25er Words on Even 25er More Albums

Goatcraft – Yersinia Pestis

Imagine if Chopin’s nocturnes were as dark and foreboding as the word “nocturnes” sounds. Or imagine if chamber music actually came from some haunted-ass chambers.

This is what Chopin actually looked like

Severed + Said – Pyrrhic Fortunes

This album should be the soundtrack to the second season of Stranger Things. Makes you wanna ride bikes with your friends straight into a hellmouth.

Caress me with your darkness, baby.

Young Thug – Slime Season 3

One of the most endearing things about Thugger Thugger is that he doesn’t care about rhyming or pronunciation. For me, he’s too fun to hate.

Hammock – Everything and Nothing

The saccharine pathos of Hammock’s new album is cloying and nauseating. Maybe they thought Sleepover Series was too grim and needed to readjust. *Bzzt* Wrong!

Woven In – New City, No Money

Perfect record for all those times you wanna hit the beach and catch some tasty waves but you can’t forget that Ian Curtis is dead.

Surf your sadness

Gucci Mane – Everybody Looking

Guwop’s music is secondary to the Guwop Myth. Doesn’t matter, though, because this album knocks front to back. GOT A MAYBACH I CALL IT PAYBACK.

Krimewatch – Demo tape

Krimewatch mixes GISM with Warzone to produce five hardcore ragers focused on so-called friends and class warfare. Either join the circle pit or get pitted!

Red Death – Deterrence

Two-song heater that requires oven mitts to flip on your turntable. Politically charged songs a la early 90s crossover. Only downside: five minutes ain’t enough.

Sophie Hutchings – Wide Asleep

At times powerful, at times nondescript, Hutchings’ latest album possesses moments of breathtaking neoclassical ambience but fails to engage the audience from start to finish.

Ascend/Descend – Murdock Street

A fast, smart hardcore record featuring members of American Nightmare that I can’t connect with. Is it me? Is it the record? Why gahd why!

Asphalt Graves – The New Primitive

Death metal for hardcore kids made by folks from metal bands with large hardcore-kid fan bases. It’s better than Black Dahlia Murder or Misery Index!

Numenorean – Home

A less shoegazy Deafheaven with excellent instrumentation and songwriting. Despair, Loneliness, and Sadness walk into a bar but the bar is just a sprawling emptiness.

Tides of Sulfur – Extinction Curse

Sludge from South Wales that sounds like it dredged the entire Atlantic Ocean floor to find all of humanity’s most damning atrocities committed against nature.

Tim Hecker – Love Streams

Hecker digitizes, manipulates, reprocesses, and reproduces the feelings of becoming one of the atoms of colour in a cotton candy sky over a world afire.

Zeal & Ardor – Devil is Fine

Mixing slave spirituals, black metal, and the devil is an inexact craft. When it bubbles (“Blood in the River”), it is soul-shaking. Uneven but innovative.

Blut Aus Nord / Ævangelist – Codex Obscura Nomina

Ævangelist’s technical, spatial black metal is better than Blut Aus Nord’s creepy industrial black metal, but this split doesn’t demand more than a couple listens.

Field Mouse – Episodic

The playful, reflective indiemo-pop of Hold Still Life gives way to a jauntier 90s alternative revivalism that doesn’t do justice to Rachel Browne’s plaintive vocals.

Russian Circles – Guidance

Biz. As. Uge. Riffs? Definitely. Atmosphere? Absolutely. Stunning instrumentation? You know it. Oh, some more riffs? Yup. What’s this… even more riffs? Oh hell yeah.

Ian William Craig – Centres

Imagine Tim Hecker making feedbacked love to Sigur Ros and then that lovechild getting really into tape manipulation and noise and also the baby’s Canadian.

Mathias Grassow – Wisdom of Fate

Two hours of creating space from non-space, of filling up every infinitesimal moment with drifting modulation and towering textures. We are one with we. Namaste.

Creative Adult – Fear of Life

Kinda like with Psychic Mess, the couple great songs (“Heal,” “Know How”) are genre-smashing. The other songs are good, of course, but can’t measure up.

Pallbearer – Fear and Fury

Peter Steele never died, he just transformed into Brett Campbell. Original track? Rad. Sabbath cover? Fine (Mob Rules is trash). Type O Negative cover? Ev-uh-ree-theeng.

The KVB - …of Desire

Find the darkest spot in the sweatiest goth club and start moving your sexy body until you burst into the shimmering glitterball you really are.

Minor Victories – Minor Victories

Shocking development: members of bands (Mogwai, Slowdive) that play beautifully despondent and cruelly gorgeous music form new band doing same! If you can believe it.

Dinosaur, Jr. – Give a Glimpse of What Yer Not

After five listens, all I’ve got is that this is significantly better than I Bet On Sky but not in the same ballpark as Farm.