2025 presented itself as a year full of surprising and awesome releases. Here is Thomas’ selection of his favorite releases.
Boneflower: Reveries
Boneflower are another punishing and highly emotional entry in the great Deathwish Inc. roster. This is honest to God, one hand to throat and one wrapped around the heart music. Screamo and Post-Hardcore waltzing in a rough mosh pit to move your body and soul.
Deafheaven: Lonely People with Power
Lonely People with Power breathes the mentality of a fourth album, even though it is the sixth. It takes some aspects of Deafheaven’s past releases and puts them back into focus for those who have missed them. Lonely People with Power sounds less like an evolution and more like a manifestation of all the things that have made Deafheaven special in their more than 10-year history.
Greet Death: Die in Love
At times Die In Love sounds like a sensory-supernova with a million colors and at other times like the implosion of something great followed by the overwhelming realization of loss. Greet Deathcombine the bittersweet with the heavy like no other band right now could do and succeed in a gut-wrenching fashion.
HEALTH: Conflict DLC
Conflict DLC is a superb continuation of Rat Wars. Like a video-game-character-build it focuses on its main strengths and adds even more perks and traits to it. It was the goal to write more “firepower”-material and HEALTH succeeded with Conflict DLC in HEALTH-fashion. Nearly every track here is good enough to be a single. This is the sound of typical HEALTH in its most condensed form: beats for your buttocks, guitars for your guts and melancholy for your mind.
Believe in Nothing: Rot
Rot is 42 minute debut of bleakness and viciousness. Believe in Nothing have bred a work of art that in all its ugliness is hard to ignore. Rot drags you along with it, it pushes you in dark corners and absorbs the light surrounding you. If you can stomach the aural hostility you are in for an enthralling experience that will surely be just the beginning of Believe in Nothing‘s journey.
rýr: Dislodged
If you want to take on dislodged, you have bring time with you. 5 tracks, creating 40 minutes of massive Post-Metal. If a musical fix-point is needed it would be Russian Circles. Just like the passive verb-forms in the tracklist, the music is so towering that you can’t do anything against it and just let the album happen.
Primitive Man: Observance
From Max’ review:
“Observance is not just a heavy record it’s an experience of pure suffocation. It might very well be their most intense and unsettling album to date, which honestly says a lot. In some twisted way, their sound feels perfectly aligned with the state of the world right now. Piss, shit, sludge, hate and doom. The soundtrack of our miserable lives.”
La Dispute: No one was driving the Car
La Dispute are still the kings of story-telling Hardcore. No one was driving the Car feels like a downward spiral. The atmosphere through the whole album is tangible and it will grip you. From the more extroverted “I Shaved My Head” to the more introspective “Siblings Fistfight at Mom’s Fiftieth” La Dispute lay everything on the table. “Environmental Catastrophe Film” is one of the best songs the band has ever recorded and that alone is a reason to give this album an ear.
Sanguisugabogg: Hideous Aftermath
From Max’ review:
“Hideous Aftermath is not just another brutal Death Metal record. It’s a diverse, refreshing and punishing release that pushes Sanguisugabogg to the next level while cementing their status as one of the best death metal bands in the game right now.”
