Album Review: Merc - No One Leaves This Room

The Sunday before last, a pretty prominent personality in the hardcore scene told me I needed to take the next day (Labor Day) off. No work. No chores. Just me, my ass, and a bag of chips. And like the overachiever that I am, I ended up taking the entire week! Facedown on the concrete slab that is my basement floor, no chips though, just lapping up mildew and sucking on mold and spider eggs. Talk about your stay-cays, am I right, girls? So now that I've dragged myself up and homo-vertical again, I'm ready and raring to tell you all about something that matters! Something that I'm deeply passionate about. That's right, New Jersey's very own Merc(k), a high-quality producer of essential medicines and cancer treatments, who leverage the power of heckin' science to save and improve questionably sentient biomass across the globe. Their subsidiaries represent an attractive portfolio for pre-seed, targeted investment for savvy funders looking to finance in the future starting in Q1 of 2027, and... *deafening sonic howl increases in pitch in the background* Um, do you all hear that? *an unmanned Shahed drone crashes through the window and explodes, taking out the whole floor and causing the building to collapse into itself, floor by floor, into a pile of rubble. As the fog of devastation clears, I can be seen casually wandering into frame to survey the destruction. Amongst the heaps of shattered concrete and splintered timbers, I peer down at my own mutilated visage, a mangled human form with sparking wires and other mechanical components jutting out from the crushed and burned formerly human facsimile. I smile, cock an eyebrow, and look at the camera* Boy, AI is really getting out of control? Wacky stuff, cuh! Anyway... *camera switches vantage point, I am now in profile facing left* Let's get back to the REAL review! *an abrupt coughing sound is heard off screen. *In a nervous blur I pivot to face the new angle of the lens, my eyes now meet yours, a strained chuckle of embarrassment escapes between clenched teeth* Sorry, it's hard to see my mark with all this... um, rubble around. Alright! What does North Carolina have that South Carolina doesn't, besides higher taxes and stricter firework laws (so lil' Johnny can keep all his fingers on the 4th)? The only real answer is Merc, the powerviolence duo who have a date with disaster. Following the misanthropically materialized 2025 LP Debhumanized, No One Leaves This Room punches the pedal all the way through to the wheel well as they spin out into a corporate lobby with a trunk full of propane and a grudge to kill. It's as frothy at the gums as its predecessor, with a slightly smoother gait, meaning that each track can close the gap between it and your throat with less effort than previously believed. Slithering without friction in a sea of muck, liquid decay, and viscera, they strike without hesitation like a cobra, poisoning and incapacitating, before bending and breaking the limbs of their rueful targets. From the corrupt to the capricious, if their crimes weigh too dearly on others' shoulders and conscience, then a gashing groove of barbed bass and skull-craving rhythmic acrimony is eagerly incoming to black-bag and tag these tyrants with extreme prejudice. Parsing these bouts of righteous dread dispensary are intersections of moody vespertine waltzes of undertow, wine-dark post-punk vintage from the best years of Bauhaus, a provable spawning ground for banshees and kuntilanak, restless spirits set loose to roam and wrack their cries over your senses, a devilish harem which may help to explain the wailing affliction that suffuses the rest of the record. No One Leaves This Room is a tactical detonation of severe, morbid-future-averting punk, emitting shock wave after rippling shock wave to fry the motherboards of a system that is void of integrity and which is owed no Merc(y). *a whirling howl can be heard incoming* God damn it, this is for that last pun, isn't it? *everything within 20 feet of the impact site is suddenly vaporized or turned to molten glass*

Interview: The Eradicator

Listen up, pusshead! You ain't nobody unless you're somebody on the squash court! It is the ultimate game of manly endurance, speed, agility, and intelligence. A test of will and fortitude on a magnitude that rivals the myths of ancient gods. Two men enter the court; one man leaves... and shortly thereafter, the other man, having declared himself the victor, also hits the showers. Sure, it's the same showers that the loser is using, and yeah, he may have to ask to borrow a towel and some deodorant from the loser, and he might have forgotten his wallet so he can't pay for a cab or the train and will be hoofing it back to the office that morning, but that just makes the triumph all the sweeter. The stains on his collar and in the pits of his suit jacket when he arrives in the lobby of his employer's building are the laurel rings of a champion, and no one can erase their golden glory- as much as one might try with a Shout stick or other name-brand stain remover. No one knows the perspiration of perseverance and the stink of success better than The Eradicator, aka Andy Slania, the demon of the D Squash Ladder, banshee of the back courts, the phantom of the point-a-rally, the shaitan of sweat- in short, he's your worst nightmare... and the latest guest on this podcast!

