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Hello y’all!

Over on the Rosy Overdrive discord, the topic of punk zines came up again and one user posted some images of Punk Planet before making their own RateYourMusic list for a 2001 edition.

It inspired me to revive my defunct attempt at creating my own lists, and so I worked through Issue #07 (May-Jun, 1995). As a result, you’ll find some reviews of stuff that caught my eye through revisiting my lists, which you can find here:

• Issue #01 | Issue #02 | Issue #03 | Issue #04 | Issue #05 | Issue #06 | Issue #07

Some other stray items from the past week or two:

• My love for Strawberry Switchblade is relatively well documented, so I’m surprised it has taken me this long to check out Since Yesterday: The Untold Story of Scotland’s Girl Bands (2024). Highly recommended!

• An addendum to my Prince Daddy & the Hyena review from my last post:

  • I’ve been coming back to this record a lot for its fizzy energy and hooks the past few weeks.

  • I think the elements of this that don’t work (the Green Day-ish sound of “Sure Could” I mentioned in my review and the verses of “30days...”) have become less and less a thorn in the albums side and more just some bumps along the way to hooksville.

  • About ready to say this latest release is their best, most overall satisfying album to be honest. Gets a bump up to 3.5 stars as a result!

Otherwise, here’s some music reviews. Hope you enjoy ‘em!

Emoji legend:

• ⛏️ denotes picks of the week, my favs.

• 🌱 seedling denotes albums like a lot and expect could grow on me over the year.

• ✨ albums I would recommend to fans of the genre (i.e. it might not convert new listeners, but you should check it out.)

• ✂ denotes favourite tracks from a given record.

As always, feel free to reach out over on BlueSky or join the Rosy Overdrive Discord server where I can be found now and again.

You can also find me in the corners of Rate Your Music scrounging for obscure emo, hardcore, indie rock and pop punk.

Don’t forget: if you’re reading this in your email it will be cut off.
Read on the web for the full list of reviews!

⛏️ Nedgravd - Ascension (2026)

Genres: Death Metal, Death Doom Metal, Brutal Death Metal

Incredibly dank, evil sounding death metal out of Norway. Production rides the line between relative clarity and sounding like you are listening to a crusty cassette someone handed you in a really balanced way. You absolutely will not find any mention of this band without someone bringing up Infester. I am not familiar with them so I don't know how hard this rides their coat-tails and whether or not they do it in a way that is good or redundant.

What I do know is that this was really satisfying. At times they stretch out into brutal and doom-y moments (the back half of "Sentinential Incantation") but I was particularly impressed by their ability to jump around into groovy asides and back again. Something about their balance of ingredients is really well tuned; they don't rely on a riff salad approach, and their asides and left-turns don't feel random or uncalculated. For an 8+ minute song "Sentiential Incantation" really kept my interest in the back half. They even sprinkle in some distant, spooky keyboards in good atmospheric measure ("Paragon of Impiety").

Any complaints (3-minute sample-forward interlude, relatively useless outro) only make this feel like maybe they have a lot more to offer when it comes to a follow-up. Maybe this is all youthful imitation and bluster, but it impressed me for sure. A lot of potential here, and could get a bump in score after repeated listens.

⛏️ lulamoon - Lambspring (2026)

Genres: Southern Hip Hop, Jazz Rap, Political Hip Hop, Conscious Hip Hop

I have no personal attachment to the furry music scene but every once in a while an album breaks beyond the scene and catches my attention. Opal was one of those albums, which ended up being one of the most interesting rap releases of that year; I loved the production and tone in particular, where it reminded me a lot of the casually experimental yet political 90s records by acts like Digable Planets.

This definitely feels like an extension of Opal, it has a lot of similarities, and feels a bit like a "if you liked this, here's more of it" type release. Which, hey, works for me. Their production still kicks ass, too. There's a lot of great experimental hip hop from the past few years, but these two from lulamoon stand out as sounding truly original to me.

🌱 Touch Girl Apple Blossom - Graceful (2026)

Genres: Twee Pop, Slacker Rock, Jangle Pop, Indie Pop, Indie Rock, C86

Touch Girl Apple Blossom seem poised to be one of the new "it" bands in twee pop it seems, as they released a warmly received EP and now drop their debut LP on Perennial (home of Slippers, Sharp Pins and others.)

And this is a really tasteful and well-rounded album of twee, slackery and jangly pop. As noted in trisarahtops' review, the weak element here seems to be the "pop" side of the equation; none of these choruses really grab you by the ears and beg to be played on repeat. But what they succeed at (in particular, their incredibly warm and slightly hazy production and atmosphere) they do very well. This album floats by on vibes and production alone and feels a bit like a nice, comfortable pillow.

When they toss an upbeat song in the mix (like "Heart-Go") they remind me a little of Go Sailor, which is high praise. Nudge up the hooks on their next release and I think they're really going to be onto something.

🌱 Prefect - In Everything You Do (2026)

Genres: Alternative Rock, Pop Punk, Melodic Hardcore

Had no expectations for this, as it was something I randomly scraped out of the 2026 pop punk genre chart, but it's not bad actually. Needs some adjustments - as always I'd love the hook-catchiness levels to be upped by at least 25% or more - but this is muscular, melodic punk music that oscillates between reference points like Small Brown Bike ("Numbers on the Door") and near-poppy melodic hardcore ("Accomplice", which also gets into some light widescreen theatrics by the end). Definitely some varying emo influences peppered in as well, mostly on the closer "Glass House".

Very promising, would listen to whatever they do next to see what angle of their influences they expand upon.

🌱 Anadol & Marie Klock - Manivelles (2026)

Genres: Art Pop, Minimal Synth, Progressive Electronic, Chanson, Spoken Word, Neo-Psychedelia

Very cool minimal synth and progressive electronic works with psychedelic and French spoken word moments. Sometimes this bops along at a kraut-like pace, and sometimes it gets freaky ("Symposium"). Title track and "Rentrer à la maison" have big time Casio-tones and rhtyhms going on, which at time threaten to become a little circus-y. I liked this most when it was drone-y and repetitive and really hazily psychedelic, but there's so much going on here that I enjoyed quite a bit of it.

🌱 Lago - Vigil (2026)

Genres: Death Metal, Dissonant Death Metal, Technical Death Metal

Pretty cool dissonant death metal, which I'm no expert in but this felt right down the middle in terms of satisfaction and enjoyability. Maybe it's just me, but felt like I detected a smidge of blackened death in here? I could be way off though. The blend of technicality and not-too-dissonant riffing has every review I've seen online naming the same names (Immolation, Gorguts, some Morbid Angel) which makes sense. I'm a broken record when it comes to trying to explain this stuff, but I think how memorable this actually is remains to be seen until I spin it a few more times. Initial reaction is that this seems dope and I'd like to hear it again.

Koyo - Barely Here (2026)

Genres: Pop Punk, Emo-Pop, Melodic Hardcore

This sounds further calculated towards the emo-pop and pop punk side of the equation, compared to their earlier stuff that had more melodic hardcore (though it's still in here, for sure.)

I am the exact type of person that wants to be stoked on bands playing this kind of music, but something about their full lengths just do not take it over the top for me. This is totally alright stuff, goes down easy, doesn't drag on at 28 minutes, but they struggle with memorability of their hooks. This stuff needs addictive earworms to really seal the deal, and they've got some average hooks, but nothing that I could remember once this is over. Some of this also sounds too much like role play, with "Saying vs. Meaning" cribbing seemingly-directly from Take This to Your Grave-era FOB (outside of the welcome hint of aggression via Drain's Sammy.)

On their last record, I was a bit more positive just based on my enjoyment of this overall sound, but this one seems to confirm they just do not have the juice when it comes to hooks.

⛏️ Fracture - Fracture (1994)

Genres: Punk Rock, Pop Punk

I snagged a copy of this on vinyl years ago, knowing that it was Adam Goren's (Atom and His Package) old band and having heard a) "No Way DNA" tacked on the end of A Society of People Named Elihu and b) a couple others as covers on Making Love.

Revisited this today and surprised to see that it only has 3 ratings for some reason, though it makes sense despite it having been re-released as a part of No Idea Records's compilation of the band's output (Fracture, which only has 6 ratings!).

So, if you're the mood for 15 minutes of scrappy, melodic punk rock this is relatively underrated. The aforementioned "No Way DNA" is a highlight, but even when these songs aren't as strong as some others, they get by with multiple out of tune singers yelling their heads off and their guitar riffs loosely flying all over the place.

RIYL: Radon, Dillinger Four etc.

✂ Martha, Getaway Car, No Way DNA, Thresholds To Adult Living (lol yes all the ones Atom covered but they're the strongest!)

⛏️ Bolt Thrower - Those Once Loyal (2005)

Genres: Death Metal, Groove Metal

Fuuuck, I was feeling bad about giving Mercenary (more on that later) only three stars but then I skipped over Honour · Valour · Pride to this one and it really sounds like they decided to focus up and deliver everything they could here for what ended up being their final record.

The riffs are diamond-clear and heavy as shit, the drumming is way more active than on Mercenary and really seals the deal. The groove elements they've been toying with since Mercenary are absolutely dialed in to perfection—not too much, not too little, just enough to drill these riffs into your brain without starting to bore straight through the skull to the other side. As someone else mentioned in the comments box too, the bass tone here is just right; lightly fuzzed out and sitting where it needs to be (hard to compare to Mercenary which felt like it was buried a little on that album which is admittedly more wintery and sludgier in tone.)

This is a distillation of what you come to mid- to late-career Bolt Thrower for in the best kind of way. I still mourn the removal of their punk/grind elements from their early work, but on an album as good as this one it doesn't really matter.

⛏️ Plutocracy - Sniping Pigz (2000)

Genres: Powerviolence, Grindcore

Came to this via No Less (they shared members, see my review elsewhere in this report) who themselves I came to via some guy's t-shirt I saw in a live video of SPAZZ on YouTube (continuing the connections, this era of Plutocracy had Battle Axe Max aha Hirax Max aka Anthrax Max aka Max 625 aka [you get the idea] of Spazz on drums.)

This is no muss, no fuss powerviolence and grind that jumps from breathless speed to pummelingly slow and sludgy riffs with varying types of guttural howls, high pitched hoots and gargling gremlin-esque screams. Retains the surreal and absurd nature of the No Less tape I listened to, but focuses it to just the right level (while retaining all the hip hop samples and weird shit they toss in for good measure.) Even some stuff you could say approaches melodic nature like the Sabbath-esque riffs that pop up on "Single File Line". As you can tell from the name of this record, they hate cops (hell yeah). Pretty dope shit, through and through.

✨ Chopper - Last Call for the Dancers (1998)

Genres: Pop Punk

Melodic punk from the UK that spreads itself across a few sub-genres, but always with a chewy, hooky center to it. Has that kind of vaguely weenie vibe to it, but with lots of chugga-chugga start-stop skate punk influence as well. They dip into bubblegum-esque territory with their backup vocals ("Mainspring" in moments reminds me of early Allister) but it's always filtered through that kind of active octave chord use type of pop punk.

Like a lot of this type of music from this era, the energy takes this a long way and it held my attention all the way through. I wouldn't go as far to say that much of this is "catchy", but the melodies are strong enough and they're selling them with conviction. Pretty strong bass performance under it all as well ("F.Perry") helps seal the deal. I'm feeling a little generous but they're giving this material their all and it worked for me.

⛏️ VCR - Power Destiny (2006)

Originally posted as a stand-alone piece, but I re-listened and re-reviewed this recently and made some changes/updates to it.

Genres: Synth Punk, Dance-Punk Revival

Was it just me or did the dance-punk explosion of the aughts contain very few bands who actually showed a distinct punk-influence? Looking back, it’s hard to see past all the hype and disco hi-hat beats to find anything that actually had some punk DNA. Sure, there were highlights of the genre that proved it could work wonderfully regardless—a personal favourite was Thunderbirds Are Now!’s Justamustache—but very quickly it dissolved into the watering down of a quickly outdated sound.

Into the ring stepped VCR (not to be confused with the Toronto-based band) with their 2003 self-titled EP released on the small Richmond-based record label Pop Faction Records. The trio’s sound featured a bevy of synthesizers over shouted vocals and punk-influenced drumming—their sound owed more to guitar-less synth-punk pioneers like The Screamers or Scenes One Through Thirteen-era Hot Hot Heat than it did to the aforementioned genre they got lumped in. As interest in their self-titled EP grew, SideOneDummy Records re-issued it in 2005–as well as handled the release of their only full-length Power Destiny in 2006.

Their bass-and-synth driven sound allowed VCR to avoid the usual pitfalls most dance-punk bands succumbed to—like the generic post-punk aping and angular guitar riffs, gloomy or sassy vocals, and the over-reliance on slick choruses. The music of VCR was more interesting due to the battling synth lines and punk vocals of Chad Middleton juxtaposing with the backing melodies of Mya Anitai. They manage to be energetic and hooky but still immediate and with grit as displayed on album highlights "Really Something / Destroy" or "Scaredofvcr.com".

I’m not too sure why they ended up a footnote in the crowd of samey bands that blew up, but there you go. VCR and Power Destiny are consistent records that deserve some attention by those who either loved this kind of stuff, or were cynical about the bands who rose to popularity by doing it wrong.

Like most people, I'd probably point to their EP as being a stronger (and shorter!) example, but their full length deserves some ears too even if it's a little one-note by the final few songs of its 38 minute running time.

✨ Appleorchard - Tacet (1996)

Genres: Emo, Melodic Hardcore

Pretty good mid-90s second wave emo that straddles the line between post-hardcore angularity and soft-loud outbursts. A lot of time, this kind of thing slides right off my brain but this felt down-the-middle-of-the-road in a non-derogatory way and went down easy. Don't need the "Untitled" instrumental in the middle of the record, though, and they aren't going to dodge accusations of being a little derivative of other bands at this time.

The CD (and streaming) version tacks on their Anything Could Go Right or Wrong EP as tracks 12 thru 15 so skip 'em if you want the album experience, otherwise it'll feel even more like it's dragging on.

RIYL: Broccoli, Texas Is the Reason, Hellbender etc.

✨ Swingin' Utters - The Streets of San Francisco.... (1995)

Genres: Punk Rock, Street Punk, Oi!, Folk Punk

I think I ended up on the Swingin' Utters bandcamp page after adding this to the 🧷 #07 Punk Planet (1995 May-Jun) list I was working on and I figured hey, why not listen to it? My experience until then was with their compilation contributions and having checked out Peace and Love recently. I also realized I've heard "Five Lessons Learned" a million times thanks to THPS2.

Anyway, this exactly what people say it is: 90s punk that homages the Stiff Little Fingers-type sound. A sprinkle of The Clash, a slight Oi influence. Not bad at all, but 3 days out from when I pressed play, I couldn't tell you much about any of these 19 songs. Might investigate some of their other records in the future to fill in the bookends I've got now, but I'm not running to do it.

✨ Bolt Thrower - Mercenary (1998)

Genres: Death Metal, Groove Metal

Seems like a divisive record to some degree, as they continue down the "crush you with a mid-tempo riff anvil" approach they started to lean into on certain songs from ...For Victory. Honestly, the biggest change here might be the drum performance from Alex Thomas, who seems much less flashy and technical, opting for a pretty straightforward and at times stripped back approach. Some songs, like "To the Last..." end up feeling like they are dragging on a bit too long as a result, and the segue into "Powder Burns" makes it seem like they're starting to repeat riffs. When they hit though, their sound still kills. Of their albums that I've heard, they still haven't made a bad one. I really wanted to be able to back this as an underrated entry in their discography, but it kind of rolled off my brain and part of me wonders if it's the drumming in particular? Still, there's some good tunes here for established fans.

✂ Zeroed, Mercenary, No Guts No Glory

Badger - Unhappy Life (1995)

Genres: Emo-Pop, Skate Punk

A split release by this band was reviewed in 🧷 #06 Punk Planet (1995 Mar-Apr) and described as "melodic, harmonic, emotional, interesting."

Emo-forward poppy punk with skate elements (dueling octave chords, flashy thrashy drumming, etc.) and a lightly theatrical nasally singer ("AYE KNOW IN TAHME, AHL GET IT RI-HIGHHHH-T"). This is the kind of stuff you can look back on and see how we got from here to early releases by bands like New Found Glory and The Starting Line, who would take this mix of punk and emo and crank up the hook levels. This doesn't have as much of the melodic hardcore Lifetime DNA that would keep that timeline moving though, admittedly. They do have a little bit of that croony alternative sound ("Last") that makes me think of Gameface.

Not bad, and I have a high floor when rating this kind of release, but with some more focused riffs this turns into the kind music I would have gone nuts for.

No Less - Lesson II (1994)

Genres: Powerviolence, Grindcore

Unhinged, stream-of-consciousness vibe type powerviolence; starts with an incredibly long (for this type of stuff) intro with lots of samples and segues into a noisy extended jam. When this locks into its grooves and energetic outbursts, it's not bad, but at times it feels like its consistency is in how it's not giving you what you want. It's a demo after all though so you can forgive a band that seems to be fucking around most of the time for not "locking in" or something. I'm all for fucking with the format and tossing in weird instruments and noise/sample collages (they also seem to love using some hip hop beats a la SPAZZ) so the overall tone of this is an intriguing one but it's a bit all over the place for my mood today.

Apartment 213 - Vacancy (1994)

Genres: Powerviolence, Sludge Metal, Hardcore Punk

Reviewed in 🧷 #06 Punk Planet (1995 Mar-Apr), where they said "This is one of the best grindcore bands that I think I've EVER heard."

These 5 songs are mostly built around swapping between blasts of SPAZZ-esque powerviolence and slowing things down for beefy doomy heavy stuff. On "Kill for Christ" they try to milk all they can from a lumbering mid-tempo sludge riff and it gets repetitive fast, particularly since there's nowhere really to go from there. Apartment 213 do add a whiff of variety in here (the riffing on "John Wayne Gacy" is pretty dope) and more of an evil atmosphere, which is welcome.

I really hate to be that person, but I'm not sure why I'd reach for this when there are 100s of SPAZZ songs sitting right there. Maybe I just vibe with their kaleidoscopic silliness more? This is solid though, particularly if you want something that has the mid-tempo headbanger moments in there too.

The Wrench - Worry When We Get There (1994)

Genres: Punk Rock, Pop Punk

Decent stuff that sits in-and-around that overlap of 90s alternative rock and what Punk Planet would call "power-punk". When they're focused on poppy hooks with punk-forward backbone this works, but songs like "Can't Catch Me" show you how little gas is in the tank when they lean a little towards a "heavier" sound. Reaching for my well worn comparisons, but "No More, No Less" has a little bit of a The Figgs thing going on, which I appreciate.

I think this loses me a little in its attitude; the punky energy and focus on melody grabs me, but the singer and overall alt-rock air here doesn't totally click. I feel like they drag their songs out a little ("What's the Point") with rock and roll theatrics in a way that betray their sugariness a little bit. Definitely could have cut this down to 20-something minutes and ended up with a stronger release, but I can also say that about a million pop punk bands from the 90s, haha.

Blueprint - Come on By (1994)

Genres: Midwest Emo, Pop Punk

Reviewed in 🧷 #06 Punk Planet (1995 Mar-Apr) and described as "Very poppy. First thought in my head was Samiam, but a melodic hardcore influence, as well. Puts a spring in my step and a sparkle in my eyes." Most notable for having released a split with Jimmy Eat World in 1996.

I can understand the Samiam reference point, though with their dual singers on "Wintertime" they feel a bit simpler and poppier than the 90s Samiam stuff. Songs like "Gladhand" have that "we mashed a couple chord progressions together" type sound of a band figuring themselves out and kinda reminds me of those early blink-182 demos.

Didn't hate this or anything, but it's not going to rattle around my head now that it's over.

Dogs on Ice - Salt Wound (1994)

Genres: Punk Rock

Reviewed in 🧷 #03 Punk Planet (1994 Sep-Oct), and described as "a mix between Jawbreaker, Face to Face, and the early Descendents."

Based on the first few songs alone, I'd probably throw names like Leatherface and Nuisance in there instead. Can understand the Jawbreaker reference a little, because the singer kind of sucks and is produced at a distance in a way that does recall those first few records from them.

Unfortunately, at 46 minutes and 14 songs, they just don't have the tunes or the restraint. A couple of these songs are decent but nothing here screams memorable and they jump around in style just enough that it sounds like they weren't totally sure what direction to take their sound. Once in a while they hit on a melody that you can draw a direct line to orgcore from; gruff and punky, but melodic and bouncy. Elsewhere, they take some noisy, weirdo angular jam turns like on "Pancreatic Mess" that are understandable given the era but don't really add much to the songs surrounding them.

Maybe an EP from this band would satisfy, but this is too much and too messy as a full length for me.

That’s it, that’s all. Be excellent to one other.

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Hello y’all!

Holy moly, I feel like I need to apologize or something for how long this edition of the tab is! I’ve run into another situation where I’ve had my head down the past few weeks, just focusing on life and work stuff while continuing my usual “listen to as much music as I can while taking notes/capsule reviews” and all of a sudden I have a wealth of them to share with you today.

Before we get to them, here’s the usual list of stray items to share that have been bouncing around my noggin’:

• As you probably have noticed in the past few editions, I’ve really been enjoying YouTube DJ sets, but cannot stand how much AI has seeped into that area of the online music industry. I just want cool people to play me cool music, please stop generating slop ass vaporwave lo-fi shit and uploading them with eye-catching vintage aping art, please.

  • Anyway, here’s a good Japanese Jazz Fusion mix that really helped me though some work last week.

• If you haven’t already, you must check out the new music video from Outer World. The song rules, the video is great, and I cannot wait for more!

• If you’re the same kind of nerd that I am, you might be interested in Clairtone (2025), a documentary about the rise and fall of Canadian hi-fi company Clairtone Sound Corporation.

Otherwise, here’s some music reviews. Hope you enjoy ‘em!

Emoji legend:

• ⛏️ denotes picks of the week, my favs.

• 🌱 seedling denotes albums like a lot and expect could grow on me over the year.

• ✨ albums I would recommend to fans of the genre (i.e. it might not convert new listeners, but you should check it out.)

• ✂ denotes favourite tracks from a given record.

As always, feel free to reach out over on BlueSky or join the Rosy Overdrive Discord server where I can be found now and again.

You can also find me in the corners of Rate Your Music scrounging for obscure emo, hardcore, indie rock and pop punk.

Don’t forget: if you’re reading this in your email it will be cut off.
Read on the web for the full list of reviews!

⛏️ Octo Octa - Sigils for Survival (2026)

Genres: Acid House, Deep House, Tech House, Progressive House

A very progressive/acid house forward release from Octo Octa; last I heard from them was 2017's Where Are We Going? so I think I missed Resonant Body's incorporation of breakbeats. It shows up here on songs like "Rituals to Exist & Connect" but not so much that I'd say it forms the backbone of the entire record. Lots of acid influence and longer form subdued deep house work ("...To the Divinity of Gay Sex") round this release out well.

Could see this sliding off my brain as mostly straightforward iterations of varying house genres but I have been in the pocket for this type of repetitive, slowly shifting stuff so it really hits the spot.

⛏️ abentis - Dim Grow (2026)

Genres: IDM, Ambient

Another record I've heard this year described as "rhythmelodic", which I'm learning is just a vibe that I can really get down with. This is filled with kalimba-esque "intricately designed electronic mallet sounds", glassy atmosphere and glitchy percussion. In some ways it might bring to mind classic minimalist works like Music for 18 Musicians with seemingly infinitely layered, always shifting rhythms and melodies. That said, there's a much more prominent dance / IDM element at play here, particularly on beat-forward songs in the second half like "Lune" or "Eachpath". Really enjoyed this, and the way it flows from having ambient and sound collage influences in the first half, to more driving tracks by the end felt really organic and effective.

🌱 Cape Crush - Place Memory (2026)

Genres: Power Pop, Pop Punk, Emo-Pop

This falls somewhere in-and-around power-pop foundationally, but also wields emo-pop sized hooks and mid-tempo poppy punk crunchiness. Makes sense that the band self-identifies as “power-emo”.

About a hundred bands rattled around my head while listening to this, but the effectiveness of songs like "Calm & Delivered" and "Train in Motion" did allow me to shut the comparisons off and just dig on their hooks as they were presented.

Usually when bands like this pull back for some acoustic-led melodrama, as they do on "North Street", I lose interest, but they do that relatively well too; allowing the song to have a backbone of jangle pop that jumps from laid-back pedal-steel and harmonica-adorned verses to emotional wall-of-sound crescendos well.

I definitely like them most when the energy is high ("Dotted Line" is a bit of a snoozy tone establisher that fizzles out) but this is a well rounded debut that shows a lot of promise for the band.

✂ Calm & Delivered, Place Memory, Train in Motion, Also-Ran

🌱 Foote/Dickow - High Cube (2026)

Genres: Ambient Dub, Progressive Electronic, Ambient Techno, Downtempo

These days, whenever I am enjoying a left-field electronic release about half the time I look it up and it will be related to Peak Oil in some way. In this case, it's a collaboration between Strategy and Brian Foote, the latter of whom runs the label. While this is more main genre tagged ambient dub music, the inclusion of progressive electronic elements help set it apart from the records I've been listening to lately. There's a steady, long-form heart beat to this release that really landed for me on a workday afternoon. Likely need a few more spins to really dissect this, but upon initial listen I'm really enjoying it.

🌱 youbet - Youbet (2026)

Genres: Indie Rock

More indie rock with elements of neo-psych, art pop and folk pulsed in from youbet, who have been proving themselves an incredibly consistent act with this, their third release.

Where Compare & Despair and Way to Be immediately landed for me, this almost feels like it will be a bit of a sleeper. They continue to stand out with their unique approach to melodies here, but I'm not sure if its just familiarity with their sound causing it to land softly this time or if they've tweaked it ever so slightly in ways that aren't registering upon first glance. Part of me wants to say the latter because when they do hit on familiar tones like the twisting folk strum of "Embryonic" with synth droplets hanging in the air, it still really works. Or when they work "Bad Choice" slowly into overdrive for the bombastic finale, it's familiar stuff but it hits.

I'm still in the pocket for what they are doing here, and they've remained an above average act in a crowded genre, but I think time will tell if this is "year end" stuff or just another solid entry into their very consistent discography. Regardless, check it out if you're into off-kilter folky indie rock.

🌱 Reinartz - Irradiated (2026)

Genres: Ambient Dub, IDM

Lately my tastes in electronic music feels very skewed towards stuff that ends up having genre tags like ambient dub (or atmospheric drum and bass). See also: Architectonics & II.

This continues that trend, as it sits exactly in that place between IDM and dubby, ambient type soundscapes. On the bandcamp desctiption, they self-describe as ‘ADHD-ambient', which, goddamn, that targets me pretty much exactly. Some of this gets nearly too ambient for my tastes today (stretches of "Love as an Antidote to Fragmentation" are pretty abstract percussion over drips and drabs) but never so much that it loses me entirely. It also makes sense, pacing wise, as the closing track to the A-side before flipping to the B-side.

If I had one complaint, maybe it'd be that a couple of these tracks follow a similar progression of a few minutes of ambient work with percussion-based moments centered in the song before evaporating by the end. But songs like "Things That Fall Right Into Place" bring to mind Chaos Theory-era Amon Tobin for me, which is always a good thing.

🌱 Appleblim - Neolithic Neon (2026)

Genres: UK Bass, Jungle, Ambient Dub, IDM

Very good liquid electronic music that skitters around between IDM, ambient dub, bass-forward stuff ("Plasma Stomp"), some breakbeats and more. This was something I sampled in the new release bin and decided to put on in whole because it sounded intriguing to me and I'm happy I did. Well rounded and feels like it could be a bit addictive through the summer.

🌱 No Peeling - EP2 (2026)

Genres: Egg Punk, Post-Punk

Decent EP (under 9 minutes) of egg punk energy; squiggly synths, jittery angular riffery, post-punk basslines, et al. What sets this apart from the usual alien-vocal egg punk is that some of their vocal melodies almost recall vintage pop. "Crimes Against Buffet" made me think of The Like at times, melodically? There's something here for sure, would love to see how this band expands to a full-length.

🌱 Pope - BFM (2026)

Genres: Indie Rock, Power Pop

Very, dare I say it, cromulent indie rock with some slackery vibes and a whiff of twang ("Back to the Center"). True Talent Champion landed on my year-end list back in 2017, so I was happy to see their name pop up again in the new releases after so long. This is all fine stuff, about 40 minutes of it, that jumps from driving hook-n-riff forward guitar pop ("Newboi") and more subdued, folky indie ("Good Enough").

Entirely passable, and at times above average, but not exactly enduring stuff. Decent.

✨ De Beren Gieren - Fuzzy Bears (2026)

Genres: Progressive Electronic

I'm torn on this a little bit, because it was a pretty great background album for the afternoon and I enjoy this kind of retro progressive electronic vibe which the group effectively pairs with some nu-jazz and live-band type accoutrements. But at the same time, it swerves in-between the non-derogatory and derogatory lanes of this kind of deliberately retro type of synth-focused music. It's best when they really smash the two building blocks of their sound together and have elements like live percussion and organic band textures alongside the modular synth type sounds ("I'll Explain Later"). I love Mort Garson as much as anybody, but there's definitely moments here where they are leaning a little too hard on the "remember?" textures ("Levenslied"). Still, I enjoyed this and it's possible I'm just being too hard on it because there's a lot of cool music on this release. Rating could potentially see an increase over time, we'll see.

✨ Tristan Arp - (Re)Weave (2026)

Genres: IDM

Good EP of well-rounded IDM and tech house. Hard to tell upon initial listening whether or not this will stick with me, but I enjoyed this quite a bit while it was on for 21 minutes. High potential to return to this and bump the score up a little, I would say. Great work-music fodder.

✨ Prince Daddy & The Hyena - Hotwire Trip Switch (2026)

Genres: Power Pop, Pop Punk, Alternative Rock, Emo-Pop

Have never been fully on board with this band, but couldn't deny that their records always had a hit or two on 'em (i.e. Prince Daddy & The Hyena's "El Dorado" is wildly catchy).

Here, they are continuing their pivot from juvenile 4th wave weed emo band to (slightly less juvenile) power pop alt-rock band that they started on their last record. It definitely suits them, and they again work themselves up a handful of nice hooks, but I'm still a bit unsure about them as an album band.

"Sure Could" kinda sounds like it wants to sit somewhere between Nimrod. and Warning:. The opening of "The Luna Project" ensures that no review will be written without at some point referencing Weezer. I'm not so sure about the aughts-era blog rock dance punk guitar riffing on the verses of "30days30days30days", but the chorus is decent.

They do sound like they are gaining ground towards an overall consistency; instead of there being one or two songs I get addicted to, this feels more like everything here is at about the same level of quality as one-another. Whether that is a good thing or just an OK thing, I'm not sure. I generally have a lot of time for big, hooky guitar rock and this mostly works on that level. Could see this being a grower, or it might just dissipate from my brain as soon as it came in. We'll see.

✨ Push! - Plowing Ahead (2026)

Genres: Crossover Thrash, Metalcore, Beatdown Hardcore, Hardcore Punk

Genre tags on this one should give you the right idea even if they might be a little out of whack, order-wise; this is metallic hardcore that sits somewhere between beatdown two-stepping and metalcore riffage, with some moments of crossover thrashiness ("Porcelain").

Usually once or twice a year, a record like this delivering no-frills, meathead riffing will hit my gut in the right spot, and this one isn't too bad at doing exactly what it says on the tin.

There's probably about a thousand bands that sound exactly like this, so I'm not sure why this one felt more passable than others but it scratched an itch I had this morning. Doubt it'll become something I reach for throughout the year, but who knows?!

The Raging Nathans / Horace Pinker - Split EP (2026)

Genres: Pop Punk, Punk Rock

Honestly, despite the Split EP being a classic punk rock format, I don't listen to many of them. I always end up prioritizing LPs over EPs or split releases, despite enjoying many of them once I finally sit down and listen to them.

The draw here was actually more about seeing what Horace Pinker sound like in 2026 (my personal experience with them begins and ends with Burn Tempe to the Ground) than it is hearing some potential The Raging Nathans leftovers. And I have to admit their two songs sound like stuff they may have had laying around ("Running in Place" might have worked as the lead-off for a more substantial release but here it sounds half baked.)

The Horace Pinker songs aren't too special either, though they sound like two fully formed thoughts in some ways compared to the A-side. "Another Way" is a bashed out pop punk tune with slight grit, and "Redeemer" is a bit more mid-tempo gruff orgcore melodic punk or emocore type vibe with shades of Small Brown Bike.

