkwell of your subconscious to someone (in self-defense, or out of perverse wish-fulfillment, what have you), you'll at least be prepared (it's working for me at least). Kadavar traditionally plays a nostalgic blend of Led Zeppelin-worshipping guitar chords, southern-fried Lynyrd Skynyrd grooves, and Ozzy-jocking vocals that combine to form a smooth, psyched-out, mid-tempo version of Clutch with aspirations of becoming Witchcraft. They took an undercarriage-scraping approach to low-end, scuzz-bomb production and tuning on their 4th LP Rough Times, but since their 2021 COVID response, The Isolation Tapes, they've embarked on a meandering road to essentially chase the arc of Yes's career like a bloodhound tryign to catch a mouthful of a hare's butt fuzz- from progressive headcases to consummate pop-chart-cracking czars of an itchy electro-hook, they really pulled out the monty- a strategy that, while bearing fruit in terms of some phenomenally imaginative and often catchy forms, didn't manage to fly the group's freak flag at full mast, and therefore felt somewhat bereft of much-needed climax. That vitalness, that hot-bloodedness, that ugly urgency of Rough Times and their earlier self-titled work is back to a gratifying degree on their latest LP Kids Abandoning Destiny Among Vanity and Ruin, but now balanced by the more patient and elongated gaze of those later releases, a concontion of unlikely stagedressing and inspiration akin in spectacle to an all-caveman crew of the Starship Enterprise on a mission to boldly crush alien life beneath the stony mill of their wheels and start fires where there were never fires lit before. The album starts off with a satisfying stoner sludge swing in the vein of Acid King with the demonic fuzz rock aura of Electric Wizard, titled "Lies," before transitioning into a wormhole of transdimensional tempestry on the windtunnel-shaped "Heartache." "Explosions in the Sky" sounds nothing like the band it shares a name with, instead lapping at the banks of the Styx to paint a blazing rainbow of death across the troposphere, subsequently the group indulges their motorik tendances on "Stick It" an initiator of wacked-out disco-gloom that lashes out in a razor-wielding dance of bloodletting rebuke, crying with laughter as it twirls on a length of spider's silk over a bed of flames. "You Me Apocalypse" takes up the off-kilter groove of its predecessor and twists it in a slightly more harmonious and yet still creaky direction, pushing the boundaries of quixotic optimism as it leans into a somersault over the jutting mouth of a volcanic wound in the earth's flesh, a diabolical dichotomy that winds you up for the mystic pulse of "Children" as well as the thunderclap and collapse of "K.A.D.A.V.A.R." like you were a fly that landed on a spinning top with a yin and yang on it, just as it began its centripetal turn, and now you can tell your sucky bits from your cloaca, before finally finishing you off with a return to form on the absolute ripper, "Total Annihilation." Abandon whatever fate you imagined for yourself and give yourself over to the pride of desolation that Kadavar will lavish upon your meager mortal form. 

Where dreams are made (Clouds Hill Records).

Album Review: Dreadnought - The Endless

Big fan of the cover art for this one. Even bigger fan of the fact that the music matches the cover in its majesty and complexity. The Endless is the fifth studio LP from Colorado doom metal and post-metal unlikely upstarts, Dreadnought. Their sound is akin to a cross between Pelican, Isis, and Procol Harum, with periodic black metal vocals, drawing not-too-surprising influence from groups like King Crimson, Opeth, and Moonsorrow. The Endless is an exploration of, conversation with, and at times flight from, man's essential duality- a creator and destroyer, a divinely endowed creature burdened by its freedoms, crying out for deliverance only to find the chains of vice grow ever tighter with the resonance of his wail, knowing only emancipation through submission in a cowering shade, ceasing his struggle so that the occasion never again arises for him to curse the bite of the irons that weigh him down. Either the body depresses and encumbers the soul, or the soul repudiates the body- whichever is the more acceptable death determines the winding path you take in life to get there, and with every step a little drizzle of the psyche eeks out between your toenails; whether it boils like tar returning to the Earth, or soars like a dove once it escapes the shelf of your little spurs, is a fair indicator of where the rest will follow. A splendidly moving and disturbing premonition of fate and the consequences of habituation, as ensnaring, troubling, and poetically melancholic as the dark churn of juxtapositions that fires the cauldron of Dreadnought's auditory dispensation of the braided, interminable whorl of salvation and despair, in whose eye lies the human heart, bleeding and pleading with spite.

