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1001 Other Albums @[email protected] · 2026-01-02 · 07:00 UTC
CW: Albums the Fediverse Loved in 2025 (CW'd because it's a looooooong post)
Albums the Fediverse Loved in 2025
And here we have it: a list of 151 albums (plus a few artists/labels in general) that kept 64 of us going in 2025, nearly 75% of those 2025 releases and the rest earlier gems! Given our collective eclectic tastes, voting/ranking was not attempted, but bolded titles and post tags indicate albums that were submitted by multiple Fedizens. Genre tags are included as tasting notes (apologies if I got any wrong), each title is linked to its Bandcamp/Songlink when possible, and footnotes list who submitted each album along with extra comments they included (warning: comments may include MOAR ALBUMS; also note: footnotes look way better on the blog). So, click and listen away – perhaps you’ll find a new-to-you album that gets you through 2026!
Thanks so much to the Fedizens who joined in, it’s so nice to see familiar faces from the 1001 Other Albums project as well as some new ones! And, as always, it’s lovely to get a glimpse of how diverse our tastes in music are, and to see people trying something new solely based on a random Fedi recommendation. The Fedi music community truly is a bright spot, and I personally am immensely grateful for it. 🙏🏻

Band – Title (year released, place of origin; genre)footnote

Action/Adventure – Ever After (2025, US; pop-punk)1
AFI – Silver Bleeds the Black Sun… (2025, US; post-punk, gothic rock)2
Against Me! – White Crosses (2010, US; punk rock)3
Alkaline Trio – Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs (2024, US; punk rock)4
Am I in Trouble? – Spectrum (2025, US; avant-garde black metal)5
Ami Taf Ra – The Prophet and the Madman (2025, US/Morocco; Moroccan gnawa, gospel, jazz)6
An Abstract Illusion – Woe (2022, Sweden; atmospheric black/death/prog metal)7
Analog Africa (label, in general) (1960s-80s, Africa; reissues)8
Anna Tivel – Animal Poem (2025, US; indie folk)9
Archon Satani – The Righteous Way to Completion (1997, Sweden; death ambient/black industrial)10
Ashbreather – La Grande Bouffe (2025, Canada; progressive sludge/death metal)11
Au4 – …And Down Goes The Sky (2013, Canada; prog rock)12
aya – hexed! (2025, UK; electronic, noise)13
Bad Cop/Bad Cop – Lighten Up (2025, US; punk rock)14
Baghed – Smear Campaign (2025, US; punk rock)15
Bank Myna – Eimuria (2025, France; post-rock/metal, doom gaze, slow core)16
Belle and Sebastian – Push Barman to Open Old Wounds (2005, Scotland; indie pop)17
Benedicte Maurseth – Mirra (2025, Norway; folk, jazz)18
Bill Frisell – Harmony (2019, US; folk-jazz)19
Black Flower – Kinetic (2025, Belgium; Ethio-jazz, Afrobeat, dub)20
Bon Iver – SABLE, fABLE (2025, US; indie folk/pop)21
Brittany Davis – Black Thunder (2025, US; cosmic jazz, r&b/soul, singer-songwriter)22
CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso – Papota (2025, Argentina; experimental trap, hip-hop, EDM, jazz, Latin pop)23
Caroline Shaw / Attacca Quartet – Orange (2019, US; classical, ambient, folk)24
Castle Rat – The Bestiary (2025, US; fantasy heavy metal)25
Causa Sui – Pewt’r Sessions 1 (2011, Denmark; psych/stoner rock)26
Celeste – Woman of Faces (2025, UK; neo-soul, jazz, singer-songwriter)27
Charlie Hunter, Carter McLean featuring Silvana Estrada – s/t (2018, US/Mexico; jazz)28
Circuit des Yeux – Halo on the Inside (2025, US; singer-songwriter, experimental)29
Civic – Chrome Dipped (2025, Australia; punk)30
clipping – Dead Channel Sky (2025, US; hip-hop)31
Dan Mangan – Natural Light (2025, Canada; indie rock/folk)32
Daniela Pas – Spira (2023, Italy; singer-songwriter, electronic, experimental)33
Data Rebel – Single Cell (2025, UK; electronic, IDM, ambient)34
Dax Riggs – 7 Songs for Spiders (2025, US; blues metal/shoegaze blues)35
Deafheaven – Lonely People With Power (2025, US; blackgaze, metal)36
Degraved – Spectral Realm of Ruin (2025, US; death metal)37
Delobos – Cabal (2025, Spain; post-alt rock, post-rock, psychedelia)38
Devil ANTHEM. – Profound Rebuild (2025, Japan; J-pop)39
Die Spitz – Something to Consume (2025, US; punk, alt rock)40
Divide and Dissolve – Insatiable (2025, Australia; doom, drone, neo classical)41
Dödsrit – Mortal Coil (2021, Sweden; atmospheric/melodic black metal, blackened crust)42
Dool – The Shape of Fluidity (2024, Netherlands; rock, alternative)43
downy – 8th Album/Untitled (2025, Japan; math rock/post-rock)44
Drab Majesty – Completely Careless (2012-2015) (2016, US; darkwave, shoegaze, dream pop)45
Dropkick Murphy – For The People (2025, US; Celtic punk)46
Eikichi Yazawa – I believe (2025, Japan; rock)47
El Pino & The Volunteers – The Long-lost Art of Becoming Invisible (2009, Netherlands; alt country/folk)48
Elli De Mon – Raìse (2025, Italy; blues, dialect, garage, psychedelic)49
Eric Church – Evangeline vs. The Machine (2025, US; country)50
Ethmebb – Allo Babar et les Caramboleurs (2025, France; progressive melodic blackened death power metal)51
Ex-Vöid – In Love Again (2025, UK; indie pop/rock)52
EYES – Spinner(2025, Denmark; hardcore, noise rock)53
FACS – Wish Defense (2025, US; noise rock, neo-post-punk)54
Faetooth – Labrynthine (2025, US; fairy doom/stoner metal)55
False Aralia (label) – ALL the new 12-inch singles (2025, US; abstract electronic)56
Fever Ray – The Year of the Radical Romantics (2025, Sweden; experimental, electronic, pop)57
FOKALITE – Fokas, Lite & Four Shooting Riddles (2025, Japan; J-pop)58
Françoise Hardy – La question (1971, France; French pop, Brazilian saudade/bossa nova)59
Fust – Big Ugly (2025, US; rock)60
Geese – Getting Killed (2025, US; art/experimental rock)61
Gnome – King (2022, Belgium; stoner/prog/hard rock)62
Habak – Mil orquídeas en medio del desierto (2025, Mexico; melodic crust)63
Hallelujah the Hills – DECK (2025, US; indie rock)64
HANABIE – Bucchigiri Tokyo (2024, Japan; metalcore)65
Hatchie – Liquorice (2025, Australia; indie/dream pop)66
Hole – Live Through This (1994, US; alt rock)67
IAN – Come On Everybody, Let’s Do Nothing! (2025, UK; experimental, post-rock/metal)68
Igorrr – Amen (2025, France; experimental/avant-garde metal)69
Imperial Triumphant – Goldstar (2025, US; experimental metal)70