Totally passable, middle-of-the-road stuff, but not exactly satisfying on the whole.

The Arrivals - Payload (2026)

The Arrivals return 16 years after their last record (Volatile Molotov). Have they changed their sound, or is it another group of bar-rocked tinged punk?

Well, it's not a bad album but... it's really lacking in energy huh? There's not a ton of memorable material here. I suppose you can't expect a band of this age to keep cranking out the same kind of music, but a lot of this just feels forgettable.

"The Wretched of the Earth: Guns, Germs, Steel" shows signs of potential; if they aren't interested in doing the pub-rock meets punk thing anymore, I would welcome a turn into some kind of progressive pub-rock that the final song hints towards. At least if they're slowing things down, they could let loose in other ways, you know?

I'm happy to have the band back, but this really went straight through my brain and out the other side, unfortunately.

Loukeman - Sd-3 (2026)

Genres: Indietronica, Downtempo, Electronic Dance Music, Outsider House, Folktronica, Neo-Psychedelia, Glitch Pop, Hypnagogic Pop, IDM

When this leans into euphoric electronic beat-forward songs like "To the Sky", it's really quite good. A lot of the quirky collage folktronica elements though felt a little corny and maybe even a bit too on the nose for me. Not a bad record, just a little overstuffed with ingredients when I would have preferred something more focused on the outsider house type elements personally.

⛏️ The Anniversary - Designing a Nervous Breakdown (2000)

Genres: Emo-Pop, Midwest Emo, Pop Punk, Power Pop

In 2000, I was in Grade 9 or 10 in a not-tiny-in-size-but-in-feeling Ontario city and would make trips to Oshawa and Toronto on weekends with my family where I'd wander around malls and pick up CDs that would explode my musical tastes into a million pieces. One key album from that era was Another Year on the Streets, which really splintered my previously exclusively pop punk tastes into many directions. It's got a lot of filler (I see you, Automatic 7, Gotohells, and No Motiv songs) but it also got me into bands like Rocket From the Crypt, Koufax and The Anniversary.

It's sad to think back to now, but in the 2000s the punk and emo scenes were still incredibly dude-forward, so a band that not only had keyboards and synths but a woman vocalist sharing near-equal singing time was pretty out of the ordinary based on what I was listening to previously. Even in 2025 users in the RYM comment box are making note of this and commenting on how "so many [emo bands were] just a bunch of dudes in ringer tees". Let alone the fact that Another Year on the Streets ended with the 8+ minute "I Believe That the End of the Reign of Terror Is Soon Near" which cracked my three-chord addled brain open as well. All that to say, it was just an album I needed at that moment, you know?

As a result, this is one of those albums that I have a hard time disassociating my memories and nostalgia from; I remember teaching myself the little riff from the second half of "Perfectly" on guitar in my room in 2000, or how epic the opening of "The D In Detroit" sounded to someone who listened almost exclusively to punk. If I had to, I'd say the highs (basically the entire A-side) outweigh some of the deeper cuts like "Shu Subat" or "Without Panasos" which are less immediately satisfying (though ultimately are satisfying in their own right, with time.)

So you can imagine that this record was pretty formative for me, getting me out of the confines of my established music tastes at exactly the right time that I needed it. This, alongside Rock and Roll Part Three probably formed the basis of my craving for "emo in foundation guitar-forward music with wee-oo-wee-oo synths" for years to come.

⛏️ Mock Orange - Nines & Sixes (1998)

Genres: Midwest Emo, Post-Hardcore, Emo-Pop, Math Pop, Math Rock

As I mentioned on a previous review of The Record Play, this was the definitive Mock Orange release to me for a number of years. On this album, they took a balancing act familiar to many emo bands of this era—fusing loud-soft dynamics and intricate noodling guitars with a busy drum performance and elements of technicality seemingly pulled from both math pop and skate punk—and made these ingredients all their own.

Truly, you could point to bands around this time doing similar stuff in the genre, but I believe nobody was doing it nearly as well as they do here. Somehow, the band is angular and technical ("All You Have") while also punk-ish in their palm mutes and ever-active rhythmic pulsing, while still dropping into emo-forward dynamics. Plus, they incorporated indie rock jangle (the opening of "Poster Child") from the get-go, signaling from afar their left-turn into indie that would come circa Mind Is Not Brain. And they do it all without becoming a pretentious, dour type of emo band. These songs are overflowing with strong melodies and hooks; emotional, but not overwrought. The opening plucked notes of "Dictionary" might sound like a hundred other bands of the second wave of emo, but where the song goes (and crucially where it doesn't return to again) lest them stand out.

Over the years, I've reached for The Record Play more and more, but revisiting this one was a great reminder of how strong this album is and what made me fall in love with their music from the start. Like many younger bands staking their claim, its a little messy and the back half has some weaker songs compared to the first side, but it still holds up as a gem of the genre for me.

⛏️ Piebald - We Are the Only Friends We Have (2002)

Genres: Emo-Pop, Pop Punk, Power Pop

Had to revisit this and knock out a review since I have nothing logged on RYM for this certified banger. In high school, I had some stray MP3s off releases like If It Weren't for Venetian Blinds, It Would Be Curtains for Us All, The Rock Revolution Will Not Be Televised and ...When Life Hands You Lemons because people on IRC were always raving about them, but when this album dropped it was a huge levelling up for the band and really sealed the deal on my interest in them.

Basically, the band pivoted away from the grittier angular post-hardcore and emo of their early work and drove their van further down the road they turned onto with The Rock Revolution Will Not Be Televised, where they dialed up the pop elements, and started exploring what they would refine down to a sharp, concise tool on this record.

It's emo-power-pop and indie rock all the way down, with crunchy riffs and major hooks. They add in some horns and acoustic moments ("It's Going to Get Worse Before It Gets Better") here and there, and "Rich People Can Breed" feels like a pivot into the kind of indie that was in vogue in the 2000s, but mostly this sticks in the "big riff, big hook, big emotions, and a sly wink" territories. “The Stalker” has aged poorly though, it’s clearly not written to be taken at face value but at the same time feels miscalculated.

I'd go on to spin All Ears, All Eyes, All the Time a bunch in the car circa 2004 and 2005 on summers home from College ("Part of Your Body is Made Out of Rock" is an underrated tune) but this remains their best work for sure.

✨ Elvis Costello and The Attractions - Get Happy!! (1980)

Genres: New Wave, Pop Rock, Power Pop, Blue-Eyed Soul, Rhythm & Blues, Mod Revival, Pop Soul, Garage Rock

My long-standing thought on this record—wherein Costello packs 20 songs into 47 minutes on a single vinyl—was that it had some excellent highlights and many duds. Upon revisiting it today, I've definitely softened on the whole thing. Since many of these songs are very short—only a single song breaks the three minute mark—it's always on to the next one by the time you start thinking a song is a little lackluster.

That said, there's definitely a few songs on the B-side that will have you thinking "did I hear this one already, or is it just incredibly similar to an earlier cut?". Otherwise, this is pretty strong overall despite it being 20 songs long. I'm always surprised that this is ranked higher in his discography than Trust, to be honest, which would be a top 3 Costello for me.

✨ Steps Ahead - Modern Times (1984)

Genres: Jazz Fusion, Smooth Jazz, Synthpop

Grabbed this on vinyl the other day and have been listening to it quite a bit over the past few weeks. As the comments box on RateYourMusic states, this is the kind of smooth jazz fusion that gets plundered and chopped and slowed down by vaporwave artists. One of my favourite things about exploring smooth jazz and smooth fusion has been finding out how often conventional wisdom about the genre is wrong.

The idea that this type of music only exists to be elevator music, or doesn't hold up to any kind of listening scrutiny just doesn't ring true for me. Take "Safari" which opens with some corny keyboard sounds but eventually gets into some lightly abrasive sax-layering. Or "Oops", which reminds me a lot of how The Bad Plus would switch back-and-forth between catchy melodies and more out-there excursions. And yeah, there's some smooth jazz here that does sound like elevator music ("Self Portrait", "Now You Know"), but the synths and slickness of the production really do make it work.

The performances here are very strong, there are enough interesting and weird diversions (the clattering synthpop smooth fusion of "Radio-Active", the stripped down and explorative "Modern Times") that make this an interesting record that also works as a mood setter. Might have to continue my way through the Steps Ahead discography because they are two-for-two in terms of enjoyable releases for me.

✨ Shit Present - What Still Gets Me (2023)

Genres: Indie Rock, Punk Rock, Emo

I know I heard this record when it came out, because I remember the album art and the name along with it coming out on Specialist Subject Records which is a label I would keep up with after really digging early releases from Doe and Caves. In my mind this record came out in like, 2015 or something. It's entirely possible I'm thinking of the Shit Present EP though.

Anyway, basically I had an idea what I was getting into by revisiting this but wasn't sure how much I liked it with having such a foggy memory about it. This sounds pretty much exactly as you would expect knowing the label and some of the other artists they've released; upbeat, hooky indie rock with varying poppy punk and emo genres sprinkled on top alongside confessional lyrics sung in a lightly British accent.

And their songs are all well above average for the most part. At 43 minutes it's maybe a little long, and although they are very good at writing that kind of slow burner tune that works itself up to a mid-tempo release ("What Still Gets Me"), I can also say that the pacing of the album is a little up and down with so many of them. But I always have time for this kind of hook-forward, emotional indie punk and this is a good stack of it.

✨ The Fairlanes - Welcome to Nowhere (2001)

Genres: Pop Punk

Above average pop punk that reminds me most of bands like The Gamits, in particular how they dial in their hooks with power pop elements without completely losing the pop punk DNA ("This Amp Goes to 11"). When they go mid-tempo mode ("Lesson Learned") they retain some chunky riffing and some bursts of energy. You could probably say there's a whiff of emo pop in here as well on songs like "Right Through You". They have some elements of big hook-based guitar rock that sometimes sits alongside "pop punk", but I think they never go so far down that road to their benefit. They strike me like a band that probably started more along the lines of snotty Weasel-core type stuff, but matured into something that rides a few genre lines effectively instead.

✨ I Farm - Sincerely, Robots (1999)

Genres: Melodic Hardcore

This is the kind of snotty, poppy skate punk and melodic hardcore that gets a lot of mileage out of attitude and energy. I came across this just digging around in the Melodic Hardcore tag, not realizing I had probably seen the name years ago on Mitch Clem's 60 Favorite Pop-Punk Albums list. That might have been why I was drawn to it? Anyway, if you like stuff along the lines of Donuts n' Glory or De La Hoya's Dance! Techno Mega-Mix Vol. 42 then I think you will fund a good amount to like here. It's 26 minutes, goes by in a blur of power and octave chords, high pitched yelps and "singing" that amounts to mostly yelling loudly yet melodically. This will serve me quite well when I want something as a chaser to that Donuts 'n' Glory album.

✨ Pinhead Circus - Detailed Instructions for the Self Involved (1997)

Genres: Punk Rock, Pop Punk, Skate Punk, Melodic Hardcore

I've bounced off Pinhead Circus a lot over the years, but I know I've tossed this album (and Everything Else Is Just a Far Gone Conclusion) on when trying to find new-to-me pop punk records in the past. Today, something I guess clicked because I made it through this one top-to-bottom. Maybe it's because the band never seemed to nail down anything resembling a cohesive aesthetic for their records, but I was a little surprised that this was the kind of snot-nosed skate punk type of pop punk and not something a bit more squeaky clean or Ramones-y?

There are shades of neener-neener stuff like Screeching Weasel in their sound, but this is generally more buzzsaw in focus with lots of speedy power chords and random pogo-laden stop-starts to their riffing ("Carefree Mental Daze") while still having decent hooks and melodic basslines. Like I said, way more skate punk than I expected for some reason. Also it might just be me, but I heard a sprinkle of some angst-driven emo punk type stuff hiding in here too.

Like Sincerely, Robots, which I reviewed recently, this calls to mind Donuts n' Glory and bands of that ilk. Maybe a pinch long as it approaches 40 minutes (has a 6+ minute song with a bunch of silence before the secret track as well), but also like Sincerely, Robots the attitude and energy goes a long way if you like this type of stuff.

✨ Errth - Errth (2025)

Genres: Punk Rock, Melodic Hardcore

Bit of a sampler platter of orgcore punk styles; opener “Close to Gone” is the exact kind of gruff, flannel-clad thing you’re already thinking of based on that opening sentence, and “8,760 Hours” follows up more in the drunkenly-snotty The Lawrence Arms type of punk.

The album (which features members of Aspiga, Graduation Speech, Public Serpents, Seeing Snakes and was released by Bad Time’s non-ska imprint Uncle Style Records) mostly trades back and forth between these styles, sometimes feeling so specifically tied to the orgcore genre to the point of near-parody, but generally landing on the “satisfyingly comfortable” side of the fence. Sometimes they do a bit of a mid-tempo emo-adjacent type Samiam vibe, like on (”Streets Don’t Sing”).

In general, this passed by quickly and in a haze of familiar tones and textures. Not sure if it stands up beyond “this sounds like other stuff I already like”, but it’s not bad.

✨ The Adventures of Jet - Part 3: Coping With Insignificance (2000)

Genres: Power Pop, Geek Rock

Big time wee-oo-wee-oo geek rock type power pop. Immediately made me think of The Squish, and to a lesser extent Ozma. The very obvious comparison would be the first The Rentals album. Throw a little Nerf Herder in there for good measure, maybe.

If you like crunchy power and octave chords with moog keyboard lines on top, this is more of that. Not all of these songs are strong, and 40 minutes of basically the same kind of song back-to-back is definitely more than I need, but my appreciation for this general sound gets me pretty far and I'm just glad that the album doesn't dip into the kind of gross geek rock lyrics that you often see.

Jets to Brazil - Four Cornered Night (2000)

Genres: Indie Rock, Emo, Midwest Emo

There are a few songs on this album so embedded in my being, so intrinsically tied to a certain time and a certain headspace that they will forever be a part of me. “One Summer Last Fall” is one of those songs, similar to other reviews from this edition of the newsletter, it landed at just the right time in my life via Santa Cruz’s Uprising (2001).

Is the album as formative for me? Well… it has “You’re Having The Time of My Life,” “Mid-Day Anonymous” and “Milk and Apples” at least. Oh, and “Orange Rhyming Dictionary” which one must assume was a leftover from the album of the same name, and must be why it’s one of the better songs here.

That’s why it’s such a shame that—though admirable that they stretched out to try some different things—the rest of the album is so forgettable. This is a great 5 song EP with a 8 passable-to-weak songs surrounding it.

Garage Fuzz - Relax in Your Favourite Chair (1994)

Genres: Melodic Hardcore, Emocore, Skate Punk

Cromulent and relatively unmemorable melodic hardcore from Brazil with elements of pop punk, skate punk, and emo. Totally alright stuff, probably a hair above average for an album with only 32 ratings. I couldn't tell you anything about a single one of these 16 songs after the fact, but it was a fine diversion while it was on. They went on to release 4 more albums over the years, so I do wonder how they evolved from here.

Ансамбль Арсенал - Второе дыхание [Second Wind] (1985)

Genres: Jazz Fusion, Smooth Jazz, Jazz Pop

Oooh, progressive smooth jazz fusion? Okay, the lead-off title track is 10 minutes and 45 seconds with multiple smooth jazz movements and a very spacey, vibey atmosphere. I'm absolutely here for it.

Second track "The Lion Constellation" is a little sleepy, but does retain that long-form, progressive approach to smooth fusion. "Forgiveness" really brings things down even further into airy progressiveness, but by this point I'm acclimating to the fact that we're much more in instrumental prog rock mode here in general. The extended soloing that forms much of that song's second half is totally fogged-out arena filling, laser light show shit. They also do dip into some more classical style compositions, which unfortunately is less exciting to me.

Uh oh, the next song is called "Funky-Charleston" and it sounds how you might expect. We're into circus ass jazz territory here and I don't like it. "Provincial Tango" fares a little better, but not entirely.

"A Model" returns us to synth-laden progressive rock theatrics, thankfully, even if by this point it feels a little stale. We close with "Nostalgie" which is fine, has some silly quack-sounds on there, and ends things with a bit of a shrug.

This mostly can't stand up to the very strong opening track, though it's not entirely a miss either. A mixed bag for sure, with a solid A-side that I could see me returning to on vinyl and then just skipping the B-side entirely.

Stereotyperider - Same Chords Same Songs Same Six Strings (2003)

Genres: Melodic Hardcore, Pop Punk, Post-Hardcore

This sits somewhere between angular post-hardcore, pop punk, emo pop and a little melodic hardcore ("Aiona"). All of that sounds great to me because I like all of those genres, but what you end up with here is poppy punk music that isn't catchy enough to be memorable ("Forget It"), and post-hardcore ("I Never Want to Rest") that doesn't have quite enough oomph to leave a lasting impact.

All of this is performed well, produced well, written well, but it was pretty in-one-ear-out-the-other. At times, it strikes a decent balance and ends up sounding a little bit like Good Health era Pretty Girls Make Graves and other times it is concise enough to be relatively hummable ("Critical People") but in general I'm not sure I'll remember much about this. I hate to say it, but I wish this was a little more streamlined, simplified and in service of better hooks.

That’s it, that’s all. Be excellent to one other.

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Hello y’all!

Not a whole lot of preamble from me today so I will cut straight to the stray items to share that have been bouncing around my noggin’:

• Skate Witches (1986)… “If you don’t have a rat, then you can’t be one of us!!”

• This video seems created entirely with me, personally, in mind: “NO AI” in the title name, footage of SSX3 (the greatest video game of all time, people!) and hidden gems of ambient drum and bass. Yes please!

• Did you know there’s a “1990s Weather Channel and Smooth Jazz” live stream channel on YouTube??? Now you do! I don’t need the weather in Andalusia, Alabama, or South Alabama but who cares? They’ve also got one for chiptune jazz.

Otherwise, here’s some music reviews. Hope you enjoy ‘em!

Emoji legend:

• ⛏️ denotes picks of the week, my favs.

• 🌱 seedling denotes albums like a lot and expect could grow on me over the year.

• ✨ albums I would recommend to fans of the genre (i.e. it might not convert new listeners, but you should check it out.)

• ✂ denotes favourite tracks from a given record.

As always, feel free to reach out over on BlueSky or join the Rosy Overdrive Discord server where I can be found now and again.

You can also find me in the corners of Rate Your Music scrounging for obscure emo, hardcore, indie rock and pop punk.

Don’t forget: if you’re reading this in your email it will be cut off.
Read on the web for the full list of reviews!

⛏️ Hoavi - Architectonics (2026)

Genres: IDM, Ambient Dub, Gamelan

Very abstract, glitchy IDM type electronic from Peak Oil, who are becoming one of my favourite labels for this type of thing.

I don't know anything about Gamelan music, but the bandcamp page tells me this is heavily inspired by it and features a "rhythmelodic hybrid sound" which does a better job of explaining what is going on here than I ever could. Feels very percussion-forward in a way, sitting on top of dubby synth echoes and vaguely spacey atmosphere. "Blue Krait" scratches a particular part of my brain and felt like a big highlight.

Really hypnotic stuff and I was liking it more and more as it went on, and as it went on I kept turning it up to engage deeper and deeper with what's going on here.

🌱 Foetorem - Incongruous Forms of Evergrowing Rot (2026)

Genres: Death Doom Metal, Death Metal, Sludge Metal

dewtaylo on RYM already has the descriptors all nailed down; apocalyptic, aggressive, gloomy yet groovy. Bringing to mind Phrenelith though also reveals why this kind of hits my ears as a pinch unmemorable sometimes? Had a similar inability to let the latest from Phrenelith pierce through as well. Not sure what it is about this certain specific type of death metal that makes me need a bunch of listens to really absorb what's going down on a songwriting level, but this does bring a lot of immediately satisfying riffs and good heavy groove to the table too while I wait around for it to hit my brain and heart.

I think this has potential to grow on me super intensely, but I'm going to need some time. Good stuff though, regardless, that is for sure. "Tapestries of Misery" in particular hit hard on first listen.

🌱 Xylitol - Blumenfantasie (2026)

Genres: Atmospheric Drum and Bass, IDM

Great atmospheric drum and bass. Hadn't heard Anemones which is referred to in another review on here as being their "breakthrough" but this is stuff is right up my alley. I dug that this mixes moody breaks and jittery melodies ("Mirjana") quite well.

Some of the little in-between tracks like "Halo" might be a little throwaway but they serve their purpose of palette cleansing well enough for me, and I don't mind the leveraging of plonky bleeps and bloops at all. All around enjoyable, will be back to this one for more spins, I can imagine.

🌱 Lone - Hyperphantasia (2026)

Genres: UK Garage, Breakbeat, 2-Step, Hardcore Breaks, Wonky, UK Bass, Ambient

I haven't been keeping up with Lone over the years since Reality Testing and Levitate, but this seems quite different than what they were doing in that era. This has a lot more maximalist, brash EDM energy going on. In some ways, it reminds me a little of the turn CFCF took on memoryland. Not that they share a sound per se, but an attitude of creating a blend of different sometimes disparate types of pop-adjacent electronic dance music and turning it into a cohesive album concept. And the old Lone sound is definitely still in here ("Affinity", "Waterfall Reverse", "Scattergun"), which is great.

It's a lot of album to digest and I generally shy away from stuff with vocals, but a lot of it is tastefully handled. Very cool!

🌱 Immolation - Descent (2026)

Genres: Death Metal, Dissonant Death Metal

My experience with Immolation begins and ends with Here in After, so maybe jumping to their latest release does them a bit of a disservice but regardless this is incredibly well rounded for a late-career release.

Not a whole lot of curveballs here, just rock solid death metal with some dissonance and technicality as outlined by the genre tags. Killer riffs, strong songwriting, pretty much all you need.

🌱 Population II - Gimmicks (2026)

Genres: Psychedelic Pop, Neo-Psychedelia, Progressive Electronic, Krautrock, Berlin School

Cromulent 18 minute EP of Quebec neo-psych; liked this a smidge more than Maintenant jamais because it feels a little more subdued and hazy with less reliance on your average neo-psych textures. The warbling synths and progressive electronic focus on the B-side helps as well. I keep wanting to love this band and coming up a little short of that, but this was a welcome diversion regardless.

✨ Gobbinjr - Crystal Rabbit Moon (2026)

Genres: Indie Pop, Singer-Songwriter, Twee Pop

Scores highly on the quirk level when it comes to indie pop and twee, but weaponizes their oddball nature mostly effectively. Maybe the "inner mission with Luke" with some pseudo-rapping is a step too far, and I an imagine this being annoying to some listeners ("spit" might test their patience) but ultimately this reminded me of stuff like youbet etc. A pleasant and enjoyable art/bedroop pop type release that I could see growing on me.

✂ Stars Implode, Nilsson Neelson, Don't Give Up

WAAX - Angel's Mess (2026)

Genres: Alternative Rock, Pop Punk, Indie Rock, Alternative Metal, Power Pop

I quite enjoyed Big Grief, as far as big rock records go, back when it was released. I checked out At Least I'm Free when it came out as well and recall it having a couple good tunes. So I figured why not try their latest as well? This continues their established cadence of making some slight changes to their bombastic poppy alternative rock recipe every few years and releasing a record with a few highlights. This one has a few hazy tracks of indie-adjacent type guitar rock ("Don't Cry Too Long"), some hooky tunes ("Love You To Death", "Ur A Rat") and a couple out-right misses ("UH OH"). Otherwise it's a bit more of the same.

The Knuckleheads - Pirate Radio (2026)

Genres: Pop Punk, Emo, Skate Punk

I really wasn't sure about this with the 30 second introduction, but "Now Is The Time" gives big time "phew, maybe the kids'll be alright" sloppy, garage-hiding pop punk vibes. Multiple singers who can barely sing, scrappy performances played as fast as they can without falling totally apart, it checks many of the boxes. Immediately my question was: "can they keep this energy/quality level up for a whole record?"

"The Dead Stay Dead's" opening had me unsure, as it takes a turn into a kind of funky bass-lead, jangling guitar introduction that gets further away from straight-forward pop punk. "Nameless Faceless" kind of confirms that they're not trying for merely pop punk but a myriad of indie-adjacent type influences. At this point, I also realized this is their third record in about 5 or 6 years, and maybe this is their attempt at maturing past pop punk? They return to punk on "G.Y.C.G.I.U.", but in general I was left wishing for more songs like "Now Is The Time".

Ultimately the answer to my first question was "not really...", but there's some promising moments here though, for sure.

Take Steps - Fighting Chance (2026)

Genres: Pop Punk, Melodic Hardcore

A promising new act playing pop punk with melodic hardcore and emo-rock tendencies that feels like they can be filed alongside Koyo, Stateside, Anxious etc. I was reading an interview with the band as I listened to this where the band said they "wanted a band that was between Power Trip and The Story So Far" and how their influences were "purely pop punk or crossover [thrash]" which raised an eyebrow, but then "No Resolution" came on and I suppose they aren't totally off there. "Money in the Bank" ends with some hardcore breakdown riffing as well. "Company" feels like meandering nu-grunge without a really solid hook to ground the track, and "Fighting Chance" tacks on some thrash-y solos and energy at the finish line. It does feel like they are on to something that works here, but are still at the "stacking building blocks together" point of their genre mixing. Then they throw a really sappy acoustic number in right before the closing track.

Overall, some solid riffing, a few decently poppy moments, but everything feels a bit like a first pass at a sound they could perfect on their next release. Part of me wishes the "hook" knob was cranked up to dizzying levels of catchiness to really sell it. If they figured that out, this could really sing.

⛏️ Jean-Luc Ponty - Open Mind (1984)

Genres: Jazz Fusion, Progressive Electronic, Smooth Jazz

Alright, toss Chick Corea on keyboards alongside Ponty and you've got a stew goin'. I love the progressive electronic elements at play here, like on "Orbital Encounters" which pulses with electronic arps over a locked-in hi-hat groove that ebbs and flows with the hypnotic electric violin on top. Some of this is downright video gamey ("Open Mind") which makes sense because I think I called The Chick Corea Elektric Band "sega genesis fusion." This is like that but with an electric violin.

The drum production here sounds so thin, almost like a drum machine or e-drums, but in a way that kind of compliments what is going on compositionally? It's very interesting to me. In general this won't be for everyone because it has that corny digital-sheen that a lot of fusion from this era has, which I do not mind.

I dig how repetitive some of this is on a foundational level with a lot of the fusion elements floating somewhere above the record ("Intuition"). Main problem here might be the pacing, as the opening of "Open Mind" might turn some people away and then following is "Solitude" which feels incredibly somber and feels a little out of place for the second track.

⛏️ Mammoth Grinder - Underworlds (2013)

Genres: Death Metal, Crust Punk, Sludge Metal

This is just perfectly placed at the crossroads of so much that I love about heavy music; equal parts hardcore heaviness, old school death metal, and thrash's speed. Traces of sludginess really rounds the whole sound out. The kind of thing that on paper has you thinking "sure, heard a lot music that does that" and then you press play and it hauls so hard it does not matter that they aren't reinventing the wheel. This kicks ass! Another reminder that I need to keep digging through the A Hardcore Tourist's Guide to Death Metal list.

⛏️ Osker - Idle Will Kill (2001)

Genres: Pop Punk, Emo, Emo-Pop

Definitely an album that has aged incredibly over the years. This dropped juuuuuust before Epitaph started to really branch out beyond their usual types of pop punk / punk rock signings, and almost signals a bit of what was going to happen to the genre in the next few years. Idle Will Kill very deftly mixes poppy punk and emo-forward songwriting into your expected EpiFat punk sound. Sometimes they end up in mid-tempo "radio guitar rock" territory ("Motionless") but their melodies are strong enough to prop these moments up. And elsewhere, they retain their punk DNA in the speediness of songs like "Animal".

Really, the only negative I have here is that the running time hits 45 minutes. Fortunately, it's not one of those situations where the material slacks, these are all pretty great tunes, but if this were a clean 30 minutes it would probably have left me wanting more. That said, as their final release I'm ultimately pleased that it's a little overlong but with strong songs vs. a long record stuffed with filler.

✨ By Divine Right - All Hail Discordia (1997)

Genres: Slacker Rock, Power Pop, Indie Pop, Neo-Psychedelia

Mid-tempo, crunchily melodic Can-rock; they would go on to be a bit more of a Broken Social Scene-adjacent type of "indie rock" band, but here it is mostly hooky guitar-rock played at a medium pace. Not sure I would call this power pop, but its torn-jeans slacker rock through and through. Maybe like a less obscured Guided by Voices when they are in hooky-rock mode ("Highway Alien Paranoia"), which makes sense given the neo-psych sub-tab. Becomes even more shambly and bric-a-brac in the second half, which makes this ultimately feel a bit too long at 40+ minutes. I spent too much time circa high school with the A-side of this record though to give it a bad score, though.

✂ I Love Everybody, Sofa Tour, Blind, Double Album, Underwater, Complicated

✨ Spyro Gyra - Breakout (1986)

Genres: Jazz-Rock, Jazz Fusion, Smooth Jazz

More smooth jazz fusion from the team behind Catching the Sun and seemingly endless other records. For some reason, though Catching the Sun has become a vinyl mood-setting mainstay in my living room, their other records never seem to catch for me. Maybe I only need so much of this? But it's oddly addicting, and so here I am again. Craved something with an even higher level of cheese-n-synths so I went for this one from '86 and got exactly what I wanted. For those who are dedicated to only the smoothest cheese, this will do the trick.

✨ Dear Landlord - Dream Homes (2009)

Genres: Pop Punk, Melodic Hardcore

This is one of those albums that seemed to get immediately canonized upon release. As far as orgcore goes, this is almost immediately pointed to as the highwater mark for the genre. And listen, I'm not going to take a heel turn here and tell you that it sucks or something, because it doesn't, but I also think it's just very good.

I've heard "I Live In Hell" about a million times since 2009 because I'm constantly putting this album on to see if it'll turn into that masterpiece this time. I don't know that I ever need to hear that one again as a result. Maybe it's because I never memorized the lyrics over the years or saw them live, but this always feels like a handful of really phenomenal songs and another couple handfuls of not-quite-as-good-but-still-rock-solid tunes.

Anyway, it's an above-average drunken orgpunk record that definitely needs to be heard if you haven't gotten around to it yet. Maybe next time it'll fully click?

✨ Swingin' Utters - Peace and Love (2018)

Genres: Punk Rock, Pop Punk, Power Pop

Saw somewhere that The Dopamines loved this album and so they tapped the producer to do 80/20 with them, so I figured I should finally hear some Swingin' Utters. Obviously I've heard stray tracks here and there on Fat comps but I always just assumed they were very oi/street punk coded or something that would sit alongside the Dropkick Murphys of the world and thus it wouldn't be up my alley. The connection to that new Dopamines album totally makes sense, though! I can hear it. This is pretty good for one of those late-career Fat band type records as well. "Demons of Springtime" kinda sounds like The Arrivals (is that D4 members on backing vocals???) and in general these songs are rock solid. They won't stick in your head for too long after listening, but it all goes down easy. The albums consistency is maybe the primary downside to it. Depending on the day I might bump this down to a three star rating but this breezed by in a way that I really didn't mind today.

Jean-Luc Ponty - Upon the Wings of Music (1975)

Genres: Jazz Fusion, Jazz-Rock

Snagged this on vinyl the other day, just because I enjoy having a bunch of Ponty LPs around to toss on when I'm in the mood for some fusion. So far, my favourite stuff of theirs is from the late-seventies and early-eighties, where they get synths involved in their sound (which isn't to say there aren't any on here). This is good stuff, but sits a little closer to your expected jazz-fusion sound. Moments like "Echoes of the Future", which is an abstract atmospheric track, are a bit more my speed. Not bad, just not my chosen mode for Ponty to be in.

Doc Hopper - ...Ask Your Mom (1995)

Genres: Alternative Rock, Punk Rock, Pop Punk

A decent 35 minute slab of 90s pop-punk. For some reason, my memory of Doc Hopper was that they had a lot of that alternative rock influence on their poppy punk rock but this was snottier and speedier at times than I remember ("Why Must", "Altoona"). In some ways, it called to mind early Plow United. Something like "Summit" feels a bit ALL-coded and has a bit of that alternative rock or garage rock vibe to the chorus and the "bash away at a couple chords" structure. Then they toss in some elements of early Samiam too. Not sure about throwing a cover of The Dickies in here though.