Check out The Eradicator's latest LP You Can Hate The Eradicator: 

Album Review: Volatile Ways - Perfect Dark

Commencing their warpath as a birthday gift from bassist Lewy Glass to vocalist Emily Beekmans, the group lives up to the premise of their name on their second LP, Perfect Dark. Favoring low, grinding grooves that scrape the surroundings like a spinning wheel of devastation appended to the arm of a Bagger 293 Bucket Wheel Excavator, they're metalcore in the transmissibly threatening pathogenesis of The Acacia Strain- slow, crushing, unsparing- a patient form of ruthlessness that builds on its own momentum to ensure the thorough defilement of the listener's imortal (yet soon to be tarnished) spirit, ascending in the darkness in an eclipsing invocation of perdition that blots out the sun in a warmthless grey quilt of gloom. Can you believe this stuff is inspired by Dark Souls? I ask rhetorically, because if it wasn't, I'd be completely at a loss. "God Will Be Cut" causes St. Peter's gates to quake on their hinges, exploding like a meteor burning up in the atmosphere, spreading a deafening violence and upheaval in the wake of its sonic boom, while "Pink Mist Wish List" tallies up its dead pool winnings with the lash and rip of saber-shaped riffs, and the claw-and-gnaw of gruesomely carnivorous grooves that mop up the scene like a tiger licking the floor of a slaughterhouse to a gleaming, polished, refective radiance, and "Perfect Dark" initiates with a turgid, undulating trawler of a riff before cracking into a yarble pitting chop and tilted, aggression-laden blade pitch, mincing with equal measured precision and patient ferocity whatever resistance you have left to the gravitational haul they exert to impel you into the density of a white-searing void. Now you have perfect knowledge of Volatile Ways dark methods. This is my gift to you. Do with it what you will.

Bereave in God Records... that's actually the name of the label. They're doing my work for me now!

Album Review: Coilguns - Odd Love

The raw angst and measured execution of 2018's Millennials easily made a thousand-strong fan out of a single man like such as myself, meaning I had elevated expectations heading into 2024's Odd Love. After only a few riffs met my ears, I immediately knew I wanted to say something about it to my audience, and so I pulled up the band's biography to sift out the facts, and lo, there it was: FFO Mars Volta, Converge... which *checks notes* was exactly what I was going to say (in so many words) as my opening hook. It's almost a relief as a music writer when a band is like "Hol' up! I got you fam," and you can skip the foreplay and plunge straight into the 4/4 (or whatever time signature these songs are in [what do I look like, a mathematician*?])! Written primarily by guitarist Jona Nido, and later arranged by compatriots vocalist Louis Jucker, guitarist Kevin Galland, and drummer Luc Hess, Odd Love embraces the strangeness of existence and the mystery of the interpersonal connections that form despite its inherently alienating premises. Leading off the procession, "We Missed the Parade" explodes like a balloon full of black confetti and thumbtacks, erupting in a recursive pattern of null-navigating grooves that burn to an angry cinder on contact with the ears like gunpowder ghosts. After the smoke clears, "Placeholders" stamps its imprint on your senses with a chilling backswing and a clean, mincing chopper groove that gins up the tension like a webby clump of flesh-colored cotton candy before dispersing its energy in a fine pink mist that frosts the walls with a fixed luminance of spectral carnage. The smoldering "Caravel" descends with a patient observance, like the captain of a ship hobbling down from his quarters to meet the icy bath of the sea, as his ship, ablaze, takes a groaning bow in submission to the wrathful chasm of Poseidon's kingdom. With "The Wind to Wash the Pain" sweeping the slate with a shivering breath of callous comfort and devout disconsolation, which waits for the heart it kited up to the sky to be returned in cherished condition, knowing full well that it was pierced by an apoxed arrow and devoured by vultures many moons ago. Curious condolences for treacherous times ahead.

