2025 Albums of the Year

Here it is again: the most autistic thing I do! I missed doing my list last year because, well, life has been a lot lately for reasons both universal and very personal. I'll mention right here that my number one album of last year (and the 2020s) was Capstan's The Mosaic. It's one of the best albums of all time in my opinion, and I will be writing up an essay on it at some point.

But in the meantime, here are the records I clicked with in 2025.

Unranked

On any given year, I check out between 1,200-2,000 new records. I don't enjoy most of them. There are quite a few that end up on a "Remainders" playlist - records I don't vibe with, but might in the future. Some I adore, and I rank those.

However, every year there are a handful that resonate with me, but which I am not familiar enough by the year's end to rank them. They deserve calling out, because people really should hear them. They sometimes end up becoming my favorites over time.

Here is that list for 2025:

Snooper - Worldwide (garage rock)

The Halo Effect - We Are Shadows (melodic death metal)

Still Talk - Year of the Cat (emo/pop-punk)

Stay Inside - Lunger (all waves of emo at once)

Squint - Drag (hardcore)

Foxy Shazam - Box of Magic (soul/pop/punk)

Warmen - Band of Brothers (melodic death metal)

Public Opinion - Perpetual Motion Machine (punk/emo/hardcore)

Upchuck - I’m Nice Now (hardcore)

The Penske File - Reprieve (punk)

Yellowcard - Better Days (pop-punk/emo)

senses - onto something (pop-punk/emo)

Parts Work - Parts Work (indie/emo)

Propagandhi - At Peace (thrash/punk)

Sigrid - There’s Always More That I Could Say (pop)

Hi Ho - Remnants (punk/indie)

Slowly Slowly - Forgiving Spree (pop-punk/emo)

Oh the Humanity! - Ground to Dust (punk)

Winona Fighter - My Apologies to the Chef (pop-punk)

Sprockets - The Bad Barrio (pop-punk)

Vampire Slumber Party - HOLES (pop-punk)

Retirement Party - Nothing To Hear Without A Sound (emo)

JER - Death of the Heart (ska)

Mayday Parade - Sweet (pop-punk)

Model/Actriz - Pirouette (post-punk)

Now, for the main event!

One quick note here: I just realized that the reason I love the whole "sounds like" conceit is related to the childhood Evangelicalism thing. Youth groups nationwide drilled it into our heads that we should only listen to Christian music in order to avoid the influence of the sinful world. Whether it was posters with lists of artists at church or lists in HM magazine, it was common for Christian bands to be presented as sounding like (or "for fans of") their mainstream equivalent (of which they were clearly an intentional knockoff). Smalltown Poets was "ffo Gin Blossoms". Bleach was "ffo The Smashing Pumpkins". So on and so forth. It was also popular in teen music magazines like Alternative Press. The reason I first checked out Rise Against's Revolutions Per Minute was due to them being "ffo Bad Religion and Bad Brains", after all. So, naturally, it's still a way I think about music.

49. Gatsby's American Dream - Chyron

Sounds like: Early Panic! At The Disco (because P!ATD straight-up stole that sound from GAD) mixed with Cursive and Say Anything

48. Action/Adventure - Ever After

Sounds like: Four Year Strong, Hit The Lights, Real Friends

47. Silverstein - Pink Moon

Sounds like: 90's post-hardcore like Far and Quicksand mixed with the modern post-hardcore Silverstein helped define

46. Pinkshift - Earthkeeper

Sounds like: If you tossed Rise Against, Paramore, Rage Against The Machine, Blood Brothers, and Boysetsfire in a blender

45. High Press - Thanks For Asking

Sounds like: Taking Back Sunday, old Brand New, old Fall Out Boy, The Wonder Years, Knuckle Puck, Real Friends

44. Sudan Archives - THE BPM

Sounds like: Hip-hop, electronic music, and R&B, with lots of violin and disparate other influences. Really nobody sounds like Sudan Archives.