In the Womb of the Universe – Searching for Sunrise (2024, US; electronic, synthpop)71
In the Woods… – Otra (2025, Norway; avant-garde metal)72
Insomnium – Shadows of the Dying Sun (2014, Finland; melodic death metal)73
Jade Bird – Who Wants to Talk About Love (2025, UK; folk rock, singer-songwriter)74
JER – Death of the Heart (2025, US; ska punk)75
Jethro Tull – Thick as a Brick (1972, UK; prog rock)76
Judas Priest – Invincible Shield (2024, UK; heavy metal)77
Just Mustard – We Were Just Here (2025, Ireland; post-punk, noise, shoegaze, trip hop)78
Kaku P-Model – unZIP (2025, Japan; experimental, electronic)79
Kieran Hebden and William Tyler – 41 Longfield Street Late ‘80s (2025, UK; electronic)80
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Float Along – Fill Your Lungs (2013, Australia; psychedelic pop)81
Kostnatění – Přílišnost (2025, US; avant-garde black metal)82
Küenring – In Search of Paradise (2025, Austria; heavy metal/hard rock)83
L.A. Salami (artist, in general) (UK; folk, post-modern blues, acoustic, rock)84
Labyrinthus Stellarum – Rift in Reality (2025, Ukraine; atmospheric/cosmic black metal)85
Lorien Testard – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Original Soundtrack) (2025, France; soundtrack)86
Lorna Shore – I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me (2025, US; death metal/deathcore)87
Lucy Dacus – Forever is a Feeling (2025, US; indie rock, folk-pop, singer-songwriter)88
Maeror Tri – Multiple Personality Disorder (1993, Germany; ambient, noise, drone)89
Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force – Khadim (2025, Germany/Senegal; mbalax, experimental, dub techno)90
Marshall Allen – New Dawn (2025, US; avant-garde jazz)91
Max Cooper – On Being (2025, UK; electronic, ambient, avant-garde)92
Messa – The Spin (2025, Italy; doom metal)93
Michel Legrand – The Essential Michel Legrand Film Music Collection (2005, France; soundtrack, compilation)94
MIKE – Showbiz! (2025, US; hip-hop/rap)95
Miynt – Rain Money Dogs (2025, Sweden; indie/bedroom rock)96
Modern English – Mesh & Lace (1981, UK; post-punk)97
Momma – Welcome to My Blue Sky (2025, US; alt/indie rock)98
more eaze & claire rousay – no floor (2025, US; experimental, ambient, avant-pop, sound collage)99
Moron Police – Pachinko (2025, Norway; concept album)100
Morris Kolontyrsky – Origination (2025, US; ambient, drone, experimental)101
Nærværet – Når Man Ser Inn I En Annens Hjerte (2024, Sweden/Norway; experimental, field recording, tape manipulation/loops)102
Nailed to Obscurity – Generation of The Void (2025, Germany; melodic/prog death/doom metal)103
Nicolas Gombert & James Weeks / Apartment House – G O M B E R T (2025, Flanders/UK; contemporary classical)104
Nora Brown and Stephanie Coleman – Lady of the Lake (2023, US; folk)105
Nout – Live Album (2024, France; alternative, punk, rock, jazz, noise)106
Olga Anna Markowska – Iskra (2025, Poland; modern classical, ambient)107
Ozzy Osbourne – Ozzmosis (1995, UK; heavy metal)108
Pino Palladino & Blake Mills – That Wasn’t a Dream (2025, Wales/US; experimental jazz)109
Point Mort – Le Point de Non-retour (2025, France; blackened crust postcore)110
Plague of Carcosa – In The Dreamless Deep (2025, US; doomnoise, experimental metal)111
Population II – Maintenant Jamais (2025, Canada; art/prog/psychedelic rock)112
Primal Scream – XTRMNTR (2000, Scotland; experimental electro-rock)113
Priscilla Block – Things You Didn’t See (2025, US; country, singer-songwriter)114
Psychonaut – World Maker (2025, Belgium; post-metal)115
Queens of the Stone Age – Alive in the Catacombs (2025, US; rock)116
Radiopuhelimet – Kosminen Tiedottomuus (2020, Finland; alt rock)117
Rebecca Foon & Aliayta Foon-Dancoes – Reverie (2025, Canada; modern classical)118
Rivers of Nihil – s/t (2025, US; death/prog metal)119
Rogue Jones – Dos Bebés (2023, Wales; folk, indie pop)120
Shayfer James – Summoning (2025, US; noir-pop, dark cabaret)121
Shedfromthebody – Whisper and Wane (2025, Finland; doomgaze, [post-]metal)122
Shepherds of Cassini – In Thrall to Heresy (2025, New Zealand; prog metal)123
Silvana Estrada – Vendrán Suaves Lluvias (2025, Mexico; singer-songwriter)124
Silvana Estrada (with Charlie Hunter) – Lo Sagrado (2017, Mexico/US; singer-songwriter)125
Širom – In the Wind of Night, Hard-Fallen Incantations Whisper (2025, Slovenia; instrumental avant-garde imaginary folk)126
SKC & The Poem – s/t (2025, Belgium; alt/folk rock)127
SKLOSS – The Pattern Speaks (2025, US/Scotland; space gaze, post-metal)128
Soulwax – All Systems Are Lying (2025, Belgium; electronic alt rock)129
Spiritbox – Tsunami Sea (2025, Canada; metalcore)130
State Azure – The Light That Remains (2025, UK; electronica, ambient, downtempo)131
Stereolab – Switched On Volumes 1-5 (2024, UK/France; avant-pop)132
Steve Tibbetts – Close (2025, US; jazz fusion)133
Stick To Your Guns – Keep Planting Flowers (2025, US; hardcore)134
Suede – Antidepressants (2025, UK; post-punk, gothic rock)135
Summer Walker – Finally Over It (2025, US; R&B, singer-songwriter)136
Susan Bear – Algorithmic Mood Music (2024, Scotland; electronic, alt-pop)137
Swansea Sound – Twentieth Century (2023, Wales; indie pop)138
TDJ (artist, in general) (Canada; electronic)139
Terveet Kädet – Lapin Helvetti (2015, Finland; hardcore punk)140
Tool – Lateralus (2001, US; prog rock/metal, art rock)141
The Bug Club – “Have U Ever Been 2 Wales” (2025, Wales; indie rock)142
The New Eves – The New Eve Is Rising (2025, UK; avant-garde/art rock)143
Trio del Mango – Cómelo (2025, US/Puerto Rico; experimental, noise)144
Turnstile – Never Enough (2025, US; alt rock)145
UNIVERSITY – McCartney, It’ll Be OK (2025, UK; punk, noise rock)146
Water Damage – Instruments (2025, US; experimental psych/drone-rock)147
Weakened Friends – Feels Like Hell (2025, US; indie rock)148
Weirs – Diamond Grove (2025, US; trad folk, experimental noise)149
Wet Leg – moisturizer (2025, UK; indie rock)150
White Lies – Five V2 (2019, UK; post-punk)151
X-Cetra – Summer 2000 (Y2K 25th Anniversary Edition) (2025, US; sleepover core, dance-pop)152
Yara Asmar – everyone I love is sleeping and I love them so so much (2025, Lebanon; modern classical/ambient)153
Yugen Blakrok – Anima Mysterium (2019, South Africa; hip-hop)154
Yws Gwynedd – Codi/ \Cysgu (2014, Wales; indie rock)155

