moisturizer finds Wet Leg growing into their power and it’s a great summer album, catchy, fun, witty, in love.

Abrasive, beautiful, emotional, manic, heavy and calm. Requiem is one of the finest summations of the boundless possibilities of avant-garde.

A little cosmic, a little shambolic but mostly an album in love with the limitless joy of sound.

If you like your sludge noisy yet expansive then Row of Ashes really is the band for you. Tide Into Ruin is fantastic.

Rich and powerful atmospheric post-metal which really deserves to be heard. This could be one of the best in 2025.

South coast noise rock team return with a cracking new album.

With moving lyrics and stirring melodies, this recording will have you sighing with sad memories even as your feet start tapping.

Despite the pain that twists through it this is a very human and beautiful recording.  

Sorrows has claws, it holds on and follows you around, reappearing in your mind when least expected. Debut album of the year? I’d put money on it.

An extraordinary patchwork of sounds set out with the bold geometry and clear, bright, colour palette of their artwork.

Wrong Speed veterans put a shift in at the art-punk foundry.

Collapsing thirty odd years of underground rock weirdness into something powerful and sticky.

Highly recommended for New Candys fans and anyone who appreciates finely written and rendered psychedelia.

Embodiment of Death is a wonderful doom laden atmospheric post-metal album from end to end, and on repeat.

The droning, doomed post-rock of Eimuria doesn’t demand the listeners attention but it most certainly deserves it. Quite possibly my favourite of the year so far.

Another stunningly beautiful songwriting collaboration between UK indie pop artist Ian M. Bailey and Scottish artist Daniel Wylie (Cosmic Rough Riders).

Is Lancashire’s history as blood soaked as Midsomer? In the meantime this is, ahem, killer stuff.

These five offerings strike a keen balance between tradition and modernity, emotional weight and raw power, making II one of early 2025’s standout metal releases.

Death Hilarious finds Pigs firing on all cylinders, cranking out the huge riffs and pile driver rhythms in a haze of noise and distortion. Still seriously fun.

On their fourth album Snapped Ankles are more themselves than ever, doubling down on their core idea of dance as a powerful therapy against harsh reality

Kodok is a true expansion and a beautiful execution of the, mainly, instrumental genre.