It may be gauche in the world of culture writing to type out the year that just ended in a headline, but I think I have a fairly solid case here: Before we leave 2025 behind us, I wanted to close out FLOOD’s year-end coverage with a short list of some of the albums that blew me away over the course of the year that mostly seemed absent from our peers’ (and, admittedly, our own) lists summing up the year in music, and which mostly reflect how heavy the year felt. Included are both debut EPs from promising new voices and projects from veterans of niche scenes gunning for a revival of their ideas that still feel fresh some 25 years after they were first unleashed, as well as figures who’ve been grinding for a few years now and consistently seem primed to break out with their next project.
Before we jump into 2026’s release slate, dive into these 15 projects below.
BRUIT ≤, The Age of Ephemerality
The Age of Ephemerality is the rare record that excels both in terms of its sound and in its ability to capture the distinct feeling of the era in which it was created. If OK Computer was the uneasy sound of pre-internet anxieties, BRUIT ≤ expresses the ramped-up tensions of the post-internet world through a -qatsi-worthy symphony of instrumental post-rock that’s at one point violated by the unmistakable voice of Mark Zuckerberg uttering the condemning statement “This is the future you want to see.” It would be easy to crown this band the new Godspeed You! Black Emperor if GSY!BE weren’t the new GSY!BE themselves.
Read our review of The Age of Ephemerality here.
Doseone & Steel Tipped Dove, All Portrait, No Chorus
It can still be difficult to fathom the core Anticon crew outside of the context of their long-shuttered label, but what better outlet could there be for a grizzled veteran of the underground returning as a (mostly) calm sage for a new era of rap than Backwoodz Studioz, a label built by an emcee who followed a fairly similar trajectory? Rather than embracing the abstraction of Themselves or even the ferocity of his recent work with A7PHA, All Portrait instead shows off Dose’s unique vocal range; there are moments where it sounds like he’s guesting on his own track, as his voice changes shape so dramatically between verses. Come for the widely appealing guest verses from peers like Open Mike Eagle, Myka 9, and Backwoodz founder billy woods, stay for the in-universe punchlines like Dose laughing off mentions of Eminem.
forty winks, Love Is a Dog From Hell
The term “earworm” gets thrown around a lot, but then you hear a song like “commie bf” that you can feel burrowing deeper and deeper into your brain over the course of its relentless, scuzzy 140 seconds. forty winks are responsible for one of the year’s most undeniable pop songs far outside the realm of pop music, and the EP it arrived on does plenty to support its callback to the early-2010s noise-pop explosion while remaining firmly grounded in today’s futuristic take on the genre. The chaotic “Spurs,” for example, is more than just a paean to the Wembification of the NBA—it’s yet further validation of the post-everything punk that bands like Spirit of the Beehive have been developing over the past decade.
Ghais Guevara, The Other 2/5ths or: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Trench Baby!!
While we already noted Ghais’ impressive label debut on our Best Albums of 2025 list, it’s worth pointing out that he did, in fact, follow through on the promise he made on “Monta Ellis” that he’d be dropping “at least two projects of the year” when he surprise-released this mixtape five months later. What The Other 2/5ths lacks in Goyard Ibn Said’s structural cohesion and meticulously polished gems it makes up for in its fascinatingly baked-in leitmotifs familiar to the discographies of cult icons like Neutral Milk Hotel and Lingua Ignota, as well as of-the-moment stars such as Chappell Roan and Cameron Winter. It’s a wild ride in all the ways Goyard wasn’t, presenting an alternate path forward from 2023’s Goyard Comin’ teaser mixtape.
Ghost Bath, Rose Thorn Necklace
Due to when the band formed and their penchant for ’gaze-suffix genre detours, atmospheric-black-metallers Ghost Bath have unfortunately always lived in Deafheaven’s shadow. Yet the diverging directions both bands have taken through 2025 betray the unfairness of that comparison; whereas Lonely People with Power opened the door to high-concept collaboration throughout their usual hour-long runtimes, Rose Thorn Necklace feels unbearably isolated at times, the record’s phlegmy coughing fits and lyrics about throat cancer confined to just over half an hour. On the other hand there’s no guest feature for a member of Boy Harsher, but “Vodka Butterfly” does bring that sort of darkwave energy to the proceedings.
Gloin, All of your anger is actually shame (and I bet that makes you angry)
Post-punk is a deceptively broad category of music that encompasses guitar-driven sounds that are either driving or loping, as well as lyrics that are perceptive or cheeky (an alignment chart may not be helpful here, since neither sound or lyrics tend to fall in “neutral” territory). Although “driving” and “cheeky” are helpful descriptors for Gloin, All of your anger only manages to complicate matters with its adventures outside of genre constraints with tracks channeling industrial punk, noise-rock, and even EBM, not to mention interludes clowning on strung-out fans and an unexpectedly lovely instrumental featuring rapid-fire first-date ice breaker questions recorded, if the title it so be believe, over iPhone. The title feels apt, given that the emotions fueling these songs can be deceiving, as well.
Read our review of All of your anger is actually shame (and I bet that makes you angry) here.
Haunted Horses, Dweller
Of all the bands signed to Justin Pearson’s Three One G Records carrying The Locust’s frantic noise-rock torch into the 2020s, none of them channel stone-cold dread quite like Haunted Horses. There’s a bit of the low end heard in those artists on Dweller, but the industrial-sludge sound that fills the record moves slowly enough that vocalist Colin Dawson’s deathrock take on Nick Cave’s sermonizing gets plenty of space as a focal point. There’s hints of what Chat Pile, Model/Actriz, and Bambara have been doing lately in the mix, as well, with the occasional surreal moment like “Fucking Hell” dragging the listener back to the zonked-out speedruns heard on Plague Soundscape over 20 years ago.