Footnote Number. Fediverse username(s): Comments

poisonous ↩︎
buffyleigh: My emotional support album of the year. I’ve been a fan of AFI since 2000 but haven’t liked an album since 2006. The second I heard the first single “Behind The Clock”, my expectations for this album skyrocketed, and they were absolutely exceeded. It sounds nothing like anything they’ve ever done, and yet it feels like this was the album they’ve always been moving towards. Song of the year goes to the entirety of side A, and Davey Havok’s unexpectedly different sound on this album is my overall favourite vocal performance of year. ↩︎
Braininabowl ↩︎
umrk: top album requested by my kids in the car this year ↩︎
brh ↩︎
RolloTreadway: The most gloriously unhinged album I’ve heard this year. Twists together ideas from everywhere without the slightest consideration of whether doing so might be normal or accepted. The kind of album where a classic French chanson or some deep filthy funk just appears out of nowhere and then is never referred to again. It shouldn’t work but it absolutely does. ↩︎
gavin57: That last one is an all-timer. It’s astonishing. ↩︎
platenworm ↩︎
rachelcholst ↩︎
3rik: This has been a year for nighttime music and music for trying to sleep. ↩︎
swampgas: definitely my most played this year. A sludgy, deathdoom concept album about greed and gluttony and corruption thats riffy and groovy af. These are driving rhythms that chug hard! ↩︎
MichaelMcWilliams: The one album that tops my list this year also appears in the 1001 Other Albums list. Band website offering free download of the album: https://au4.ca ↩︎
brh ↩︎
poisonous ↩︎
jake4480 ↩︎
mbr ↩︎
riff: Most “Wait why did i never listen to this band before ?” of the year. ↩︎
keefeglise ↩︎
eamonn ↩︎
_slotek_ ↩︎
onuryasar: My kind of, very balanced Indie Pop: just the right amount of Indie but not too much and just the right amount of Pop but not too much 🙂 ↩︎
icastico ↩︎
santialone ↩︎
eamonn ↩︎
burnitdown || MetalheadDana ↩︎
cloudtripper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_e5kKzlFqU&list=RD8_e5kKzlFqU&start_radio=1 ↩︎
nevar23 ↩︎
debonaire: Recency bias is pushing me to three Silvana Estrada albums. I love her voice, I love the music, I love her with Charlie Hunter. ↩︎
otherdog ↩︎
fistfulofdave: Aussie punk in the vein of The Saints and Radio Birdman. ↩︎
rothko ↩︎
Chigaze: what happens when four guys to go a cottage in Ontario, find a flow state, and record an album over a few days. I got to see them play the album through at the Winspear in Edmonton and it’s way up there on my concert experience list. ↩︎
evilchili: The Italian singer and composer’s debut is a hypnotic journey of loops, bloops, and dramatic and impassioned vocalizations. ↩︎
nellie_m ↩︎
fistfulofdave: Blues metal? Shoegaze blues? I don’t know or care, I like it. ↩︎
tym || niels ↩︎
jake4480 ↩︎
santialone ↩︎
Kingu ↩︎
tym || demon6 ↩︎
otherdog ↩︎
MetalheadDana: I listened to this album when it first came out in 2021 but for some reason it didn’t click with me. But apparently 2021 Dana had horrible taste in music, because in early 2025 I randomly tried Dodsrit – Mortal Coil again and fell in love and have been obsessed with it all year, it’s the perfect blend of crust punk and black metal and I love it. ↩︎
TG_Esq ↩︎
rustynail ↩︎
alicemcalicepants ↩︎
Chigaze: nails it just as a solid Dropkick’s album but goes farther with songs made for the times. “Who’ll Stand With Us” and “School Days Over” are amazing workers songs while “Chesterfields and Aftershave” takes me back to my own grandfather. ↩︎
thesinkingbelle ↩︎
Braininabowl ↩︎
riff: Most listened this year. ↩︎
Mark52 ↩︎
Moss ↩︎
e (eva) ↩︎
steveroyle: Leaving out Never Enough by Turnstile as I’m sure that’ll get plenty of votes. ↩︎
fistfulofdave: Angular, noise rock, neo-post punk. Unsettling, laid-back, yet aggressive. And yes it was the last album Steve Albini recorded. ↩︎
MetalheadDana || demon6 ↩︎
soundclamp: Runner-ups – https://lineimprint.bandcamp.com/album/muzak-for-the-encouragement-of-unproductivity; https://myheartaninvertedflame.bandcamp.com/album/my-heart-an-inverted-flame-apparitions-split; https://timbarnes.bandcamp.com/album/lost-words-1 ↩︎
buffyleigh: I’ve known of Fever Ray since first seeing the TV show Vikings, but I for some reason didn’t check them out further until this year, when their s/t album came up for a blog post. I was floored. As it happens, their kinda sorta live album was set to come out soon after my first listen of the s/t, so I got caught up on the full Karin Dreijer discography, got super duper obsessed with their spectacular ARTE concert (which is essentially the same versions performed on the new album), and proceeded to be immensely inspired – nay, awakened – by this artist. ↩︎
Kingu ↩︎
onuryasar: I’ve first discovered the song Apocalypse by Cigarettes After Sex (I know, late comer), which brought me to Greg Gonzalez’s Wikipedia page, that says “Gonzalez was heavily inspired by French singer Françoise Hardy and her album La question”. I remember this album being mentioned in my Fedi timeline recently, so I gave it a spin and it turned on and on for the remainder of the year. [Editor’s note: Also see the 1001 OA spotlight on this album from earlier this year!] ↩︎
rachelcholst ↩︎
mynameistillian ↩︎
burnitdown ↩︎
demon6 ↩︎
donutage: I was a bit skeptical of this, and sure, in a 52-song project there’s some unevenness, but between the sheer audacity of the attempt & the frequent successes it scores, definitely one of the more remarkable records of the year. ↩︎
Tak ↩︎
e (eva) ↩︎
Lizahadiz ↩︎
mbr ↩︎
brh ↩︎
umrk: my fav album released in 2025 ↩︎
superflippy ↩︎
raisedfist ↩︎
gavin57 ↩︎
Mark52: Jade Bird has been by far my most listened to album this year. ↩︎
poisonous ↩︎
derthomas: I kept coming back to this album because it just fits every mood. It’s peak Jethro Tull if you ask me, it’s perfect in any way. Also the Steven Wilson Remaster sounds incredible. ↩︎
burnitdown ↩︎
jebeyer: a longer list is here – https://www.buymusic.club/list/whistlingkitty-some-of-my-favorite-2025-releases ↩︎
thesinkingbelle: honorable mentions – Scare – In The End, Was It Worth It; Creatvre – Toujours Humain ; Guck – Gucked Up ; AVTT/PTTN – AVTT/PTTN; Saor – Amidst the Ruins ; Jessica93 – 666 tours de periph’ ; Deadguy – Near-Death Travel Services;  LS Dunes – Violet;  Aesop Rock – I Heard It’s A Mess There Too ; Fishbone – Stockholm Syndrome ; Dead Pioneers – Po$t American ; Ethereal Wound – Defile | Demise;  Sci Fi Industries – Initial States ↩︎
soundclamp ↩︎
cloudtripper ↩︎
rustynail ↩︎
derthomas: My AOTY from a very underground Heavy Metal band from Austria. ↩︎
platenworm ↩︎
raisedfist ↩︎
thesinkingbelle ↩︎
