Top 25 Albums of 2025

industrial . Darkwave . Circuswave . Trip Folk . Ice Cream Truck Step

2025? WHAT A SHIT SHOW IT’S BEEN. Here are the 25 best albums OF THIS crapolla YEAR. I USUALLY ONLY do top 10 or topm15’s so ENJOY IT, YOU FREAKS

25: Give My Remains To Broadway: This Party Still Sucks

Post Punk

Jangle-Goth. The music is happy, but sad at the same time. They don’t have a wiki page. I can only find an extremely simple bio on their Bandcamp page. All I can say is that the lead singer has the gothiest voice I’ve ever heard, which is the strangest juxtaposition given the sound. I’ve never heard an album before that makes me want to mope around while bounce up and down at the same time.

24: Auragraph: nutronix

Techno

I don’t know WTF Auragraph is supposed to be. He definitely started off Vaporwave. But vaporwave seems to be the kind of genre that the modern punks of the electronic music industry turn to initially in order to sharpen their skills before turning pop.

This album goes way past Vaporwave and is just a straight up hardcore techno record and it’s friggin’ great. Probably the best techno album I’ve heard in a couple of years.

23: THE MURDER CAPITAL: BLINDNESS

Post Punk, Gothic Rock

This album rocks nuts. I could try to write some fancy Pitchfork/Rolling-Stone-esque review to sound intelligent. But I won’t. It’s post-punk. It’s Irish. But it’s not Fontaines DC. It’s much more raw and simple and fun and serious. It sounds like how the album cover looks. 

22: Miki Berenyi Trio: Tripla

Dream Pop, Indie

I miss Lush. We all do. And this album sounds like what Lush would sound like if they kept making music and evolving. The closest we got was a mini 2016 reunion. Then we got this album. I’ll take it.

21: The Horrors: Night Life

Post Punk

The Horrors pick up where Marilyn Manson left off in the late 90’s before he started sucking. The first half of this LP has a bit more hard-rock/indie flair, but the second half descends into some atmospheric creepy dark madness. It’s more bipolar than the other albums on this list.

Night Life is an example of the “post-album” world we live in where “albums” now feel more like collections of singles to pick and drag onto various curated playlists rather than to be listened to entirely. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.

On that note, give the final track, “L.A. Runaway” a shot if you want to give this album just one track to judge by.

20: Snapped Ankles: Hard Times Furious Dancing

Krautrock, Electro

I don’t know much about Snapped Ankles is, but I know that I need more of it in my life. A little bit LCD Soundsystem. A little bit Aphex Twin. A little bit Liars. A little bit Suicide. All rolled into one.

19: Perturbator: Age of Aquarius

Dark Synthwave

Perturbator has been trying to escape the confines of the synthwave genre for a while now, but he can’t deny it’s what he does best. After going metal the last few years he’s abandoned that venture and finally incorporated what he learned from that streak into a new dark synthwave album. The results are exactly what you want if you’re someone who loves both genres.

18: Soft Kill: Watch It Burn

Post Punk, Indie Rock

Soft Kill is still doing what they do best. This album is similar to previous ones and fun to listen to but it doesn’t have quite the poppy bangers they’re known for. I still have no problems rocking it out, though. Even a not-so-perfect Soft Kill album is still better than 95% of what’s out there. It’s the Season 5 of the Wire of the post punk world.

17: Pictureplane: Sex Distortion

Darkwave, Witch House

The Goth Star is back with his full-length LP in four years. He hasn’t been dormant, though. Plenty of EP’s and Singles have come out since. He’s cycled through a lot of electronic styles over the years, veering more and more towards the darkwave style.

This album is his first real cohesive piece of work in any single particular genre through. He finally found his wheelhouse

“Heaven is a State of Mind” is a certified banger, just like his early “Goth Star” track from ages ago.

16: Assemblage 23: Null

EBM, Future pop

EBM isn’t something I’m always in the mood for, but this album scratches that itch when I want something circa that 2000 Apoptygma Berzerk sound. It has some politics in there too, so maybe you MAGA snowflakes want to stay away from this one.

15: Nmesh: The Molokai Compendium

Vaporwave, IDM

Aphex Twin level subversion and weirdness. Nmesh is weird as fuck. Always has been. Always will be. Never a full vaporwave artist, but you can always count on him reaching back to the tools of the genre for every album. An absolutely trippy, dreamy, messed up beast.

14: Farba Kingdom: Latest Model

Darkwave

Gourmet darkwave. If you like 2-piece darkwave groups with female vocalists, but think the genre is getting a bit too poppy or synthy, give these guys a shot. The duo frequently alternate vocal duties which gives their work a really wide spectrum of weirdness.

In fact, they released TWO LP’s this year. The other, Degradation, is also good, but Latest Model is exceptionally dark, creepy, and haunting.