Southbound and down, aren't we all... (Profound Lore).

Album Review: Castle - Evil Remains

 Wayward, witchy, doom metal from San Francisco that draws in equal part from occult preoccupations of proto-metallers Coven as it does crooked-jawed, roadhouse, ass-kickers The Obsessed. Castle's name is shorthand for their literary occult philosophy which they call "Castle of the Mind," a worldview culled from the writings of William Blake and Charles Baudelaire and which informs the majority of the dark incantations found in their lyrics. Evil Remains is Castle's sixth LP, but it could just as easily be their debut with how raw and hungry the duo of Elizabeth Blackwell and Mat Davis sound here, iterating on the cursed and contorted grooves and miasmic atmosphere that has defined their career, and giving '70s downer dirges the rough-and-tumble, chopped, and bare ravenous intrigue of a beast of legend stalking the moonlight for a pale, defenseless neck to sink its fangs into. Standing out even amongst Castle's fortified attributes is Elizabeth's coolly ensnaring vocals that always seem to be flowing in and around you as a graveyard fog, slipping through your pores and carrying slivers of your soul away into the night with their billowing egress. Reclaim the night with the urgent, dirgey, moonlight descent sheathed in a malevolent co-deviant repartee that beckons the conflagration hither to one's effigy-prepared bosom on "Queen of Death," the sanguine-draining, nocturnal viper melee of "Nosferatu Nights," the seductively caustic and necromantic echo of a promise of vengeance that is "Deja Voodoo," and the undulating, warped passage of flexing guitar melodies that harrows down the gorge of a geist-shredding, black-winged retribution for an eons-old betrayal on "She." When the winds and black magic prevail, there is no place stonier or more serene than Castle's keep.

Beat your heart out (Hammerheart Records).

Album Review: Monolord - Your Time To Shine

Monolord is definitely laying it on a little thick with the cover and title here—Your Time to Shine? A lifeless lepus, wreathed with flowers? A bit of that restrained Swedish dourness goes a long way. Me being my tactful, beneficent self though, I'm going to put it to you even more bluntly: you are a vermin, a noxious nuisance, a dyed-in-the-wool cretin. You're running around the metaphorical jungle of modernity, the great urban holt, red-assed and cross-eyed, flapping your cheeks in the wind with the pride of a blooded noble, bellowing like a being of untold importance and boundless delusion, a shadow that runs before the crumbling ruin of your actual personage, a scared animal shitting under a bush, too dumb and blind to be ashamed of its own specious projections of hubris. Only in death will you attain the aura that you sought in life, because it is the only point in history since your birth when you will be remembered with ubiquitous fondness, owed solely to the practicality that you can no longer do anything to further embarrass yourself and others... It's sorta zen when you think about it. In nothingness, you finally find the serenity of peace that escaped you in life. Ah! Nirvana at last! ...right before you're reincarnated as a tampon. This fatalistic, if backhandedly optimistic, outlook- liberation via the unburdening of life in its continuance- is certainly reflected in the billowing, cosmic star-rangler and veristic tendencies of this inky, astral-hued sludge metal band from the great white North, whose gripping, nature-worshipping, navel-gazing sound is as contemplative as it is flesh-flatteningly heavy. Their mournful, hazy riff-hammering makes its home somewhere along the broken highway between Mastodon and Hawkwind, with dark, beautiful cascades of guitar cracking the sky and lighting your way through the phenomenally thick atmosphere the band has managed to conjure as it leads you to your new abode, a 6x6 efficiency, in the clodded turf of nature's bosom where you can tranquilly dissipate into the successive churn of eons... or more precisely, become fertilizer. A good place to start if you're looking to have your bones ground into plant chow early is the devastating massive opener "The Weary," which hews closer to the chunky beardo-with-a-heart-of-gold, party-pit groove rock of Red Fang, or "I'll Be Damned," with its shovel-hefting, dirt-sifting, crack-and-slam grooves, each repetition of which is like another pound of gravedirt piled on your rotting bones. "To Each Their Own" is a hauntingly somber number, with the crushing gravity of an imploding star, that sucks you in, pulverizes you, and then mixes your dust with a palette of paint which the band uses to revarnish the celestial dome above. Then there is the ten-minute title track, which is fierce and whimsical while remaining compellingly heavy and undeterred, making use of meandering grooves and quivering feedback to leave the impression that you're being boiled in a pot of lysergic pekoe to fill the gullet of a frog wizard while he ponders and stargazes, parcing clouds of violet-tinted scholastic cogitation with the warty weft of his intellect. You might never summit the peak of your facile ambitions, but you can take solace in the supposition that you'll at least be helping to keep the grass greener once you're gone.