* Someone who can count. 

Album Review: Gust - Gust

I had this one on my desk for a while-12 years, actually- during which time it mostly served as a coaster and mantel to prop up a picture of myself and bae (Hi, honey!). In all that time I didn't really feel like I needed to hear it because, in many ways, I already did. There was a big wave of crust/black metal/noise rock hybrids during the early '10s who all seemed to have the same mission: to fuck with other people's vibes- scare American Apparel shoppers and generally rip up the mood at large, millennial gatherings. Bands like Full of Hell, Trap Them, and Nails pretty much existed as sonic-psychological ordnance, deployed by hipsters against other hipsters, and Southern Lord was one of the main dealers of the era. But now that I've finally had a taste, I'm glad that I actually gave Gust's self-titled LP a listen, because it is a lot of fun, and it was quite the gay little jaunt going back and wallowing in some of the simply atrocious (non-derogatory) aura that was in circulation during the previous decade. The fast-pass, no-bull description of Gust on this, their debut LP and first proper studio recording, is withering d-beat and wind-tunnel hardcore inspired by those wrathfully whimsical metalcore minstrels Converge and Cursed. They're a Swedish band, and they live up to the pedigree that a cadre of crusts hailing from those parts implies, and pretty much check all the boxes for a group that started out doing straight crusty d-beat but eventually hazarded onto the logic that a bigger, cleaner, and more Boatright-y sound (Brad literally produced the record) could go farther and inflict more damage on adversaries and innocent bystanders alike- ruthless, loud, and, lest we forget, misanthropic. If you've had a bad day (like I do every day), this will scratch your itch, with a little more acidic atmosphere and black-metal snarl than your average band of punk crushers, even of the same milieu. Some might argue that this is just warmed-over Baptist grey water... and they have a point, but Gust's antireligious, antiauthoritarian swill is still more delicious and hits harder than many groups that came after them, and being absolutely novel isn't nearly as important with hardcore and extreme metal bands as whether or not they deliver the goods- ie, crushing beats, epic riffs, soul-rending grooves, and vocals that transmit a sense of unrestrained human anguish. In that case, it's all here. Take it in and let the bad times roll.

Technically, Southern West Coast Lord. 