Really, the worst thing going on is a bit of a personality crisis, as you can tell from all the types of bands I'm connecting red threads to on the wall here. They could use a bit of a tightening up on the track listing and (for my tastes) just focusing on the speedy, snotty hooky stuff. It feels by the last 4 to 5 songs they are just tossing on whatever they had left over. Some solid stuff here though, at times.

Crumb - Seconds, Minutes, Hours (1998)

Genres: Alternative Rock, Emo, Indie Rock, Emo-Pop, Power Pop

Pretty sure I caught wind of this scrolling through reels and seeing members of The Juliana Theory talking about how underrated this was. The members and guest credits here are pretty nuts, including: Knapsack, Jim of Jimmy Eat World plays guitar on some songs, Josh Freese on drums, the Haden's from That Dog. on backing vocals and violin, and uh Jani Lane of Warrant?

This gives me big time Jade Tree/Vagrant-era second wave power pop emo vibes. That kind of "muscular power-pop music by weenies" that you'd get from Hey Mercedes. A lot of times it brings a lot of the bands above to mind (OK maybe not Warrant but for sure Jimmy Eat World and The Juliana Theory) but I would also throw in stuff like New End Original or even something like Noise Ratchet or maybe Black Dress in a B Movie-era Keepsake.

When they're in upbeat, big hook mode this is totally pretty decent. Both of the weepy acoustic songs are bad and completely stop the album in its tracks, even if "Do You Remember?" includes the members of That Dog., whom I am always glad to hear.

Definitely a handful of solid emo-pop-rock songs on here, but not sure about it getting cemented as a totally underrated album. Worth a peek if you're into this kind of stuff.

Dig Dug - Pop Trio of the Week (2000)

Genres: Pop Punk

Someone commented on a YouTube video about how their band Millhouse opened for Propagandhi once and that lead me to a Dig Dug / Millhouse split release with this band. Generally I end up prioritizing LPs over EPs and splits so I jumped to this instead of tracking down the Millhouse songs. Opens with a Kids in the Hall clip, so they're on my good side already. First track is a pop punk ripper, and then "Hello" massages in some emo/power pop type influences. It's all incredibly scrappy and the singer can only kinda-sorta sing. "Hairy Palms" kinda reminds me of Dead Ends and Girlfriends-era Allister. They settle themselves into more of a power pop type band on songs like "Eye Want", but the pop punk DNA is never too far away on "Ms. Greenman's Couch" (which sounds a bit like a less effective Sicko) or "Broken Words".

Honestly, their songs overall aren't too memorable, but I do get some thrill out of this stuff based on their youthful ambition alone. Even with the 37 minute song of silence before the secret track (Hey!! It's a Sicko cover lol) this felt a bit long in the tooth for what they were laying down. But I appreciate their aspirations.

That’s it, that’s all. Be excellent to one other.

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Hello y’all!

Just to continue the narrative from my last newsletter, I highly recommend you not get into any car accidents. Otherwise, things are very up in the air right now and it looks like for the foreseeable future we have a lot of walking on the agenda. As I mentioned last time as well, that’s probably a good thing to force myself to do as I deal with some leg issues. Hey, turning 40 amirite?

Anyway, as always some stray items to share that have been bouncing around my noggin’:

• As you’ll see later, I’ve been on something of a smooth kick, mostly jazz that is. But have you listened to much Utopian Scholastic? Think Encarta ‘95 soundtrack and you’re most of the way there. When done well, it’s kind of a trip (in case you were wondering how definitively not cool I am lol).

• Some friends and I went to a local VHS screening of the ‘90s family movie cult classic BINGO (1991) and it was even more unhinged than I had remembered. BINGO sits in the driver’s seat of a truck and drives it like a human being and that’s the least unbelievable thing in this wildly unhinged cartoon-ass movie full of non-stop what the fuckery. Cult movie fans need apply:

• I recently re-watched Caddyshack II (weed may have been involved with this decision) and while that movie still sucks I have to say the Kenny Loggins theme song is kind of a goddamned bop? Seriously…

Otherwise, here’s some music reviews. Hope you enjoy ‘em!

Emoji legend:

• ⛏️ denotes picks of the week, my favs.

• 🌱 seedling denotes albums like a lot and expect could grow on me over the year.

• ✨ albums I would recommend to fans of the genre (i.e. it might not convert new listeners, but you should check it out.)

• ✂ denotes favourite tracks from a given record.

As always, feel free to reach out over on BlueSky or join the Rosy Overdrive Discord server where I can be found now and again.

You can also find me in the corners of Rate Your Music scrounging for obscure emo, hardcore, indie rock and pop punk.

Don’t forget: if you’re reading this in your email it will be cut off.
Read on the web for the full list of reviews!

⛏️ Sweat - Tear It on Down (2026)

Genres: Hardcore Punk, Garage Punk, Melodic Hardcore, Hard Rock

More hardcore/punk with classic rock-and-roll swagger from this great LA band. Gotta Give It Up remains the high water mark for the band but their follow-ups have been incredibly consistent for me and really enjoyable. They inject some short-and-to-the-point stuff here ("Displaced") which is probably the only real change in their sound aside from inching the "melodic" knob up a smidge on some of their mid-tempo, less hard hitting songs ("Tension"). Doesn't feel like they are reaching for the same thing a lot of hardcore bands are these days when they slow down and go grunge-alt-melodic though, to my ears. They also nicely alternate between the heavy and the melodic on songs like "Life Sentence". All around, great stuff. Another one I will be revisiting a few times this year in the car on sunny days, cracked up loud.

⛏️ Physicalist - Physicalist (2026)

Genres: Garage Punk

8 minutes and 23 seconds of Recess Records-esque garage punk rock from two-thirds of Night Court plus a member of Unfun. If you dig Night Court but wish they cranked the grit knob up a few positions and played with more to-the-point punk rock energy then you will for sure like this. It's over before you know it, and then they toss on a full master of the preceding songs in one track in case you wanna listen through all over again (I absolutely did).

RIYL: Recess Records, The Marked Men, F.Y.P., Toys That Kill et al.

⛏️ Teratoma - Longing Voracity (2026)

Genres: Death Metal, Death Doom Metal

Terrific meat and potatoes death metal with some rotten doom atmosphere. This is firmly in the "does what it says on the tin" type death metal, which I'm finding sometimes is all I need. Sure, they get a little acoustic strum and smoking solo interlude in there ("Interim") which might play a little too close to the mold for some people, but this all works as it is supposed to for me. Maybe they don't have the most personality in the world, but this sounds big and hits pretty hard and has a suitably bleak air to it. This hits my gut hard in the same way as some other recent straight-and-to-the-point stuff from Degraved or Invictus.

🌱 Hedge - Freeze Frame High Five (2026)

Genres: Pop Punk, Indie Rock

Hedge are back with just over 9 minutes of their established throwback 90s-esque power pop alt-rock blend on this EP. On "Hey Dude" they're in pop punk mode with an effectively hooky chorus, and "Snapple Cap" continues in that mode. Elsewhere, they get some bass-led alt-rock in on "Little Joey and the Kangaroos" in the mix.

The cover art might reference Dinosaur Jr., The Replacements and Archers of Loaf, but their music feels most indebted to those kind of bands in texture. I mean this non-derogatorily, because I really admire that they are taking the noisy, buzzy bite of 90s act and filtering them through power poppy punk quite effectively. If it makes sense, their version of Guided by Voices' "My Valuable Hunting Knife" reminds of me of when blink-182 covered Dinosaur Jr. on an early demo, you know? There might not be a direct line between influence and output, but only because they are adding so much of their own welcome personality in there.

As a result, they can remind you of a big long list of bands (on Better Days I brought up The Fiendz and Sundials, and Rosy Overdrive rightly reminds that they list Weston as an influence) without any of them being a perfect analogue. It's a tough trick to nail but they prove on this EP they're still doing it very well.

⛏️ Metropolis Ensemble, Erik Hall, Sandbox Percussion - Canto Ostinato (2026)

Genre: Minimalism

If you know me, you know that Erik Hall’s take on Canto Ostinato released in 2023 absolutely blew me away. After working alongside the Metropolis Ensemble and Sandbox Percussion to “re-orchestrate the piece for an outdoor summer solstice performance”, the whole team has released an in-studio recording of their adaptation. This version includes mallet instruments, eighteen strings, woodwinds, and Erik Hall on piano. It’s incredible and only cements the fact that Simeon ten Holt’s Canto Ostinato is one of the most moving and beautifully mesmerizing pieces of composing work I’ve ever heard in my life. I prefer the textural quality that Erik’s recording brings to the piece, but it’s wonderful to hear it with so many instruments and in such clarity here as well.

🌱 Egregore - It Echoes in the Wild (2026)

Genres: Death Metal, Black Metal, Thrash Metal

This is... interesting! It's not that often that a death metal release leaves me scratching my head a little bit, but this is a pretty chaotic mix of ingredients upon first glance.

Basically, this is blackened death metal with some cavernous vocals/textures and riff-style that can recall 80s thrash as well as some traces of speed metal. I'm not going to go so far to say that they're sloppy, but everything is executed in a really organic, slack way that (to me) is a nice counterpoint to the modern overly-produced, blown out, technical perfection that sometimes is found in death metal.

"Stair Into the Vortex" is where I really started to click with their brew of influences, some sick riffs going on here. Then out of nowhere they start hitting some high pitched vocals!? Honestly I'm here for a band tossing all their influences into a blender but can imagine some of this will come off as too "overstimulating" to some purists.

I'm going to need more time with this, but on the basis of their originality alone I'm leaving with a pretty above average take on the record. How it settles into a repeat-listen experience will be seen but I appreciate everything that they are doing here.

🌱 Outgrow Madness - われらの狂気を生き延びる道 (2025)

Genres: Thrashcore, Powerviolence

Currently this slab of powerviolence from "ex- and current-members of CHARM, COMPLETED EXPOSITION, EXCLAIM, SPAZZ and others" is only available on vinyl (with a release date of February 27th on Trash Tapes).

That should tell you about what you need to know here; this is fast, blink-and-you'll-miss it powerviolence/hardcore that reminds me most of a very streamlined, aggro-increased SPAZZ. I love this kind of stuff, and this really hits the spot even though it's super straight-forward and doesn't have much of the fun left-turns that a band like Spazz throws in there. If you need more than just "fast, heavy hardcore music that blasts through then maybe hits a simple slowed breakdown or spoken word moment" then maybe this won't be for you but I really loved it.

🌱 Tigers Jaw - Lost on You (2026)

Genres: Indie Rock, Emo-Pop, Pop Punk, Power Pop, Midwest Emo, Indie Pop

Upon first glance, this sounds to me like it balances their syrupy emo and more driving poppy indie rock vibes a bit better than I Won't Care How You Remember Me, but I might need to revisit that one to know. I liked a good amount of that record but it didn't stick in my listening rotation all that much.

When they're in upbeat rock mode on this record, it reminds me a bit more of Charmer which I felt was a great turn into indie rock for the band at the time. They are still doing the midtempo emo-rock that builds and churns into cathartic releases ("Baptized on a Redwood Drive") which maybe isn't my favourite mode of theirs, but when they follow it up with a dreamy riff-focused tune like "BREEZER" and then a indie rock burner like "Ghost", it helps to be honest.

I think all of this is quite good, but I think I need some time with it to really know where it lands for me so I'm sticking with a well-rounded three stars for now with room to grow over the year.

🌱 True Green - Hail Disaster (2026)

Genres: Indie Rock, Slacker Rock

Lightly spacey, vibey, slackery indie rock. Overall has a very introspective sound, built around acoustic strums, melodic basslines and blooming echos of synths and other accoutrements. Sometimes it has a sprinkle of Kinsella-esque second wave emo scrappiness ("Texas Instrument") and other times it's a bit more direct ("Italian Lightning"). Other times, it reminded me a little of Fishboy.

Feels a bit like the definition of a sleeper though, this didn't make me want to run over and hit play again when it was done, but I could see its sound blossoming upon further listens as well.

Good Riddance - Before the World Caves In (2026)

Genres: Melodic Hardcore, Hardcore Punk, Skate Punk

Not much that Good Riddance have done since Bound by Ties of Blood and Affection has grabbed me, but for some reason the singles of this were telling me it might be worth checking out. This certainly isn't bad, but it's mostly a cromulent late-career release that doesn't really stand out much beyond "hey, it's not bad". Even at 32 minutes this felt a little long to me. For die hard fans this will satisfy but there's no world where I'm reaching for this alongside Symptoms of a Leveling Spirit or Bound by Ties of Blood and Affection to be honest.

⛏️ Sam Roberts - Chemical City (2006)

Genres: Alternative Rock, Singer-Songwriter, Pop Rock

Likely have too much nostalgia around this record for me to be totally objective, but the balance of storytelling singer-songwriter poppy alterna-rock and 70s rock 'n' roll alongside tasteful whiffs of progressive atmosphere ("Mind Flood") remains really well executed and holds up upon revisiting.

This album hit me at a very specific moment in my life, in my mid- to late-twenties when I was working dead end jobs and smoking a lot of weed, basically. Have fond memories of Canadian winters in Toronto, trudging to open up a crappy coffee shop at 5 am, half baked and listening to this record.

Nothing Sam and Co. did before or after really hit me from a top-to-bottom album perspective, to be honest. You could hide this record in some kid's classic rock collection they inherited from a family member and it would play really well upon the needle dropping. Feels oddly overlooked online, as Sam is mostly remembered as a singles type of artist these days (or so it seems to me.)

✨ Twin Cosmos - Double Action (1982)

Genres: Psychedelic Folk, Avant-Folk, Space Age Pop, Progressive Electronic, Field Recordings, Experimental

First half of this album kicks ass; private press psychedelic space age singer songwriter type stuff. “LosAngeles City” is a total banger. All five tracks on the A Side are really great and are totally in my wheelhouse. The B Side is basically a grab-bag of experimental outsider avant-folk and ambient room noise focused weirdness. Obviously I understand there is an audience for this kind of stuff, and the “each brother records their own juxtaposing side of music” concept is interesting in its own way, but I can’t imagine sitting down and listening to the B side from top to bottom ever again. Loved the first half, though.

We interrupt your regularly programmed edition of The Discover Tab with a Smooth diversion:

✨ Noriki - Dream Cruise (1984)

Genres: Smooth Jazz, Jazz-Funk, City Pop, Jazz Fusion

Excellently smooth city pop fusion; found this looking for highly rated smooth jazz records between the mid-70s and mid-80s. 野力奏一 [Soichi Noriki] is credited as providing arrangement and keyboard on スーパーマリオワールド [Super Mario World], so of course this hits. Would even be a great starting point for both smooth jazz and (mostly instrumental) city pop because this bounces around between chill and energetic, funky and smooth, summer time and neon-drenched night life etc. It really gives you what you will be looking for when you reach for a record like this.

✨ Steps Ahead - N.Y.C. (1989)

Genres: Smooth Jazz, Jazz Fusion

Gat damn that's some smooth, CD-era sterile, corny ass fusion... hell yeah. Incredibly cheesy in the right kind of way, personally. This is elevator ass fusion, but since it's just ahead of the 90s you also get really bombastic cornball shit like "Get It".

This is going to hit for a small percentage of a certain type of person, but it's pretty good stuff if you're in the right mindset. And one thing to note, despite this being smooth and often giving elevator/weather channel jazz vibes, they retain a good amount of fusion's hard edges on some of the solos. It's not all wet cardboard, there's legitimately good jazz solo performances around the corners of this.

✨ Bob James - Obsession (1986)

Genres: Smooth Jazz, Jazz-Funk, Synth Funk

Speaking of, I do love me some corny hyper-digital sounding smooth shit, and let me tell you, and that is what this is too!

Maybe don't need the pop song with vocals "Gone Hollywood" sequenced in the second position, feels more like a middle-of-the-record type song to me, it's nice though. The rest of the tracks are extended digitally smoothed jams that I can totally get down with. You have to be ready to engage with some corny, thin sounding "we were all on cocaine in the 80s" ass production though, but I'm all over that.

✨ Admas - Sons of Ethiopia (1984)

Genres: Jazz Fusion, Easy Listening, Jazz-Funk, Smooth Jazz, Ethio-Jazz, Synth Funk, Dub

Happy to stumble across this because it's incredibly cool, considering it is listed as fusion/smooth jazz primary but mainly contains jangling guitar lines, dubby synths, easy listening and funky jazz elements. Love the slightly warbly, warm texture of this with its plunky synths ("Wed Enate"), drum machines ("Anchi Bale Game"), and synthfunk ("Kalatashew Waga").

And now back to our regularly programmed newsletter…

Dade County Resistance - Every Last Chance (2003)

Genres: Pop Punk, Emo

Positive review for something obscure by dewtaylo always jumps to the top of my listen pile. They've got you covered with the description of this music for sure; this is chunky, melodic, riff-forward emotive guitar rock music that you could categorize as pop punk, power-pop informed second wave emo, and a lot that lands in between there somewhere. They've got some riffy guitar lead lines adding melody on top of lightly-muscular power chord hammering, simple emo bridges to build up tension ("Litmus") and shades of melodic hardcore or vaguely "gruff" punk elements. Sometimes they almost sound like early Saves the Day ("Catalog").

Unsure if it was the mid-album slow number that let some wind out of the sails or if I just got used to their bag of tricks, but I felt like the first half was a little stronger than the B side. Not sure I needed the Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers cover either. I bet if I heard this back in the day I would hold it up as an underrated gem, but it's not bad that's for sure!

That’s it, that’s all. Be excellent to one other.

• Follow me on BlueSky.

• View my Spotify playlist database here.

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Hello y’all!

Lots of stuff happening around my neck of the woods these days. A car accident (don’t worry, nobody was hurt) and on-going issues related to a bulged disc and sciatic nerve have plagued me, but I’m still digging through new releases and compiling my thoughts, don’t worry.

On that note, I shared a quick video recently where I discussed some of my process. Some people seemed to dig it, so I believe I will prepare a Part II at some point.

Aside from that, I have been reconnecting with podcasting through a revival of my old show from around 2012 through 2020, See You Next Wednesday. This time, for reasons, we’re actually just recapping the original run of Beverly Hills, 90210. The internet is screaming for three old men to talk more about Beverly Hills, 90210, right? Hello? (taps screen)

Some stray items to share that have been bouncing around my noggin’:

• I’m still loving the Humano Studios DJ sets, but that also got me revisiting some of these classic compilations of video game soundtrack electronic music from the 2000s.

• Speaking of old television above, one consistent thing is that I always enjoy watching old stuff instead of catching up on the latest shows. Emma has been speed running ER these days, and I’m about to start Cagney & Lacey, because why not?

• This Ween bootleg culled from their tour with the Foo Fighters where they performed in classic duo format is pretty great stuff if you’re a fan.

• Finally, because I can’t stop talking about replicating the experience of watching hours of old television with era-appropriate commercials, this channel has some bangers too.

Otherwise, here’s some music reviews. Hope you enjoy ‘em!

Emoji legend:

• ⛏️ denotes picks of the week, my favs.

• 🌱 seedling denotes albums like a lot and expect could grow on me over the year.

• ✨ albums I would recommend to fans of the genre (i.e. it might not convert new listeners, but you should check it out.)

• ✂ denotes favourite tracks from a given record.

As always, feel free to reach out over on BlueSky or join the Rosy Overdrive Discord server where I can be found now and again.

You can also find me in the corners of Rate Your Music scrounging for obscure emo, hardcore, indie rock and pop punk.

Don’t forget: if you’re reading this in your email it will be cut off.
Read on the web for the full list of reviews!

⛏️ Louie Zong - Strange Weather (2026)

Genres: Smooth Jazz, Nu-Jazz

I don't always have time for every single Louie Zong release, but I really liked Aquarium City and enjoy checking in on what they're doing when they release new albums. Seeing the name and album art for this one was giving big-time Weather Network jazz vibes I had to hit play, and I was not disappointed. Smooth nu-jazz that makes you feel like you're watching temperature data scroll by. I absolutely love this kind of stuff so it's totally up my alley, and this is a phenomenal modern take on the genre without just being a novelty. Great stuff.

⛏️ Paperclip Minimiser - II (2026)

Genres: Ambient Dub, UK Bass, Glitch, IDM, Dubstep, Dub Techno

Minimal, ambient dub and glitch with IDM elements. Pretty much completely in my wheelhouse when it comes to this kind of beautifully textural, cyclical, hypnotic electronic music that squeegees my brain clean and lets me calm down and focus on whatever I need to. Phenomenal, if you're into this type of thing (which obviously I very much am.)

🌱 No/Más - No Peace (2026)

Genres: Grindcore, Deathgrind

Sick death/grind etc. Put this on and blasted through 20 minutes of work. Maybe requires a closer look but for now it was a really effective barrage of angry blast beats and sick riffs that got me pretty amped.

🌱 Green-House - Hinterlands (2026)

Genres: New Age, Ambient, Comfy Synth, Folktronica

Solid cozy synth with ambient and nature recording vibes. Some of this inches into a little corny territory with the folktronica vibes ("Farewell, Little Island") but generally I dig the nature-y new age-y comforting synth approach taken here. The more ambient and chill this gets and the less acoustic-plucky-folktronica it gets, the more I like it.

🌱 Lice - Miami Lice: Season Four (2026)

Genres: Abstract Hip Hop, Jazz Rap, Hardcore Hip Hop

9 years since their last collab, Aesop Rock and Homeboy Sandman return with their fourth—and longest at 27 minutes—Lice EP. If you either know these two rappers, or have heard previous Lice EPs, you'll know what to expect here but the increase in running time just means this feels slightly more substantial than they have in the past. Great stuff from both of them, and in the wake of I Heard It's a Mess There Too continues Aesop's "back to rapping my ass off over sparser beats" era that he has going right now.

🌱 2m8o - Popcorn Ceilings (2026)

Genres: Indie Rock, Twee Pop

Well-rounded indie rock that jumps around between jangly pop and noisy lo-fi slacker rock. A jolt of caffeinated twee-esque energy also rears its head throughout the 25 minute running time. Really nice stuff that is strongest when they have some power behind their dreamy melodies ("Wishy Washy"). This could really grow on me but for now it was a little in-one-ear out-the-other, but I imagine I will be back for further inspections.

🌱 Girl Scout - Brink (2026)

Genres: Indie Rock, Indie Pop

Girl Scout makes the jump from EP band to LP band relatively well, but it still feels like I am waiting for them to really define their sound beyond “RIYL The Beths, Alvvays, Beach Bunny etc.”

This isn't bad at all, but it feels a little like an expected leg-stretch of maturity after their EPs. They are at their best on their most direct tunes ("Crumbs", "Same Kids" etc.) and while their moodier pieces ("Homecoming") aren't bad, they feel like window dressing to some degree, or maybe answers to expectations that they need to prove themselves beyond the EP format. On "Song 1" they show promise that they can have it both ways, though, so I'm not writing them off by any means.

In some ways this feels a little overly-fussed-over as an "album" with its intro and outro tracks. Could be a MP and not a YP but a little editing and this would have made another great EP to be honest.

🌱 Sparrowhawk - Sunflowers in the Moonlight (2026)

Genres: Rock, Power Pop, Hard Rock

I'm not always into the dual-guitar classic-rock type throwback stuff but this band is two-for-two on cromulent-if-a-li'l-corny (non-derogatory) rock records in my book. Band member in a Thin Lizzy shirt in their Bandcamp picture should tell you what you need to know, lol. Can't imagine this would become something I am returning to over and over but it scratched a guitar rock itch I had today and that is good enough. Feel like Sparrowhawk is a little scrappier in a concise way and more effective as such, but if you dug that album I can't imagine not digging this one too, to some degree.

🌱 Mammo - Lateral (2026)

Genres: Ambient Techno, Dub Techno, IDM, Microhouse, Ambient Dub, Ambient

Very good 3xLP set of ambient techno, but I'm likely never going to sit down and listen to all 1hr 40min of this again straight through. Feels tailor made for the vinyl format where each side likely functions as its own thing and you can listen to each "set" as you wish. Still of a high quality but every time I hear albums like this it makes me wish there was a cleaner way to replicate the "sides" on streaming services.

Opener "Intuitive - Portable - Easy to Use" had me a little worried with how repetitive and simple it seemed but the rest of the (three) records unfold in much more liquid manner. Good stuff, just a lot of it.

✨ The Rippingtons featuring Russ Freeman - Kilimanjaro (1988)

Genres: Smooth Jazz, Jazz Fusion, Jazz Pop

Bounced around on some of The Rippingtons' records because I was craving more smooth jazz after listening to Strange Weather. Ended up on this one because something about it sounded just right for my mood. Incredibly smooth, but not quite as "proto-vapor"-y as the other Rippingtons albums I sampled. After loving Catching the Sun but bouncing off other Spyro Gyra albums, this did the trick nicely today. For smooth-brains only.

✨ Choke - Slow Fade or: How I Learned to Question Infinity (2005)

Genres: Post-Hardcore, Alternative Rock, Emo, Melodic Hardcore

It is cool to hear how Choke went from a technical skate punk band with emo influences to more of a forward-thinking post-hardcore type emo band over time. This shares a lot with fellow Canadians Moneen (particularly their early-to-mid career stuff) but where that band injects big hooks into their knotted, twisty emo-rock, Choke are being a little more cerebral about it.

Ultimately, I have the same criticisms for this record that I did for There's a Story to This Moral, which is just that they had found a near-perfect measurement of their sound on Needless to Say and this just continues their trajectory of getting further away from that blend.

Their post-Needless to Say work will definitely be for a certain type of listener, but I keep walking away admiring it and wishing they had more of that skate punk energy and melody in their songs. That said, I'll have to close their discography off with Foreword to see how that fares following up my personal favourite of their career so far.

Divit - Broadcaster (2002)

Genres: Power Pop, Pop Punk

Cromulent power-pop alt-rock type stuff that seems to get a punk rock and pop punk tag just because they made a shift from those genres into this one, similar to how a lot of bands of this era did. Video game soundtrack rock music ("Plan B") that vaguely sounds similar to stuff like late-career MxPx, or maybe a band like Bracket if they had major label production sheen.

Some of these tunes are fine enough, but it's big time in-one-ear-out-the-other. Would be interested if going backwards in their discography brings higher energy or reveal any flecks of punk in their DNA.

That’s it, that’s all. Be excellent to one other.

• Follow me on BlueSky.

• View my Spotify playlist database here.

  The Discover Tab is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Links mentioned in this video include:

• Post-Trash’s new release page.

  • Absolutely essential to my weekly process.

• Rate Your Music’s new release thread on their forums.

  • Always find a few new ones in here, and the genre-tagging is helpful too.

• AOTY’s new release page.

  • I browse through this like I’m flipping through records, and then sample anything that sounds familiar or stands out because of its album art.

• New Releases by Genre (The Comeback Begins).

  • There once was an incredible “New Releases by Genre” function of the Every Noise at Once website, but Spotify killed it. You can get a similar result these days, but it takes some setting up and API fenagling if you’re up for it.

• Then I move on to further curated places to find new music recommendations, such as:

  • Rosy Overdrive: They review 4+ new records every week, if not more. One of the best blogs on the internet, bar none.

  • Faster and Louder: I come here every other week or so and a stack of power-poppy punk rock and garage rock is waiting for me.

  • Add to Want List: Another review-focused site that is always covering stuff I end up digging.

  • Turntable Report: Their monthly release round-ups are always incredibly eclectic and stuffed with the best music out there.

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Hello y’all!

Often times, I wish I had more to say here. I collect all these capsule reviews because I’m a sicko who is addicted to getting thoughts down about the things I’m listening to, but then I go blank when it comes to trying to write an introduction or, I dunno, talk about my life or whatever.

I’ll instead default to some bullet points of things that have been rattling around my brain:

• Revisited Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007) for the first time in probably 15+ years. Still incredibly funny.

• It’s only barely music adjacent, but I watched the documentary Dream Tower (1994) as well, not a bad look at Toronto's Rochdale College (a co-op experimental education space of the late sixties) but felt a little surface. Worth a peek, though.

• A co-worker tipped me off to these Humano Studios DJ sets on YouTube and they have been really great so far. Excellent stuff.

• We have been playing some Crokinole here and there, which I really enjoy. Here’s Maple desperately trying to find a way to be involved in our game the other night:

• AI thumbnails on a couple of the most recent uploads aside (ugh), this channel that creates “reimagined” uploads of specific Nick at Nite broadcasts (“Very Very Noir,” “Very Very Refurbished,” etc.) is also great watchin’:

Otherwise, here’s some music reviews. Hope you enjoy ‘em!

Emoji legend:

• ⛏️ denotes picks of the week, my favs.

• 🌱 seedling denotes albums like a lot and expect could grow on me over the year.

• ✨ albums I would recommend to fans of the genre (i.e. it might not convert new listeners, but you should check it out.)

• ✂ denotes favourite tracks from a given record.

As always, feel free to reach out over on BlueSky or join the Rosy Overdrive Discord server where I can be found now and again.

You can also find me in the corners of Rate Your Music scrounging for obscure emo, hardcore, indie rock and pop punk.

Don’t forget: if you’re reading this in your email it will be cut off.
Read on the web for the full list of reviews!

⛏️ The Refraints - Badminton (2026)

Genres: Indie Rock, Pop Punk, Power Pop

Scrappy, buzzy mostly mid-tempo power-pop-punk that ranks high on the "singer isn’t great but it doesn't matter because they have a backup singer to join in on the melodies" scale ("Kissy Cam"). This took me a couple songs to warm up to, but once I did I dug it a whole lot. Sits between jangly indie rock and power pop with lightly fizzy punk-adjacent energy in the same way some early Lookout! Records bands did. There's some Dirtnap Records type energy in there as well. "Nacho Type" made me think of The Figgs, who I know I name drop way too much and promise I'm not just looking for reasons to compare bands to them, it really sounds like the kind of song they'd write! A couple times I also thought of them as a looser, more shambly Liquid Mike. Another reference point that came to mind was Queer Salutations, which is high praise for me.

⛏️ cootie catcher - Something We All Got (2026)

Genres: Indie Rock, Indie Pop, Twee Pop, Slacker Rock, Power Pop

On Shy at First, cootie catcher pretty cleanly split the difference between clattering electronic textures and straight-forward indie pop, using the former often as foundations to their songs. Here, they're going all-in as indie rock/pop first and electronic flourishes as additional features. It works for them, due in no small part to the strengths of their songs and melodies. This is big, jangly guitar-forward hook-laden twee pop, with off-kilter songs like "Lifestyle" or "Wrong choice" sprinkled in for good measure. "Puzzle Pop" ends up sounding like a mission statement around their cut and paste approach to driving indie pop.

Highly enjoyable stuff, and even with how much I liked this upon first listen, it feels like there's room for appreciation to grow even further. Year-end potential for sure.

🌱 Exhumed - Red Asphalt (2026)

Genres: Death Metal, Deathgrind, Goregrind

I don't know anything about Exhumed beyond "they're the deathgrind band with the bloody logo and gore/horror album covers" but I often check in with legacy bands releasing new music just to see what they sound like and this one actually connected right away. The comments box seems to agree that this isn't just another band whose best days are behind them, and if you handed this to me and told me it was a new band I'd have enjoyed it just as much. Very much "does what it says on the tin" kind of stuff, but effective in its own right.

🌱 Landowner - Assumption (2026)

Genres: Post-Punk, Post-Hardcore, Art Punk

I know I've heard this band in the past, but I feel like my memory of them isn't that they played very skewed post-punk kinda arty post-hardcore math rock type stuff as they do here. Maybe I'm just confusing them with a different band, though. I will say, I don't reach for records that sound like this very often these days, but Assumption held my attention well throughout. They play well with plucky post-punk repetition, weird jangly melodies, art punk chaos ("PRAY for the Environment") and even dabble in some slowcore adjacent indie rock texture ("Expensive Rent"). Nice stuff, if you're into these genres.

🌱 New Found Glory - Listen Up! (2026)

Genres: Pop Punk, Melodic Hardcore, Power Pop, Easycore, Skate Punk

A few of the singles for this sounded promising, and my first reaction is that this is the band doing a tight 35 minute "back to basics" album in a way that really suits them. After trying to expand their palette on Makes Me Sick and Forever and Ever x Infinity having a handful of good tunes in an overlong package, this strikes just the right balance for the most part. It's upbeat NFG bouncy, riffy pop punk with fun head-nodding breakdowns almost all the way. Distills their sound down to the basics so aggressively that it at times only narrowly avoids sounding like self-parody (including the mid-album mid-tempo song with "Medicine") but that's a problem I can deal with this deep into their career.