43. CF98 - STUPID PUNK

Sounds like: Avril Lavigne, WSTR, Neck Deep, Yellowcard

42. MESSMAKER - Remember You're Alive

Sounds like: The Mad Caddies mixed with Blink-182 and The Band CAMINO

41. Bony Macaroni - Death Drive

Sounds like: Hot Mulligan, Front Bottoms, Pet Symmetry, The Loved Ones, WSTR

40. The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus - X's For Eyes

Sounds like: Exactly what you think based on the cover art

39. Taylor Acorn - Poster Child

Sounds like: Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, and Avril Lavigne, all at once

38. Home Front - Watch It Die

Sounds like: The Buzzcocks, Joy Division, Militarie Gun, Fucked Up, Echo & The Bunnymen, a violent cascade of Roland synths in the stock room of a dive bar that they call the green room

37. Bearings - Comfort Company

Sounds like: State Champs, Third Eye Blind, Blink-182, Super American

36. Meet Me @ The Altar - Worried Sick

Sounds like: A better Four Year Strong record than the last Four Year Strong record

35. Orville Peck - Appaloosa

Sounds like: Brandi Carlile, Ennio Morricone, Roy Orbison, Chris Isaak

34. The Beths - Straight Line Was A Lie

Sounds like: Muncie Girls, The Weakerthans, Wednesday, Hop Along

33. Endless Mike and the Beagle Club - The Forest Is The Trees

Sounds like: Front Bottoms, Neutral Milk Hotel, The Sidekicks, Defiance, OH, The Mountain Goats, AJJ

32. Molly Tuttle - So Long Little Miss Sunshine

Sounds like: Nickel Creek, Old Crow Medicine Show, Alison Krauss, Margo Price on stimulants (thanks for that one, Glen)

31. Demon Hunter - There Was A Light Before

Sounds like: Trivium, Pantera, Living Sacrifice, In Flames

30. Good Luck - Big Dreams, Mister

Sounds like: If Lemuria were on Plan-It-X Records

29. Young Culture - All Weapons Formed Against Me Have Prospered

Sounds like: Real Friends, Jimmy Eat World, Between You And Me, Broadside

28. Danny Brown - Stardust

Sounds like: Boom bap, prog rock, EDM, and pretty much everything in between, with, just, an incredible amount of energy for someone my age

27. Hot Mulligan - The Sound A Body Makes When It's Still

Sounds like: The Wonder Years, The Hotelier, Tiny Moving Parts, The Story So Far, Cursive, Spanish Love Songs, The Jealous Sound

26. Brandi Carlile - Returning to Myself

Sounds like: Joni Mitchell, Elton John, Indigo Girls, Bon Iver, Katie Pruitt

25. The Casket Lottery - Feel the Teeth

Sounds like: Small Brown Bike, Knapsack, Garrison, Braid, Touche Amore

24. Spanish Love Songs - A Brief Intermission in the Flattening of Time

Sounds like: The Menzingers, The Killers, The Police, Against Me!

23. The Beaches - No Hard Feelings

Sounds like: A bunch of Gen Z lesbians who really like The Cure

22. Joan Armatrading - How Did This Happen And What Does It Now Mean

Sounds like: Carole King, Tracy Chapman, Bruce Springsteen, The National

21. DE'WAYNE - June

Sounds like: Prince, YUNGBLUD, Queen, Lenny Kravitz, Talking Heads

20. The Brokedowns - Let's Tip The Landlord

Sounds like: Dillinger Four, The Arrivals, Leatherface, and Screeching Weasel

19. The Ataris - Car Song

Sounds like: The Ataris' best Dave Hause impression, but fuck yes, new Ataris, finally

18. Danger Days - Danger Days

Sounds like: Millencolin (Nikola Sarcevic is one of the singers), MxPx, No Use For A Name, Lagwagon, 88 Fingers Louie