Hilary Woods, Night CRIÚ
Amid the subtle Grouperfication of indie-pop, Night CRIÚ stands out as the work of an artist whose solo career has long been steeped in dark-ambient sound design and electro-acoustic drone music. Hilary Woods opens her latest album with little to discern it from any of Midwife’s recent adherents before the record’s wholly unique palette—ominous cello, eerie bells, possessed children’s choir—slowly gets introduced piece by piece. It’s far more structured in the guise of pop music than 2023’s eerie instrumental collection Acts of Light, though it’s also far more geared toward what couldn’t possibly be an accidental October 31 release date.
Read about five non-musical influences on Night CRIÚ here.
J Fisher, DEADLOOPS2025
The album title and its cover may make DEADLOOPS seem like a collection of song-sketches pulled from a recent desktop folder of .WAV files, but it could easily pass for something a little more proper given its curated dial-tone emo-rap palette and small cache of guest vocalists, including Botsu from Deathbomb Arc labelmate Dos Monos and By Storm (née Injury Reserve)’s RiTchie. Maybe the title’s timestamp was merely intended to fortify a certain early-album interlude—an impromptu disclaimer that may just be the funniest bit tacked onto a song in 2025.
Maneka, Bathes and Listens
Among the heavy slate of 2025’s Halloween-week releases I was excited about, Maneka’s was probably the most unexpected—first because Devin McKnight’s slacker-punk solo experimentation has never been particularly spooky, then because it immediately became apparent that his third LP is, in fact, darker and heavier than his prior material in a fairly subtle way. While the jammy extended outro “Why I Play 2K / Land Back” is certainly a highlight, Bathes and Listens mostly feels defined by textures more eerily open or densely packed across the record. I threw “Dimelo” on a playlist as soon as it dropped and the first few times I heard the opening instrumental I assumed it was a Uniform track given its dense, thrumming industrial fuzz.
Read Maneka’s track-by-track breakdown of Bathes and Listens here.
Nuclear Daisies, First Taste of Heaven
Distancing themselves a bit from the entrancing blanket of noise heard on their 2022 debut, the cleaned-up sound of Nuclear Daisies’ second effort reveals a neo-psych funhouse that often sounds like Black Moth Super Rainbow and A Place to Bury Strangers covering The Jesus and Mary Chain in the style of (mostly) analog industrial breakbeat. There’s some of The Raveonettes’ shoegaze neo-noir in the mix, as well as Purity Ring’s hip-hop-based dark alchemy and the space-rock movement’s inebriant pop music, too. Despite all that, it’s somehow never far from memory that they released the record through Portrayal of Guilt’s label.
Read our review of First Taste of Heaven here.
Nyxy Nyx, Cult Classics Vol. 1
I was introduced to Nyxy Nyx a few years ago via their split with Bad History Month, with whom they seem to share a morbid slacker-pastoral aesthetic. Yet on what they’re billing their debut album (in which case I’m not really sure what the 20-plus releases that preceded it were), they distance themselves from the expansive passages of drone and primitivist guitar Sean Sprecher has made his calling card for grungier—if not downright sludgy—textures. This iteration of the band features Madeline Johnston, whose dreamy slowcore as Midwife can be heard in some of the tamer compositions, as well as a former member of fellow new-wave shoegazers Knifeplay. It can be tough to reduce these songs to any of those genres, though, as each proggy, doomy track snakes through a decade-plus of influences.
Odonis Odonis, Odonis Odonis
Listening to Odonis Odonis’ self-titled record feels like waking up from a dream about the band spending the past decade as a coldwave duo rather than the industrial rock they channeled on their first two albums. Every bit as propulsive (and horny) as Hard Boiled, Soft Boiled was 11 years ago, Odonis Odonis picks up precisely where the band left off prior to their EBM streak with just a hint of that darkwave personality lining a revivalism of their own post-punk chapter.
Read our review of Odonis Odonis here.
Pain Magazine, Violent God
Pain Magazine is a supergroup of sorts filing members of the hardcore band Birds in Row into a duo of fellow French musicians who instead occupy space in the Parisian electro-industrial scene. I’ve heard my fair share of remixes and collaborations attempting to make hardcore music more danceable, so trust me when I say that the blend of various elements at play on Violent God—synth-punk, post-punk, gothic trip-hop—is a well-balanced and compellingly unique solution to a concept that frequently yields messy results. Perhaps it’s because the driving force behind the project is a mutual disdain for the capitalist forces at play assuring them that despite the intense emotions that fuel it, Pain Magazine likely won’t have a lucrative future in the streaming era.
Stratford Rise, Stratford Rise
For those of us who could only stomach approximately one and a half albums dreamed up by Geordie Greep, there is now Stratford Rise—a band that Black Midi fans will certainly assure you does not sound like Black Midi, yet scratches a certain itch that’s gone unattended for about five years now. Granted their debut EP forgoes the jazziness of the project’s later material for the chaotic noise-prog influence heard on Schlagenheim, abrasive songs like “Gunshow” take the same sorts of unexpected hairpin turns behind vocals that could certainly be described as “Greepy.”