Album Review: C.L.S.M. - Infinity Shit

I was thinking the other day about how stone-cold spectacular it was to see Coliseum and United Nations play at the Sub T in support of the former's LP Anxiety's Kiss, declaredly their final album back in 2015. The intensity of both their performances is something of a core memory at this point, especially the manner in which Ryan Patterson would kinetically manifest the emotions and intentions behind each song in his set to narrow the circumspection of the audience while approximating the dread of being a raccoon facing off against an oncoming train- guy has a talent for making one fear for their splatability. Coliseum cracked and crumbled after that tour, and Ryan moved on to his pure post-punk project Fotocrime. It was bittersweet to bid the group farewell, but I'm not one to begrudge an artist for shifting focus, even if their choice of direction leads us down divergent paths. As for Fotocrime, it affects me about as much as the mating habits of endangered Andean condors- interesting but ultimately inconsequential to my life. Imagine my surprise when I looked up old Battledome-C on a whim, only to learn that they had constructed a new arena in which to display their prowess and spill their carnage, a retcon back to the cockcrow of their conception, indecently identified as Infinity Shit and released in 2023. I'm somewhat shocked that Ryan would claw back his declaration that Anxiety's Kiss was the group's parting buss, but seeing how he's now calling the band C.L.S.M., I guess this is more of a reincarnation than a reunion- a reversion to a simplified structure, reminiscent of a prior instantiation, in order to ignite a freshly ascendent blaze of destiny. Back in the mid-'00s, when highly commercial third-wave emo and pop-punk were at their zenith, there was more or less an undercurrent of backlash within the punk scene that manifested in a consistent outflow of d-beat, crust, and gritty hardcore that offered the nation's youth a more caustic alternative to the outwardly docile, consumer-friendly sense of alienation and punk rock they could purchase at the mall. Coliseum, in its original infleshed epitome, was a byproduct of this schism. This sinfully ugly trio of Louisville punks headbutted their way out of the Midwest with their lurching blend of sludge metal, roadhouse country-blues, and bloody-knuckled hardcore, and helped to bring the skuffed metallic punk hybrids of the early-to-mid '90s into the new millennium along with a devastated earnestness that their big-city peers would take almost a decade to catch up to. Infinity Shit is eternally bestial, far more so than the majority of the group's catalog, save their debut, with in particular Ryan sounding like a caiman crammed full of amphetamines to the point where its overheated snap-box of brain has discovered how to mimic the human tongue, or at least pull off a half-blinkered parodic impression of Jaz Coleman after drinking a grail brimming with Lemmy's blood. Tracks like "Dehydrated Flesh of the Bourgeoisie," "Trash the Human Race," and "Alchemical Terrorism" place a premium on cyclonic grooves that penetrate body cavities, vibrate, jostle, and partically liquify organs, and involuntarily convert toe-tapping into tile-splintering stomps, taking less of an indirect Buñuelian path to insulting the Burghers, resolving to simply spit at them for being ugly parasites and wishing to stack their bodies as the planks and foundation of a new world. Ominous in its intentions, the beatdown is without pause, fetting one bitter rebuke to the next in a cacophonic catena of punk-metal mendacity towards a world that more and more resembles a moral and intellectual cesspool, a condemned noetical superfund site, each day we wake into it. The effluent of iniquity flows eternally, as does the fury to combat it. Infinity Shit is C.L.S.M.'s rousing return to a campaign against the corruption that besets this world. 

20/23 is not perfect vision, but it's good enough for Equal Vision. 

Album Review: Cult Leader - A Patient Man

Pain-stricken hardcore out of Salt Lake City. That's pretty much the whole bag of worms, but I digress... Cult Leader began their ascent up the ranks of the metal underground in 2013 when it became clear that time was up for a regrettably christened prior project (Ask Jeeves or whatever if you don't know already). The band has kept the same lineup since its inception, with Mike Mason on guitar, Casey Hansen on drums, Sam Richards on bass, and Anthony Lucero on vocals. They've released two EPs and now two LPs on Jacob Bannon's Deathwish, Inc. Cult Leader just sounds like suffering personified. They adopt grindcore blastbeats, harrowing powerviolence tempo changes, blackened-doom guitars, and Lucero has a vocal presence that could intimidate the piss out of Dwid Hellion. And that's just when they feel like kicking out the jams. The band also has a penchant for death rock, which they pull off to devastating and peerless effect on their 2019 LP A Patient Man, see "To: Achlys" and, appropriately, "A Patient Man" off that release. Also on that release, you can find "I Am Healed," which bursts with agony and strangulating arpeggios, "Curse of Satisfaction" is the emotional equivalent of surviving a suburban rollover, and "Aurum Reculsa" is literally a sonic blender. If you've ever wanted to know what it feels like for your soul to break out into a cold sweat, set this shit spinning and let it drag you to hell.

