Stressed in Paradise
A new music playlist plus reviews of: Indie Rock, Digital Hardcore, Abstract Hip Hop, Post-Rock, Slowcore, IDM and more!
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.
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.
Anita Velveeta album art riff of whipped cream and other delights is so good