t4s: Honorable mentions – The Halo Effect, Machine Head, Heaven Shall Burn, Spiritbox, Jinjer, Allegaeon ↩︎
rachelcholst ↩︎
3rik ↩︎
Wintergr33n: Percussion-driven music from Senegal on a self-released album: https://ra.co/news/82509. ↩︎
platenworm: 5 things that ruled my world musically this year:
– The Analog Africa Label
– The Artist L.A. Salami
– The knowledge that you can have too much music
– The knowledge that you can make your solo debut album when you are 100 years old……Hail Hail Marshall Allen
– And that everybody loved Ozzy ↩︎
nellie_m: The music project that somehow touched me most deeply was the result of two years of work by Max Cooper. „Powerful works of art have traditionally sprung from some source deep within an artist and, if they strike the right tone, resonate with an audience to leave a lasting mark. But what if that equation were reversed: what if an artist were to draw their inspiration from deep within their audience, and use that to reflect those ideas, emotions, hopes, fears, pains and aspirations back to us?…“ ↩︎
niels || TG_Esq || sentynel || otherdog || umrk ↩︎
eamonn ↩︎
jake4480 ↩︎
steveroyle ↩︎
alicemcalicepants ↩︎
BramMeehan ↩︎
avi_miller: All three fall into the more ambient realm, and they all are absolutely phenomenal. I love music that is based more around textures and creating a mood than creating a melody, and this year had some really good ones. ↩︎
niels ↩︎
TG_Esq ↩︎
3rik ↩︎
raisedfist ↩︎
keefeglise: Compositions by Nicholas Gombert and James Weeks. Performed by Apartment House. Flanders/UK. Contemporary Classical (Debatable! Gombert died in 1560.) ↩︎
evilchili: Two hipster kids from Brooklyn play 100 year old Appalachian folk tunes and make them come alive. Honest, reverential, and true. ↩︎
riff: “Instantly burned in my brain” this year (well, it was actually their KEXP session from april that blew my mind, but since i have to submit an album, it’ll do nicely 🙂 ). ↩︎
avi_miller ↩︎
derthomas: I discovered this album this year on a metal journey (yeah, late to the party) and I loved it. It’s my favourite Ozzy album. ↩︎
_slotek_ ↩︎
mbr ↩︎
tym: Oh and not a brand new release, but the remaster and new tracks for the 20th anniversary reissue of ‘Takk…’ by Sigur Rós are pretty great. That and ( ) are still what I listen to the most, this year and apparently every year. ↩︎
Kingu ↩︎
epu: I had all but forgotten party drug enthusiasm tracks like ‘higher than the sun’ from 1991, and it turns out they made so many albums since I last tuned in. This one really resonates with my reaction to USpol this year. It rekindled my love for this band; I bought Evil Heat import on CD, my first physical purchase since last year. ↩︎
Mark52 ↩︎
sentynel ↩︎
Braininabowl ↩︎
jiiruu ↩︎
avi_miller ↩︎
jiiruu || t4s || gavin57 ↩︎
Steffi ↩︎
superflippy ↩︎
rustynail: most played ↩︎
sentynel ↩︎
debonaire ↩︎
debonaire ↩︎
TwoClownsEating: I discovered this band in 2025. Absolutely incredible, I’ve bought their entire catalogue and had the privilege to see them live a few months ago. Unbelievably good musicians. Magical music. ↩︎
jomel: 2025 was a great year for Belgian music. Stef Kamil Carlens, co-founder of dEUS has released a gem with his new band The Poem. I have seen SKC twice this year, once in a solo gig, and the second time (in less then 2 weeks) for the “worst Case scenario” rewind from (and so with) dEUS, those two concerts were fabulous, and at the time, I wasn’t expecting this release.
Bonus Albums: The live album from Depeche Mode – Memento Mori: Mexico City; Arvo Pârt – Credo (released Alpha Classics label) which includes his “hits”  – Credo , Fratres , Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten (my favourite one)  https://outhere-music.com/en/albums/arvo-part-credo; 2025 Bryan Ferry release, with Amelia Barrat as female lead singer/speaker. Some of his material came from the 70’s and were updated, it’s a timeless album, and elegant as always https://soundcloud.com/bryanferry/sets/loose-talk-4 ↩︎
jebeyer ↩︎
jomel: (AKA 2manydj’s) Yep, those guys will make you dance, and rock, I guess they’ve listened to Kraftwerk & Front242. ↩︎
Tak ↩︎
nellie_m ↩︎
cloudtripper ↩︎
_slotek_ ↩︎
t4s ↩︎
Lizahadiz ↩︎
slamma ↩︎
e (eva): algorithmic mood music was my fav last year! but i’m still listening to it and i didn’t submit anything then. ↩︎
Steffi ↩︎
BramMeehan: I’ve listened to so much TDJ, though no one release in particular. ↩︎
jiiruu ↩︎
buffyleigh: There’s so many other albums I’d love to list here for exposure, but it feels more honest to list this masterpiece, my first obsession of the year, courtesy of catching their amazing set at the big Black Sabbath/Ozzy send-off concert. I mean, I even titled my AOTY list “Forty Six & 2”, since that was the first song Tool played there and got my attention. Said list is here. ↩︎
epu: Ok, this one’s kind of a cheat, it’s an EP.
2024, my friend turned me on to Bug Club for its lo-fi production aesthetic, humor and infectious fun/dark undertones. Marriage from 2023 album ‘Rare Birds: Hour of Song’ was the hook.
You can get this band straight into your heart and mind with this EP. And it takes me back to that one time I did go to Wales. ↩︎
jomel: This newcomer British female band has written the ultimate feminist anthem as opening track. || RolloTreadway: I don’t tend to be very much of a rock person, so for a big brash rock record to have such an impact on me must say something. It’s noisy and it’s loud and it has guitars and drums and punkiness. And, er, flutes. Harmonicas. Cellos. Weird interpretations of bible stories. All chaos and absurdity and celebration and being absolutely done with the patriarchy and above all else fun. So much fun. ↩︎
soundclamp ↩︎
santialone ↩︎
steveroyle ↩︎
jebeyer ↩︎
donutage: far & away my number 1; an angry & desperate neo-grunge banger. Sonia Sturino is a force of nature. ↩︎
RolloTreadway: In parts weird and experimental, in others traditional. Here there’s strange droney noise, and then there’s some light, old-fashioned fiddle playing. Electronic distortion, a choir recorded live outdoors singing a simple hymn. It’s an astonishingly creative and unique folk record. ↩︎
donutage: not as jaw-dropping as their debut (my runaway 2022 fave), but with a lot of the same qualities. It’s dancy, smart, & sexy, without ever once being submissive. || slamma ↩︎
alicemcalicepants ↩︎
slamma ↩︎
keefeglise ↩︎
evilchili: Afro-futurist South African Hip-Hop Mysticism. Blakrok instantly became my favourite female MC. ↩︎
Steffi ↩︎
#AOTY #AOTY2025 #CastleRat #Deafheaven #DieSpitz #Faetooth #ListenToThis #Messa #music #musicDiscovery #RiversOfNihil #TheNewEves #WetLeg
#aoty #aoty2025 #castlerat #deafheaven #diespitz #faetooth
Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] · 2025-10-02 · 11:48 UTC