Deathwish granted *BRAP! BRAP! BRAP!*

Album Review: Blind Justice - No Matter the Cost

Blind Justice is a hardcore band from New Jersey, and I'm pretty sure they only have two albums: 2015's Undertow and 2017's No Matter the Cost. This was a period when Zzz'rs and youngish millstones were still (re)discovering hardcore music, in the same way that you might discover that you left a fiver in your back pocket on laundry day, and manage to magically dig it out on a day you left your wallet at home and decide to stop by the taco truck for lunch (and yeah, you can still get pretty good tacos in Chicago for a fiver... you know, in the event you'd rather eat than save for a lead-lined firetrap in an under-resourced part of the city in 4-5 years for double its current market price). This music was always there, but greenhorns were just managing to gouge themselves on its rougher edges at a time when underground music was desperately in need of an adrenaline fix- on god, good on them. As for Blind Justice, they're named after an Agnostic Front song (Duh!). The album of theirs that I'm best acquainted with is No Matter the Cost, and it's pretty much all there in the title. Relentless, untrammeled truth and fury, unleashed without regard for life, limb, or the happiness of liars, cheats, and hypocrites. They're not metalcore; they don't play around with time signatures; they don't accent tracks with samples from action movies or French New Wave cinema; and there is nothing "elevating" about their sound that attempts to "push the limits" of hardcore. And boy, is it pure mana from mosh-Minvera. Old-school, heedless, don't-mess-with-us hardcore in the vein of Sick of It All, Terror, and Bane. Stomping guitar churns, depth-charge bursting subtonal bass, plummeting breakdowns, and relentless air-raid siren vocals. Lyrics deal with self-assertion, wanton destruction of property, building lifelong friendships, and attacking political corruption. Blind Justice will kick down your door, windmill-kick all your shabby, sunken, second-hand furniture to death, and burn the roach motel sublet to the ground just for the hell of it. They're frankly doing you a favor. No dump, no lease, no landlord, no problem. Go with the wind. God speed.

Flatspot (on your forehead where the spin kick hit) Records.

Album Review: Expulsion - Nightmare Future

Expulsion is the womb-pest of Matt Olivio, guitarist of grindcore legends Repulsion. It sounds like it too! Mean, ugly, thrashy, and well... repulsive! Although, Expulsion sounds a little more like a blistering, blood-thirsty hardcore band than a grindcore gremlin to my ears, and this I think is confirmed to the degree that they cleaved sustenance and influence from heavily punk-infected death metal acts like Gruesome and Necrot, pairing turgid tremolos, acidic bass parts, and savage tempo changes with undulating thrash riffs and cleaving arpeggios, replete with croaking shout vocals supplied by grindcore and death metal vet Matt Harvey (of Exhumed, and yeah... Gruesome! [Hell yeah brother!]). Think Gorguts meets Power Trip, minus the darkly festive sense of bombast that tends to soften the blow of either of those acts. With all these gory details to dye your expectations, you couldn't be faulted for anticipating that their 2017 LP Nightmare Future would have to be a hell of a ripper—in fact, it is! Strap in for the grinding, untrammeled fury of "Total Human Genocide" with its sub-tonal, somersaulting bass, roller-coaster riffs, and apocalyptic lyrical themes; the overdrive excess of "Nightmare Future" with its double-time tempo, prowling guttural vocals, and acrobatic thrash-infused riffs that rise and fall like an air-raid siren; and lastly, the heedless headbanger "Funeral Bells" with its alternating dynamic of souped-up riff-grinds which give way to sudden tempo downshifts and morbid, dragging guitar dirges. The real nightmare begins when the growling feedback and howling subsides, and you find yourself shaking, distraught, and too weak to hold back from hitting that play button again, finding yourself addicted to their savagery, and impetuously eager to crawl back into the belly of Expulsion's brazen bull of cyclonic sound, begging to lay your body down as fuel for their bellowing conflagration.

Getting back to my dumb metal guy phase. You could even say that I'm Relaps[e](ing).