🌱 joyride! - joyride and friends! (2026)

Genres: Indie Rock, Indie Pop

Almost missed that this one came out earlier this month. Miracle Question was one of my favs from 2022, so I was excited to see a new release from the band.

As mentioned on their bandcamp, this is a "collection / collaboration / extension of the band" which just means: 5 of these songs are the core band, and 10 of them feature some variety of friends / collaborators / guest musicians etc. In practice, this still sounds like joyride!; fuzzy power-poppy mid-tempo indie rock. The kind of thing that gets called pop punk, even if there's not much speed or punk energy in their DNA.

First impressions is that this is strong but for a band who have been very consistent in the past, that consistency is starting to hollow out to familiarity and un-memorability to some degree. I still enjoyed this quite a bit, but need more time to see if a level of comfort and familiarity helps these songs bloom a little.

✨ Latest God - Concrete Kids (2026)

Genres: Punk Rock, Melodic Hardcore

Australian band playing revolution summer style melodic hardcore and punk rock, up-to and including the genre excursions like dipping into random outbursts of dub on "God Botherer". For my tastes this approaches hewing too closely to the original acts, as some of these songs end up sounding like a tribute act. That said, I can't deny they're doing it well.

✨ Templar - Conquering Swords (2026)

Genres: Heavy Metal

Well executed intentionally corny heavy metal from members of bands that seem to span the spectrum of other genres including thrash, death and speed metal. This is a hair better than the intentionally corny stuff of a similar ilk for a couple reasons: the production is nicely scuzzy without sacrificing quality, and the performances feel honest to me. Not sure how to articulate it, but this feels less like some band dudes playing dress up and more like an actual expression of appreciation for this type of metal.

When the other review on RYM says "Iron Maiden meets Mercyful Fate meets the Darkness meets Electric Wizard meets The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion" it just makes a lot of sense. There's flecks of that over-the-top performative nature going on here, but it's... tasteful?... in comparison to other albums of this ilk that I've heard.

That said, it's time to roll out some of my over-used language like "a little faceless" and "unmemorable" because while I had a fine time doing some work to this the other day, it didn't exactly stick to my brain. Worth a look if you really like this type of thing, because it's not a bad example of the style.

✨ Fort Not - You on Repeat (2026)

Genres: Indie Rock, Indie Pop

Cromulent indie pop, mostly of the mid-tempo churningly melodic "slacker" type. Much of this is jangly and poppy ("Stationary", "Careless Love") bringing to mind 90s collegiate indie-pop, and other times it has that grey-day sad sack guitar rock thing going on ("Gymnast"). Totally enjoyable stuff, doesn't blow the roof off by design but I could see this growing on me in a sleeper kind of way.

✨ Scythe - Boiled Alive (2026)

Genres: Death Metal, Technical Thrash Metal

Well-balanced stuff out of Romania is foundationally death-thrash, but there's a whiff of technicality and restlessness that makes it a cut above your average death-thrash throwback act. This is totally in my wheelhouse, I really like a thrashy band throwing riff after riff my way and then diving headfirst into some steamroller death metal sections. Obviously, not the most innovative or groundbreaking music going on here, but it's well performed and executed so I'm mostly pretty happy. Could improve upon further listens as well.

Footballhead - Weight of the Truth (2026)

Genres: Alternative Rock, Emo-Pop

You look at the album cover for their latest album, you read the press kit which has the terms "unapologetically-buttrock-inspired" (and a RIYL section including Finch, The Story So Far, Trust Company) then you press play on "Peace of Mind" which has a verse that sounds a LOT like Linkin Park. Can't say they didn't warn ya, right?

Honestly, I'm not sure what to think here. Much like the press kit mentions, it feels like they are coming from a place of genuine love for this kind of music. Personally, I am all for bands reclaiming genres like like this that got written off when they reached the apex of their popularity. Sometimes this sounds like actual butt rock ("Used to Be", "Comforting") and other times it retains their approach to poppy punk and melodic hardcore ("Death to a Past Life").

All of it is executed slickly, and professionally. It didn't really make me feel much though, and the hooks aren't so bracingly cheat-code level hooky that I have to slam repeat on any of these songs. I'm sure this will make a certain type of listener incredibly happy and I like that about this record. I'm not sure I personally need to come back for repeats, but who knows? We'll see.

Voxtrot - Dreamers in Exile (2026)

Genres: Indie Rock, Indie Pop, Dream Pop, Jangle Pop

I dunno, I'm stoked to have Voxtrot back after all these years but honestly I don't think they're beating the "EP Band" allegations again here. It has gotta be hard to live down releases like Raised by Wolves or Mothers, Sisters, Daughters & Wives, and while Voxtrot had a handful of great tunes on it, the general reception was that it was a step down in quality and so the band disappeared basically.

This new record is a bit of a similar story; it never dips into any outright bad tunes, but there's about an EPs worth of highlights alongside a bunch of cromulent but not great material. Maybe I need to be in a more subdued mood to really glom onto what they're putting down here.

Again, I'm happy they're back making music again, but I'll probably reach for a playlist of the best songs before listening to this or their self-titled record in full again.

⛏️ Flop - World of Today (1995)

Genres: Power Pop, Pop Punk, Post-Grunge

I noted it in a previous review, but like a lot of bands from this era, Flop needed an editor—and Kurt Bloch of Fastbacks (whose own albums were often uneven or a little overlong) wasn’t about to step up to the plate. Flop's debut and follow-up, Whenever You're Ready aren’t the longest albums in the world, but their tendency to toss in weirder songs that stray into other genres on the back half would always get the better of them.

They’re still up to those tricks, placing the outlier song with horns (“Vancouver Door Company”) and weird Beatles-esque tune (“Yellow Rainbow”) on the second side while front-loading most of their higher-energy, straight-to-the-point stuff. That’s tough, because it means the album feels like it’s running out of steam before they whip out “Two Martians Working” to leave you on an energetic note... well, before it turns into a partially acoustic, noisy closing number.

Regardless, the material here feels strong enough to leave you generally happy with the 37 minutes spent. It mostly stays in the post-grunge, alt-rock, power-pop territory, which works well if you’re just looking for more of that sound.

RIYL: The Figgs, Fastbacks, Triple Fast Action, Super Deluxe etc.

⛏️ Ween - The Pod (1991)

Genres: Experimental Rock, Neo-Psychedelia, Slacker Rock, Psychedelic Rock, Noise Rock, Comedy Rock, Heavy Psych

When I was a teenager, I hated Ween. I thought they were stupid and annoying. I recall a friend trying to get me into them again and again, and eventually I found some songs I liked scattered across Chocolate and Cheese, The Mollusk and White Pepper. I started to say that I was a fan of "post-Pure Guava Ween". Around 2006 or so, I became an enormous pot head after graduating from College and moving to Toronto. My enjoyment of Ween skyrocketed and I was now a non-apologetic fan of the aforementioned records. I loved The Mollusk, and the most recently released Quebec seemed like the best of all of the band's worlds. Their masterpiece, maybe!?

I say all this, because even when I fully embraced the band, I felt like The Pod was a step too far. It was too annoying, too muddy and distant and fucked up. Sure, I enjoyed "Pork Roll Egg and Cheese" but 76 minutes of this shit? Fuck no. Didn't help that it starts with a song that feels like some kind of unending fake-out. Even if I was stoned, I'd put it on and feel uneasy and unsettled and like I needed to turn it off immediately.

Anyway, today I listened to it and realized actually? I love this. It's everything a detractor of the band could rightfully claim; feverish, sometimes unlistenable, annoying, repetitive, prankish, etc. And yet, it establishes the band as genuinely talented chameleonic genre-spoofers. I love the run from "Right to the Ways and the Rules of the World" to "Demon Sweat". Insane that any legitimate record label heard any of these songs and said "Let's put that out", but I'm happy they did.

Would not argue with anyone who hates this record, but somehow it has finally unlocked for me.

✨ Naked Eyes - Burning Bridges (1983)

Genres: Synthpop, New Wave, New Wave, Sophisti-Pop

Big fan of Tony Mansfield and New Musik so I figured why not take a peek at more stuff they produced? This is slick new wavey sophisti-synth-pop and if you dig what New Musik was doing, you'd likely find something to enjoy here. Songs like "A Very Hard Act to Follow" feel right in line with New Musik's vibe.

It's also a good example of a band with a major hit that feels fresh when re-framed with knowledge of the producers/musicians. In the context of the album, it stands out (both as a cover, and the poppiest thing on a pop record) but does feel like an extension of their sound. I forgot the textures of the rest of the song when all that sticks in your mind is the radio-ready hook.

✨ Christopher Cross - Christopher Cross (1979)

Genres: Yacht Rock , Soft Rock, Adult Contemporary , AOR

Dudes like me will listen to this and say "Hell yeah." A soft ass masterpiece. Doesn't matter that people think this stuff is incredibly uncool, the smooth atmosphere is off the charts and the melodies are like syrupy wine that goes down easy. More people could use embracing corny, unpretentiously effective music like this.

✨ Saint Etienne - I've Been Trying to Tell You (2021)

Genres: Downtempo, Ambient Pop, Plunderphonics, Ambient Dub, Trip Hop, Vaporwave

Lush and ethereal ambient pop. I came to Saint Etienne because someone in a comments box for Gran Turismo said "This is The Cardigans trying to do a Saint Etienne album the same year that Saint Etienne tried to make a The Cardigans album" and that made me want to check them out. I bounced around a bunch of their records, but a friend put me onto this one which really slotted into my ambient/progressive pop type mood I have found myself in the past few weeks. This is way more focused on mood and texture with some light vocal work that almost sounds more like samples, and I see in reviews on RYM that people almost seem to describe this as a side project record for the group. What makes this work for me is how these tracks feel at once long-form and progressive (to some degree) but are presented in relatively bite-sized formats; not much here is longer than around five and half minutes. That helps things move along even when you're getting lost in the lushness. Very nice indeed.

✨ Purelink - Signs (2023)

Genres: Ambient Dub, Ambient, Downtempo, Ambient Techno, Illbient, Glitch

Incredibly liquid ambient electronic with dub and minimal techno elements. I dug this the most when it had a scattered, flickering and unpredictable feel to the rhythms ("In Circuits") and less when it dips into overly hypnotic and repetitive stretches. Still, can't deny that there's something very nice going on here. Definitely makes me want to hear more from Peak Oil.

✨ The Movielife - This Time Next Year (2000)

Genres: Pop Punk, Melodic Hardcore

This was my entry point to the band, and it's where they really nail down their sound into a perfect meeting place between near-syrupy poppy punk and melodic hardcore with a sprinkling of emo. Remains a shining example of the "hardcore dudes playing pop punk" genre.

Elsewhere in the music world, New Found Glory were amping up the slick hooks that would lead to easycore being a thing, and Saves the Day were taking their Lifetime worship to new heights, but The Movielife had their own thing going on despite sitting on the shelf alongside those bands. Unlike them, I think a defining factor of The Movielife is that they took the finger-pointing sing-a-long energy of hardcore and softened it in a way that retained the crowd interaction without it just being "pop punk, sometimes with breakdowns" or "Lifetime, but softer/whinier".

Example: "Deal With It" inherits chugging riffs from hardcore but is never "actually heavy", despite being built upon a foundation that alternates between the "hardcore influence" section and pop punk melodies. And then, the bow on top is having that "It's over now / get used to it / burn my picture and go to sleep" stretch that you can guarantee would whip up a crowd.

And when they do have a heavier approach ("Pinky Swear", "How Can You Even Face Me?"), it's massaged so effortlessly into the song alongside incredibly poppy sections.

Even if I didn't have fond memories of learning "This Time Next Year" on guitar as a teenager, I still think this would hold up.

✨ The Movielife - It's Go Time (1999)

When I first got into The Movielife circa This Time Next Year, I had a bunch of these songs downloaded off Napster and burned to CD-Rs and so a good few of these songs are really burned into my brain. In that way, I can't dislike this and still find it incredibly endearing even if the last couple songs are a bit weak.

Youthful and scrappy in that "they haven't quite nailed it yet" type of way, as songs bounce between poppy punk, emo and Long Island style melodic hardcore. At this point, they're kind of slapping different chunks of song-types together, but honestly it works pretty well and (even though it slots into a sound other bands were doing at this time) they already sound like themselves. In particular, the one-two-three punch the album opens on is great.

✂ Barefood, Dead to the World, Champ

Wax - 13 Unlucky Numbers (1995)

Genres: Punk Rock, Pop Punk, Alternative Rock

I've bounced off this record a bunch over the years, as it always was coming up when I would look for 90s pop punk that I hadn't heard yet. Genre tags on here probably should be flipped, as this is firmly in the "major label alternative rock with poppy punk influences" rather than anything that retains any actual punk rock DNA. The big song here ("California", which I’m only now remembering was mainly known for that Spike Jonze video days after listening to it) is exactly one of those hooky, mid-tempo power-poppy alt-rockers that gets erroneously called pop punk. They do shake things up enough for this to be pop punk adjacent though ("Stop Sign", "Too Well"). In that way they bring to mind other bands that straddle those lines like Superdrag, The Magnolias, Fig Dish et al. even if they don't exactly sound the same. Regardless, it's 23 minutes and pretty inoffensive, and a couple of these songs stick well enough.

✂ Who Is Next, In Spite of Me, Stop Sign, California

That’s it, that’s all. Be excellent to one other.

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Hello y’all!

Whenever I end up with a stack of capsule reviews like today’s, I feel the need to apologize to anyone who lacks the interest in aggressive/metal releases… because this edition is very death metal forward. I’ve just been in that kind of mood these days, I suppose.

For those of you who are not fans, I offer you a) a couple non-aggro reviews for good measure this week and b) a picture of Maple sunbathing:

Otherwise, here’s some music reviews. Hope you enjoy ‘em!

Emoji legend:

• ⛏️ denotes picks of the week, my favs.

• 🌱 seedling denotes albums like a lot and expect could grow on me over the year.

• ✨ albums I would recommend to fans of the genre (i.e. it might not convert new listeners, but you should check it out.)

• ✂ denotes favourite tracks from a given record.

As always, feel free to reach out over on BlueSky or join the Rosy Overdrive Discord server where I can be found now and again.

You can also find me in the corners of Rate Your Music scrounging for obscure emo, hardcore, indie rock and pop punk.

Don’t forget: if you’re reading this in your email it will be cut off.
Read on the web for the full list of reviews!

⛏️ Picture - Eeeeeeee (2026)

Genres: Minimal Techno, Dub Techno, Ambient Techno

Euphoric minimal techno with a heavy emphasis on tactile, organic textures; splits the difference between ambient elements and beat-forward danceability incredibly well. This is practically made for me: longform, brain-clearing stuff with a decidedly human pulse.

Cannot co-sign this sentence from the Bandcamp notes hard enough: "You could have the 38 most productive minutes of your life with it spinning as your soundtrack next to you."

Highly recommended to fans of the genre(s). Thanks to for putting this one on my radar.

⛏️ Fossilization - Advent of Wounds (2026)

Genres: Death Metal, Death Doom Metal

Never heard any of Fossilization's previous work but saw this in the new release bin (and this "shreddit" [ugh] release tracker tool) tagged as death so I gave it a whirl.

At first I thought this would border on the constant-blasting type death metal that can give me fatigue, but they never hammer that stuff home for too long before they change things up in interesting and riff-focused ways. Maybe the drums drop to a simpler pattern while the guitars tremolo to their hearts content before hopping back in ("Cremation of a Seraph"). Or maybe they pull back entirely and provide some bleak, overcast atmosphere. It just gives things a nice level of variety while still pressing the buttons you want this type of music to press.

Wrap it all up in a package that runs 35 minutes? Big time potential for this to be an album I come back to all year. So nice I listened to it twice already today.

🌱 Converge - Love Is Not Enough (2026)

Genres: Metalcore, Mathcore, Sludge Metal, Hardcore Punk

I'm certainly not a Converge expert or mega-fan, but in particular I have enjoyed their late-career trajectory with All We Love We Leave Behind and The Dusk in Us in particular landing for me. I'm seeing a lot of hype around this being one of the best they've ever done, but personally it doesn't hit as hard as those two. This feels a little like a victory lap type record, revisiting some of what worked on those albums and doing a bit of a greatest hits of their textures and styles in a concise 30 minute package. It flew by and I dug my time with it, but I'm not sure it stands neck and neck with even the best of their later records. Still, a solid and well-rounded record and I can't imagine dyed-in-the-wool fans being let down by this.

🌱 Slant of Light - Slant of Light (2026)

Genre: Indie Rock

Grab-bag indie rock; some moments have a pinch of Sleater-Kinney in there ("Archetypes"), and other times they have that post-hardcore-esque angularity that recalls (an admittedly much calmer) Unwound ("Lie Like the Deer"). Brief shades of gothic rock influence, grey-day slowcore and noisy outbursts—sometimes all within the same song. My usual way of talking about albums like this is to say that it has the right ingredients, and the right measurements.

Maybe not the most remarkable album in the world, but high potential for being a sleeper in 2026 because I like everything here and they get out before the 35 minute mark.

Have to thank (go follow them!) for recommending someone pass this record along to me. They were right to!

🌱 Voidhämmer - Noxious Emissions (2026)

Genres: Death Metal, Stenchcore, Crust Punk

Stompy, crusty and cavernous riff-and-groove forward death metal. Genre and sub tags get you pretty much all the way there. When the snare hits and has that tweaked hardcore sound with a tasteful amount of cave-dwelling reverb, my brain says "yes, please". The drumming in particular is a highlight, I dig the active cymbal work on the intro of "Coffin Leakage". None of this is going to blow any minds, but I was in the right place and the right frame of mind to thoroughly enjoy these 14 minutes.

🌱 Mors Verum - Canvas (2026)

Genres: Dissonant Death Metal, Progressive Metal, Technical Death Metal

Twisty, dense death metal with technical and progressive sub-tags and some foundational dissonance to the riffing. A lot of dissonant and modern technical death metal doesn't do it for me, because it usually means "aggressively fast and sounds like no human had a hand anywhere in its composition" but this all feels and sounds very organic and thoughtful. Lots of turns, tempo changes and surprises without it coming off wildly calculated or egghead; a whiff of progressive air without it totally being for dorks ("Canvas" has some post-rock elements in its atmospheric passages.) But when they focus in on riffs or slow things down, it generally passes the "is it heavy still?" skill check.

I wasn't sure about this based on the band name and album art (caught a "death metal, but for hipsters" air for some reason) but I'm glad I took a chance because it's well rounded and enjoyable.

✨ Scythe - Boiled Alive (2026)

Genres: Death Metal, Thrash Metal

Well-balanced stuff out of Romania is foundationally death-thrash, but there's a whiff of technicality and restlessness that makes it a cut above your average death-thrash throwback act. This is totally in my wheelhouse, I like a thrashy band throwing riff after riff my way and then diving headfirst into some steamroller death metal sections. Obviously, not the most innovative or groundbreaking music, but it's well performed and executed so I'm mostly pretty happy. Could improve upon further listens as well.

✨ Void Monuments - Posthumous Imprecation (2026)

Genres: Death Metal

Had to do some work on the weekend, and wanted another 2026 death metal release to check out so I tossed this one on. Hard to express my feelings about this, as it seemed totally cromulent and did the trick. Very "does what it says on the tin" style death metal. Good, down the middle old school style and served me well for 36 minutes. Could improve upon closer inspection but my gut is telling me there's a couple other albums already this year that I'd reach for over revisiting this one, but you never know.

Slaughterday - Dread Emperor (2026)

Genres: Death Metal

Totally fine OSDM-aping stuff. What's the death metal version of pizza thrash? This isn't quite at that level of cartoonish approach, but it's totally down-the-middle stuff that went in-one-ear-out-the-other.

Reviews elsewhere on the internet name-check all the bands you'd expect—like Entombed—alongside Asphyx, Autopsy and Bolt Thrower. I guess these all make sense—this is often mid-tempo, has doom-forward moments, and is generally riff-focused in a Bolt Thrower-esque way, but nothing solidified as memorable to me. Lots of very melodic lead guitar soloing that kind of pulls focus away as well.

Can’t actually pinpoint this as being bad, but I mostly felt nothing while listening, if that makes sense.

⛏️ Necrocannibal - Somnambuliformic Possession (1994)

Genres: Death Metal, Thrash Metal

First song after the introduction hits and I'm already thinking: hell yeah, buddy.

Sick death metal with a diligently thrashy approach to its riffing. This is the kind of death metal that got me to fall in love, because I could appreciate the classic elements of the genre while it was being pulsed into oblivion alongside starts and stops and stretches of varying tempos. Regardless of what they are doing—slow and heavy, fast and pummeling—it's in service of very entertaining riffs and trying to get your head banging. Cherry on top is the legible but still evil sounding vocals. Maybe I'm just in the right mood, but this gave me a nice big rush that I'll probably be chasing for the afternoon.

Basically, this is the type of record that makes me search out new-to-me releases with sub-100 ratings. In 1994, this probably sounded like old hat or a little behind the times, but it's right in my wheelhouse.

I guess this is a demo tape (according to cirithungol's review from 2010) but I was bopping around some mainstream 90s death metal releases this morning... and this sounds better than at least two thirds of them. It's possible the version on streaming has been remastered, but regardless it sounds great to me.

✨ Creeping Death - Wretched Illusions (2019)

Genres: Death Metal, Metalcore, Thrash Metal

I found myself getting into death metal via albums like Holocene Extinction and The Grand Descent alongside vintage thrash metal bands who cranked their speed and heaviness up so much they accidentally turned into death-thrash.

As such, Creeping Death is a name I've heard a lot but never actually listened to. I can imagine had this landed on my plate in 2019 or 2020 I would have gone nuts for it right alongside those records, as it contains both the hardcore influenced death metal I love, with a tinge of thrashiness that gets my inner headbanger stoked. Good shit.

✨ Frozen Soul - Crypt of Ice (2021)

Genres: Death Metal

Very good Bolt Thrower-esque death metal with big time hardcore riffing (comments box user calls it "Bolt Thrower you can 2-step to" which, yeah.) In my journey through death metal I'm always laser focused on the newest of the new, or obscure/underrated vintage releases, so I need to remember that I should check more records out from within the last decade because there's a lot I've missed. This is straight forward stuff, but in the kind of way that feels like comfort food instead of an imitation.

✨ Amorphis - The Karelian Isthmus (1992)

Genres: Death Metal, Death Doom Metal

Slow and heavy death metal featuring a good amount of doom influence. Incredibly well rounded and very satisfying. Not a whole lot to add to the conversation around this record, but I have to second dewtaylo's review on Rate Your Music saying that this got better and better as it went along. Bonus track "Vulgar Necrolatry" at the end is particularly a highlight. Good stuff.

✨ Pariah - Blaze of Obscurity (1989)

Genres: Thrash Metal, Speed Metal, Heavy Metal, Technical Thrash Metal

Entertaining thrash metal with undertones of the speed/heavy varieties. Some nice technicality to their riffing and rhythm section, but none of this is going to change the world. It's fun jean jacket can of Molson type stuff, and as far as it goes this is well rounded and enjoyable.

✨ 30 Foot Fall - Ever Revolving, Never Evolving (1999)

Genres: Pop Punk, Skate Punk

This is the kind of snotty skate punk that gets by on energy and attitude alone. Sits beside bands like Donuts n' Glory or Assorted Jelly Beans in terms of their ability to sound sloppy and off-the-rails while still being an appropriately tight band. Even with this having a 15 minute long track of silence hiding the hidden track, it's too long and cutting some covers and throwaway songs would help a lot. Trim this to the 10 best songs and you've got something I'd probably come back to again, but it wasn't bad otherwise.

That’s it, that’s all. Be excellent to one other.

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Hello y’all!

I don’t know about where you are, but in the past couple days around here things went from cold to colder.

Despite the weather, we spent a day in Toronto recently looking at this and that, trying Dad’s, and doing some quick vintage shopping. Didn’t end up grabbing any records, though my order (that I forgot I had made) of This Shit Is Geniuser came in, which I’m stoked on. I also made the trip in to catch Antarctigo Vespucci live with The Golden Apples opening, which was a great show.

Hope everyone out there follows Maple’s lead and finds a good ray of sunlight to bathe in this afternoon. Otherwise, for now here’s my latest stack of capsule reviews for ya - let me know if you’re stoked on any records lately in the comments!

Emoji legend:

• ⛏️ denotes picks of the week, my favs.

• 🌱 seedling denotes albums like a lot and expect could grow on me over the year.

• ✨ albums I would recommend to fans of the genre (i.e. it might not convert new listeners, but you should check it out.)

• ✂ denotes favourite tracks from a given record.

As always, feel free to reach out over on BlueSky or join the Rosy Overdrive Discord server where I can be found now and again.

You can also find me in the corners of Rate Your Music scrounging for obscure emo, hardcore, indie rock and pop punk.

Don’t forget: if you’re reading this in your email it will be cut off.
Read on the web for the full list of reviews!

⛏️ Ratboys - Singin' to an Empty Chair (2026)

Genres: Indie Rock, Power Pop, Alt-Country, Slacker Rock

I'll be one of the first people to tell you that I grew tired of the alt-country stem of modern indie rock (often with some light shoegaze elements) pretty quickly. Bands like Wednesday or Big Thief generally have an early album I really dug and then a string of releases that kinda got more and more boring or samey to me as they went along. Ratboys were a bit like that too, I dug AOID and GN but fell off them a little bit with later releases. The Window was a fine step back in the right direction, but on their latest they are taking those steps and building on them effectively.

"Light Night Mountains All That" and "Anywhere" are two of their most immediately enjoyable tunes in recent memory. Later, they turn an eight and a half minute slow burner ("Just Want You to Know the Truth") into something quite emotionally impactful. The B-side in particular is a surprise, with a trilogy of longer songs that don't sacrifice their energy and melodies for purely atmospheric diversions, but instead blend those three of their strengths together deftly.

All of this was established on The Window (which itself had an eight plus minute track on the B-side that) but here it feels like they're employing these tricks even more productively.

⛏️ Ulrika Spacek - EXPO (2026)

Genres: Indie Rock, Post-Punk, Neo-Psychedelia, Post-Rock, Krautrock, Indietronica

Cool grab bag of neo-psych indie rock stuff here. Pretty sure I heard and enjoyed Modern English Decoration back in 2017 but haven't been following them too closely since then. This incorporates some trip hop / light electronics to their sound, which work well but I still like them most when they're bouncing skewed art pop guitar riffs around with noisy blown out post-punk abandon. Singer dips into a bit of a Yorke-ian thing on "Build a Box Then Break It" which I thought was a little distracting even though I was digging the song otherwise. "Square Root of None" and "Weights & Measures" split the difference between their electronic-flecked neo-psych and arty indie rock stuff a bit more effectively. Overall though, a good one if you dig this kind of stuff for sure.

⛏️ Invictus - Nocturnal Visions (2026)

Genres: Death Metal, Thrash Metal

Likeable death metal with nearly no frills. This is straight-forward, riff-focused, secondary "thrash" tag type stuff. They keep things simple, play to their strengths and get out before they reach 40 minutes. Even with songs that (aside from the closer) don't stretch their legs out too far, this seems to be built upon dense stretches of death-thrash, which is A-OK by me.

Sometimes, this almost reminds me of a death metal take on Time Does Not Heal. My first couple spins of this album felt a little lightweight and forgettable, but over the week or two I have found myself returning to this record a bunch. It sits in a wildly comfortable place for me and is just too densely satisfying to ignore.

🌱 Skulld - Abyss Calls to Abyss (2026)

Genres: Death Metal, Crossover Thrash

Pretty massive stench/death type stuff, with riffs that definitely get into metallic/hardcore territory throughout. The stench side of the death metal coin isn't one that I'm intensely familiar with, and this seems to have some of that d-beat punk/stench angle in its DNA but seems to have some varying types of "-core" in its foundation too. A lot of mid-tempo anvil-heavy riffs with half-time drumming ("Le Diable and the Snake") that takes you by the hand and hucks you into death metal stretches with hardcore intensity. Gotta be a whiff of metalcore's reliance on the chug-heavy breakdown moments in here as well. They're taking from a lot of genres that I love, so maybe I'm just getting lost in the influence sauce and someone else will come along and be able to describe it more succinctly, but know it sits somewhere on the death/crust/hardcore spectrum at least. I imagine they will gain comparisons to early Sacrilege just on genres + singer alone. This sits juuuust on the right side of that kind of throwback metal that goes "look how retro looking out art is" but if it hauls it hauls, and this kinda hauls to me.

🌱 Lapêche - Autotelic (2026)

Genres: Indie Rock

Well rounded and driving indie rock that feels like it has its hands in a lot of different pots despite being built upon a melody-and-riff-forward alt rock foundation. Some of this has a dreamy pop element, and elsewhere they have a nervy new wave bop to them. "When R U From" sounds so much like a band that I want to use as a reference point but apparently has completely disappeared from my brain.

This could grow on me over the year, because it sits in a very comfortable place considering my tastes. For now, I was a little soft on it despite enjoying my time with it.

🌱 Joyce Manor - I Used to Go to This Bar (2026)

Genres: Pop Punk, Power Pop, Emo-Pop, Jangle Pop

I've never expected Joyce Manor to release "Joyce Manor Part II" or "Never Hungover Again, Again", so them casually releasing cromulent sub-20 minute power pop albums once in a while doesn't really bother me. I totally understand why they might be a band for certain fans who have dropped off, but if they keep sneaking one or two "Last You Heard of Me" or "Souvenir"'s on their albums I don't mind. If you are still waiting around for them to release something that recalls their more energetic days, this probably isn't for you.

If anything, this one sounds even more transitional in nature than usual. They seem to be sneaking in some referential moments like the title track's riff referencing Sum 41, or "Well, Whatever It Was" sounding like a Third Eye Blind-era radio pop rock single from a non-existent one hit wonder band. People are going to hate "After All You Put Me Through", I just know it.

Like a lot of bands these days, releasing 4 singles (which are some of the best tunes here) off a 9 song release was a mistake. Not sure if this one will grow on me much more over the year, but some of these songs I dig quite a bit.

✨ Deathraiser - Forged in Hatred (2026)

Genres: Thrash Metal, Death Metal

Very cromulent death-tinged thrash metal. Anything you see written about this band or this album on the internet is gonna reference Kreator, Sepultura, Demolition Hammer etc. so you will know the measurements of ingredients here. This is speedy thrash metal that inches into death territory with some tremoloing and just the sheer speed and aggression of it. It's entertaining but quite derivative, though I didn't mind too much even if you can switch between the opening second or two of "Empire of Ignorance" and "Composition Parasite" and barely notice a difference. The very definition of in-one-ear-out-the-other, but I'm leaning on the positive side of the coin with my rating even though I could see this being a real down-the-middle 2.5 star type release on some days.

⛏️ Treepeople - Guilt Regret Embarrassment (1991)

Genres: Indie Rock, Slacker Rock, Noise Rock, Post-Punk

I understand that Treepeople aren't exactly some incredibly obscure act (being Doug Martsch's pre-Built to Spill band brings them a certain level of attention) but it's mindboggling to me that this album isn't regarded as an all-time 90s indie rock classic across larger swaths of music fans. Or maybe I've just spent too much time with this, having stumbled upon it back when I was a Built to Spill obsessive in my early 20s.

These songs criss-cross wires of warped pop melodies, buzzsaw-noisy riffing, driving post-punk basslines, and even some punk rock energy ("GRE"). There's some youthful missteps ("Wasted on You") that feel a little too simple, but ultimately are a part of the charm. Even when they cover David Bowie's "Andy Warhol" it sounds unmistakably Martsch.

The Something Vicious for Tomorrow EP can't really stand up to this in my personal opinion, but it's equally as fascinating considering how it continues Martsch's trajectory towards what they would do in Built to Spill.

⛏️ The Monkees - Good Times! (2016)

Genres: Sunshine Pop, Pop Rock, Power Pop, Psychedelic Pop, Jangle Pop

I don't think we talk enough about how good this is for an album released by The Monkees in the year 2016.

The fact that it works as well as it does—having been made up of previously discarded or written material (Neil Diamond's "Love to Love" was put aside when the band went to work on Headquarters plus there's cuts by Harry Nilsson, Carole King and more) alongside new work from contemporary writers (Adam Schlesinger, Rivers Cuomo, Ben Gibbard, Noel Gallagher etc.)—is a marvel.