Modder – Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun Review
By Grin Reaper
Blending sludge metal and electronica make for fascinating bedfellows, and that’s exactly what instrumental outfit Modder brings to the table with Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun. I don’t recall encountering this genre combo before, but the unlikely pairing fits together in compelling and novel ways. Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun is one part early Mastodon and one part The Prodigy, and it works better in practice than I’d ever expect it to on paper. Both styles embrace the bottom end, and in a live setting, I imagine Modder is unapologetically crushing. But it takes more than novelty to guarantee a grand time, so let’s dig in and see what goodies this Belgian quintet serves up.1
Though third outing Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun unites sludge and dance, it wasn’t always so, as Modder has evolved with each release. On their self-titled debut, Modder trod the well-worn doom path with low-end crunch and abundant fuzz, recalling Sleep and Electric Wizard. Sophomore album The Great Liberation Through Hearing injected quicker paces and subdued attitudes, delivering a rich variety of textures that plays like Inter Arma sans vocals. Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun continues the evolution of Modder’s sound, this time embracing dance-ready pulses and electronic trappings that occasionally approach Fear Factory’s Remanufacture (“Chaoism”). It’s a direction hinted at on The Great Liberation Through Hearing, but here Modder triumphs in fully fleshing it out.
On Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun, Modder succeeds in evoking an assortment of influences while maintaining the band’s distinct identity. From the Korn-fed intro of “Stone Eternal” to the Gojira-glazed grooves of “In the Sun,” the album packs a broad range of sounds into its forty-two minutes. Each one of the album’s six tracks brings unerringly heavy riffs. “Mather” begins with a Prodigy-induced flourish, then drops into a disgustingly dense lurch that shakes the room like a herd of mammoths tromping past. Guitars, bass, and electronics weave an intricate tapestry, with melodies and countermelodies coalescing into grooves thicker than a bowl of oatmeal (“Stone Eternal,” “Mutant Body Double”). The drumming flits and hammers, with actual and programmed drums enabling quick shifts between sludge and breakbeat (“Chaoism”). This five-piece flaunts chops, and they pack them into an easily digestible package.
Even if Modder’s latest is a barrel of fun, its imperfections hold it back from greener pastures. For starters, the mix is distractingly crowded. I suspect the goal was to create a concussive bombshell that rattles listeners to the core. While effective on that front, there are times when the sludgy crunch warps into over-compressed artifacts (“Stone Eternal,” “Mather”). This may be a challenge with the merger of styles, where the electronic elements don’t require the auditory depth needed to express the timbre of acoustic drums or bass. Instead, the music gets rammed through the aural equivalent of Fat Man’s Squeeze, coming out the other side flat and jarring. Another issue with Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun is immediacy. Both sludge and dance emanate a hypnotic sheen onto their styles, whether through towering, droning riffs or persistent electro-throbs. This makes great music for focusing on other tasks, but rarely did I stay engaged for an entire listen. If the goal is to surpass the novelty of instrumental electrosludge, something more is needed. As it is, Modder has strung together fun moments without enough cohesion. If you remove one of the songs or reorder them, the end result doesn’t change substantially, indicating that the whole is no greater than the sum of its parts.
Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun is a study in cross-genre pollination that bears fruit worth sampling, but won’t sustain you for long. I really like the idea of what Modder has concocted, but the album would have benefited from further refinement. A more dynamic mix would immediately boost listenability, and upping their songwriting game could help push their brand of electrosludge past the point of novelty and into territory with more active engagement and longevity. Modder oozes potential, but there’s ultimately not enough on Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun to keep me coming back.