13: Glaring: Inertia

Coldwave, Darkwave

Atmospheric and bizarre. It’s hard to pin down the style of the German artist, Anna Nin. As soon as I think I’m listening to a darkwave album, it turns ambient, then industrial, and then synthpop, and then so on and so on.

I’m not complaining. She does it all well. The more our brains and lives get pushed into shuffle-mode rather than full-album-artistic-statement mode, the more I can appreciate an album that’s all over the place. So many emotions. So little time.

12: TURNSTILE: NEVER ENOUGH

To all the Turnstile haters: Grow Up. Yea they started off years ago as a hardcore band. Artists move on. If you stagnate in the same genre and don’t move on, you’re not going to remain interesting. If you don’t like what they’ve become, I understand. They’re clearly not for everyone. But they’ve evolved in a similar way as the Deftones over time; a band looking to take a harsh sound they know they could only honestly make for a few years and to try to make something softer, but still energetic.

This album is class. It still has some head bangers, but it’s a work by a band aging gracefully. No matter how hard some of us pretend to be, we all have lighter music we love; whether it’s synthpop, shoegaze, pop punk, Cocteau Twins, The Police, or what have you. There’s no reason a band can’t try to blend all these styles. This album treads into unknown waters and it works. 

Like David Bowie once said: “If you feel safe in the area you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel that your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just about in the right place to do something exciting.”

11: The Tear Garden: Astral Elevator

Industrial, Electro

If you were sad that Skinny Puppy has called it quits, fear not. This album goes way more than TG’s previous works into the electro realm and feels a lot more like a post Dwayne Skinny Puppy album.

I’m not sure cEvin Key would consider that a compliment, but I SWEAR it is. To be fair, Edward Ka-Spel’s vocals are fantastic. While Skinny Puppy’s music tends to feel more conventional music (in retrospect) meant for Ogre’s vocals to serve as a frontman, Ka-Spel’s voice seems more like another instrument… part of the atmosphere rather than something to focus on.

It’s really interesting stuff. It’s my favorite Tear Garden album by far.

10: Lebanon Hanover: Asylum Lullabies

Coldwave, Darkwave, Industrial

The king and queen of moody darkwave are back with their first LP in five years. We’ve been teased since with some singles and LP’s, but if you’ve been starving for a full LP of some really drab, gothic music that makes you want to hunch over and swing your arms back and forth while wearing a noose-necklace: this is the album.

While it still has plenty of a darkwave vibe, it heads much more in the direction of say…. Dead Can Dance.

9: The Orb: Buddhist Hipsters

Ambient House, IDM

The Orb still have it! Thank God. The Orb have never put out a bad album, but the stuff they’ve done with Lee Scratch Perry and those odd vocals weren’t really my thing: a little too much dub for my taste. No knock on them, but I personally was more attracted to their earlier work.

Buddhist Hipsters feels more like a refined version of their first few albums all the way up through Oblivion. It’s refreshing.

8: Portion Control: SEED EP3.1

Industrial

This is the best Industrial album of the year and a throwback to the 90’s. All their albums feel like this 90’s actually, but this one of their modern ones especially. I get flashbacks to the heydays of Wumpscut, Apoptygma Berzerk, Skinny Puppy, and Ministry with this album.

If you dig that style, you’ll love this one. Not much else to say.

7: John Maus: Later Than You Think

Synthpop, Lofi

Let’s talk about the elephant in the room and get it out of the way right now. Was Maus at the Capitol building on January 6th? Yes.

No, he wasn’t a part of the riots. Yes, he was with his scumbag buddy, Ariel Pink, at the rally but I don’t think John Maus is MAGA or political at all. Back in the 90’s my mom went to the 25th anniversary Rowe vs Wade anniversary protest in DC, but I wasn’t pro-life. I just went along to take pictures and observe. That’s the kind of guy I think John Maus is.

And you get that observer feeling in his work. It sounds like he has something bizarre to say, like he’s just taking the strange things he sees and echoes it through his distorted, cryptic lyrics.

This album is a beautiful puzzle. It’s the same musical style, but you can tell he’s trying to say something, you just don’t know what. You easily get lost in just how much more listenable it is than his previous albums and you find yourself stuck there trying to figure out what he wants to say to us. It feel like 1980’s Kubrick, in album form. Not pro-or-anti anything. More or a fun-house, distorted mirror of an LP commenting on society perhaps?

6: Miami Nights 1984: COSMOPOLIS

Synthwave

The best synthwave album of the year, which says a lot considering The Midnight released an album as well.

Miami Nights 1984 is where it all started for me with my love of synthwave. Their early album, Turbulence, was a blast of nostalgia and yea it was cheesy. While many artists in the genre have moved on to different styles, MN84’s music has gotten way more mature and refined but still stays in that same lane and kicks off the same emotion. I’m a fan for life.