I love how you can hear the influence of these writers in each song while still feeling utterly and completely Monkees-esque. Without knowing Andy Partridge of XTC wrote "You Bring The Summer," the sound is still unmistakable and there's more than a little Fountains of Wayne in "Our Own World," but it also can't be confused for anything but a classic Monkees tune. I'm not totally in love with Gibbard's "Me & Magdalena" but it sits nicely in the middle of the record as a kind of duet between Nesmith and Dolenz.

I think the worst thing you could say about this is that it's just a little shy of feeling cohesive; there's a bit of an all-over-the-map feel to the album, but hey it's a 50th anniversary celebration record so its bound to feel a little "greatest hits-y."

⛏️ The dB's - Repercussion (1982)

Genres: Jangle Pop, Power Pop, New Wave, Neo-Psychedelia

Stands for Decibels is the record by The dB's that gets the most attention, but their follow-up is no slouch either. This is the record that introduced me to the band, not sure why I searched this one out after hearing They Might Be Giants sing "She doesn't have to have her dB's records back now" as a teenager, but this was where I landed (before also seeking out their debut, which of course is phenomenal.)

And for the uninformed, they sound quite a bit like a band that might get name checked by TMBG would; nervy, jangly power pop and new wave with various accoutrements (horns, keyboards, etc.) The band has a way with incredibly sneaky earworms, such as "Happenstance" which starts very unassumingly and slowly wriggles itself into your brain.

A modern comparison point might be fellow melody-worshippers Fountains of Wayne, who have a similar knack for crafting vivid storytelling tunes out of various pop detritus. See: the gentle alt-strum of "From a Window to a Screen", the rollickingly hooky tale of broken hearted suicide that is "Amplifier" or "Ask for Jill", a song about mastering a record.

It's quite top-heavy though, as the A-side is packed with memorable songs, and the flipside is mostly deeper cuts that blend together a bit despite still having some solid highlights. For the adventurous pop music fan though, lots to love here.

✨ Duplomacy - All These Long Drives (2006)

Genres: Indie Rock, Indie Pop

Sometimes sleepy (non-derogatory) bedroom indie rock from the 2000s that recalls early Death Cab for Cutie or It's Hard to Find a Friend era Pedro the Lion. Also used to call this kind of stuff "grey day" indie rock. Sad sack, slow-core influenced stuff but with a potent through line of hushed melodies. Some songs ("Coppertone") work up to cathartic releases that resemble other acts of the era who similarly worked within the Venn diagram overlap of emo and indie. I can see why this might not have stuck in many people's minds over the year (I'm the tenth rating on here) but I've always felt like it was an above average take on this type of record and find it incredibly cozy, if a little unoriginal.

✨ Adult Magic - Adult Magic (2019)

Genres: Power-Pop, Alternative Rock

When this dropped in 2019, I was pretty darn stoked about there being a supergroup of sorts featuring members of bands like Broadcaster, Iron Chic, Get Bent, Wax Phantom plus guest vocals from Mimi of Nona. Every year or so I circle back on this one and it still scratches that power-pop-alt-rock-and-roll type itch I always have.

When Jesse from Broadcaster sings, it sounds a lot like the heart-on-sleeve stuff you would expect if you've heard that band ("Achin'", "The Other Side"). Elsewhere, they have a bit of a vaguely heartland-y tinge to their hook-forward indie/alt rock sound ("Losing Face"). "Sign of the Times" almost sounds a little like Charmer period Tigers Jaw. Only on "Many Moons Ago" do they approach anything near the orgcore/DIY punk you might expect from a few of the members' other bands.

At 10 songs in 30 minutes, this isn't that much of a commitment but even then a few of these tracks sound a bit like they are re-writing the same song. Doesn't really bother me, as I'm always game for this kind of stuff. Would love to hear another one from them someday.

✨ Smiley - The Smile Gets Wild (1989)

Genres: Hip Hop

Smiley was one of the first (if not the first?) woman to break out of the Detroit rap scene in the late eighties and release a full length record. This has some sick booming old school production and sample work. The wonky sound quality (ripped from an old cassette I assume) adds to the charm.

As an MC, Smiley holds it down well and has some fun personality to their flows. They don't totally stand out of the pack for this era of rap, but they're above average for sure. Very much sounds like a debut album from the era because production quality jumps around song to song, and so does Smiley's flow as if they're trying everything they can. "The Commencement" is a bit of a throwaway instrumental that samples the music from Peanuts, but otherwise this is a neat piece of history.

✨ Drawn and Quartered - Congregation Pestilence (2021)

Genres: Death Metal

Continuing my journey through their catalogue, this is definitely my favourite of this era of D&Q. This is just evil, nasty riffing from start to finish. Machine gun drumming might pummel you into monotony but they are doing a lot around it that keeps me entertained. When they do slow down, the drummer really stretches out and does a lot of sick, showy work. Then they toss some satanic lead solos on top now and again, and you've got a stew goin'. That stretch in the middle of "Proliferation of Disease" just kicks so much ass. Just when I thought maybe I was a little down the middle on this stretch of the band's career, they pull me back in!!

✨ Taken by Savages - Sleepaway Cramp (2016)

Genre: Noise Pop, Alternative Rock

I’m a big fan of Joe Ziemba's work through Bleeding Skull! and AGFA (American Genre Film Archive.) I was also a big fan of the band The Like Young back when they were active. Then, one day I realized Ziemba was the same Joseph from the aforementioned band (and twee act Wolfie too) and my mind exploded. My film nerd and music nerd worlds, colliding!

Alongside Annie Choi, they put out this record as Taken by Savages; It’s really great, slightly dark-n-moody, but still super-catchy fuzz-rock. Mostly built upon fuzz-bass, drums and some The Rentals-esque synths, subtle interlocking melodies get layered until they reach near-earworm territories ("Bobcat", "Cleave It").

Absolutely worth looking into for fans of The Thermals, Flin Flon, et al. For a more directly 90s aping power pop forward take on this sound, check out Ziemba's album released under the Desacatyl moniker.

Drawn and Quartered - Feeding Hell's Furnace (2012)

Genres: Death Metal

They still don't seem to have a bad album in them, but for me the 2010s output from D&Q so far is where they get closest to meat and potatoes versus the more varied sound they had in their earlier releases. Nothing wrong with that, this is great but I think around this time they got a bit more subtle about the things that set them apart... and the records probably require a more nuanced ear than I have to piece together the tricks they're pulling. I'm definitely someone who likes when death metal twists and turns and takes big swings, and these songs are just more subtle about that stuff is all. Likely a MP not a YP, but I wouldn't point someone at this for their first taste of D&Q is all I'm saying.

X-Large - Living Large (1997)

Genres: Skate Punk

Canadian skate-punk out of Quebec. Sounds a whole lot like Lagwagon, Bracket, Belvedere, Cigar and a bunch of other Fat Wreck style bands rolled into one. A lot of alternating palm mutes, octave chords, start-stops on a dime, speedy drumming and active melodic basslines. Whatever you're imagining in your head from that description will be at a minimum of 90% the way there.

Not poorly performed or written by any stretch, but I have heard way too much of this stuff so if it's not really, really good or have something else to make it stand out... then it just doesn't quite get there. Couldn't fault anyone who had this when they were in their teens claiming it was an underrated gem or a nostalgic favourite, but it's just too run-of-the-mill to make a lasting impression.

Phantom Limbs - Romance (1983)

Genres: Jangle Pop, Cowpunk, Rock & Roll

The whole "cow-punk" thing isn't totally up my alley, so seeing that as a secondary genre when this album art caught my eye had me questioning things a bit. I find the history of the genre in the UK and eventually California to be interesting, but not a ton of bands labeled that really catch my ears for any length of time.

There's a hefty dose of jangly pop with an undercurrent of surfiness to accompany the twang on Romance though, which makes this intriguing. I can't say every track is a hit but there's probably a good 4 or 5 winners here that make it worth spinning for 80s jangle pop fans.

✂ Dead Language, Wedding, (Isn't It A) Wonderful World?, Slice of Life

Star Ghost Dog - Happylove (1999)

Genres: Indie Rock

Decent noisy power pop type late-90s indie rock; some pretty fun songs scattered throughout this tracklist, but even with it being under 40 minutes this ends up feeling a bit long in the tooth.

Alternates between jangly stuff, loud/soft moments and otherwise driving, energetic pop tunes. Some of the outliers are a swing and a miss, but I could see the band tightening this up to a solid record.

✂ Kite, Downer, Master #1

Shufflepuck - Shufflepuck (1996)

Genres: Alternative Rock, Power Pop

90s geek rock can be frustrating because it has some great, undeniably catchy music but often times it comes couched in really gross lyrical elements. A lot of proto-incel ass type music in that genre, let me tell you. At best, you get something like this record which is suitably catchy, features lots of churning mid-tempo riff-laden songs, and has a lot of "why doesn't she like me", "why can't I be him?", "I need her so bad I'm gonna die", "is she out with another guy?!" type songs. They land just shy of the truly gross stuff, but I guess I need to be thankful they're not singing about whackin' it to a Claire Danes Poster. This isn't exactly well above average, but there's some songs here that scratched the geek rock itch without making my hate myself for enjoying it.

That’s it, that’s all. Be excellent to one other.

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Hello y’all!

I’m still here, doing my capsule reviews as often as I am able to. I still haven’t gotten back into the swing of the new music release days for 2026, but a couple new records have definitely caught my ear already.

A fair warning, the past couple weeks I’ve been in full-on death metal deep dive mode, so we’ve got a bevvy of aggressive stuff in here but (as always!) I’ve tried to pepper it throughout so there’s something for all y’all regardless of your tastes. Let me know what you think!

Emoji legend:

• ⛏️ denotes picks of the week, my favs.

• 🌱 seedling denotes albums like a lot and expect could grow on me over the year.

• ✨ albums I would recommend to fans of the genre (i.e. it might not convert new listeners, but you should check it out.)

• ✂ denotes favourite tracks from a given record.

As always, feel free to reach out over on BlueSky or join the Rosy Overdrive Discord server where I can be found now and again.

You can also find me in the corners of Rate Your Music scrounging for obscure emo, hardcore, indie rock and pop punk.

Don’t forget: if you’re reading this in your email it will be cut off.
Read on the web for the full list of reviews!

Erik Hall - Solo Three (2026)

Genres: Minimalism, Process Music

By virtue of this being Erik Hall's take on four different pieces of American minimalism, this feels maybe a little less profound than Canto Ostinato did, but it's still gorgeous and feels like it is actively clearing out my brain and getting me to breathe again.

Their approach remains the same - recording every layer themselves in reaction to the previously recorded ones - and they are pairing a shorter piece with a longer one on each side. I think "A Folk Study" into "Music for a Large Ensemble" are the most impactful as a pair, but I might also think that because they were the two tracks released in advance so I've had some time with them. They're also maybe the more 'active' pair. "The Temple of Venus Pt. 1" and "Strumming Music" are also great, the latter of which is very hypnotic and goes some beautiful places.

Tombseeker - Tombseeker (2026)

Genres: Death Metal

This has the chainsaw HM2 death metal sound going on, paired up with the cranked snare sound from hardcore. Honestly, first impressions got a hell yeah from me. This feels like somewhere in the venn diagram overlap between death metal and hardcore, but it doesn't seem to be doing it in the way I've understood "deathcore" to be? Press kit name checks Bolt Thrower, Entombed and Suffocation so maybe I'm off in how much hardcore there is in here? Can definitely hear Bolt Thrower in the tank-heavy riffcraft though. This might suffer if you are looking for originality, but I was pretty taken by this on a real gut-level way. Fun "punch through a brick wall" kind of record.

Since this dropped on the 16th, I’ve listened to it probably 8 or 9 times and I just keep loving it. Enormous and wildly addictive.

Two Thumbs Down - Keena (2026)

Genres: Indie Rock, Emo

Much shorter and concise than End All Be All, which saw the band doing everything from random ska upstrokes to horn-adorned indie rock alongside scrappy punk and more.

This one draws a bit more in the lines, featuring mostly melodic indie rock/emo of varying strains. The opening song builds upon Weezer-esque blown-out, churning guitar melodies, and "Get Bent" has that kind of emo-grunge thing going on. They jump to adjacent genres with a jangly acoustic number, but nothing so out-there that it isn't somewhat expected.

I think the shorter EP-length running time here helps and hinders things a little bit. It helps that this is over before you know it and might leave you wanting more, but it also makes this feel a little lightweight—almost like it's a stop-gap collection of tunes between meatier releases. But regardless, I liked the songs here so I can't complain too much.

That Dog. - Totally Crushed Out! (1995)

Genres: Power Pop, Slacker Rock, Alternative Rock, Noise Pop, Post-Grunge

This is one of those albums that unlocked a band for me. I always knew the band from seeing the “Old Timer” video here and there but never really looked into them beyond that. When I first heard this LP in my 20s, it was a real hidden gem type discovery. Then I heard how they went from the scrappy soft-loud indie rock to the enormous sound of Retreat From the Sun and it really cemented them as a great band in my mind.

Listening today, I can say this album has some pacing issues - it's top-heavy with songs like “Ms. Wrong” and “He's Kissing Christian” and then the second half slows things down with a few softer songs in a row and the immediacy is lacking a little bit. But aside from that wrinkle, it's got most of what I look for in an album: noisy indie pop, great harmonies, something to set them apart (the wonderful addition of violin / cello) and a sprinkling of big hooks.

Drawn and Quartered - Extermination Revelry (2003)

Genres: Death Metal

My experience so far with Drawn and Quartered has been a little varied, from loving Hail Infernal Darkness to merely enjoying The One Who Lurks and Lord of Two Horns. I was wondering if maybe they were a one-album band for me, or if there was some kind of magic to their earlier/mid-career work that spoke to me.

Well, it's looking a little like the latter because this fucking kicks ass. This is everything I want from a death metal album served up to me on a silver platter. Enormous riffs, lots of diversity sprinkled between the enormously heavy and the frenetically blasty. A couple thrashy solos for good measure, maybe a light dusting of doom once in a while. Clarity to the production, but not in a way that sacrifices their filthy gnarliness. Thank you, can I have some more?

Maybe familiarity will help me unlock their career trajectory since nothing I've heard from the band has been bad, but for now I'm truly in love with this period and am beyond stoked to hear how Return of the Black Death sits between the two surrounding albums.

That Dog. - Retreat From the Sun (1997)

Genres: Power Pop, Alternative Rock, Indie Pop, Indie Rock, Jangle Pop, Post-Grunge

Probably more consistent an album than Totally Crushed Out!, with highs that reach a similar watermark ("Never Say Never", "Minneapolis") but there's a "major label" feel to the enormous guitars and relative slickness compared to the previous album. It's a bit more power-pop focused with alt-rock and post-grunge style, although still built upon their foundation of hooky, noisy indie rock/pop with violin. If it makes any sense, this is the comfort album I'd probably reach for more often, but Totally Crushed Out! is the one I appreciate more in my brain?

Drawn and Quartered - Return of the Black Death (2004)

Genres: Death Metal

I listened to Extermination Revelry and said "Can I have some more?" and then Drawn and Quartered said "Yes, yes you can." Potentially suffers slightly due to how much I liked Extermination Revelry, but this also shreds.

The Muffs - Blonder and Blonder (1995)

Genres: Power Pop, Pop Punk, Punk Rock

Absolutely enormous one-two-three-four punch on Side A from "Agony" through "Sad Tomorrow". I don't think The Muffs have ever really been an albums band for me, despite them having crafted some of my all-time favourite songs (probably more than I could count on my fingers, to be honest) across their discography. From the beginning with The Muffs they were the kind of band that would top-load their best songs and often their albums would then dive head-first into all kinds of deeper cuts and lesser songs. But they always would have songs like "I Need A Face" or "Funny Face" (not all of them are face related I swear) sitting somewhere on Side B to keep you engaged. So, like many albums from The Muffs, this is relatively uneven but the highs really kick ass.

✂ Agony, Oh Nina, On and On, Sad Tomorrow, I Need a Face, Funny Face

Décryptal - Simulacre (2025)

Genres: Death Metal

Death metal out of Quebec and released in conjunction with the Me Saco un Ojo Records label, which gave us that Degraved album I loved so much? You know I'm stoked to hit play on this one.

And immediately, this has both the ingredients and the measurements down. Songs have elements of cavernous death with a sprinkling of doom-y atmosphere, but also jump around between fast and slowly crushing passages.

This all feels really well tuned to give you a bunch of the stuff you want, without it being overly "technical" death metal. Just because they aren't sitting too still for any length of time doesn't mean they're flexing their mathematical brains or whatever, you know? Just a good mix of classic chunky death metal with a few blistering solos here and there, plus some slight groove to their riffing tossed in for good measure.

Have seen this compared to Phrenelith in some reviews, but that most recent Phrenelith record didn't do much for me and this feels a lot more varied. Maybe the worst thing happening here is the band have their bag of tricks, and they wield them a little predictably. But when those tricks are the kind I like to see? I'm not complaining all that much.

Susumu Yokota - Baroque (2004)

Genres: Deep House, Breakbeat, Ambient House, Trip Hop, Illbient, Japanese Folk Music

Bounced around Susumu Yokota's discography this morning looking for a way in, since their releases vary from legitimately ambient/collage type stuff all the way through to deep house and IDM. Generally, my tastes probably sit somewhere leaning towards the former, though I do enjoy some ambient music from time to time.

Upon first glance, this felt organic and textural in a way that grabbed me so I dove in here. "Deformed Pearl" was immediately the kind of thing I go for. Repetitive and cyclical but with nice melodies and some good turns. A lot of this is very kaleidoscopic, but it only dips into overly "playful" in theme on something like "Royal Flush" which was a little over that line for me personally. There's some tasteful "illbient" elements as well on songs like "Spinner." "Nacre" is a pretty gorgeous closer though and left me impressed.

Nearly 60 minutes of this might be a bit much for my patience, but this feels relatively undervalued considering it has less than 220 ratings.

Drawn and Quartered - Merciless Hammer of Lucifer (2007)

Genres: Death Metal

For a band primarily known for their consistency across their 9 album discography, they do offer quite a bit of stylistic tweaks throughout their career. I'm certainly not a black metal expert, but some of this sounds a lot more in the realm of blackened death than the rest of the D&Q albums I've heard (i.e. "Funeral Pyres of Annihilation"). Not that they're changing genres or anything, but they're tossing in some riffs and melodic elements that really brought to mind that genre. The production here is similarly tweaked, and sounds a little distant compared to some of the other D&Q albums which often have a crispness to them.

Don't let it seem like I'm down on the record though, I think this is a really interesting and cool corner of their discography and it's interesting to hear a band I felt like I had nailed down shaking that off a little bit. This has more of a gloomy, dank atmosphere in comparison, but some of their lead guitar work will pierce through in really intriguing ways ("Bloodbath of Renewal").

Of all their albums, this one feels the most like a sleeper to me and one that might take some repeat listens and familiarity to really unlock, but I also dug it quite a bit upon first spin.

Plague Bearer - Summoning Apocalyptic Devastation (2023)

Genres: Death Metal, Black Metal

Had to break off from the mainline Drawn and Quartered releases to check in on this one, thanks to a reminder from dewtaylo.

Ended up being a good idea after hearing some blackened influence on Merciless Hammer of Lucifer, because this continues that influence and takes it a pinch further. And it really works, not because they've pushed the black metal elements beyond that album, but because they've further folded it into their death metal brew in ways that feel like they're working with chocolate and peanut butter. This hauls, sounds totally evil, and will make you want to flatten a brick house or something. Don't have much insightful to say here other than hell fucking yeah.

Digginlilies - Popula (1999)

Genres: Indie Rock

Mid-tempo indie rock with emo-adjacent songwriting that churns and bubbles with guitar-forward energy and very plain-faced vocals. At times it reminds of slower The Get Up Kids tunes, though generally it has that kind of slacker indie talk-singing type vibe that might bring to mind simpler Pavement songs or maybe a sleepier Mock Orange. One song here is notable for being the only piece of music featured in a scene from The Blair Witch Project. Decent stuff, not too shabby at all, but not incredibly memorable either.

Immolation - Here in After (1996)

Genres: Death Metal, Technical Death Metal, Dissonant Death Metal

I think I am about to the point where I've listened to too much death metal in too short a time period and I'm starting to be unable to accurately express my thoughts about it. Despite this, I decided I needed to throw a “bolded” on RYM classic in to the mix and since everyone is always mentioning Immolation in relation to Drawn and Quartered (who's discography I have been binging) I might as well start here.

This is relatively crisp sounding for something with a dissonant death metal tag, but it splits the difference really deftly. It remains legible, while being dissonant and intense with a nice level of technicality. I tend to enjoy stuff that jumps around, tosses a variety of riff styles into the mix, but doesn't get too high-level egghead about the technical angle. This suits me really nicely in that regard because there's a lot of entertaining rhythmic back-and-forth going on here.

Interesting to see the comments box saying how difficult this is, because personally I find stuff that is nothing but walls of dissonance, blasts and tremolos a lot harder to parse than this type of death metal.

Xenomorph - Empyreal Regimes (1995)

Genres: Death Metal, Technical Death Metal

First instinct here is that this sounds grimy as hell, is quite ambitious, and can really haul at times. If you told me while I was listening to this that they were from Omaha I'd never believe you. There were moments I questioned if they were even singing in English, lol.

The drummer is really going for it here, which I appreciate, even if the comments box is right about the kicks being a little sloppy. Honestly, I'll take an organic, sounds like a human performed it style performance like this over insanely repetitive robotic performances you hear in death metal sometimes.

One big downside to this ultimately is that the band really likes to stretch out their legs and crank running times up to 8+ minutes. None of these songs dip below five minutes and they have a lot of asides and diversions, usually in the name of more riffs. These songs are long enough that I want to call them vaguely progressive, but in practice it's mostly a lot of riff repetition. Sometimes when they push that to the extreme, it gets boring.

They also do that thing where, in an attempt to sound as vile as possible, they seem to be practicing some real 90s edge lord tendencies, particularly on "Wehrmacht" which obviously is about N*zis. Based on their penchant for horror movie references (The Keep, Subspecies, The Exorcist etc.) and their lyrics not really revealing any actual point of view, this feels aligned with black metal in that "we want to sound as evil as possible" kind of way. Feels super gross, regardless, and made me like this a lot less as you might expect.

Maybe it’s ridiculous to expect death metal from the 90s to have a point of view instead of just having a song be on its face “just about something evil, mannn”, but these days I don’t really have the patience to overlook that kind of thing to be honest.

That’s it, that’s all. Be excellent to one other.

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Hello y’all!

We’re a few editions of New Music Friday deep into 2026, but I’m still a bit stuck between things. I have yet to dive headfirst back into the whole “dig through the release bin every Friday” routine, though I have dipped my toes into some new releases as you’ll read below.

That said, the majority of stuff here is a real mix of weird rabbit holes and genre diversions that I’ve been bouncing around between. Hope you don’t mind!

Aside from that, not all that much to say so let’s just get straight to the reviews shall we?

Emoji legend:

• ⛏️ denotes picks of the week, my favs.

• 🌱 seedling denotes albums like a lot and expect could grow on me over the year.

• ✨ albums I would recommend to fans of the genre (i.e. it might not convert new listeners, but you should check it out.)

• ✂ denotes favourite tracks from a given record.

As always, feel free to reach out over on BlueSky or join the Rosy Overdrive Discord server where I can be found now and again.

You can also find me in the corners of Rate Your Music scrounging for obscure emo, hardcore, indie rock and pop punk.

Don’t forget: if you’re reading this in your email it will be cut off.
Read on the web for the full list of reviews!

⛏️ Peaer - Doppelgänger (2026)

Genres: Indie Rock, Slowcore

Continues the band's established formula of knotted guitar lines and slackery vocals over emo-esque fluctuations in energy levels. This is exactly the kind of "please, can I have some more" type album that you don't mind waiting seven years for. They still work themselves up into some heavy outbursts ("Rose in my Teeth") but are just as content plucking away at extended sections of slowcore-indebted emotional indie rock. I love this kind of sly guitar-forward hangout record and this really hits the spot. Happy to have 'em back.

🌱 Feels Like Heaven - Within Dreams (2026)

Genres: Emocore, Melodic Hardcore

Sits somewhere between melodic hardcore, emocore and that "sorta alt-rock-ish music made by hardcore dudes" type sound. Bottom line, this is sometimes aggressive and sometimes melodic loud guitar music with a foundation in punk, to simplify it.

Sometimes they have a Title Fight thing going on, sometimes they have a finger-pointing hardcore crew vibe, maybe a sprinkling of Drug Church melodicism and other times they feel like they've taken their notes on the Revolution Summer scene. Can also understand why someone might name check Hüsker Dü in the comments box over on RYM. And often times these are all little moments peppered throughout the same songs.

I think this is probably being over-hyped, but I also think their inability to keep their songs inside their own outlines is a benefit to adding some level of unpredictability to their sound, even if it's still sitting inside some well worn territories. Helps that this is 23 minutes long. I'm definitely filing this under "could grow on me, could disappear from my mind in a few days" so we'll see how this hangs.

Ectovoid - In Unreality's Coffin (2026)

Genres: Death Metal

I thought this was totally fine, if somewhat unremarkable. Has some riffs, has some groove to it, but by the halfway point I felt like I had heard what it had up its sleeve and got a little tired. I think when I did hear lyrics it seemed a bit corny, so that might be in play. I don't know if this technically counts as melodeath because I barely know what that means, but in moments it felt like it was getting close to incorporating some melodic elements - particularly melodic lead lines and vocals that feel halfway between brootal and legible - into its meat and potatoes modern death metal. Maybe I'm way off though, who knows.

Could be a MP not a YP though, so maybe check it out if you want to, I'm not your boss.

⛏️ Simple Minds - Sons and Fascination (1981)

Genres: New Wave, Post-Punk, Synthpop, Art Rock, Coldwave

Empires and Dance will always be "the" Simple Minds album that broke my brain open, but the highs on Sons and Fascination are up there in the bands catalogue for sure. "In Trance as Mission" and "70 Cities as Love Brings the Fall" are just absolutely enormous tunes, particularly the latter which really unlocks the band's early- to mid-career in my brain - huge, weird synths and post-punk industrial clattering atmosphere that clears up on a dime into a wide-screen pop hook with this little addictive guitar riff on the chorus.

The band goes on to move more and more towards equal measures of pop hooks and art-rock new wave on New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) and Sparkle in the Rain (both really great!) but on some of these tracks they really perfect that push and pull between abrasive, oddly dancable synthy cold wave post-punk and ambitious integration of pop melodies.

✂ In Trance as Mission, Sweat in Bullet, 70 Cities as Love Brings the Fall, Love Song

✨ Iceberg - Arc-en-ciel (1979)

Genres: Jazz Fusion, Jazz-Rock, Progressive Rock

Pretty cool jazz fusion with a Latin flair, particularly on some of the high-flying acoustic guitar solos. Really polished and all around a nice listen, if not entirely mind blowing or overly progressive. I was in the mood for something more synth-focused but this was good enough to keep my attention even though it's not really that kinda spacey fusion vibe I was looking for.

✨ The Hi-Fives - And a Whole Lotta You (1997)

Genres: Garage Rock, Power Pop

This has always been something of a missing link for me around the Hi-Fives, as I have owned Welcome to My Mind and Get Down on vinyl for years but never really got around to hearing this one.

If you've heard those albums, this sounds about exactly as you would expect an album sitting smack dab between those two would be. In fact, it sounds a lot like Welcome to My Mind: Part II, as the band sounded relatively polished on Get Down and they're not quite there yet.

If you haven't heard 'em, the band sits in that garage rock and throwback pop area of poppy punk, where all of the latter comes from their energy and scrappiness as opposed to any actual punk rock influence. These are vintage rock and roll type tunes played through distortion pedals tastefully set at the half-way mark, but sometimes performed like they had downed a few coffees beforehand ("Black and Blue").

I think the highs of Welcome to My Mind will always leave me reaching for that record, but there's a consistency to this one that works as well.

✂ Black and Blue, It's Up to You, I'll Take You There, Peaquod

✨ Scratching Post - Flamethrower (1996)

Genres: Alternative Rock

Stumbled across this when looking into Canadian bands as featured on Squirtgun Records, and expected it to sound like some 90s alternative butt-metal or something based on their album covers and the reviews on RYM. What this actually sounds like, is super crunchy power pop with a sprinkling of chugga-chugga riffing inherited from hardcore (see: "Gracie", "Zipper", "Beef" etc.) all in service of twee-like vocals and hooks from Nicole Hughes (who is giving big-time Mimi from Nona vibes to me.)

Songs like "Master of Action" are catchy enough to keep me listening, and I admire their juxtaposition of vaguely aggressive elements alongside incredibly bubble-gum type hooks ("Don't Sweat It"). Not a lot of bands doing this, so I have to give them points for trying something out. When they lean into just being a power poppy wee-oo-wee-oo punky kind of band ("Flyweight") it's not quite as intriguing, but they do it well enough that I'm not angry about it.

Really torn about how much I like this, because I enjoy the swing they're taking here... but also there's enough filler ("Rednecks n' Monster Trucks" ends the album on an annoying note) that I'm not sure it hangs on a top-to-bottom kind of way. Might have to err on the side of caution and see how they sound on their follow-up. Speaking of…

✨ Scratching Post - Destruction of the Universe (1998)

Genres: Alternative Rock

On their follow-up to Flamethrower, the band sounds considerably slicker and bigger with heavier, chugging riffs and even poppier hooks. They've also sliced the running time down to 25 minutes (is this technically an EP?) and re-recorded "Bloodflame". Sequencing is also more direct, with the first three songs on here having received music videos with considerable push over on Much Music (likely featured on The Wedge, I'd have to assume).

This feels to me like one of those situations where the highs aren't quite as high as their last record, but the concise nature and increase in production has me enjoying my time a little bit more. They've sanded down the clash of "you got your heavy riffing in my twee power pop" a little, which makes this pinch less exciting in that "how will they pull this off?" way… but I enjoy myself a bit of this alternative rock with big hooks and riffs type music so I'm not complaining.

✨ 88 Fingers Louie - Back on the Streets (1998)

Genres: Melodic Hardcore, Skate Punk

88 Fingers Louie were a versatile band, and they show it well on the A-side of this record which finds them jumping around between the melodic hardcore of "State" and poppy "ooh ahh" skate punk of "Summer Photos". Opener "Tomorrow Starts Today" also foreshadows a lot of what Joe and Dan would go on to do together with Rise Against on The Unraveling. At times they also bring a bit of an emo-adjacent thing that reminds me of some of the more mid-tempo tracks from Can I Say.

Unfortunately (though the album doesn't run too long in the tooth time-wise) there's 16 songs here and this could use some trimming down. Cut this thing down to like 10 songs and you'd be looking at a much higher score from me. I think in that way, their versatility and need to do so many different things make them a bit of a playlist band—though I have to admit that Thank You for Being a Friend was a very strong reunion record that I recall enjoying.

Sweet Baby - It's a Girl! (1989)

Genres: Pop Punk, Power Pop, Beat

I always think of Sweet Baby as being related to The Hi-Fives because they have a very similar kind of retro-pop type of sound. I guess they're related through members being brothers, but I always thought they shared members.

Anyway, this is fun stuff but if you need your pop punk to have a measurable amount of the latter, you might not like this. Instead, this is vaguely mod-type power pop with Beatles-esque ambitions. All the songs are about gotta get a girl, baby I love you, let's just tak about the girl, etc. etc.

In 2025 they might be most notable for inspiring a particularly prolific YouTube channel that uploads obscure punk stuff, but this is enjoyable if you dig the type of power pop punk they are playing. Definitely a "your favourite East Bay pop punk band loved these guys" type of curiosity though.

Wildly amusing that Tim from Maximum Rocknroll didn't want to let early Green Day / Sweet Children play at Gilman Street because they were "too poppy", meanwhile bands like this were in the scene, lol.

Keats - Keats (1984)

Genres: Pop Rock, AOR, Progressive Pop, Neo-Prog, AOR

I'm not an The Alan Parsons Project guy, so I have no idea about how this fares considering it is technically a bit of an off-shoot type release featuring a new configuration of Alan Parsons Project regulars. All I know, was that I wanted some lightly progressive pop from the 80s with that near yacht level slickness, and this is exactly that. The A-Side has a pretty good three-song run there, but "Walking on Ice" kinda drags the energy down a little, even if I appreciate the synthy atmosphere they're going for there.

This is definitely one of those albums where you go from feeling like you have an above-average patience for this kind of AOR-type stuff, to being a song or two into the B-side and realizing you've had your fill. I wanted to go to bat for this but it's just a bit too same-y and at 40 minutes it's a bit more of this than I needed today. Couple songs are worth a look though, if you're in the mood.