Rating: Mixed
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kpbs mp3
Label: Consouling Sounds / Lay Bare Recordings
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: October 3rd, 2025
#25 #2025 #BelgiumMetal #ConSoulingSounds #ConsoulingSoundsRecords #DestroyingOurselvesForAPlaceInTheSun #ElectricWizard #ElectronicDanceMusic #ElectronicMetal #Electronica #ElectronicaMetal #Electrosludge #FearFactory #Gojira #InstrumentalMetal #InterArma #Korn #LayBareRecordings #Mastodon #Modder #Oct25 #Prodigy #Psychedelic #Review #Reviews #Sleep #Sludge #SludgeMetal #TheProdigy

#belgiummetal #consoulingsounds #consoulingsoundsrecords #destroyingourselvesforaplaceinthesun #electricwizard #electronicdancemusic
Rob Pegoraro @[email protected] · 2024-03-30 · 03:14 UTC

The Capitals and the Wizards may not win another championship anytime soon, but they will continue playing their home games where they should: in the downtown arena they’ve called home since 1997 as first the MCI Center, then the Verizon Center, followed by the resulting nickname of the Phone Booth, and now Capital One Arena.
That’s the best possible resolution of an interlude in which Monumental Sports and Entertainment had committed to relocating both teams to a new arena to be built in Alexandria’s Potomac Yard neighborhood. The Dec. 13 news of that move seemed driven from the start not by fundamental flaws with the teams’ Gallery Place venue, placed atop three Metro lines, but by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R.) wanting to secure a political legacy.

Having failed to capitalize on his election in 2021 with durable policy achievements–and having just seen Republicans lose a narrow majority in the state senate and return the General Assembly to Democratic control–Youngkin jumped at the chance to invite Monumental owner Ted Leonsis to bring the Caps and the Wizards across the Potomac.
Leonsis saw the chance to stop worrying about crime and noise outside Capital One Arena and build a sports and entertainment district from scratch with the help of $1.35 billion in subsidies, so of course he accepted that handshake deal.
Alexandrians I know were not nearly as enthusiastic about the prospect of a 20,000-seat venue being plunked down in their midst and what that might mean for traffic and Metro. Democratic leaders in Richmond, meanwhile, revealed themselves comparably skeptical of a financing plan that advertised no downside for Virginia taxpayers but which banked on assumptions that included moving Georgetown basketball games and dozens of concerts to the new arena and having people pay as much as $75 for parking and $731 a night for nearby luxury hotel rooms to generate the taxes to cover those subsidies.
Weeks of Youngkin treating the General Assembly as if it were a lower-level occupant on the org chart at the Carlyle Group, the private-equity firm that made him exceptionally rich, did not advance his arena ambitions. And now with Monumental signing a “strategic partnership” Wednesday with the District to upgrade Capital One Arena and its surroundings–backed by $515 million in public funds–they’re officially defunct.
Which is good, because I didn’t like the thought of redoing the experiment of having our NBA and NHL franchises playing outside of the city center. The Alexandria arena would have at least been next to a Metro stop and next to a walkable neighborhood, unlike the Capital Centre in Landover that introduced me to Georgetown hoops without ever earning any nostalgia from me. But when it had been such an unambiguously good idea to move the D.C. area’s biggest arena to the heart of the District–and when so many other places have seen good things happen when they moved their arenas to their city centers–why would you want to go back on that even a little bit?
https://robpegoraro.com/2024/03/29/city-sized-arenas-belong-in-city-centers/
#CapOneArena #CapitalCentre #CapitalOneArena #Caps #GalleryPlace #Hoyas #Landover #MCICenter #NationalLanding #NHL #PhoneBooth #PotomacYard #USAirArena #VerizonCenter #Wizards

#caponearena #capitalcentre #capitalonearena #caps #galleryplace #hoyas
Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] · 2025-10-02 · 11:48 UTC