17. Arrows in Action - I Think I've Been Here Before

Sounds like: The Home Team, 5 Seconds of Summer, Fall Out Boy

16. The Wrecks - INSIDE:

Sounds like: Super American, Brand New, The Killers, The Front Bottoms, OK Go, Vanessa Carlton

15. Maddie Zahm - (the angry part)

Sounds like: Billie Eilish, FLETCHER, Maggie Rogers, Olivia Rodrigo's less pop-punk stuff

14. Betty Who - Love Yourself

Sounds like: Whitney Houston, Carly Rae Jepsen, MUNA, Cyndi Lauper

13. Heartwork - Three Alley Cats & The Impossible Sky

Sounds like: Say Anything, Manchester Orchestra, The Gaslight Anthem, Gatsby's American Dream

12. Coheed & Cambria - The Father of Make Believe

Sounds like: The woman at the distro who sold me Second Stage Turbine Blade 23 years ago said "They're like Rush and Sunny Day Real Estate". Sure, that still works.

11. The Dirty Nil - The Lash

Sounds like: Dead To Me, The Bronx, The Arrivals, The Flatliners, and kind of like if Municipal Waste wrote American Idiot

10. Hit The Lights - Tomorrow's Gonna Hurt

Sounds like: Mid- to late-aughts New Found Glory, mid-10s Four Year Strong

This was a pretty good year for easycore. Not much to say about this EP that couldn't be said about Hit The Lights' 2015 Summer Bones LP. If you like that one, you'll dig this one. I always associate Summer Bones with my friend Jim, who passed earlier this year. Wish we could have talked about Tomorrow's Gonna Hurt. I bet he'd have dug it as much as I do.

9. Militarie Gun - God Save The Gun

Sounds like: Drug Church releasing a Sugar cover album on Dischord Records

Patrick Kindlon's bands Drug Church and Self Defense Family have always felt like a subgenre unto themselves, and in the past five or so years, have inspired enough other bands to become one. And now, with God Save The Gun, Militarie Gun has crafted a new high water mark for this particular brand of post-hardcore.

The press for this album talked a lot about how the band wanted to create a classic. They've succeeded. This is a record that owes as much to the kind of 80s/90s hardcore found on SST, Dischord, and Revelation Records as much as it does such wide-ranging influences as Gin Blossoms, Andrew WK, The Hives, and sadboi emo like Fireworks and The Wonder Years. It has a lyrical depth and complexity that slowly surfaces above the initial rush of the phenomenal hooks and earworm riffs. It's a very 2020s album, as its wide array of influences were rarely seen on one record before the streaming age democratized access to music, yet it also sounds like it could have been written at any time in the last 40 years. It is timeless, important, and more than anything, fun.

8. Maren Morris - D R E A M S I C L E

Sounds like: The Chicks, The Highwomen, Selena Gomez, late-aughts Starbucks radio

For someone who made a big hubbub about leaving country music, Maren Morris sure dropped a great pop country record this year. Don't take that to mean this record is all short shorts and pickup trucks; it's one full of wit, grooves, ballads, and harmonies galore. While it's not nearly as good as Selena Gomez's Rare (one of my favorite records of the past decade), it scratches that itch better than Gomez's recent musical output. Whether it's about exes, ex-friends, or even the toxicity of the music industry, D R E A M S I C L E is a record to put on when you need a good catharsis. These are songs to shout along to with the windows down, or cry to with a good pair of headphones on after taking an edible. D R E A M S I C L E perfectly illustrates the power of a great pop record, with the country influence giving it a kind of uniqueness that elevates it above its already rarified air.

7. Motion City Soundtrack - The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World

Sounds like: Weezer, The Wonder Years, Motion City Soundtrack's best records

I've written quite a bit about this record already. Motion City, at their best, are untouchable. From their start, they have sounded both nostalgic and utterly original at the same time. Justin Courtney Pierre has been writing lyrics about mental illness and neurodivergence since about a decade-plus before the rest of the world caught up. But after their best record (My Dinosaur Life), their output took a bit of a nosedive. Even the songs they released after getting back together a few years ago failed to impress me the way their early stuff did. I was even more hesitant to get excited after hearing the album's first single, "She Is Afraid".