Half Dizzy - Yard Sale (2025)

Genres: Punk Rock, Ska Punk

Initially a part of me was surprised this wasn’t a ska band based on the band name and album art, because the first few songs are throwbacks to the EpiFat skate punk era. But then they started to get into some Rancid role play on “Turn This Up”, and afterwards “King of the Landfill” lands somewhere between Rancid and Operation Ivy tribute. So I guess my initial thought was correct.

This is the band’s debut (after some singles and an EP) so I feel like they’re suffering a little from that “we have to get everything on this record” condition. We need the slow non-punk duet emo song (”November 3rd”) and we need to get 14 songs in under 40 minutes. I think they’re generally at their best when they are just hammering out straight up poppy punk rock songs (”Easton”, “No Disrespect”), though they split the difference between punk and ska on “Sidelines” well enough, so I could see them also just going full-on skacore too.

I really don’t want to go too hard on this band because I appreciate anyone playing this style of music in 2025, but I feel like it’s a little too all-over-the-place and could see them leaning into their strengths on another record and really knocking it out of the park.

Ph.D. - Ph.D. (1981)

Genres: Synthpop, AOR, Progressive Pop, Pop Rock, Neo-Prog

Took a chance on this at the record store because I recognized the cover after diving through the progressive pop genre tag filtered for esoteric + 80s the other day. Had high-ish hopes for this because it's also got AOR and synthpop tags, but this really feels like a debut album from a band that isn't sure what they want to be.

When it sounds lightly progressive it strikes a vibe or two, and songs like "Oh Maria" and "I Won't Let You Down" are decent synthy AOR pop tunes, but a lot of the album is all over the place in a way that feels disjointed. It has that weird problem of needing focus but also being very middling. It's also got pacing problems and they front load a couple pretty mediocre tunes and it can't recover from that.

Brent's T.V. - Lumberjack Days (1990)

Genres: Indie Rock, Indie Pop, Pop Punk

More garage-y, jangly revved up vintage mod-pop type pop punk featuring one of the Denery brothers (John), who between the two of them were involved with bands like The Hi-Fives, Sweet Baby, The Bomb Bassets etc.

Some of this is totally stripped back jangly pop with basically zero punk influence ("Bright Lights") and some of it is played so zippily ("What Do You Get") and briefly that they inherit the genre tag even if there still ain't much more than trace amounts of punk involved.

Interesting for fans of the above bands, and how they stood out compared to the other East Bay acts at the time (Brent's T.V. were from Arcata) but otherwise I'd stick with The Hi-Fives personally (something about that band really solidified John Denery and Chris Imlay's work together and produced their best material imo.)

That’s it, that’s all. Be excellent to one other.

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Happy new year, and welcome back.

First things first, I want to thank everyone who has subscribed to my little brain-dump of a music newsletter and helped me (somehow!!) break the 1,000 subscriber mark. A goal I would have never imagined to set for myself, and yet here I am.

As a result, I have spent a good part of the new year worrying; am I doing enough for the newsletter? Should I be making snippy, snappy videos and capitalizing on my surprising reach? Maybe I should be posting on Substack’s version of social media (Notes) more? Or, is me cracking my brain off the desk every few weeks and letting a barrage of reviews across varied and disparate genres seep out enough? I mean, it got me this far, I guess! I just want to make sure that I am serving you, the audience, as well as I can and in the way you want me to.

And wow, here I was thinking I needed to get back to listening to a crap-load of music because I was soooo behind on capsule reviews… and I didn’t realize I had a lot of them that piled up around the time I was readying my year-end lists!

So with that in mind, today’s post is a bit of a catch-all; you’ve got some 2025 releases reviewed here, plenty of miscellaneous old music (from jazz fusion to pop punk, oh my) and whatever else might tickle your fancy.

Now, let’s get to some tunes.

Emoji legend:

• ⛏️ denotes picks of the week, my favs.

• 🌱 seedling denotes albums like a lot and expect could grow on me over the year.

• ✨ albums I would recommend to fans of the genre (i.e. it might not convert new listeners, but you should check it out.)

• ✂ denotes favourite tracks from a given record.

As always, feel free to reach out over on BlueSky or join the Rosy Overdrive Discord server where I can be found now and again.

You can also find me in the corners of Rate Your Music scrounging for obscure emo, hardcore, indie rock and pop punk.

Don’t forget: if you’re reading this in your email it will be cut off.
Read on the web for the full list of reviews!

747 - Pacific Spirit (2025)

Genres: Atmospheric Drum and Bass, Acid Breaks

Really phenomenal atmospheric drum and bass work here. Some of it sounded a pinch familiar (no idea why "Cascadia" felt like something I had heard this year?) but across the board this is great and very ethereal stuff that doesn't just settle for switching between "quiet ambient moments" and "acid breaks/breakbeats". Aside from some of the familiarity, it's awesome stuff and could very well have been on my year-end list had I found it earlier in the year.

Cigarette Camp - Steps (2025)

Genres: Punk Rock, Pop Punk

When Cigarette Camp dropped Slowpoke, I said maybe these were some EP leftovers to tide people over until they release a full length. I was kinda wishful thinking with that one, but then last night I saw that their debut full length actually was dropping today via Dead Broke Rekerds.

Upon first glance, this seems to fit in with their EPs (one of these songs is 9 seconds long and nothing breaks the 1.5 minute mark, in fact they bash out 19 songs in as many minutes) but they've definitely taken their foot off the gas pedal a pinch when it comes to pacing and energy on their debut. They're offsetting their brevity with a few more mid-tempo power poppy tunes here and there ("Shoe Store", "Tooth Decay"). A bit more Chinese Telephones and a bit less Dillinger Four if that makes sense, even if both styles are well represented across all 19 minutes of the record. I imagine I won't be the only person who hears "Tell Me Something" and thinks of the "Tell Me Tell Me" off Chinese Telephones right?

I don't mind, because I love gritty but mid-tempo pop punk bangers. I mean, they cover Fastbacks, so you know where they are coming from here and are signaling their slight turn in sound pretty clearly.

The Pomps - Partial Eclipse of The Pomps (2025)

Genres: Ska, Power Pop, New Tone, Reggae

I think it's cool that there still exists a place in the modern music scene for this kind of release, and that Bad Time Records are helping keep that space for it in the new-tone genre.

What I'm talking about, is the overlap between power pop, new wave and ska/reggae that you'd most often hear in the 70s and 80s. The Pomps fit snugly there, but with a slight modern update. This is hooky pop-rock played with upstrokes and organs, and never dips too far into outright reggae—but also doesn't just sound like a band aping Cosetello-esque nervy new wave. As I am wont to say, their ingredients are measured well and executed the same. It's not the most memorable record of the year, but it goes down easy and enjoyable. Definitely interested in hearing more from them.

.ISO - Save Screens (2025)

Genres: Jungle, Atmospheric Drum and Bass, Dreampunk, Ambient, Breakbeat

Dug this because, while it's foundationally jungle/drum and bass, it has a lot of cool cyberpunk (sorry, dreampunk?) atmosphere and a warbly, warm organic texture to it. Yeah, it's working with a set of building blocks that you've probably heard before, but they're assembled in satisfying ways. I wouldn't go so far as to say this sounds unlike anything else in the genre, but it does have some je ne sais quoi that makes it sound less derivative than initially expected.

ASC - Next Time You Fall (2025)

Genres: Atmospheric Drum and Bass, Jungle

Possibly overdosing on the genre by listening to a bunch of hours of similar stuff in a row, but this was more very solid atmospheric drum and bass. Very rain-slicked, driving around aimless kind of music, with a twinge of melancholy. Above average and worth looking into if you're into the genre.

Satin Sheets - S.World (2025)

Genres: Atmospheric Drum and Bass, Breakbeat, Chillsynth, Utopian Virtual, Ambient House

Comes with a Utopian Virtual PS1 heavy aesthetic but ultimately in practice this is beat-forward electronic music with a kaleidoscopic vibe busted down into bite-size sub-two-minute chunks (only breaking the three minute mark on a handful of occasions). Kind of gives this a little bit of an all-over-the-place feeling that seems less album-focused and maybe more of a lark, but it functions like a record where if a song isn't your speed, another one is around the corner so it's not a big deal.

I will say though, at times it can feel like you're digesting something meant for another medium - video game soundtrack, etc. - and the conceptual identities of the songs don't buck that trend ("Loading", "Disc", "Sky", Lava", etc.) So in that way, it's not beating the accusations of the aesthetic-forward nature of the genre. But enough of this was hitting for me that I enjoyed my time with it, even if 50 minutes was starting to push my patience. Their last record was 32 minutes and that feels a bit more like it for me, personally.

lpower - Abinox (2012)

Genres: FM Synthesis, Progressive Electronic, Progressive Rock, Chiptune, Synthwave

Totally rules and is absolutely in my realm of wanting chiptune/chip-based music that doesn’t sound like a bite-sized level-by-level soundtrack to a non-existent video game. I like that stuff too—and when chiptune is leveraged just for straightforward electronic bangers—but this feels a little more... purposeful? Very ambitious, with aspects of progressive music (not sure about the prog rock subtag, but OK I guess) and it packs in lots of different, interesting movements within each song.

A pinch long, but it kept me engaged the whole time and left me really excited to look into Part 2 and 3.

Passport - Looking Thru (1973)

Genres: Jazz-Rock, Jazz Fusion, Progressive Rock, Jazz-Funk

Much more my speed than their 1976 release Infinity Machine. This is more in line with Cross-Collateral, in that it's focused around lightly progressive fusion with a spotlight on spaced-out synths and the "lite" sax work that would later dominate their sound. They stretch out now and again into some more out-there territories ("Eloquence") in the same way they do on Cross-Collateral, but it's always foundationally smooth in some way or another. "Things to Come" is a particularly weird little closing tune that makes me wish they did more off-the-wall shit like that. I guess I will have to keep going backwards in their discography for that kind of thing.

lpower - Abinox II (2013)

Genres: FM Synthesis, Progressive Electronic, Chiptune

Maybe a little more refined compared to Abinox but still playing to the same strengths: FM synthesis and chiptune music stretched over progressive electronic structures. Again, it paints a great picture and plays well to the ear beyond “this sounds like a video game level” to me.

lpower - Abinox III (2014)

Genres: FM Synthesis, Progressive Electronic

The final act in this trilogy of records. 2 tracks totaling 60 minutes across a variety of movements and shifting atmospheres. You will know exactly what to expect if you’ve heard the previous two records, and it’s more of that but presented in a slightly more dense way.

Maybe a bit too much to take in back-to-back but both are very fantastic achievements in FM and chip songwriting and mood setting. More fantastic stuff, but obviously only for people who have already absorbed the first two acts. Docking a half star just because it’s the only one that I feel like you couldn’t point someone towards on their own.

You could probably pass the 2nd album to someone who digs chiptune and they’ll like it but this one feels more of an undertaking and for people who already are invested in the series.

Heartsounds - Until We Surrender (2009)

Genres: Skate Punk, Punk Rock, Melodic Hardcore

Logged into the computer to do some work on the weekend and caught dewtaylo on RYM logging a positive review on a record with cover art that looks like this? Christmas came early! You know I’m prioritizing that.

The name and album art seemed very familiar, but when I hit play it wasn’t ringing a bell. And then I realize I reviewed Internal Eyes last year, ha. This one sounds a like what I might expect the first album from the band I was describing in that review would sound like - a pinch scrappier, a slight bit heavier on the punk foundation, but still mixing pop and orgcore with fast dugga-duggas and interchanging vocalists.

I liked this a bit more than Internal Eyes, which makes me want to listen through their discography in order now and see if it makes more sense when I get to that record. Still, good stuff!

Capguns ‘n’ Coke - Just Another Day E.P. (2007)

Genres: Pop Punk, Punk Rock

Scrappy three chord pop punk that sits right there between Ramonescore (or more specifically, Weaselcore) stuff of the 90s and the bearded orgcore explosion of the 2000s. 7 songs, 16 minutes, all pretty above average. Sometimes it gets very snot-poppy (”Anywhere But Here”) and sometimes it’s more straight-forward on the punk side of the equation (”Can’t Say I Never Try”). There’s a lot of bands that will be on the tip of your tongue when you listen to this, basically. Part of me wants these songs to have hooks that just catch you just a little deeper, but otherwise they’ve got this stuff nailed down tight. A nice find from dewtaylo!

Lifeless Dark - Forces of Nature's Transformation (2024)

Genres: Stenchcore, Thrash Metal, D-Beat

Very cool stuff, and right up my alley. This is basically early Sacrilege worship, with a punky stench influence stemming from records like Heading for Internal Darkness or maybe some Discharge. Slight whiff of progressive elements on the opening track that stretch into a few other songs too. Very well rounded, would love to hear more from them in the future to see where they take this sound next.

Saga - Worlds Apart (1981)

Genres: Progressive Rock, New Wave, AOR, Synthpop

I've tried here and there to get into bands that segued from prog towards synth-forward AOR (i.e. Kansas, that kinda stuff) and usually it doesn't really work for me all that much. Was craving some synth-forward AOR rock that has vague progressive foundations and figured why not listen to Canada's own SAGA? This record was their first big swing from being overtly-prog into something more pop/rock in foundation. Usually, I go for stuff more in the 1985 era because I want that in-your-face cocaine synth vibe, but this was a good place to start as any.

And it's pretty good! Cromulent hooks on the bombastic pop rock songs, some good poindexter-ass showing off ("Conversations") and some Toto-esque rocking when "No Stranger" kicks in. They are at their worst when they crank up the "watery ballad" knob though, on "No Regrets".

Tempted to rate this higher, but for now it's a nice little diversion. Might check out what came after, as I am still wanting something that really hits that synthy prog-pop pleasure center from the band, but who knows maybe I'll come around on this one even a bit more.

Gentle Giant - The Power and the Glory (1974)

Genres: Progressive Rock, Avant-Prog, Zolo

While I didn't love Free Hand compared to something like Interview, I think this record strikes a better balance at being really out there and super nerdy as far as progressive rock goes but still being avant-garde in a way that is fun to listen to. Some of this also rocks in a cool way, almost proto-math rock kinda vibe on songs like "Cogs in Cogs." Overall, really strong record from the band and doesn't dip into the type of nerdy prog that ends up sounding like a circus or a renn faire to my ears.

Eloy - Performance (1983)

Genres: Progressive Rock, Space Rock, AOR

Hard to beat the review (on RYM) below mine saying "The Cars and The Police decided one day that they were really into Hawkwind and Tangerine Dream."

Eloy take a real turn into AOR-style progressive spacey synthy rock here and it definitely works for me. Very enjoyable and quite digestible at under 40 minutes, even with a couple songs stretching their legs out tastefully.

Eloy - Metromania (1984)

Genres: Progressive Rock, Space Rock, New Wave, AOR

Honestly, Eloy's sometimes-derided 80s efforts keep hitting for me. This seems divisive, considering some reviewers seem to mark it as when the band stepped fully out of their progressive roots and into something more "marketable".

And yet you still get stuff like "All Life is One" which is absolutely not a catchy little tune trying to land on the radio. It's a perfect melding of cold, spacey and drone-y new wave that happens to have a whiff of AOR to it. Plus, the band still gets to layer their progressive tendencies on-top of the comparatively standard foundation. Honestly, absolutely loved that track and it really unlocked the whole record for me.

"Escape to the Heights" sounds a little like if The Police and The Cars got together to try their hands at an AOR-progressive rock new wave tune, but it kinda works too?

Sure, some of these songs feel nudged towards "commercial" rock (dig those palm muted, chugging guitars on "The Stranger" leading into a bombastic chorus, the 9 minute synth-rock-fest "Follow the Light", the guitar-rock of "Nightriders") but it's coming from a really eccentric band who seem unable to dial back those foundational eccentricities. Which makes this so, so much more interesting than your average "oh the progressive band tried to make a hit record" albums.

Eloy - Ra (1988)

Genres: Progressive Rock, Synthpop

More commonly viewed as where the band really took a turn for the worse, RA finds Eloy taking a new age spoken word storytelling and very digital sounding approach to their progressive rock. Sometimes referred to as a "glorified Frank Bornemann solo album" since the band paired down to Bornemann, a chosen keyboardist and guest musicians.

The drums here have that enormous cocaine 80s sound to them, and a lot of this is pretty cool if you're into that vibe. Some of it, like "Dreams" is the most watery and lightweight the band have sounded so far in their career. It's not bad, but it's the first time I would describe them as kind of... bland?

Other stuff here is decent, "Invasion of a Megaforce" is an OK cheesy new age-y AOR type tune but is quite long in the tooth. I think mostly I'm disappointed because I thought maybe they were turning in the direction of progressive electronic type influence but it's not really that type of record. Some of this scratches an itch that I have, but it's a bit forgettable.

Warthog - Warthog (2022)

Genres: Hardcore Punk, Crossover Thrash, D-Beat

Saw this band had a sweet looking logo on the Tied Down line-up announcement poster and decided to give it a try. The genre tags tell you everything you need to know, as this is foundationally hardcore punk music with thrashy crossover appeal. Solid, but listening to this release from 2022 in 2025 kinda makes it sound a little unremarkable to me. I might have been way more stoked on this had I heard it a few years back when I wasn't already listening to a few bands that sound exactly like this. Would definitely be interested in what they could do on a full length, but not going to be running back to these three songs any time soon either.

Passport - Infinity Machine (1976)

Genres: Jazz-Rock, Jazz Fusion, Jazz-Funk

I have a high tolerance for the watery jazz fusion of the 80s, but I kept bouncing off this after really digging Cross-Collateral. I assumed that I'd enjoy them even more the further they went into the synthy lite-jazz rabbit hole of their career, but damn the first side of this was pushing it for me. Not that it's particularly terrible but it's just so... poorly paced. Opening with, ugh, 10 minutes of "Ju-Ju-Man" kept throwing me off and having me not want to listen to the rest of the record. Then the rest of the A-side is very airy and disposable, finally the B-side picks things up and gets more out-there on "Infinity Machine", and "Ostinato" kinda rips with some really sick synth work in the second half. It's all a bit too little too late though, the A-side has already done its damage.

That’s it, that’s all. Be excellent to one other.

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In the world of film fanatics and Letterboxd lists, people (myself included) often make year-end “discovery” lists where they bring up their favourite movies they saw for the first time that year. I still do this, but have stopped calling them “discoveries”, because often times we’re talking about known quantities we just finally got around to seeing. So, when I call this list my favourite album discoveries, just know I’m thinking along the lines of “I discovered I loved this record!” and not that I consider myself to the definitive person who has “discovered” that Japan put out a really great album.

And with that out of the way, here’s some albums (and in some cases bands) that I heard for the first time this year!

As always, feel free to reach out over on BlueSky or join the Rosy Overdrive Discord server where I can be found now and again. You can also find me in the corners of Rate Your Music scrounging for obscure emo, hardcore, indie rock and pop punk.

Don’t forget: if you’re reading this in your email it will be cut off.
Read on the web for the full list of reviews!

Silver Scooter - The Blue Law (2001, Peek-a-Boo)

Genres: Midwest Emo, Jangle Pop, Indie Rock, Indie Pop, Twee Pop

Thanks to Christopher of HEDGE for tipping me off to this via their contribution to my Digging for Something series.

Silver Scooter play a very intriguing mix of indie pop, informed by that 80s gloom but always melodic, and with wonderfully fluid bass lines holding up their foundation. Terrific stuff.

Spyro Gyra - Catching the Sun (1980, MCA)

Awwwww yea. Weather Network ass smooth jazz, right here. No really though, their later work seemed to be used on actual Weather Network segments and ultimately compilations like The Weather Channel Presents: Smooth Jazz II.

Sacrilege - Within the Prophecy (1987, Under One Flag)

Genres: Thrash Metal, Stenchcore, Crust Punk

Was tipped off to this because I read a list saying that they were a big influence on Bolt Thrower. Some really enormous riffing on this, it’s super satisfying. Sits right between the punk/crust influences of Behind the Realms of Madness and their full-turn into a doomy progressive metal type act on Turn Back Trilobite.

Up for Nothing - Swindled (2016, No Label)

Genres: Punk Rock, Pop Punk

Definitely fits into the 2010s era of poppy, gruff orgcore singalong punk rock but seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle of years. This feels particularly overlooked even if it’s not going to blow any minds. Very well rounded.

Eloy - Planets (1981, Harvest)

Genres: Progressive Rock, Space Rock, Symphonic Prog

Absolutely huge synth sound on this album, and bass lines that positively haul. Total progressive space rock greatness.

U.K. - Danger Money (1979, Polydor)

Genres: Progressive Rock, Symphonic Prog

This is progressive rock with a big focus on sweet electric violin jams (“Caesar’s Palace Blues”) and smoke machine synths (“Nothing to Lose”) with a foundation in dad-core melodies and hooks. Kind of gives everyone what they want, in some ways, be that progressive dad rock or honest-to-good-ness progressive fusion, it’s all in here somewhere.

Sonetic Vet - Peer (1994, Bittersweet)

Genres: Pop Punk, Noise Pop, Garage Rock

Sounds like if Dahlia Seed dialed back the aggression/emo and input more shambly pop punk into their overall vibe. There’s definitely a pinch of that “pop punk but influenced by alt-rock” thing going on here too, but not so much that it gets into that “wait, is this grunge-pop” territory that bands like that sometimes do.

Frenzal Rhomb - Shut Your Mouth (2001, Fat Wreck Chords)

Genres: Pop Punk, Punk Rock, Skate Punk

This feels like the quintessential turn that Fat bands often made (See also: Like You Know, More Betterness!) towards a slightly less punk sound, peppering more mid-tempo power-pop songs into their track lists. Another good example of when the “conventional wisdom” of a discography cannot be trusted (this is the band’s lowest rated album of their entire career on Rate Your Music).

Electric Light Orchestra - Balance of Power (1986, Epic)

Genres: Synthpop, Pop Rock, AOR, Sophisti-Pop

I guess people don’t care too much for this album because ELO fully took a turn into AOR synthpop and away from their more quote unquote legitimate symphonic rock. Well guess what? I love cheesy 80s cocaine pop and this is above average if you’re into that kind of thing.

Animal Chin - 20 Minutes From Right Now (1999, Fueled by Ramen)

Genres: Pop Punk, Ska Punk, Emo-Pop

Horn-less ska-punk from this band with pre-The Stereo member Jamie Woolford. If you like The Impossibles‘ brand of ska-punk with Weezer-esque geek rock and poppy punk hooks this would also be up your alley.

Chester Copperpot - Short Cuts (1995, Dolores Recordings)

Genres: Indie Rock, Pop Punk, Emo

Scrappier than their LP, not quite as power-poppy, but still sitting on that over-lap between indie rock and poppy punk-adjacent music. I like how “Just Another Goonie” starts as a scuzzy little indie rock tune with an emo-element to the vocals but takes a real poppy turn for its denouement.

Gentle Giant - In’terview (1976, Chrysalis)

Genres: Progressive Rock, Avant-Prog, Zolo, Jazz-Rock

Very digestible as far as progressive music goes. But! It still contains some fun, challenging moments. A great blend and possibly my favourite pick of their discography.

Pages - Pages (1978, Epic)

Genres: Yacht Rock, AOR, Soft Rock

Came across this via the SomaFM channel Left Coast 70s, because it’s consistently listed in the #1 position on their “Top 30 Albums BY SPINS” chart for the station. This is about a ten out of ten on the “these guys want to be Steely Dan” rating scale (non-derogatory).

Fun Fun - Have Fun! (1984, X-Energy Records)

Genres: Italo-Disco, Synthpop, Hi-NRG, Dance-Pop

Great stuff if you enjoy cheesy 80s Hi-NRG synthpop dance music, which I absolutely do. Euro/Italio-disco-sized melodies and some cheesy ass scratching on “Happy Station.” I mean, hell yeah.

Yes - Drama (1980, Atlantic)

Genres: Progressive Rock, Symphonic Prog, New Wave

I’ve tried moving on to 90125 (as much as I absolutely love the bombastic cheese of “Owner of a Lonely Heart”) and have tried moving backwards for Going for the One / Tormato but this seems to be a perfect recalibration of their sound for me and remains the one album of theirs I have been reaching for over and over.

Hey, don’t forget that my 2025 year-end list is out and ready for you to peruse!

O.K., back to your regularly scheduled list.

FM - City of Fear (1980, Passport)

Genres: Progressive Rock, New Wave, AOR

As reviewed in my “Listening to Every Album by the Mostly Forgotten Canadian Progressive AOR Band FM” article.

Direct to Disc is more thrilling on the whole, but this has a cold, rain-slicked atmosphere that really works for their more concise songs.

Passport - Cross-Collateral (1975, Atlantic)

Genres: Jazz-Rock, Jazz Fusion, Progressive Rock, Jazz-Funk

First side leans a little more on the ‘out there’ side of jazz-fusion with some wilder excursions (“Cross-Collateral”), and the second side is more groove-focused. Nicely lacks any in-your-face guitar work and instead focuses on the drums, sax, bass, and varying keys and moog and synth combo which really works for me.

Japan - Gentlemen Take Polaroids (1980, Virgin)

Genres: Art Pop, New Wave, Synthpop, Sophisti-Pop

I went straight to Tin Drum when getting into the band, but this has a lot of really nice atmosphere with extended synth diversions and instrumental passages.

Gorguts - Considered Dead (1991, R/C)

Genres: Death Metal

This certified death metal classic whoops ass. Really great vocal performance actually, nails a perfect balance between mostly legible and throat-shredding-vocal-chord-slashing evilness.

Happy the Man - Happy the Man (1977, Arista)

This seems obviously a prog-fusion album first and foremost, as the addition of vocals are incredibly minimal and only appear on a couple songs. There’s enough smokey, forbidden planet synth solos and otherworldly atmosphere for me to toss this on the 🐉 D&D Fusion list.

Autopsy - Mental Funeral (1991, Peaceville)

Genres: Death Metal, Death Doom Metal

Two songs into this and you know exactly how sick this is going to be. The opening one-two punch of death metal and slowed down smoked-out drop-an-anvil-on-your-head riffs just absolutely kills.

Prism - Prism (1977, Polydor)

Genres: Jazz Fusion, Jazz-Rock,

Slick, proggy jazz funk fusion with an incredible bass performance. Some of this sits in a bit of a straight-forward, slinky jazz-funk box (“Love Me”) but the performances are sick and there’s a lot of whiffs of prog and out-there moments peppered throughout (like when the aforementioned “Love Me” eventually takes off.)

Krabathor - Cool Mortification (1993, Monitor)

Genres: Death Metal

This is a good example of a record being better than the sum of its parts, somehow. Someone could complain that this is standard death metal stuff and I wouldn’t argue with them, but when it works it works you know?

Mingo Lewis - Flight Never Ending (1976, Columbia)

Genres: Jazz Fusion, Jazz-Rock, Space Rock, Latin Rock

Can definitely understand this being referred to as Return to Forever-meets-Santana. Got some Jean-Luc Ponty in here as well. Sick as hell synth work and a really aggressively active atmosphere as a whole, just tons and tons of wild ass performances.

Aggressor - Procreate the Petrifactions (1993, Theka)

Genres: Death Metal

I love how much people hate synths in metal/death metal, so whenever an album like this has some synth adornments I’m always like “fuck yeah buddy”. Love the elements of groove here too - “Meaningless Life” hauls.

Shadowfax - Watercourse Way (1976, Passport)

Genres: Progressive Rock, Jazz Fusion, Jazz Fusion

Immediately this ticks a bunch of 🐉 D&D Fusion boxes... the cover art, the proggy synths, the classical 12 string guitar pickin’ and strummin’ and the nerdy forest elf ass vibe. Much of this crosses over into straight up prog and less fusion but the funky elements are there in spirit.

Invocator - Weave the Apocalypse (1993, Black Mark)

Genres: Thrash Metal, Groove Metal

Platonic ideal of a thrash band turning groove metal, because there’s tons of really interesting percussive and rhythmic stuff going on all the time. They’ve got a borderline sophisticated approach, rhythmically, to what is otherwise brain-slamming music.

Starcastle - Starcastle (1976, Epic)

Genres: Symphonic Prog, Progressive Rock

Look at the cover and you know exactly what this will sound like. I understand that this gets compared (unfavorably) to a specific titan of this era of prog (yes, you guessed right), but this just feels like another level of corny in a way that makes me able to take it on its own merits.

спид [Aspid] - Кровоизлияние [Extravasation] (1993, RiTonis)

Genres: Technical Thrash Metal, Progressive Metal

Really sick Russian technical thrash. This likely needs time to simmer and revisit before I called it a masterpiece or anything, but if you really like high-ass-density riffing with an almost oppressively technical atmosphere then you definitely should be checking this one out.

Steve Hillage - Green (1978)

Genres: Space Rock, Progressive Rock, Psychedelic Rock

At first I wasn’t really sure how to take this - as a straight prog record, something more prog-pop, or experimental stuff. But it works remarkably well as a whole. By the time “Activation Meditation” segues into “The Glorious Om Riff”, I was totally converted. This kicks ass.

Jungle Rot - Slaughter the Weak (1997, Pulverizer)

Genres: Death Metal, Beatdown Hardcore

A four star review from dewtaylo on a death metal album with less than 1K ratings is an instant spin for me. This totally hauls. Groove-forward death metal with sprinkles of slam. Definitely ranks high on the “makes me want to punch a wall” scale.

Kenso - Kenso III (1985, King)

Genres: Progressive Rock, Jazz Fusion, Jazz-Rock, Neo-Prog

This is so perfectly in my wheelhouse, the exact overlapping of jazz fusion and progressive rock, big cheesy 80s synths sprouting up where the two genres meet. Love it! Japanese fusion is obviously amazing and this is just another great example.

Thanatos - Realm of Ecstacy (1992, Shark)

Genres: Death Metal, Thrash Metal

This sits right in the pocket between thrash metal’s inability to sit still and need to cram riffs in your face and death metal’s intensity. Some big time neck-snapping head-banging moments in the first couple tracks. Title track “Realm of Ecstacy” approaches Bolt Thrower levels of the mid-tempo, anvil-heavy stomp in the opening half. Just uhh don’t bother reading the lyrics, okay?

Mi-Sex - Space Race (1980)

Genres: New Wave, AOR

This is kind of quirky, geeky new wave synthy rock, and while it’s not going to blow you away I dug what’s going on here. Sometimes they give a bit of a The Monks vibe, with the kinda humourous/satiric tone they often strike. “It Only Hurts When I’m Laughing” was a stand out, and closer “Ice Cold Dead” is a great new wave rave up.

That’s it, that’s all. Be excellent to one other.

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I opened last year’s list by talking about all the big changes that happened to me, and how turbulent the year seemed. This year felt like the bizarro version of 2024 on the surface: no huge changes… and yet still a low simmer of worry and stress and internal unrest.

Compared to 2024, where I put almost all of my effort into the newsletter and music, I feel like this year I spent a lot of time treading water and just trying to keep up. I posted less new music Friday posts, even though I was still making them and tracking releases.

I think I did a pretty good job of keeping a steady stream of capsule reviews coming your way, though. Now that I think of it, I did launch the Digging for Something series, which I admit burned bright and has since started to flame out. Will try and get back on that horse in the new year, I promise. I tend to get that way with ideas, I’m constantly flirting with wanting to try video content or maybe a return to podcasting/interviews, but my execution always trails behind ambition. ADHD going to ADHD, etc.

Aside from all of that, a sincere thank you to everyone who has subscribed and enjoys what I’m trying to do. The idea that even a single person is out there reading this stuff will forever be novel to me, and I thank you for being out there. I welcome any and all feedback or suggestions if you’d like to see anything different from me on here.

On with the list, and I hope you find something you dig.

Feel free to reach out over on BlueSky or join the Rosy Overdrive Discord server where I can be found now and again. You can also find me in the corners of Rate Your Music scrounging for obscure emo, hardcore, indie rock and pop punk.

Don’t forget: if you’re reading this in your email it will be cut off. Read on the web for the full list of reviews!

Playlist

Previous year’s lists:

2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024

Don’t forget: if you’re reading this in your email it will be cut off. Read on the web for the full list of reviews!

saoirse dream - saoirse dream (Lauren Records)

Genres: Emo-Pop, Indie Rock, Indietronica

This album has everything I could ever want in a poppy, electronic-infused indie rock record. In the past, saoirse’s music was a little more foundationally hyperpop or indietronica, and here they achieve perfect crossover appeal for emo, indie rock and bitpop fans. It packs in crunchy guitar riffs, samples and vocal clips, alt-country solos and even shoegaze textures all through a Jeff Rosenstockian “post-genre” approach to pop music. It’s a beautiful, relatable, messy and emotionally kaleidoscopic journey... Hey, “it’s sorta like being alive”.