Modder – Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun Review
By Grin Reaper
Blending sludge metal and electronica make for fascinating bedfellows, and that’s exactly what instrumental outfit Modder brings to the table with Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun. I don’t recall encountering this genre combo before, but the unlikely pairing fits together in compelling and novel ways. Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun is one part early Mastodon and one part The Prodigy, and it works better in practice than I’d ever expect it to on paper. Both styles embrace the bottom end, and in a live setting, I imagine Modder is unapologetically crushing. But it takes more than novelty to guarantee a grand time, so let’s dig in and see what goodies this Belgian quintet serves up.1
Though third outing Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun unites sludge and dance, it wasn’t always so, as Modder has evolved with each release. On their self-titled debut, Modder trod the well-worn doom path with low-end crunch and abundant fuzz, recalling Sleep and Electric Wizard. Sophomore album The Great Liberation Through Hearing injected quicker paces and subdued attitudes, delivering a rich variety of textures that plays like Inter Arma sans vocals. Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun continues the evolution of Modder’s sound, this time embracing dance-ready pulses and electronic trappings that occasionally approach Fear Factory’s Remanufacture (“Chaoism”). It’s a direction hinted at on The Great Liberation Through Hearing, but here Modder triumphs in fully fleshing it out.
On Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun, Modder succeeds in evoking an assortment of influences while maintaining the band’s distinct identity. From the Korn-fed intro of “Stone Eternal” to the Gojira-glazed grooves of “In the Sun,” the album packs a broad range of sounds into its forty-two minutes. Each one of the album’s six tracks brings unerringly heavy riffs. “Mather” begins with a Prodigy-induced flourish, then drops into a disgustingly dense lurch that shakes the room like a herd of mammoths tromping past. Guitars, bass, and electronics weave an intricate tapestry, with melodies and countermelodies coalescing into grooves thicker than a bowl of oatmeal (“Stone Eternal,” “Mutant Body Double”). The drumming flits and hammers, with actual and programmed drums enabling quick shifts between sludge and breakbeat (“Chaoism”). This five-piece flaunts chops, and they pack them into an easily digestible package.
Even if Modder’s latest is a barrel of fun, its imperfections hold it back from greener pastures. For starters, the mix is distractingly crowded. I suspect the goal was to create a concussive bombshell that rattles listeners to the core. While effective on that front, there are times when the sludgy crunch warps into over-compressed artifacts (“Stone Eternal,” “Mather”). This may be a challenge with the merger of styles, where the electronic elements don’t require the auditory depth needed to express the timbre of acoustic drums or bass. Instead, the music gets rammed through the aural equivalent of Fat Man’s Squeeze, coming out the other side flat and jarring. Another issue with Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun is immediacy. Both sludge and dance emanate a hypnotic sheen onto their styles, whether through towering, droning riffs or persistent electro-throbs. This makes great music for focusing on other tasks, but rarely did I stay engaged for an entire listen. If the goal is to surpass the novelty of instrumental electrosludge, something more is needed. As it is, Modder has strung together fun moments without enough cohesion. If you remove one of the songs or reorder them, the end result doesn’t change substantially, indicating that the whole is no greater than the sum of its parts.
Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun is a study in cross-genre pollination that bears fruit worth sampling, but won’t sustain you for long. I really like the idea of what Modder has concocted, but the album would have benefited from further refinement. A more dynamic mix would immediately boost listenability, and upping their songwriting game could help push their brand of electrosludge past the point of novelty and into territory with more active engagement and longevity. Modder oozes potential, but there’s ultimately not enough on Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun to keep me coming back.

Rating: Mixed
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kpbs mp3
Label: Consouling Sounds / Lay Bare Recordings
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: October 3rd, 2025
#25 #2025 #BelgiumMetal #ConSoulingSounds #ConsoulingSoundsRecords #DestroyingOurselvesForAPlaceInTheSun #ElectricWizard #ElectronicDanceMusic #ElectronicMetal #Electronica #ElectronicaMetal #Electrosludge #FearFactory #Gojira #InstrumentalMetal #InterArma #Korn #LayBareRecordings #Mastodon #Modder #Oct25 #Prodigy #Psychedelic #Review #Reviews #Sleep #Sludge #SludgeMetal #TheProdigy

#belgiummetal #consoulingsounds #consoulingsoundsrecords #destroyingourselvesforaplaceinthesun #electricwizard #electronicdancemusic
Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] · 2025-10-02 · 11:48 UTC

Modder – Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun Review
By Grin Reaper
Blending sludge metal and electronica make for fascinating bedfellows, and that’s exactly what instrumental outfit Modder brings to the table with Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun. I don’t recall encountering this genre combo before, but the unlikely pairing fits together in compelling and novel ways. Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun is one part early Mastodon and one part The Prodigy, and it works better in practice than I’d ever expect it to on paper. Both styles embrace the bottom end, and in a live setting, I imagine Modder is unapologetically crushing. But it takes more than novelty to guarantee a grand time, so let’s dig in and see what goodies this Belgian quintet serves up.1
Though third outing Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun unites sludge and dance, it wasn’t always so, as Modder has evolved with each release. On their self-titled debut, Modder trod the well-worn doom path with low-end crunch and abundant fuzz, recalling Sleep and Electric Wizard. Sophomore album The Great Liberation Through Hearing injected quicker paces and subdued attitudes, delivering a rich variety of textures that plays like Inter Arma sans vocals. Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun continues the evolution of Modder’s sound, this time embracing dance-ready pulses and electronic trappings that occasionally approach Fear Factory’s Remanufacture (“Chaoism”). It’s a direction hinted at on The Great Liberation Through Hearing, but here Modder triumphs in fully fleshing it out.
On Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun, Modder succeeds in evoking an assortment of influences while maintaining the band’s distinct identity. From the Korn-fed intro of “Stone Eternal” to the Gojira-glazed grooves of “In the Sun,” the album packs a broad range of sounds into its forty-two minutes. Each one of the album’s six tracks brings unerringly heavy riffs. “Mather” begins with a Prodigy-induced flourish, then drops into a disgustingly dense lurch that shakes the room like a herd of mammoths tromping past. Guitars, bass, and electronics weave an intricate tapestry, with melodies and countermelodies coalescing into grooves thicker than a bowl of oatmeal (“Stone Eternal,” “Mutant Body Double”). The drumming flits and hammers, with actual and programmed drums enabling quick shifts between sludge and breakbeat (“Chaoism”). This five-piece flaunts chops, and they pack them into an easily digestible package.
Even if Modder’s latest is a barrel of fun, its imperfections hold it back from greener pastures. For starters, the mix is distractingly crowded. I suspect the goal was to create a concussive bombshell that rattles listeners to the core. While effective on that front, there are times when the sludgy crunch warps into over-compressed artifacts (“Stone Eternal,” “Mather”). This may be a challenge with the merger of styles, where the electronic elements don’t require the auditory depth needed to express the timbre of acoustic drums or bass. Instead, the music gets rammed through the aural equivalent of Fat Man’s Squeeze, coming out the other side flat and jarring. Another issue with Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun is immediacy. Both sludge and dance emanate a hypnotic sheen onto their styles, whether through towering, droning riffs or persistent electro-throbs. This makes great music for focusing on other tasks, but rarely did I stay engaged for an entire listen. If the goal is to surpass the novelty of instrumental electrosludge, something more is needed. As it is, Modder has strung together fun moments without enough cohesion. If you remove one of the songs or reorder them, the end result doesn’t change substantially, indicating that the whole is no greater than the sum of its parts.
Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun is a study in cross-genre pollination that bears fruit worth sampling, but won’t sustain you for long. I really like the idea of what Modder has concocted, but the album would have benefited from further refinement. A more dynamic mix would immediately boost listenability, and upping their songwriting game could help push their brand of electrosludge past the point of novelty and into territory with more active engagement and longevity. Modder oozes potential, but there’s ultimately not enough on Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun to keep me coming back.