That fear turned out to be wildly unfounded. This might be my second favorite MCS record now. It is them firing on all cylinders, often one-upping themselves at their old tricks, while never shying away from the kind of inventive, curveball idiosyncracies that make their best music so much damn fun. To top it all off, Pierre's lyrics are, this time around, about healing and growth. He finally sounds happy (or at least happier), and unlike the case with many songwriters, it make the songs even better.

If you have ever liked Motion City Soundtrack, you need to hear this record. If you've never liked them, well, this one probably won't change your mind. And if you've never heard them, there are far worse places in their catalog to start (and not many better).

6. The Halo Effect - March of the Unheard

Sounds like: In Flames, Zao (if they wrote hooks)

Over the past few years, in my forties, I finally got into metal. And as is typical for me, the stuff I love is the cheesiest stuff there is. My favorite subgenre is power metal, but I have also taken to the Gothenburg melodic death metal sound. Given that Halo Effect is a band made up of former members of In Flames, it was kind of a given I'd dig this record. This band has a knack for writing searing, anthemic riffs that rival Metallica at their best. The vocals manage to be growling and screaming while also catchy as hell. And, much to my delight, palm muting and double kicks abound!

Additionally, the vinyl version of March of the Unheard features some of the best graphic design I've seen since the dawn of the streaming era. The craft, creativity, and money that went into it is bonkers. Most bands and labels - even very successful ones - are not willing to invest in album artwork, but this record has a 12" booklet with full spreads for every song's lyrics accompanied by art as complex as the cover. All of this is printed with high-quality inks on high-quality paper, including some pages with gold print on vellum. It is a sheer delight to hold, to feel, to pore over. The music could be half as good as it is, and it'd still be worth every penny.

5. The Crease Rule - Acceptable Rot

Sounds like: Diesel Boy, Lagwagon, Banner Pilot, basically any song on Short Music For Short People by any Fat Wreck Chords band

Over the past decade, my musical taste has expanded a lot. Naturally, this meant the bar for the music I enjoyed in my twenties would move higher. I've failed to connect with the recent output of many of the bands I used to love, and I've often wondered if I've moved on from that sound. Turns out I have not.

This record came out three days into 2025, and honestly set the expectations pretty high for the year. That doesn't usually happen. My friend Kevin sent it to me because they recorded a version of "Rock, Flag, and Eagle" from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia (called "Charlie's America Song" here) that would be hilarious if it weren't SO FUCKING GOOD. It sounds like No Trigger at their best, and I could listen to it on repeat all day long. But I definitely didn't expect the rest of the record to be equally as good. I wish this record came out when I was still drinking, because it's full of the kind of songs meant to be shouted, arms around friends in the pit, plastered as hell.

4. Silverstein - Antibloom

Sounds like: If Thursday was less pretentious, if Limp Bizkit weren't so dumb, if The Artist in the Ambulance came out on Victory Records

There's a type of band where, though I don’t connect with their music, there is potential that I may fall head over heels for something they release in the future. Silverstein was always one of those bands, until Misery Made Me came out in 2022 and proved that supposition correct.

This year, Silverstein released two companion albums. While the second of the two - Pink Moon - didn't grab me as much, Antibloom might have topped Misery Made Me. This is a record that has heavy post-hardcore vibes, digital beats, and orchestral backups, but also a song ("Stress") that interpolates Limp Bizkit's neanderthalic "Break Stuff" to speak to the value of dumb, angry music as catharsis for suffering people.

You know how, sometimes, when you hear a record, you can tell it's going to (no pun intended) bloom for you over time? While Antibloom hit me immediately, I could also tell that I wasn't going to stop discovering new things to love for a long time. I'm still not done yet.