熱があります (Relapse Records).

Album Review: Beastmaker - Inside The Skull

Wwwaaaahhhhhhhhhh Beastmaker breaks my heart. The burly doom metal out of Fresno, CA, was briefly euthanized in 2019 to fill the spiritual vessel of Haunt to the brim by both bands' all-father Trevor William Church. Now, while technically revived, for tax reasons (probably), etc... Beastmaker as a band has essentially been hibernating while the aforementioned Haunt gallivants over the moors of the metal scene like a big-haired, bullet-belt-adorned Baskerville. I get why that is. I don't begrudge Haunt's success. Beastmaker had a hell of a run, dropping 10 EPs in 2018 alone, before getting iced in the wake of the Eye of the Storm EP's gale... but I just prefer their monster-mash, mushroom-headed, ooze-and-booze style of doom to the more epic and thematically dense material that Haunt embodies and exudes. Maybe it's too many late nights as a kid hypnotized by MST3K reruns on the Sci-Fi channel, or all the time as a teenager I spent digging into the schlock horror inspirations of my favorite Misfits songs, but if a band nails the crunchy macabre oeuvre of these imprudent pastimes of mine, then they've earned a loyal fan for me.... 'til death do us part... or maybe longer. So who/what/were(wolf) is Beastmaker? Well, they're a hazy, horror-inspired doom metal, heavily influenced by downer-rockers Black Sabbath and later psychedelic and blues-fueled doom purveyors like Pentagram. As I alluded earlier, they have a surprisingly dense catalog, of which Inside the Skull is only their second and (at this point) most recent LP, released in 2017 via lauded metal asylum Rise Above Records. The production and mixing on this album are... well, let me put it this way: the master might have been boiled in hog fat before it was sent to the presses, but that only enhances the grimy, grind-house vibe of the record on the whole, and the musicianship is tight and compelling enough to shine through any disputed flaws one may notice with the recordings. Most of the songs have a pulp-horror narrative similar to the macabre vignettes from Tales from the Crypt, recounting stories of nightmarish eternal life, malevolent black widow lovers, and other things that go bump in the night. If you dare, and are up for a scare, then creep into the trippy psych-drenched "Now Howls the Beast" featuring guest vocalist Johanna Sadonis of Lucifer, as well as the swampy, southern riffs and fat undulating grooves of "Nature of the Damned," the muscular, maudlin riffs and oozing crawl of "Inside the Skull," and the sludgy, venomous grooves and spitting hooks of "Night Bird." Inside of you are two wolves; Beastmaker would like nothing more than to rile them up and set them loose in the dark, gothic theater of your mind.

Up from below (Rise Above Records).

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.