Album Review: Creeping Death - Boundless Domain

Texas, man, it's a whole different kind of place. While the Midwest is still sheltering itself from the last blizzardly breaths of winter, they're already in the swelter of summer. But this is not a normal summer, you understand... from what I hear it's like the state is closer to the sun than the rest of the country. Like camping on a frying pan with a gas flame dancing beneath its keel. It's the kind of place where you can find free rattlesnake jerky sizzling on the ground in a Wal-Mart parking lot, and you can stick an egg in your back pocket and barbecue it on your own butt sweat. Dust-choked, UV-deathray-sautéed, half-buried in sift and seemingly forsaken by God, it's the sort of place that you have to be half-coyote to survive in. It's the only place on Earth I would believe a band like Creeping Death would call home. Named after a Metallica song off Ride the Lightning, Creeping Death is basically a death metal crossover band with a lot of metallic hardcore and thrash elements woven through its core, forming a rough subdermal exoskeleton of rusty barbed wire and reclaimed heavy machinery. Boundless Domain is their second LP, following up on their RuneScape-inspired debut Wretched Illusions, and their tribute to late Power Trip singer Riley Gale, 2021's The Edge of Existence EP. Their sound combines elements of '90s death à la Bolt Thrower with Swedish death by way of Entombed, the thrashy peel of Morbid Visions-era Sepultura, the vicious deathcore of Human Error, and the hardcore thunder-horse pummel of twisted Lone Star stallions Iron Age. Their sound and aesthetic are in line with the death metal revival hardcore like Fuming Mouth and Brainoil from a few years back, but with a certain element of savagery that you can only acquire from forging under rocks for bugs and lizards to fortify your sustenance. "Cursed" is a steamroller of galloping beats and meat-rending guitar churns, while the title track vacillates between a dry-rot, thrash-necrotic pit of pestilence and a d-beat death-nado of crust-punk fury. Following closely behind is "Intestinal Wrap," a sufficiently fast and terrifying barbed-whiplash of a number with some bold and brutal thrash elements sounding like Outer Heaven doing a Red Death impression, with the final track "The Common Breed" offering a buffet of gorgeously gruesome old school death worship with enough of a classic punk pulse to keep you headbanging until your dome is filled with nothing but batter-whipped, pink toothpaste. Boundless Domain is as brutal and inexhaustible as the arid plains from which it hails.

On some label of something.*

*Ok, so Boundless Domain is released on MNRK Heavy. I don't know what MNRK stands for, so I'm just going to assume it's a stand-in for malarky. I'm also not going to link to said label because it's like a brand or something managed by a tangle of conglomerates, and I really don't care. I wrote this review not knowing what label Creeping Death was on, and simply because I like their record. After I finished though, I sort of regret it because you really don't get much more into the realm of faceless corporate halls of mirrors than whatever entity is currently distributing this record. 

Album Review: fallingwithscissors - the death and birth of an angel

Young'uns are calling fallingwithscissors's second EP the death and birth of an angel "breakcore"... Now, I'm in the habit of defending the opinions of my juniors, but in this case the kids' brains are shot through, I swear. Does this sound like "Same Old Chiyo Shit"? Come on, get educated... On the flip side, I read a review of this album from someone who is clearly 40, who described it (lovingly?) as an incoherent mess... Are people just not able to hear and appreciate a song with multiple parts anymore? And I thought the yutes had short attention spans. My rebuttal to said reviewer: "Sir, don't you have something more pressing... like planning your retirement? Where is your wife?" I hate to break it to you all, but there isn't some secret code to understanding the death and birth of an angel- Errorzone was only 8 years ago. Atari Teenage Riot launched 34 years ago. Get caught up, or get left behind. fallingwithscissors is a current-day metalcore band. the death and birth of an angel is a current-day hardcore record with nods to dissonant dance music, a digital hardcore record if you will -a very fine hardcore record at that- but let's not get too distracted by the anime visuals and start slapping "break-this" and "break-that" all over everything. Okay? Have a little restraint, folks. Now the death and birth of an angel a cool take on what's come before it, and is very much informed by contemporary production and EDM trends in a way reminiscent of forward-facing artists in the vein of Femtanyl and Machine Girl- with, of course, emo vocals and melodic conceits delivered with the flair of a wounded devil and evocativeof turns taken by Alice Simard with her Coffret de Bijoux project. As far as metalcore and its consequences are concerned, though, I do like the direction that this record is pointing, one that feels fresh but firmly rooted, and one that, sonically and meta-texually, acknowledges the human race's consciousness as it rapidly synthesizes with an augmented digital reality- all while retaining some semblance of the rage exerted by the animal nevertheless impounded in the interior. The way the death and birth of an angel sort of clicks together with such baneful efficiency has me thinking it's the extreme aural equivalent of a Battle Angel style cybernetic being, assembled from components of disparate designs and eras, but repurposed into a sleek and deadly visage of mechanized bionic fury, capable of venting the calvaria of a skull with a single swift blow like it was a can of cranberry sauce. A sweet cybernetic cherub, whom death follows like billous oily perfume.

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.