Wisconsin Anger Team - Beyond The Everest Crater III (Self Released)

Genres: Power Pop, Pop Punk, Punk Rock, Indie Rock

Wisconsin Anger Team have been quietly releasing fantastic records since 2021, and they’ve been getting better and better with each one. 2024’s Archie was a high water mark, and this year’s Beyond the Everest Crater II is their best yet. They’ve sneakily become one of the best bands out there, the kind that makes me want to yell at everyone to listen to. They have wide appeal, but are happy toiling away every year on a new set of songs regardless. You could slot this on the shelf beside Liquid Mike, anything released by Dirtnap Records, or hand it to fans of The Figgs or Green Day and it’s going to satisfy everyone.

Emily Yacina - Veilfall (Self Released)

Genres: Singer-Songwriter, Indie Pop

This record immediately hit me in the gut on an emotion level, but the songs in general are really gorgeous too and continued to grow on me since this released. Manages a good balance of indie pop and folk that dabbles in electronic elements without going full-on synth pop. In some ways, this reminded me a lot of Kicking Every Day, which is a very high compliment if you know me.

Hélène Barbier - Panorama (Bonsound Records)

Neo-psych is such a tricky genre for me, because there’s a lot of bands playing slick vaguely psychedelic indie-based pop/rock with that slinky bass tone and lots of syrupy melodies, but often times that results in music so airy and featherweight that it dissipates. Hélène Barbier seems to fit more alongside bands like Fievel Is Glauque, who really deftly balance the psych, the pop, and the moments of abrasiveness that make this kind of stuff stick to your brain.

Graham Hunt - Timeless World Forever (Run for Cover Records)

Genres: Indie Rock, Neo-Psychedelia, Indie Pop

Graham Hunt has been putting out really intriguing and catchy solo records since the end of Midnight Reruns, and along the way it has been very hard to pin them down as a talent. While their work is built on a foundation of pop hooks, influence-wise they go a lot deeper. They’re power pop, but not exclusively. They have a sub-genre tag of Baggy, but only in the sense that they have a jangly approach to their hooky tunes while overlaying it on some slacker-y beat-style drums (”I Just Need Enough”, “Cave Art”). Ultimately, I’d label this as eclectic singer-songwriter power pop and indie rock. And this could very well be their best album yet.

Aesop Rock - I Heard It’s a Mess There Too (Rhymesayers)

Genres: Abstract Hip Hop, Boom Bap, Experimental Hip Hop

Aesop Rock released two albums this year, and very good ones at that. When it came time to figure which one would be on this list, maybe recency bias came into play a little bit, but the back-to-sparseness approach they took on this album was just too good to overlook. This is a stack of simple, rap-your-ass-off Aes songs. Like an ice cold glass of refreshing water for the long-time fan. And it is done in a way that doesn’t sound like a lark or a “this one’s for the fans” type release. This isn’t some throwaway 40 minute album (the fact people are saying it’s “short” tells you how long his albums have been in the past years) but instead it’s stuffed with the energy of someone who is rediscovering a style or process they perfected and moved beyond years ago. I love that about this album.

Impurity - The Eternal Sleep (Hammerheart Records)

Genres: Death Metal

A few years back, I dove head-first into technical thrash metal and started dipping my toes into death metal. This year I really kept tumbling down the death metal rabbit hole, and despite my tastes branching out into more diverse areas of death metal, a lot of my favourite new records in the genre are firmly in the “this is meat and potatoes death metal that kicks my ass” territory.

This definitely fits that category, but a lot of this is also short and to the point, with some songs coming in at under 3 minutes. “Rectifying Pieces” even has some of that power violence call-and-response vibe going on to it that harkens back to punk/grind-influenced death metal stuff. Nice touches.

Hard to articulate exactly, why, but this became one of my go-to albums very quickly.

Liquid Mike - Hell Is an Airport (AWAL)

Genres: Power Pop, Indie Rock, Emo-Pop, Pop Punk

Liquid Mike knows what the people want, and releases another sub-30 minute album of guitar-rock power-pop nuggets. Some of this has a bit more arena-sized edge than their previous releases, with muscular 90s riff-rock elements (”Grand Am”, “’99”) and elsewhere they continue their grab-bag, GBV-esque approach to jangly genre-hopping (sans the lo-fi haze.) Some of the former elements have me thinking this is Mike’s take on the “major-label debut” type of power-pop records you’d get from 90s poppy punk and post-grunge alt-rock type bands. Works for me.

The Best of the Worst - New Dead Ends (Bad Time Records)

Genres: Skacore

In the past, this band escaped me because I felt like the ingredients of their sound were a bit out of whack. Here, they’ve perfected them. Skip through these songs and 95% of the time you’re either hitting an upstroke ska section, some variation of the riffy chugga chugga stuff or just a stretch of really sick melodic hardcore/ska-core. This album rocketed from “hey, pretty good” to “I cannot put this album down” in record time.

Dark Thoughts - Highway to the End (Stupid Bag Records)

Genres: Pop Punk, Garage Punk

6 years since their last release and Dark Thoughts returned with a mere 16 minutes of short, snotty and hooky retro punk rock. Thankfully, it’s 16 kick ass minutes; a stack of 11 super fast, super short songs (OK one is partially acoustic) that make you wanna walk through a brick wall. Thoroughly addictive.

Impérieux - Rezil (Macro)

Genres: UK Bass, IDM

Electronic music that touches on a variety of genres - techno, glitch, house, bass, IDM etc. This is definitely one of those records that glides by easily but doesn’t exactly captivate in a “closer inspection” kind of way, but that’s also what I’m into sometimes when it comes to this kind of album you know? Over the year, this stayed in rotation and made Impérieux a prolific name (on top of this record, they dropped 2 EPs) that I wanted to keep tabs on.

Pavid Vermin - The Life of a Showgirl (Self Released)

Genres: Pop Punk, Power Pop

If you didn’t know, Pavid Vermin are a pop punk band that once released a record called “Cutting Corners” with the same track listing as Abbey Road. Obviously, they fit into the long tradition of pop punk pranksters. And the songs? It’s all classic Vermin; bubblegum three-chord pop punk sprinkled with some faster more punk-focused moments (”Father Figure”, “Wi$h Li$t”). This comes in at 15 seconds under 15 minutes, so it’s not exactly substantial but I admire that they keep doing silly shit like this while at the same time being a solidly catchy pop punk band.

Water From Your Eyes - It’s a Beautiful Place (Matador Records)

Genres: Indie Rock, Experimental Rock, Post-Punk

Another great stack of hard-to-describe stuff from this band. The variety of genre and sub-genre tags should tip you off to what’s going on here though as it sits somewhere in the realm of indie rock dabbling in hypnotic grooves and art/noise/dance/etc. textures. Been digging all the main-line LPs they’ve been putting out since All a Dance and this continues their streak for sure. And it doesn’t over-stay its welcome either!

FM Skyline & Equip - Music 2 (100% Electronica)

Genres: Utopian Virtual, Chillsynth

It’s a fine line with this kind of deliberately nostalgic electronic music for me. Sometimes it bounces off me as way too explicit a re-creation of retro virtual type music. I’m not so well versed that I can pinpoint why this album worked for me, but it does. I think it’s somewhere in the details, like how “Goatman” starts as a super literal aping of “water level” type songs but then underlays a breakbeat under it to give it a modern touch. Moments like that turn these songs from a naked worshipping of a bygone sound to something a little more interesting.

Degraved - Spectral Realm of Ruin (Dark Descent Records)

Genres: Death Metal

Really meaty death metal that feels tailor made for me personally. This is total 90s death metal worship, super tough and straight ahead. Jumps between bashing you around and pummeling you by dropping heavy riffs on your head like an ACME anvil. Sits perfectly in my wheelhouse.

Propagandhi - At Peace (Epitaph Records)

Genres: Melodic Hardcore, Progressive Metal

2025 was a banner year for “I’m going to need a lot more time with this to fully understand how I feel about them” type albums.. and this was one of those.

The changes to Propagandhi’s sound over the years have been thrilling to follow, and Victory Lap proved there was a ton of gas left in the tank. The singles for At Peace showed signs of another small change - less intensity, more simmering and boiling. Thankfully, I had been listening to a lot of progressive rock this year and that really unlocked a lot of what they are doing on At Peace. It kicks a lot of ass and the B-side on this is sneakily amazing.

“The probability that you are even here is next to none / Hey, no pressure everyone!” spent a lot of time rattling around my brain in 2025.

gyrofield - Suspension of Belief (Kapsela)

Genres: Techno, Wonky Techno, Birmingham Sound

Have ben enjoying Gyrofield and following their releases since I heard A Faint Glow of Bravery. Hoped for a new album this year, but a 23 minute EP is pretty close. I don’t know anything about the turn in genres here because I’m not an expert, but Birmingham Sound being described as cold, mechanical, hypnotic tracks does check the box on what I’m hearing though. This is really good and suitably tense with nice and effective moments of release.

Dwelley - Loons (Self Released)

Genres: Indie Rock

This band including Deafheaven / Summoner’s Chris Johnson and members who played together in Blood Lightning. That all might lead you to believe this will be some kind of heavy act, but the names that kept coming to mind when I listened to it were Pinback and Rob Crow. Has a certain kind of 90s indie rock thing going on, but also a variety of other influences from a spectrum of genres. It’s jangly and plucky in a way that first had me expecting something emo/indie adjacent (”Skate and Smoke”) but they do get noisier in a 90s slacker rock way too.

Felt like this went a little underrated this year, so if it sounds like something you’d dig you should check it out.

Goto80 - B Y S A N (Data Airlines)

Genres: Chiptune, IDM, Glitch, Space Ambient

Fourth release in Goto80’s self-described “series of slower and longer music” which also includes S H Y G G A, G L o S o N and S T A L L O. I am a little familiar with those releases but none of them really grabbed me in a way where I wanted to sit down and listen to them straight through multiple times.

This release (which on streaming is broken into even more manageable passages than the Bandcamp track lengths) is rhythmic and melodic enough that I enjoyed the entire 72 minutes. It’s all minimal, glitchy and atmospheric stuff built on a C64-chip foundation, but interesting enough that it held my attention.

Anita Velveeta - Liquid Gold (Self Released)

Genres: Metalcore, Emo, Digital Hardcore

I really dug i saw the devil in portland oregon’s kaleidoscopic post-genre thing, and here they’re leaning a lot further into simplifying the ingredients in their sound but not really simplifying the sound itself, if that makes any sense.

Mainly, this ups the measurements of the heavy aspect of their sound with big chugga chugga breakdowns and aggressive digital hardcore breaks and electronic bleepy bloops. Might take a couple songs before you settle into what’s going on here, but it’s really good stuff if you have a taste for this kind of chaos.

Malformed - Confinement of Flesh (Extremely Rotten Productions)

Genres: Death Metal

Immediately upon pressing play, this was exactly my speed. What struck me about their sound is how specifically it seems to be fusing together their influences from Finnish death metal with distinctly old school American death metal elements. Definitely a good amount of classic thrash influences on some of the riffing here, to my excitement. Lots of great pummeling death metal riffs, alternating with great mid-tempo nicely technical thrashiness (without getting all egghead about it.) They toss in some melodic leads (”Confinement of Terror”) that also seem yoinked straight out of some late-90s thrash albums.

Sam Prekop - Open Close (Thrill Jockey Records)

Genres: Ambient Techno, Electronic

Have to admit that the few times I’ve stuck my head into Sam Prekop’s solo material in the past, it always seemed more ambient than this. Likely an issue with timing on my part, as multiple records of theirs seem to be labeled as minimal or ambient techno and progressive electronic. My memory of their solo albums always felt more like “that person from The Sea and Cake making abstract synth gurgles” (The Republic) and not “kraut/Berlin-y electronic with skittering percussion and ambient drones” but it seems like their career has a lot more of the latter than I erroneously thought. Really beautiful, simple electronic music with an organic pulse and a heartbeat. I still just want to sit in a dark room with this cranked up loud for a while.

pond 1000 - daffodiL (Sad Cactus Records)

Genre: Indie Rock

Great indie with a noisy art-rock skew to it. Brings to mind bands like Pom Poko, Moontype or even some Blonde Redhead. Wirey and plucky guitar lines, twee vocals plus slightly drone-y melodies that build and stack together in satisfying ways before clashing into releases of smudged guitar rock.

Prepared - Module (Compost Records)

Genres: Avant-Garde Jazz, Post-Bop, Post-Minimalism

I love this kind of cyclical, repetitious modern classical music. It’s got the form and texture of a jazz band but the interlocking simplistic melodies of classical minimalist compositions. Gets into nice head-nodding territories without being overtly modern or too hip. Only thing I would say is that by “Modul vier IV” it feels like we get into a standard “end the album on a high note” kind of thing that could ring as cheesy for some. Otherwise, this really benefits from its brevity and simplicity - most of these movements are 2 - 6 minutes and build off each other nicely.

Wavers - Look What I Found (Salinas Records)

Genres: Indie Rock

Described by Salinas Records as “big-hearted, melodic, indie rock band influenced by D.IY. punk” and that’s about as good as anything I could have come up with. Not completely sure about the members here (credited online mostly by first-name only) but discogs and this fanzine link seem to hint they are all from various other bands.

Anyone coming to this for punk rock would be disappointed, but I really like emo-adjacent guitar focused indie rock with churning emotions and autumnal vibes and this checks a lot of those boxes, personally.

Ukko’s Hammer - Ukko’s Hammer (Self Released)

Genres: Crossover Thrash

Genre tags are crossover thrash (and metalcore) which makes sense because this is swirling with punk, hardcore, thrash and other types of metal influences. Definitely has the chugga-chugga breakdowns of metalcore and crossover thrash, but never gets into the real chaotic strain of metalcore since the foundation is in speedy thrashy riffery (with textures set to “brutal.”) Vocalist seems very satisfyingly unhinged. Kick ass cover art, too. “Hiisi Tanssi” never failed to get me slamming my head around at work real good.

Ghoulies - Shafted by the Algorithm (Erste Theke Tonträger)

Genres: Egg Punk, Garage Punk, Synth Punk

That synthy high pitched egg punk thing is a genre that I feel like burned out bright. I dig Snõõper are doing (more on that later) but there seemed to be a ton of bands who all sounded super similar in the genre and I kind of tired myself out of trying to keep up. GHOULIES are the first band in a while to shake me out of that disinterest. Maybe it’s because they’re over-cranked so wildly, or that they anchor their off-the-rails synthy punk in pop hooks more effectively? There’s definitely as much Dirtnap/Recess style garage pop punk in these songs as there is DEVO worship or herky jerky new wave worship or other signifiers of the egg punk genre.

Virtua Point Zero - Reconnection (Data Airlines)

Genres: Chiptune, Bit Music

Amiga-based chiptune/tracker stuff from Data Airlines. Mostly upbeat energetic stuff that inches towards a brassy in-your-face EDM adjacent sound. I don’t mind that brash kind of electronic music when it is couched in chiptune textures, so this was a welcome record in my rotation this year.

Beach Bunny - Tunnel Vision (AWAL)

Genres: Power Pop, Indie Rock

Beach Bunny have either been a singles band or an EP band for me up until this point. Their debut had a few tracks I enjoyed, but Blame Game was a stack of four fizzy and addictive indie-power-pop songs I couldn’t put down. Their second album Emotional Creature really did not land for me.

The singles for this album seemed promising, though. This band is most effective when they crank up the pop hooks knob, and thankfully they’re back at that here. They take some stylistic detours - the verses of “Tunnel Vision” sound like them aping Paramore’s 80s phase - but it doesn’t detract when most of these songs have really solid, ear-worm level melodies when the choruses hit. I appreciate that they are taking a bit of a back-to-basics approach at times here on simpler, more direct songs like “Chasm” and “Pixie Cut”. Overall, solid stuff and their strongest top-to-bottom release outside of Blame Game.

Horsegirl - Phonetics On and On (Matador Records)

Genres: Indie Rock, Indie Pop, Twee Pop

Where Versions of Modern Performance was a take on 90s grey-day guitar-focused indie rock, I really enjoyed how on their second album they just said “this time we’re doing another throwback take on a whole different kind of band’s sound.” This is way more twee and jangle in foundation, still with a bit of a slacker-y bent, but calling to mind more bands like Yo La Tengo, The Raincoats or bass-driven (”Well I Know You’re Shy”) 80s-influenced collegiate underground pop. Super delightful, very enjoyable. Has that kind of wistful vibe that will make sense in the fall, make sense in the summer, make sense in the spring... you get the idea.

Visual Learner - Greg (Salinas Records)

Genres: Indie Rock, Pop Punk

Another one of those bands aping that very specific moment in 90s poppy punk where scrappy college radio indie rock and regional alt rock all melted down to spawn a bunch of The Replacements-worshipping acts. This feels right on that dividing line, it’s not so power pop that the focus is entirely on mining for hooks, and it’s not so punk in foundation that it’s all energy and attitude either (though it’s there on songs like “Cure-All”). I could imagine reviews name-checking Hüsker Dü too, but that’s not as simple a reference point either—though their spiky lead lines do recall SST Records in moments.

Basically, this is ramshackle indie rock guitar music that dips into poppy punk energy (”Barely There”) and that drunken storyteller kinda alternative rock (”THEMCHARMINGHAMMS”) whenever the moment calls for it.

Squint - Drag EP (Sunday Drive Records)

Genres: Melodic Hardcore

Squint out put 5 more Squint songs and another Squintro. Makes sense to me. I know that this sound is at the absolute pinnacle of being played out, but I’m still on team Squint being the one non-Drug Church band that handles it well. I’m OK with a band like this re-writing the same song over and over because when it hits, it hits. This will likely not win over anyone who has tired of them by now, and maybe the band is due to really figure out if they are going to lean further into alt-rock esque radio rock (“Mourning Dove” has me thinking they could pull off a modern take on Rival Schools’s United by Fate very well) or into something else, but I’m OK for now.

Bike Notes - Bike Notes (Bloated Kat / Limited Fun)

Genres: Indie Rock, Pop Punk

This is a little hard to pin down, it comes from Bloated Kat Records, but isn’t straight up pop punk. Reminds me particularly of that kind of UK-based fuzzy noise-pop indie rock like Martha, Woahnows or Doe. Definitely some punk energy in here and a big time focus on melody and hooks but not sure I’d go right into calling it pop punk tbh—though songs like “Splinters and Glue” approach skate punk attitude with their galloping beats. There’s definitely overlap into the genre for sure. Anthemic and energetic, this gets an extra half-star from me just on sheer gumption.

The Brokedowns - Let’s Tip the Landlord (Red Scare)

Genres: Indie Rock, Pop Punk

For me, Species Bender has always been the key album from The Brokedowns, but gun to my head, I’d say this one is a little more consistent and has more interesting curveballs than their last few. They pull some “we have Hot Snakes at home” riffs out now and again (“Summer Games”, which also sounds a LOT like The Arrivals) in a way that is a satisfying diversion. As org-y melodic punk rock releases from in 2025, this is a damn fine addition.

cootie catcher - Shy at First (The Cooked Raw Label)

Genres: Twee Pop, Indietronica

It’s twee/indie-pop so the bad band name is basically feature, not bug. This splits the difference between exuberant, jangly twee pop and clattering indie orchestra folktronica textures. This kind of thing walks a really fine line between cute and annoying, but thankfully they mostly stay on the former side. Their indie-pop tendencies shine through and songs like “Friend of a Friend”, “Dumb Lit” and “Diary” are quality little guitar-forward bops. The synthy diversions like “Do Forever” round the album out in a nice way.

Doomsday - Never Known Peace (Creator Destructor Records)

Genres: Crossover Thrash

A lot of modern thrash / crossover either sits in the category of aping vintage bands so hard it becomes almost comical, or going so far into punk/hardcore territory that they just end up sounding mostly like a beatdown band. What struck me about this is that they split the difference very effectively. Sometimes they do the hardcore chug-’n’-gang-chant (”Holy Justice”) and sometimes they just kick out good 90s-ass ripped denim crossover thrash jams (”The Outlaw”, “Remnants of Spite”).

Not saying nobody else is doing this (many are) but I feel like there is such a glut of “wink wink we’re doing cheesy 90s thrash metal” that this blend of ingredients went down even smoother for me. Just the stuff I like, crammed into 30 fairly memorable minutes. Fun!

Fanclubwallet - Living While Dying (Lauren Records)

Genres: Indie Rock, Indie Pop

Was unfamiliar with Fanclubwallet‘s previous records, but happily had this put on my radar by Rosy Overdrive. Bounces around a lot of related pop genres, with pulsing acoustic strums and motorik-esque percussion (”Gears”) or peppy indie rock guitar lines (”Cotton Mouth”) alongside synthpop features on dreamy tunes (”Know You Anymore”) or squiggly chiptune tones (”Me Time”). On the more upbeat, indie pop style songs they can bring to mind acts like Sobs.

(T-T)b - Beautiful Extension Cord (Disposable America)

Genres: Indietronica, Slacker Rock, Bitpop

Glad to see this band back, and while they are still doing crunchy emo-influenced indie rock with chiptune bleeps and bloops, it’s still something that only a few bands seem to do this is (T-T)b continuing to do it very well. It doesn’t hurt that Crying stepped away from this sound almost entirely on their second (masterpiece) album and left a big hole for someone else to step up and deliver.

This is all really effective - they nicely expand their palette of textures with strummy acoustics, pedal steel and clean plucked chords here and there, backing their hook-forward emo foundation. This stuff all builds and recedes and does the quiet loud thing, but always stays in service of good melodies and cathartic releases.

Good Luck - Big Dreams, Mister (Lauren Records)

Genres: Midwest Emo, Power Pop

Good Luck are back, and they released another great record. This sounds about what you would expect a reunion album for this specific band to sound like: it’s not phoned in, it sounds mostly like their last album with some light pushing of the boundaries of their genre. Feels as much as a change compared to Without Hesitation as that record did to Into Lake Griffy. Anyone wishing they would move back in the direction of fuzziness and super-high energy of their debut may be disappointed, but this is a great reunion album from a fantastic band and I’m happy to have them back. It may be the third best Good Luck album, but that’s a pretty high bar to be honest.

Violator - Unholy Retribution (Kill Again Records)

Genres: Thrash Metal

Brazilian thrash metal that skirts shy of the pizza thrash genre by amping up their focus on really evil, morbid atmosphere. Definitely some longer compositions here—not surprising, but welcome considering there are still some detectable crossover elements in their foundation. That said, they mostly lean away from those elements in favor of keeping things suitably brutal, as is Brazilian thrash’s wont. Really love how furious this gets, and there’s certainly some riffs that approach death metal by virtue of their speediness and intensity. This is just a really well rounded thrash album, and nicely sits in the throwback metal pile without being corny or goofy.

Kloke - Lucidity (Mindgames Collected)

Genres: Jungle, Atmospheric Drum and Bass, Techstep

My only problem with Kloke’s brand of atmospheric jungle slash drum and bass seems to be that they have a little bit of a more is more problem. On Rhythm similarly ran about 70 minutes, and they’re back again with a 12 song album clocking in at the same running length. I said on the review of On Rhythm that it might just be a pinch too much for me to take in one sitting, giving the relatively repetitive nature of the genre. But it’s all of a certain quality, so I can’t fault them there. As far as slabs of jungle/dnb go, this is great stuff.

Paper Jam - This and That (Self Released)

Genres: Twee Pop, Jangle Pop, Cuddlecore

What separates this record from other Melberg-influenced indie pop slash twee throwback acts, I think, is the strength of their songs. These are effortlessly breezy in the same way that stuff by Go Sailor or The Softies are, but they also stick to the wall, melody wise. Really, this is all about balance and when “Skyscraper” bounces along, it has that “could fall apart at any moment” feeling but the foundation remains steady. “Scrappy, but still tightly wound” is a tough rope to walk, but they do it again and again on these 10 songs. Also helps that 20 minutes is just about the perfect running time for this stuff as it makes you feel like starting it all over again wouldn’t be such a bad idea.

Cigarette Camp - Slowpoke EP (Self Released) / Steps LP (Dead Broke Rekerds)

Genres: Pop Punk

Cigarette Camp are definitely still out here being the best band doing sloppy poppy punk rock a la Dillinger Four. Since their debut LP was released the exact day that I am writing these words, I decided to roll it up with their EP which was previously chosen for inclusion here (even though I have only listened to it twice lol.) First glance at the LP is business as usual (one of the songs is 9 seconds long and nothing breaks the 1.5 minute mark, in fact they bash out 19 songs in as many minutes) but closer inspection shows them nudging the power pop knob a la Chinese Telephones up a few notches and the Dillinger Four orgcore knob down a little. Both styles are well represented across all 19 minutes of the record, but it’s a slight change of pace.

I don’t mind, because I love gritty but mid-tempo pop punk bangers. I mean, they cover Fastbacks (”Weather Perfectly Clear”), so you know where they are coming from here and are signaling their slight turn in sound pretty clearly.

Roll this 19 minute LP and 4 minute EP up together and you’ve still got what amounts to a short record, so I’m doing that with my list because I’m the boss here and I can do what I want!

Mei Semones - Animaru (Bayonet Records)

Genres: Chamber Pop, Bossa nova, Indie Folk, Math Pop, Jazz Pop, Singer-Songwriter

Wonderful and jazzy chamber-pop indie-rock etc. Lots of big melodies that stick despite the restless instrumentation and orchestral arrangements. This straddles the line between quiet and quirky in a way that you could recommend this to a fan of Fievel Is Glauque as easily as more traditionally indie sounding experimental noisy pop bands like Pom Poko. Hell, some of this sits in singer-songwriter territory as well. Really nice! I look forward to listening to this a few more times for sure.

STERÖID - Chainmail Commandos (Crypt of the Wizard)

Genres: Egg Punk, Heavy Metal, Garage Punk

Egg punk vocals and programmed drums over cranked-up 70s power-pop riffs and melodies, filtered through an 80s glam rock “metal” strainer. I can imagine this will make a lot of people annoyed, but I really had a nice time with this. The metal angle on this is going to be super questionable for most people but honestly, if you take certain riffs here, slow them down 200% and play them through an Big Muff or something, it absolutely makes sense. The main attraction here is the energy and the melody, so it’s a lot of fun as long as you’re not interested in picking apart whether or not it’s got any real metal or whatever in it.

Sijjin - Helljjin Combat (Sepulchral Voice Records)

Genres: Thrash Metal, Death Metal

Very good meeting place of modern thrash with a whiff of technicality without being just ridiculous. Comments in the RYM box name checking ...And Justice for All makes sense to me as this is similarly riff-focused, as does the comment calling it “crushing mid-paced tech-deathrash.” If you’re coming here for the death part of that equation you’ll probably be disappointed but if you like extended slabs of technical thrash that bring to mind titans of the early 90s then this will scratch an itch for sure. Vocal style aside, this gets close to activating the same part of my brain that goes nuts for dense thrash like Time Does Not Heal.

Tapeworms - Grand Voyage (Music Website)

Genres: Glitch Pop, Indie Pop, Bitpop, Picopop

I have a memory of enjoying Funtastic back in 2020, but in my mind it was a lot more of a “band” style thing with shoegaze and dream pop kind of stuff.

They’ve really re-focused their sound on this record in a way that makes a lot of sense without dropping what made them interesting in the first place. Funtastic had a lot of synthy textures alongside their jangly noisy sound, but here they’ve dialed the latter way way back and are much more glitch/bitpop/picopop/etc. focused. They still have acoustic strums on songs like “Love and Pop”, or hazy dreamy hooks on something like “That Place in Time”, but it’s texture rather than foundation. Honestly, it really works for the band. They’re way closer to something like a mix of early-and-late career Kero Kero Bonito than the shoegaze/noise pop of their last record.

Anxious - Bambi (Run for Cover Records)

Genres: Emo-Pop, Post-Hardcore, Pop Punk

Likely not going to be a surprise for anyone who followed Anxious’ post-Little Green House singles, but they’ve expanded beyond their emo-pop / emo-rock that had vague hardcore-adjacent influence and soft-grunge moments. Honestly, some of this even reminds me of the softest of 00s emo-pop like the more direct songs on Mapping an Invisible World. If their syrupy nature was a bug not a feature to some listeners of their last album, not sure this will convince them otherwise. But it continues down a path I’m willing to follow them, and it’s pretty solid and enjoyable all around. That said, re-listening to this for year-end list inclusion I was reminded that there’s still some songs that really bang on this one too.

The Beths - Straight Line Was a Lie (Anti- Records)

Genres: Indie Rock, Indie Pop, Power Pop, Jangle Pop

This isn’t always the case, but when a band I admire primarily on a melody/hook/energy level slowly transitions into a less immediate, more expansive version of their sound I generally find myself losing interest. The Beths aren’t making a hard-turn into softer, lighter music here because they have been on that trajectory for an album or two, but they do continue to show that they’re retaining their strong melodic foundation. In the RYM comments box, BobBarker (lol) compares their trajectory to The New Pornographers or Superchunk, which tracks stylistically but The Beths are proving themselves more adept at remaining memorable as they soften up over the years, for me anyway.

Snõõper - Worldwide (Third Man)

Genres: Egg Punk, Garage Punk, Dance-Punk, Synth Punk

A fun blast of egg punk from the one band that I’ve always gravitated towards in the genre. Unfortunately, aside from a measurable uptick in fidelity this is more of the same. Fortunately, I’m still on board for “more of the same” but their next move will be wildly important for them. What matters, is this retains their high energy, high-hook-density songwriting craft in a way that still excites me. Not sure I have another “more of the same” album from this band in me, but I’m on the edge of my seat wondering where they take this sound next.

That’s it, that’s all. Be excellent to one other.

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Afternoon!

It has been a while since my last newsletter, and I briefly considered not sending this one today since everybody’s inboxes are likely stuffed with Friday sales announcements… but I figured maybe a few of you out there would like a brief respite from that. Keeping the introduction brief again today, but have included today’s new music playlist for y’all to peruse on top of my usual cavalcade of capsule reviews.

And now, let’s get to the tunes.

New Music: Friday November 28th, 2025

Emoji legend:

• ⛏️ denotes picks of the week, my favs.

• 🌱 seedling denotes albums like a lot and expect could grow on me over the year.

• ✨ albums I would recommend to fans of the genre (i.e. it might not convert new listeners, but you should check it out.)

• ✂ denotes favourite tracks from a given record.

As always, feel free to reach out over on BlueSky or join the Rosy Overdrive Discord server where I can be found now and again.

You can also find me in the corners of Rate Your Music scrounging for obscure emo, hardcore, indie rock and pop punk.

Don’t forget: if you’re reading this in your email it will be cut off.
Read on the web for the full list of reviews!

Degraved - Spectral Realm of Ruin (2025)

Genres: Death Metal

Really meaty death metal that feels tailor made for me personally. This is total 90s death metal worship, super tough and straight ahead. Jumps between bashing you around and pummeling you by dropping heavy riffs on your head like an ACME anvil.

Maybe it’s the Seattle location on the artist page, but you could convince me there’s a little sludgey grunge influence going on as well. A few atmospheric moments sprinkled around (”Unseen”) to give you a moment to come up for air. Vocalist is pretty one-note in that non-derogatory way that suits this type of thing.

You could listen to this and say it blurs together, all sounds exactly the same, it’s incredibly derivative, they’re just banging on the same ol’ riffs etc. etc. but I’m truly not bothered by it at all. Sits perfectly in my wheelhouse. In the week or so since this was released it has become my go-to album to reach for, so I think that says something.

cootie catcher - Shy at First (2025)

Genres: Twee Pop, Indietronica, Glitch Pop, Slacker Rock

It’s twee/indie-pop so the bad band name is basically feature, not bug. This splits the difference between exuberant, jangly twee pop and clattering indie orchestra folktronica textures. This kind of thing walks a really fine line between cute and annoying, but thankfully they mostly stay on the former side. Their indie-pop tendencies shine through and songs like “Friend of a Friend”, “Dumb Lit” and “Diary” are quality little guitar-forward bops. The synthy diversions like “Do Forever” round the album out in a nice way. Really solid stuff if you aren’t allergic to twee.

Hélène Barbier - Panorama (2025)

Genres: Neo-Psychedelia, Art Pop, Psychedelic Pop, Art Punk

I really dug Regulus, which landed on my year-end list in 2021. Had no idea that Hélène Barbier had a new one coming out until I tried to catch up on Friday’s releases and saw this sitting in the bin.