3. Grayscale - The Hart

Sounds like: If The 1975 was a sadboi emo band

Grayscale's Umbra is, in my opinion, one of the best records of the past decade. It is a masterpiece of pop that still manages an enviable deftness on topics like addiction and loss. While The Hart was a bit of a step down - especially after the years-long trickle of single after single - it's still an incredible record. It's more raw and rock than its predecessor, but still navigates the balance between profundity and simplistic catchiness that often finds Grayscale peerless.

The highlight of the record is "Mum II", a sequel to "Mum", an older song about the singer's estrangement from his mother. It's a rewardingly repetitive slow burn of a song that hits very close to home. I doubt I'll ever have the reconnection with my own mother that is depicted in the song, but the emotional weight in every word is still incredibly affecting. Emo and pop-punk often get derided as juvenile - something I've already discussed at length on this blog - and this song, this album, as with the best of bands like The Wonder Years and The Hotelier, proves just how limited a view that is.

2. Battle Beast - Steelbound

Sounds like: If Journey were a metal band fronted by Pat Benatar

I have fallen hard for a particular brand of orchestral power metal over the past few years, and I haven't loved a record in that genre as much as this one yet. Powerwolf's 2024 LP Way of The Wicked came close, but, while I love that record's absolute stupidity, this record engages me intellectually as much as it does artistically. If Wayne's World were made in 2025, Battle Beast would be on the soundtrack.

It is difficult to fathom writing and recording music like this. It is soaring and life-affirming, with the kind of structural complexity usually reserved for classical music, prog rock, and musical theatre. Boisterous and preposterous, a first listen belies the intelligence therein. While the lyrics can be a bit simplistic, cat-hat-bat at times (English is their second language, after all), they are passionate, earnest, and powerful. I have, frankly, been pretty disappointed at the lack of protest anthems coming from more popular American punk bands lately. Yet here is a Finnish band willing to torpedo their US touring visas with songs like "Twilight Cabaret" - an antifascist banger drawing musical inspiration from genres that span the globe.

I know this record isn't for everyone, but it is, in every note, absolutely for me.

1. Knox - Going, Going, Gone

Sounds like: Absolute pop perfection on the level of Carly Rae Jepsen's Emotion

Let's get it out of the way. This record is what would happen if Fall Out Boy were teenagers when "Stomp, Clap, Hey" music dominated the airwaves. I know how bad that sounds. Hopefully anyone reading this still respects my musical taste enough to be curious when I say this record is staggeringly incredible pop music. There is no way to succinctly describe its greatness that doesn't woefully undersell it.

There is a kind of pop song that manages to be timeless in both its specificity and universality, balancing emotional heft with sugary, arena-dominating hooks. The ones that strike some universal chord within us all and anchor themselves in our shared consciousness. Think "Call Me Maybe". "I Just Wanna Dance With Somebody". "Semi-Charmed Life". "Good Vibrations". "Hey Jealousy". "My World Is Empty Without You". "Africa". "All The Small Things".

This record is that good. Every. Single. Track. (Well, maybe not "Voicemail")

It is a record about new relationships, breakups, and navigating the world as a twenty-something Ohio scene kid finding themselves playing songs they wrote in basements to huge rooms full of screaming fans. I might love it now, but I can't even imagine how much it would have meant to me if it had come out in the year following my divorce when Turnspit was blowing up.

There is an emotional maturity and depth of self-reflection here that usually isn't found on records like this. A sonder and effective empathy backs up many of these songs of heartbreak and discovery that makes you feel for everyone involved. It whips back and forth from sadness to joy, often settling on a melancholy that amplifies both.

Still, none of that would be necessary to put Going, Going, Gone at the top of this list. The production is some of the best I've ever heard. These songs are playful as fuck, from the sharp-witted wordplay to the deceptively complex rhyme schemes and adventurous cadences and meters. The kind of songs you play on repeat memorizing every word. The kind of record that changes your life in high school. The kind of record you put back on in your thirties and think "Damn, this was good shit." I would be extremely envious of the sheer ambition and effortless, flawless craft here if it weren't so damn inspirational and joyous to experience.