5: Whirr: Raw Blue

Shoegaze: Goth’s manic pixie girl cousin. There’s quite a revival going on now, but nothing is really like the early 90’s heyday… except for Whirr. This album is as close as you get to that early lightning in a bottle of an era. The title track rivals the best tracks from MBV or Slowdive. If you get what I’m saying, there isn’t much more to write. If you like that style, you’ll LOVE this album. It’s a wall of beautiful rainbow vacuum cleaner sounds.

4: Swans: Birthing

Swans are… well.. Swans. and this is a Swans album… meaning you’ll love it or hate it.

I first listened to this album driving along a dark, woodsy, windy road that hugs the Potomac River just outside Washington DC and it started putting me into a trance. By the time I got to my office I had to park and sit for a bit. It’s fucking powerful.

It’s the apocalypse. It’s the creation of the universe. It takes Dead Can Dance and crushes their albums into a pile of dust, puts that dust into a Folger’s coffee can and in accordance with what we think your dying wishes might well have been, we commit your final mortal remains to the bosom of the Pacific Ocean, which you loved so well. Good night, sweet prince.

3: Perfume Genius: Glory

Every Perfume Genius album is an explosion of trauma coming from someone born in the wrong part of America. His entire catalog is filled with the emotion of Bronski Beat’s “Smalltown Boy” but articulated with so much more individual talent and experimentation. 

Ultimately a folk artist, this album returns to more of this early style after a long period of experimenting, and touring with bands like Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Faint. If you’re new to Michael Alden Hadreas’s work, I’d start with his first album. “Mr. Peterson” is the first track I heard by him, and it lives in the back of my brain even today, randomly coming out to haunt me. I hope he keeps making new music, but this album feels like a great bookend to a brilliant career.

2: Pink Turns Blue: Black Swan

Post Punk

Modern post punk powerhouses like Interpol and Editors often get accused of copying classics like Joy Division, The Sound, and The Chameleons. I think such statements are lame. There’s nothing wrong with continuing the tradition that the post punk forefathers stared.

However, if you’re going to compare to the classics, there’s one more band from the 80’s that is often overlooked as a major influence on modern bands: Germany’s Punk Turns Blue.

I can hear so much of early Pink Turns Blue in The Editors and I can hear so much of early The Editors in the latest stuff by Pink Turns Blue. There’s nothing wrong with newer bands doing earlier bands nor when older bands are influenced by newer bands. It’s art. As much as people like to pretend, it doesn’t live in a vacuum.

PTB’s Black Swan is just the result of an entire genre refining, experimenting, and perfecting over the course of 40 years and it’s a chill, sad, beautiful album. An unintentional collaboration of all the cross pollination of the aforementioned bands just mixing it up in the ether over the last few generations. Go listen and enjoy.

… and finally…

*** ALBUM OF THE YEAR ***

1: AFI: Silver Bleeds The Black Sun…

Post Punk, Gothic Rock

Well, this was unexpected.

Watching AFI’s mercurial evolution has been fascinating. Their early hardcore albums are pretty good. When they went full on melodic hardcore they were one of the best bands around. Then they, not surprisingly went pop.

We’ve seen this happen to a lot of punk bands of the era, especially Rise Against. The difference is when AFI went pop, they were still a good band.

Their 2006 album DECEMBERUNDERGROUND still had echoes of those melodic days and was their last really good album. They were still very talented and Davey was always one of the greatest crooners of the 21st century, but for almost two decades they sort of lost their identity.

So when I heard they had a new album out this year I didn’t expect much. I put the album on and listened to the first track which didn’t impress me. It was pretty weird, actually.

But then, holy shit. Something seems to happen to a lot of great artists who had early success. I’ve seen it with everyone from The Prodigy to Ministry. They spend years, even decades, trying to find something similar to what made them popular in the first place, but like the first time you try a drug, you’ll never get that feeling back. Just let it go, man.

AFI said “fuck it”. Davey gave up on the crooner vocals and went full on Peter Murphy. The meticulous, but predictable guitars gave up on trying to show how technically great they were and went full on Peter Hook. Vamping and reverb, Oh my. This is a straight up modern goth rock masterpiece. These guys finally decided to stop trying to recreate The Art of Drowning and decided to have fun and the result is exactly that: a joy to listen to.

Honorable Mentions: Wet Leg: moisturizer, Chimes: Pile of Parts, VNV Nation: Construct, The Ravonettes: PE’AHI II Stereolab: Instant Holograms on Metal Film, Pulp: More, Magic Wangs: Cascades, Nine Inch Nails: Tron Ares Soundtrack, Ash Code: Sythome, Odonis Odonis: Self-Titled, Deftones: private music, Rosette Stone: Dose Makes The Poison, Ritual Howls: Ruin