Neo-psych is such a tricky genre for me, because there’s a lot of bands playing slick vaguely psychedelic indie-based pop/rock with that slinky bass tone and lots of syrupy melodies, but often times that results in music so airy and featherweight that it dissipates. Hélène Barbier seems to fit more alongside bands like Fievel Is Glauque, who really deftly balance the psych, the pop, and the moments of abrasiveness that make this kind of stuff stick to your brain.

You can head the building blocks scraping against each other instead of being so perfectly built from the ground up. But it never gets annoying, never stops being the kind of album I want to crawl inside to find out what makes it tick. Very hard thing to do! Enjoyed my 26 minutes with this and look forward to re-visiting. Year-end potential with some revisits, that’s for sure.

Terror Corpse - Ash Eclipses Flesh (2025)

Genres: Death Metal

This rules. Wish I had more to say but you should probably just go read dewtaylo‘s review. This is capital D primary genre Death Metal, but even though it seems they’ve taken a turn away from deathgrind there’s sprinkles of that sound in here if you’re listening for it (”Nuclear Winter”). When they’re not dabbling in that, it’s a mix of that mid- to upper-mid tempo heavy shit that you crave. It hauls, it’s heavy, and I really dug it.

Awich - Okinawan Wuman (2025)

Genres: Boom Bap, Hardcore Hip Hop

This was sick and I’m surprised by the low score. Awesome production from RZA and a lot of really dope features. I haven’t followed the endless solo releases from Griselda so hearing Westside Gunn pop up here was still novel for me. On top of that, Awich generally puts in a really great performance holding the album together. It’s a bit scattered in terms of having skits and bouncing between boom bap hip hop, some pop-esque hooks (”A Woman Hung Up”) and more soulful/R&B moments, but it hangs together well enough. Worst thing I’d say is that this feels a bit top heavy.

The Brokedowns - Let’s Tip the Landlord (2025)

Genres: Punk Rock, Pop Punk

For me, Species Bender has always been the key album from The Brokedowns. Maybe it was a time and place thing, maybe it was the simple fact that I heard it before any of their other albums. Regardless, I had some time for New Brains for Everyone and the albums that came after Species, but if I’m reaching for a Brokedowns album it’s gonna be Species. I admire that they are still pumping out records every couple years, but it’s not like they’re gonna ursurp a band like The Dopamines as my fav current band doing this type of thing, yanno?

Probably a bit of an unfair comparison there, as there’s differences in the measurements of what the bands are grasping at, but there’s a venn diagram overlap nonetheless. Gun to my head, I’d say this one is a little more consistent and has more interesting curveballs than their last few. Maybe this time it’s recency bias, but I’m enjoying this. They pull some “we have Hot Snakes at home” riffs out now and again (”Summer Games”, which also sounds a LOT like The Arrivals) in a way that is a satisfying diversion.

Give me some time to see if this hangs with Species, but as far as org-y melodic punk rock in 2025, this is a solid addition.

Lone Wolf - Dark Thoughts (2025)

Genres: Pop Punk, Post-Punk, Power Pop

Really dug Haze Wave back in 2023 (seems longer ago tbh) but looks like it had narrowly avoided landing on my year-end list that year. Was happily surprised to read about a new one from them pop up on the blog Faster & Louder today though.

They play guitar-hook laden power-pop that dips into noise-pop and indie rock territories throughout these 10 songs. Definitely some emo-adjacent influences, though I hesitate to use the term pop-punk to describe them because mostly these songs are mid-tempo indie rock in foundation to my ears, though there’s similarities to garage-y Dirtnap style bands on songs like “Rip It Apart”.

Enjoyable stuff!

Moving Targets - Red Eyes (2025)

Genres: Post-Hardcore, Alternative Rock

Moving Targets are such an interesting band to me because a) they’re a punk/melodic hardcore/post-hardcore band from the mid-eighties still steadily releasing albums to this day and b) they seem to be very consistently a band that never clicks for me, despite my efforts. Their early stuff is Hüsker Dü-esque, and in the 90s through their reforming they settled into an alternative rock forward kind of gruff but poppy punk kind of vibe. I heard Wires when it came out, not knowing their history as a bit of a legacy act, and thought it was alright. Every few years, a new one from them pops up and I check it out thinking “I remember this band being pretty good” and I’m always unsurprised that yes, they’re pretty good. Total two point five to three star, not bad, doesn’t blow you away guitar rock music. Sometimes they get a little jangly in a college rock power pop way (”On the Run”) and sometimes they pull the energy level up a smidge (”Nine Lives”). I wouldn’t blame someone if they listened to this and said there was zero punk energy left in their sound.

Didn’t hate this, but it was total background music for me upon first listen and feels pretty forgettable. Eventually I do need to check their first album out though and see how that fares.

Siege Column - Sulphur Omega (2025)

Genres: Death Metal, Thrash Metal, War Metal, Speed Metal

First impressions would be that this is thrash-forward death metal with crusty-in-foundation aesthetics and drumming. I’m not an expert in War Metal yet so I’ll take the sub-genre tag’s word for it. They’ve got some punk bounce to them on songs like “Eternal Pentagram” which is a nice change of pace after being heads down in the modern death metal mines. Basically, the ingredients and measurements are here in good form but for whatever reason I found some kind of invisible ceiling to their songs that I can’t place my finger on. All of this is good, and could improve upon closer inspection, but I left finding it a pinch forgettable. Could be my relative inexperience with some of the origins of the ingredients? Who knows. Fun stuff though, and worth a look if it sounds up your alley.

Tony Molina - On This Day (2025)

Genres: Folk Pop, Power Pop, Jangle Pop

Incredibly pleasant. I admire the folky twee area that Molina has wound up in, but for my money they are still at their best when they are writing higher energy riff-based stuff. Some of the power pop and jangle pop tunes on here do work well though. I like the little acoustic ditties and the even-shorter-than-the-already-short-song interludes but wonder how this would sound with all the full-band songs stacked together in one-go. Anyway, a nice stack of enjoyable little tunes.

Home Front - Watch It Die (2025)

Genres: Post-Punk, New Wave, Oi!, Synthpop

This band is the biggest thing going in punk right now it feels like (or is that just up here in Canada and I’ve got regional bias?) and whenever I sit down to listen to their albums I feel like a grumpy old man. This is fine, good even, but nothing about it stands out to me. Lyrically this feels like corny bog-standard platitudes over post-punk with coldwave/synthpop textures that we’ve heard elsewhere.

At 43 minutes, I felt like I had heard everything they had to do here by track 6. “Kiss the Sky” feels 24 years late to the “let’s try to sound like The Faint“ party. Not that that’s bad, but it feels very obvious. I honestly came to this wanting to love it as much as everyone else and kept an entirely open mind, and again I don’t hate this, it’s totally pretty good.

I feel like this sits on the fence between the punk and the synthpop sounds in a way that sacrifices the best parts of both those genres - it lacks truly punk energy (could be the production, I know their live show is raved about and that may be my missing link here, not having seen them live) and leaves me wanting for more cold but sticky melodies and hooks. When they reach for punk (”Young Offender”) it feels surface to me. When they do coldwave it feels textural and the hooks don’t hang.

File this one under MP not a YP to be honest. People love this and I am happy it exists and hope to see them release an album that lands for me personally, some day.

U.K. - Danger Money (1979)

Genres: Progressive Rock, Symphonic Prog

Took me a couple of attempts to put this one on to finally line my mood up with it. Dunno why, but kinda bounced off this my first tries but today it’s sounding great. Love the slight detour into dad prog rock here compared to the last one, which was a lot nerdier sounding and (as mentioned in that review) sometimes dipped into a bit of circus-prog-fusion vibes.

This is progressive rock with a big focus on sweet electric violin jams (”Caesar’s Palace Blues”) and smoke machine synths (”Nothing to Lose”) with a foundation in dad-core melodies and hooks. Closer “Carrying No Cross” dives head-first into fusion-forward prog through and really wraps it all up in a great way. Kind of gives everyone what they want, in some ways, be that progressive dad rock or honest-to-good-ness progressive fusion, it’s all in here somewhere.

Tyrant Trooper - Insane Sickness (1995)

OK so to get it out of the way, a lot of this really drags on and on but what they are doing is sick enough that it doesn’t really matter. To my ears this sounds weirdly ahead of its time for 1995?

Obviously there were death metal bands in the 90s doing mosh riffs with foundations in groove but there’s something about the mix of influences here that kills. Seeing someone in the comments box say the band “admitted they were a deathcore band” makes some sense. At times this feels like it anticipates elements that would come to life in deathcore. That’s another genre I have a very limited understanding of, but it seems to make sense when I listen to this. Is it a bit of a stretch? Maybe. It all comes down to there being enough death metal in here alongside the sick mosh-ready breakdowns, dope and flashy drumming and thrashy solos that it all goes down easy.

47 minutes feels like it’s way too much but I admired what they were doing regardless.

Eternal Solstice - The Wish Is Father to the Thought (1995)

Genres: Death Metal

Good, heavy shit from the Netherlands. This had a nice mix of fast paced and mid-tempo stuff alongside that thrashiness you’d still hear in death from around this time. Tossed this on because it was on a 100 Obscure Death Metal Albums list on RYM and it caught my eye for whatever reason. I didn’t exactly play the closest of attention but it was also 38 minutes that kinda flew by so

I’m leaning on the side of generosity because I enjoyed this quite a bit on a gut level. Brain level, we’ll see if I return to it, but worth a look.

Diabolic - Supreme Evil (1998)

Genres: Death Metal

I haven’t quite reached the level of digging for esoteric death metal records that I found myself doing for technical thrash a year or so ago, but I’m dipping my toes into stuff with lower review counts now and again. I’m also no expert on Floridian 90s death metal, as I also didn’t dive straight into the classic bolded records of the genre either.

So this sits somewhere where I’m a little unfamiliar, being a slightly lesser known release that gets compared to a lot of stuff I’m only slightly familiar with. Likely the reason why this was a little in-one-ear-out-the-other this afternoon. Solid stuff, pretty cool drum performance as well. There’s a good level of diversity in their sound while still sounding like classic 90s death metal. “Dwelling Spirits” perked my ears up with some fun extended soloing and lightly technical elements. On that song, when they bounce around their three core elements - their thrashiness, the classic 90s OSDM vibe, and anvil-heavy riffing - they really get a stew goin’. They do some similar dumb-heavy riffing on “Wicked Inclination”, and in particular I think the B-side kinda hauls overall. Maybe it was me getting comfortable with their sound, or maybe it was the strength of the second half?

For that reason I’m coming down on the generous side of things with a 3.5 rating when I was originally thinking 3, just by virtue of it leaving me on a high note. Will have to file this under something to return to though, for sure.

Exoto - Carnival of Souls (1994)

Genres: Death Metal, Thrash Metal

Cromulent death-thrash, maybe more emphasis on the thrash but I clocked the track lengths here and figured this was going to be a little more to-the-point type death influence and less massively heavy and I was mostly right. They stretch out here and there, particularly in the second half. Certainly well rounded and enjoyable, but also the kind of album you’ve heard before so I can’t imagine it blowing any minds.

The Smooths - (No Brakes) (1998)

Genres: Third Wave Ska, Ska Punk, Reggae

Pretty well-rounded as far as third wave ska that seems to have gone un-remembered goes. This has a lot of that “third wave ska band made up of band geeks” thing going on, and only touches upon the ska-punk side of the third wave (”Farewell”, “Look Out” and a couple others get close). Mostly, they do the dated 90s reggae-voice (”Big Decisions”) and generally fuse more “classic” ska influence into their upbeat poppy third-wave blend.

I was about ready to give this 3.5 stars since it’s pretty above-average for the A-side, but it drags on and by the 7th or 8th track it was getting clear that I had heard most of what they have to do here. Still, if you’re scrounging for some overlooked third-wave ska, a few of these songs should do the trick on your playlists.

✂ Farewell, Commander 7 to Spaceboy, History’s Burning, Look Out

That’s it, that’s all. Be excellent to one other.

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Morning y’all.

Not much to tell ya these days... I’m still listening to a lot of music though.

And! I made a semi-return to film podcasting after a long break, so if you have any interest in me talking about weird movies you’ve got that going for ya.

• Eric Roberts is the Man, Episode 295: Nobody’s Fool (1986)

• New World Pictures Podcast, Episode 159: Caged Terror (1973)

And now, let’s get to the tunes.

New Music: Friday November 7th, 2025

• This was bound to happen, but the intertwining of new music playlists and my reviews has resulted in a big batch of overlap.

• If you’d like some of my thoughts on the albums released on November 7th, 2025 all you need to do is scroll down. Some other stray thoughts for now:

  • I need to catch up on hip hop releases. Friday saw new music from Armand Hammer, The Alchemist, billy woods, E L U C I D, Domo Genesis, Graymatter, Bun B, Cory Mo and more.

• Flames are a band I’ve reviewed here before, but I’m still cautious when it comes to legacy metal bands releasing new music as I’m not sure I can count many times where it turns out positive. It happens… just maybe more rarely?

• Haven’t heard a new Clark album in a while, but I mean to check this new one out at some point.

Anyway, here’s my reviews…

Emoji legend:

• ⛏️ denotes picks of the week, my favs.

• 🌱 seedling denotes albums like a lot and expect could grow on me over the year.

• ✨ albums I would recommend to fans of the genre (i.e. it might not convert new listeners, but you should check it out.)

• ✂ denotes favourite tracks from a given record.

As always, feel free to reach out over on BlueSky or join the Rosy Overdrive Discord server where I can be found now and again.

You can also find me in the corners of Rate Your Music scrounging for obscure emo, hardcore, indie rock and pop punk.

Don’t forget: if you’re reading this in your email it will be cut off.
Read on the web for the full list of reviews!

⛏️ Anita Velveeta - Liquid Gold (2025)

Genres: Digital Hardcore, Metalcore, Indie Rock, Emo

Really dug i saw the devil in portland oregon‘s kaleidoscopic post-genre thing, and here they’re leaning a lot further into simplifying the ingredients in their sound but not really simplifying the sound itself, if that makes any sense.

Mainly, this ups the measurements of the heavy aspect of their sound with big chugga chugga breakdowns and aggressive digital hardcore breaks and electronic bleepy bloops. I think this has that “terminally online” brand of genre-mixing that will maybe rub some people the wrong way but has never bothered me.

I really dig this and imagine at 30 minutes it will be something I come back to a lot this winter. End of year potential, absolutely.

⛏️ Aesop Rock - I Heard It’s a Mess There Too (2025)

Genres: Abstract Hip Hop, Boom Bap, Experimental Hip Hop

My reviews of the past few Aesop albums have been incredibly similar: talk about how his work has been plentiful but overwhelming, that since None Shall Pass his self-produced work got denser and denser, that his concept albums have been looser and less well-defined... but maintain that his work is always so above-average it doesn’t really matter.

All of that also meant that Aes’ work has been getting a little... disposable for me. Every year or two, a few more slabs of 60+ minute records for me to enjoy but have a hard time truly digesting. So when I saw another album from him this year, before I’ve even been able to digest May’s Black Hole Superette... well I was worried.

But I was worried for nothing, because this is like an ice cold glass of refreshing water for the long-time Aesop fan. This is sparse in a way they haven’t been since like... the early 2000s? And it is done in a way that doesn’t sound like a lark. This isn’t some throwaway 40 minute album (the fact people are saying it’s “short” tells you how bloated his albums have been in the past years) but instead it’s stuffed with the energy of someone who is rediscovering a style or process they perfected and moved beyond years ago. I love that about this album.

First few listens and my gut is saying this is his best record since The Impossible Kid.

🌱 Buddie - Glass (2025)

Genres: Indie Rock, Power Pop, Noise Pop

Enjoyed Diving a lot, and Agitator was good but didn’t seem to crack through into “year end” level good. They are still doing what they’ve done on those previous records, which is driving indie rock with elements of jangly/acoustic-led power pop. Someone on their previous album compared them to The Posies, which seems to make sense to me but I’m no expert on that band. This sits somewhere between aughts indie rock, 2020s emo-adjacent singer-songwriter records and 90s power pop... which is all the kind of stuff I’m into, so it goes down easy. Will have to sit with this and see how strong it is upon some revisits.

🌱 Radioactivity - Time Won’t Bring Me Down (2025)

Genres: Indie Rock, Pop Punk

Radioactivity are back! They still sound like Radioactivity... mostly!

This has more power pop than garage-y punk-pop than their previous records, which makes sense given the band was an off-shoot of a long-running band and now this act has been around for 12 years themselves. I think it suits them to slow down a little bit, but that might be at the risk of losing some people that just want more speed more high-octane hooks, more more more etc. I think what makes this work is they haven’t left that sound behind, as songs like “Watch Me Bleed” and “Why” still click with their old energy.

But I will say, the B-side certainly takes a turn for the mid-tempo jangle and the near-pastoral (”Analog Ways”). In that way, your mileage may vary. I dug it and could see this turning into a Fall/Winter sleeper hit for me.

🌱 Squint - Drag (2025)

Genres: Post-Hardcore, Melodic Hardcore, Alternative Rock, Emocore

Squint out put 5 more Squint songs and another “Squintro.” Makes sense to me. I know that this sound is at the absolute pinnacle of being played out, but I’m still on team Squint being the one non-Drug Church band that handles it well. I’m OK with a band like this re-writing the same song over and over because when it hits, it hits. This will likely not win over anyone who has tired of them by now, and maybe the band is due to really figure out if they are going to lean further into alt-rock esque radio rock (”Mourning Dove” has me thinking they could pull off a modern take on Rival Schools‘s United by Fate very well) or into something else, but I’m OK for now.

🌱 Chat Pile & Hayden Pedigo - In the Earth Again (2025)

Genres: Post-Rock, American Primitivism, Slowcore, Ambient Americana, Atmospheric Sludge Metal, Noise Rock

I enjoyed this, but it’s definitely another “this isn’t gonna convert anyone that already dislikes the band” kind of albums. Hell, maybe how different this is will capture some new ears... prove me wrong children, prove me wrong. Definitely their saddest, most melancholy album since this has a lot of instrumental passages (”Behold a Pale Horse”, “I Got My Own Blunt to Smoke”, “Inside”) and slowcore slash acoustic tunes (”Demon Time”, “The Magic of the World”).

think some of the most successful stuff here blurs the lines between their sounds within the same song (”Radioactive Dreams”), but this is still a welcome turn for the band even if it feels transitional to me to some degree. Could also grow on me so maybe the rating expands over time.

✨ Impérieux - In and Out EP (2025)

Genres: UK Bass, IDM, Techno, Progressive Breaks

Impérieux keeps winning for me. Unfortunately unavailable on streaming (for me anyway) so I can’t listen in the car but this is over on Bandcamp which works too. Rezil was one of the first electronic releases this year that caught my ear on an album level, and Fena EP was great too.

This is more stuff in a similar vein: techno, glitch, house, bass, IDM etc. If I had to pinpoint differences here, it’s in songs like “Okka” which are a lot more hypnotic and repetitive, even breaking for a weird textural diversion for a bit there in the middle. Generally a bit deeper a vibe here than their other releases, and maybe a bit more obtuse and arty in moments.

I’m usually an album person over EP but surprisingly I’m not finding this “seven track mini album” alongside an EP and LP to be overkill in a single year. Very nice stuff.

✨ Elway - Nobody’s Going to Heaven (2025)

Genres: Alternative Rock, Pop Punk, Heartland Rock

Everything about this band I should love, but they seem to be one of those groups with an invisible ceiling for some reason. I dug The Best of All Possible Worlds well enough, and have dabbled in their earlier records, but I always walk away thinking they’re good-not-great. Maybe I need to spend a few more beer-soaked late nights with this played loud and a lyric sheet or something to really get in the mood. But it’s totally cromulent if you’re into this kind of emotionally charged, alt-rock framed flannel punk.

✨ Drawn and Quartered - Lord of Two Horns (2025)

Genres: Death Metal

Sitting here wondering if there’s just certain moments of Drawn and Quartered’s career that hit for me personally. Loved Hail Infernal Darkness in particular. A good chunk of this sounds like what I would have told you I didn’t like about death metal before I actually knew much about the genre outside my preconceived notions. I think this really relentless blasting through songs is one of the elements of death metal that fastest wears me down. Then “Lord of Two Horns” breaks away with that riff 2:45 into it and I’m back on board.

I think I might just not be trve enough a head to be able to fully parse this type of stuff. I think the production is a part of what’s going on here, the guitars sound so distantly dissonant upon first listen. A lot of this melts into a big pile of sound, but there’s also many moments where they pull back briefly and the sky opens up.

Going to file under: try again, after I return to their work circa 2004 or 2007 and see how they fare.

✨ Drain - ...Is Your Friend (2025)

Genres: Crossover Thrash, Metalcore, Hardcore Punk

Drain puts on an incredibly infectious live show but for me their albums merely been all-around solid. I enjoy them when they are on, but outside of their live energy I find their albums to be a pinch unmemorable. I know their last record had that rap interlude and this one has the outro to “Can’t Be Bothered”, but part of me really wants them to push their off-the-wall elements of their sound further and further on the album format.

When this hits the crossover thrashy hardcore nail on the head, it works very well as expected. But I feel like this band has a phenomenal capital A album in them that they haven’t quite released yet. Instead they’ve done the “25 minutes of good DRAIN material and one really slick pop song” thing again. Which is... fine.

✨ Hellogoodbye - Would It Kill You? (2010)

Genres: Power Pop, Indie Pop, Indie Rock, Chamber Pop

I heard the Hellogoodbye EP when it came out and aside from that one jokey prom song, felt like it was annoyingly catchy. A cross between songs you love to hate and ones you hate to love. Their debut album immediately felt like a disappointment to me. I understand the appeal of the cheese-ball 80s pop song that is Here (In Your Arms), but the album felt all over the place and stepped over the line of annoyingness for me. It had a couple nice tunes, but really felt like one of those rushed/unfocused kind of debut records.

So I was immensely surprised with this record when it dropped, and even moreso that it ended up on my year-end list for 2010. The band really laser-focused their sound into something that touched on vintage-aping, string-and-horn adorned wall-of-sound sunshine pop (”Betrayed by Bones”, “I Never Can Relax”, “Coppertone”) while maintaining really well crafted big-n-nervy power pop hooks (”You Sleep Alone”).

The thing about this album that ages it the most would be when it slips into dinka-dinka ukulele “adorkable” mode (”When We First Met”). And yet, it kinda works anyway? Maybe it’s the so-syrupy-it’s-almost-undeniable sappiness (”Something You Misplaced”) but I find that they win me over even when their chamber indie-poppy annoyances threaten to derail them.

A couple of these songs don’t quite hang with the rest of them, quality wise, but this is generally a bit underrated considering it’s from a band most people would write off entirely after their 80s-pastiche hit.

✨ Half Hour to Go - Items for the Full Outfit (1995)

Genres: Midwest Emo, Indie Rock, Noise Pop

Really interesting album here, since around this time you generally had either “capital E” emo bands like Mineral or Christie Front Drive alongside ones who were leaning into the emo meets post-hardcore elements on records like Frankie Welfare Boy Age Five or Watercourse, but this seems to be more in line with bands like The Get Up Kids and The Promise Ring who were about to take the reins of the second wave. Hell Bob Weston was involved with this and the first TGUK album a few years later.

Not like it’s some origin text or anything but they are pulling from the same strings and seemed to have been right on the crest of this softening of the second wave, where emo moved past the grunge and post-hardcore elements into more indie rock influenced power pop stuff. They manage to seem ahead of the curve a little while not leaving the post-hardcore emo stuff completely in the rearview.

Sometimes this sounds a little like Superchunk (”Slick”) with a pinch of Archers of Loaf‘s noisy cacophony (”Bocour”). Other times they sound more in line with the knotted-guitars-and-lump-in-throat-hooks of the genre at this point (”Can Mack Draw?”).

Regardless, it’s an interesting time capsule and while it doesn’t hang together perfectly as an album it has an above average hitting ratio I’d say. Intriguing for people who love this era of emo/indie at the very least.

✨ U.K. - U.K. (1978)

Genres: Progressive Rock, Jazz Fusion, Symphonic Prog, Neo-Prog

Friend of mine was selling some records and I saw this in the pile and made a mental note to check it out the next time I was in the mood for some prog.

This is pretty solid stuff, a mix of symphonic elements but the band set up which includes electric violin and keyboards/electronics by Eddie Jobson give it just the right level of synthy goodness that I’m always craving from this stuff. That it comes alongside some good guitar riffs and dope drumming helps too. There’s a couple times where this dips into “oops, it’s prog that sounds like circus music” territory (”Presto Vivace and Reprise”), which is certainly not my vibe, but thankfully they deke away from those moments relatively quickly.

Apparently on Danger Money they lost guitarist Allan Holdsworth and drummer Bill Bruford, so I’m wondering that means they amp up the synth-prog elements. Will have to investigate.

✨ Drawn and Quartered - The One Who Lurks (2018)

Genres: Death Metal, Death Doom Metal

This is good. I needed to get something done so I took a CBG gummy and turned this up loud. I’m not sure if it’s a me thing, but to some degree this felt a lot less memorable than Hail Infernal Darkness was upon initial rotation. Maybe my mistake was moving forward in their discography instead of backwards for my next taste. My gut wants to jump to this year and try out Lord of Two Horns (if you’re reading this on Substack you can scroll up and see what became of that thought, haha) because I’m always looking for new records to spin from the current year... but I think instead I might circle back on Extermination Revelry.

✨ A New Found Glory - Nothing Gold Can Stay (1999)

Genres: Pop Punk, Emo-Pop, Melodic Hardcore

This album is burned in my brain because these songs were some of the first MP3s I downloaded in the Napster era. There was a period right before that where you could go download MP3s off random MP3 websites (vivid memory of getting Blink 182’s “Apple Shampoo” off some site that was just a list of pop punk file names) but when Napster hit I definitely had a bunch of these songs on my computer and they got me hyped for their Self-Titled album right on the horizon.

Honestly, I know “Hit or Miss” is their biggest tune but if I never hear it again I’ll be OK with that. I’ve just heard it way too many times at this point. When I revisit this these days I just start with “It Never Snows in Florida”. This is clearly very scrappy and Jordan is firmly in the “insanely nasally” period still, but I think a lot of these songs still bang. The pronounced emo/melodic hardcore influences here are great. They definitely are still figuring out how to fuse together these elements, but it also doesn’t sound like a band just shoving building blocks together. And they don’t really sound like a “we just want to be Lifetime” band either (except on maybe something like “Tell Tale Heart”).

Maybe it’s my familiarity with these songs but the ones that hit are great. “...Florida”, “3rd and Long”, “...Pennsylvania”, “2’s & 3’s”, “Winter of ‘95”, etc. There’s definitely a bunch of filler too, so I can’t say this is amazing top-to-bottom, but it’s also not completely embarrassing imo. There was a time in my life I would have shunned this, but I don’t care any more because a handful of these songs really hit that nostalgia pleasure center in my brain.

✨ Rufio - Perhaps, I Suppose... (2001)

Genres: Pop Punk, Skate Punk, Emo-Pop

With MCMLXXXV (1985) entering my rotation as an adult after having written it off upon release, I’ve been feeling more and more in the mood to revisit this one. That, and I came across this video of them at Warped Tour 2003 and remembered what a jam “Above Me” is, even in this slightly sloppy and played way faster than required performance.

The behind the scenes thing I’d hear about this this album over the years had something to do with it never being really “fully finished” or maybe it was never mixed/mastered to the band’s liking. Something to that effect. Another thing you hear a lot about the band is that people think they’re awesome until the vocals come in, which I think is entirely fair since this sits on the high end of the “nasally singer” scale for sure. You had bands like Thrice that had a certain level of aggression to back up their whiny tendencies, but Rufio weren’t “heavy”, they were just fast and technical alongside their emo-influenced whiny-pop punk. Can imagine that being off putting for a lot of people.

Biggest issue with this album today? You guessed it, it’s too long and has a good amount of filler. Side A is pretty dope, even with some ballads that threaten to bring down the energy. But the B-side really feels like they decided to throw every bit of songwriting scraps they had laying around onto the album. There’s still a few gems down there, but it definitely throws all idea of any kind of pacing out the window.

Unsurprisingly, the 35 minute MCMLXXXV (1985) is a better “album” experience, but the some of the highs here still hit that pop punk with technical riffs and sick basslines pleasure center in my brain. I used to write this band off almost entirely, but stack their best songs off their first two albums up beside one another and you’ve got a stew goin’.

✂ Above Me, Still, In My Eyes, Dipshit, Stop Whining

That’s it, that’s all. Be excellent to one other.

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Morning y’all.

I wanted to get this post up on Friday to be more timely with the new music playlist, but here it is on Wednesday of the next week anyway. I’m back in another downswing—morale is low, as I am wont to say... and yes a Bomb The Music Industry! song made me cry before work yesterday—but I have at least been taking my stupid hikes for my stupid mental health. Nature, am I right?

And now, let’s get to the tunes.

Here’s my new music playlist followed by capsule reviews as always. What have you been stoked about lately? What hasn’t left your heavy rotation? Let me knowwww ok bye

New Music: Friday, October 24th / 2025

• I had no idea cupcakKe had a new album, so that was a surprise on Friday morning. I have given it a single spin so far and it seems more consistent than their last one upon first glance. I continue to admire their adherence to the juxtaposition of the dirtiest of dirty raps and their calmer side. There’s also this, which is a big hell yeah:

• Oruã from Brazil have been on my radar since they released Íngreme in 2021, and have been enjoying their latest. Review to come, at some point, but if you like a perfectly measured hodge podge of indie rock, psych rock, experimental rock and moments of jazz, you should check it out.

• Gatsbys American Dream releasing new music in 2025 wasn’t on my bingo card, but I used it as an excuse to re-familiarize myself with some of my favs from their discography. New EP is nice too.

• Don’t forget to wrap your ears around some new releases by Teenage Tom Petties, Major Stars, Tortoise, verity den, and more.

Emoji legend:

• ⛏️ denotes picks of the week, my favs.

• 🌱 seedling denotes albums like a lot and expect could grow on me over the year.

• ✨ albums I would recommend to fans of the genre (i.e. it might not convert new listeners, but you should check it out.)

• ✂ denotes favourite tracks from a given record.

As always, feel free to reach out over on BlueSky or join the Rosy Overdrive Discord server where I can be found now and again.

You can also find me in the corners of Rate Your Music scrounging for obscure emo, hardcore, indie rock and pop punk.

Don’t forget: if you’re reading this in your email it will be cut off.
Read on the web for the full list of reviews!

⛏️ Emily Yacina - Veilfall (2025)

Genres: Singer-Songwriter, Indie Pop

Fantastic stuff, immediately hit me in the gut on an emotion level, but the songs in general are really gorgeous too. Manages a good balance of indie pop and folk that dabbles in electronic elements without going full-on synth pop.

Sometimes shorter capsule reviews from me means “I don’t know what else to say about this album” and sometimes it means “I have no idea how to describe the ways in which I feel so strongly positive about this album” and in this case, it’s the latter. Beautiful record.

In some ways, this reminded me a lot of Kicking Every Day, which is a very high compliment if you know me.

⛏️ Fanclubwallet - Living While Dying (2025)

Genres: Indie Rock, Indie Pop, Pop Rock, Indietronica, Alternative Dance, Bedroom Pop

Was unfamiliar with Fanclubwallet‘s previous records, but happily had this put on my radar by Rosy Overdrive this morning. Bounces around a lot of related pop genres, with pulsing acoustic strums and motorik-esque percussion (”Gears”) or peppy indie rock guitar lines (”Cotton Mouth”) alongside synthpop features on dreamy tunes (”Know You Anymore”) or squiggly chiptune tones (”Me Time”). On the more upbeat, indie pop style songs they can bring to mind acts like Sobs. Really strong stuff all the way through, and totally in my wheelhouse so I didn’t have much to complain about here.

⛏️ Good Luck - Big Dreams, Mister (2025)

Genres: Midwest Emo, Pop Punk, Power Pop

Good Luck are back, and they released another great record. This sounds about what you would expect a reunion album for this specific band to sound like: it’s not phoned in, it sounds mostly like their last album with some light pushing of the boundaries of their genre. Feels as much as a change compared to Without Hesitation as that record did to Into Lake Griffy. Anyone wishing they would move back in the direction of fuzziness and super-high energy of their debut may be disappointed, but this is a great reunion album from a fantastic band and I’m happy to have them back.