Album Review: Innumerable Forms - Pain Effulgence

Innumerable Forms is the fetid brain loogie of Jon DeTore, who, along with pals Jensen Ward of Iron Lung, Chris Ulsh of Mammothgrinder, and Connor Donegan of Genocide Pact, has wrought upon the Earth a genuinely malevolent force of oppressive morbidity. Innumerable Forms is a necrotic, frost-ravaged take on Finnish death metal combined with American doom in the vein of Brooklyn’s Winter, imbued with a palpable rage carried over from DeTore's days in the Boston power-violence group Mind Eraser and with a knack for darkly penetrating melodies honed from his years playing in power metal groups Sumerlands and Magic Circle. Their third LP, Pain Effulgence, is just as crushingly moribund as its older siblings, feeling like a torturous preamble to a final crushing tragedy, like Sisyphus losing his footing on the soft peaty ground of a Tartarus incline, and watching helplessly as the boulder he had been pushing slowly topples backwards towards his prone and vulnerable form, about to transform him into a pulpy grist. "Impulse" begins with a coffin-rattling howl before leaden riffs begrudgingly pry a leprous melody from its cursed sonic foundation; "Blotted Inside" is bleak and ominous, hanging its gargantuan grooves over the listener like a crow-pecked carcass of an accused warlock; while "Overwhelming Subjugation" unleashes a formidable, all-consuming deluge of acid sludge-punk; and "Austerity and Attrition" churns out a final light-swallowing dirge of doom that only the most depraved of God's rejects could muster the blasphemous nerve to peer into as if it were a mirror. Pain Effulgence is cold liquid anguish incarnate, the kind that burns in the best sort of way.

A fresh, yet familiar, chapter in the history of brutality (Profound Lore).

Album Review: Black Road - Witch of the Future

Keeping my zone chill and skuzzy with some fuzzed-out, slow-burn doom metal out of Chicago. Witch of the Future is the debut LP from Black Road, released on the very underground Dark Hedonistic Union Records in 2019, and it is still their only full-length album. DHU doesn’t release many records, but when they do, it's usually worth taking notice. Black Road began in earnest on Halloween 2016 and consists of Tim M. on guitar, Robert Gonzales on drums, Casey Papp on bass, and Suzi Uzi performing vocals. Their hazy, psychedelic vibe is heavily reminiscent of the original cult psych-band, Chicago’s own, Coven, while smoothly integrating elements of fluid R’nB à la Jefferson Airplane and the throbbing, bristled churn of Mastodon-esque sludge. This dynamic is executed brilliantly on the title track and evolves beautifully on the badly warped, minimalist acid rock of "Torches," the lumbering, Obsessed-indebted "Blood on the Blade" featuring a particularly Jinx Dawson-like vocal performance by Suzi, and the moody electric blues of "End of Man." The future is a bitch, and only the witchy will weather its storms. Feed your head until curious mushrooms mulch your crumbly carcass and put your flame back in the soil.

Life's a drag, so you might as well smoke it (Dark Hedonistic Union Records).

Album Review: Sacred Monster - Worship the Weird

Worship the Weird is the debut album* from Chicago doom metal band, Sacred Monster (from 2019, a very popular year for rehashing stalwart tales of cosmic horror for whatever reason). They perform a muscular blues-riff anchored interpretation of classic NWOBHM and doom grooves ala Pentagram, with vocals that run the gambit of strained reptilian cries interspersed with the clean ring of King Diamond-esque salvos. The contents of their songs are mostly homages to classic horror and sci-fi, presented with an appropriate measure of Cryptkeeper camp. Like the stomping Twilight Zone tribute "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet," the uncanny Clutch-worshiping stutter-groove retelling of an '80s cult-classic "Re-Animator," and the superb, pugnacious knuckle-duster and Dark Tower homage "Face of My Father." The vampy-er tracks tell original stories, with "The Wraith," depicting a story of revenge from beyond the grave with a burning Orange Goblin-esque bridge, and the epic Candlemass-meets-King Diamond haunted asylum tour of "Waverly Hills." Embrace your weirder side and give this a spin.

Find more adherents of the dark arts from Ordo MCM.

*... and the last album too. The group disbanded in 2022. Another metal ulogy. It seems I've been writing a lot of these lately...