Rating: Mixed
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kpbs mp3
Label: Consouling Sounds / Lay Bare Recordings
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: October 3rd, 2025
#25 #2025 #BelgiumMetal #ConSoulingSounds #ConsoulingSoundsRecords #DestroyingOurselvesForAPlaceInTheSun #ElectricWizard #ElectronicDanceMusic #ElectronicMetal #Electronica #ElectronicaMetal #Electrosludge #FearFactory #Gojira #InstrumentalMetal #InterArma #Korn #LayBareRecordings #Mastodon #Modder #Oct25 #Prodigy #Psychedelic #Review #Reviews #Sleep #Sludge #SludgeMetal #TheProdigy

#belgiummetal #consoulingsounds #consoulingsoundsrecords #destroyingourselvesforaplaceinthesun #electricwizard #electronicdancemusic
Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] · 2025-10-02 · 11:48 UTC

Modder – Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun Review
By Grin Reaper
Blending sludge metal and electronica make for fascinating bedfellows, and that’s exactly what instrumental outfit Modder brings to the table with Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun. I don’t recall encountering this genre combo before, but the unlikely pairing fits together in compelling and novel ways. Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun is one part early Mastodon and one part The Prodigy, and it works better in practice than I’d ever expect it to on paper. Both styles embrace the bottom end, and in a live setting, I imagine Modder is unapologetically crushing. But it takes more than novelty to guarantee a grand time, so let’s dig in and see what goodies this Belgian quintet serves up.1
Though third outing Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun unites sludge and dance, it wasn’t always so, as Modder has evolved with each release. On their self-titled debut, Modder trod the well-worn doom path with low-end crunch and abundant fuzz, recalling Sleep and Electric Wizard. Sophomore album The Great Liberation Through Hearing injected quicker paces and subdued attitudes, delivering a rich variety of textures that plays like Inter Arma sans vocals. Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun continues the evolution of Modder’s sound, this time embracing dance-ready pulses and electronic trappings that occasionally approach Fear Factory’s Remanufacture (“Chaoism”). It’s a direction hinted at on The Great Liberation Through Hearing, but here Modder triumphs in fully fleshing it out.
On Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun, Modder succeeds in evoking an assortment of influences while maintaining the band’s distinct identity. From the Korn-fed intro of “Stone Eternal” to the Gojira-glazed grooves of “In the Sun,” the album packs a broad range of sounds into its forty-two minutes. Each one of the album’s six tracks brings unerringly heavy riffs. “Mather” begins with a Prodigy-induced flourish, then drops into a disgustingly dense lurch that shakes the room like a herd of mammoths tromping past. Guitars, bass, and electronics weave an intricate tapestry, with melodies and countermelodies coalescing into grooves thicker than a bowl of oatmeal (“Stone Eternal,” “Mutant Body Double”). The drumming flits and hammers, with actual and programmed drums enabling quick shifts between sludge and breakbeat (“Chaoism”). This five-piece flaunts chops, and they pack them into an easily digestible package.
Even if Modder’s latest is a barrel of fun, its imperfections hold it back from greener pastures. For starters, the mix is distractingly crowded. I suspect the goal was to create a concussive bombshell that rattles listeners to the core. While effective on that front, there are times when the sludgy crunch warps into over-compressed artifacts (“Stone Eternal,” “Mather”). This may be a challenge with the merger of styles, where the electronic elements don’t require the auditory depth needed to express the timbre of acoustic drums or bass. Instead, the music gets rammed through the aural equivalent of Fat Man’s Squeeze, coming out the other side flat and jarring. Another issue with Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun is immediacy. Both sludge and dance emanate a hypnotic sheen onto their styles, whether through towering, droning riffs or persistent electro-throbs. This makes great music for focusing on other tasks, but rarely did I stay engaged for an entire listen. If the goal is to surpass the novelty of instrumental electrosludge, something more is needed. As it is, Modder has strung together fun moments without enough cohesion. If you remove one of the songs or reorder them, the end result doesn’t change substantially, indicating that the whole is no greater than the sum of its parts.
Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun is a study in cross-genre pollination that bears fruit worth sampling, but won’t sustain you for long. I really like the idea of what Modder has concocted, but the album would have benefited from further refinement. A more dynamic mix would immediately boost listenability, and upping their songwriting game could help push their brand of electrosludge past the point of novelty and into territory with more active engagement and longevity. Modder oozes potential, but there’s ultimately not enough on Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun to keep me coming back.

Rating: Mixed
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kpbs mp3
Label: Consouling Sounds / Lay Bare Recordings
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: October 3rd, 2025
#25 #2025 #BelgiumMetal #ConSoulingSounds #ConsoulingSoundsRecords #DestroyingOurselvesForAPlaceInTheSun #ElectricWizard #ElectronicDanceMusic #ElectronicMetal #Electronica #ElectronicaMetal #Electrosludge #FearFactory #Gojira #InstrumentalMetal #InterArma #Korn #LayBareRecordings #Mastodon #Modder #Oct25 #Prodigy #Psychedelic #Review #Reviews #Sleep #Sludge #SludgeMetal #TheProdigy

#theprodigy #sludgemetal #sludge #sleep #reviews #review
Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] · 2025-10-02 · 11:48 UTC

Modder – Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun Review
By Grin Reaper
Blending sludge metal and electronica make for fascinating bedfellows, and that’s exactly what instrumental outfit Modder brings to the table with Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun. I don’t recall encountering this genre combo before, but the unlikely pairing fits together in compelling and novel ways. Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun is one part early Mastodon and one part The Prodigy, and it works better in practice than I’d ever expect it to on paper. Both styles embrace the bottom end, and in a live setting, I imagine Modder is unapologetically crushing. But it takes more than novelty to guarantee a grand time, so let’s dig in and see what goodies this Belgian quintet serves up.1
Though third outing Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun unites sludge and dance, it wasn’t always so, as Modder has evolved with each release. On their self-titled debut, Modder trod the well-worn doom path with low-end crunch and abundant fuzz, recalling Sleep and Electric Wizard. Sophomore album The Great Liberation Through Hearing injected quicker paces and subdued attitudes, delivering a rich variety of textures that plays like Inter Arma sans vocals. Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun continues the evolution of Modder’s sound, this time embracing dance-ready pulses and electronic trappings that occasionally approach Fear Factory’s Remanufacture (“Chaoism”). It’s a direction hinted at on The Great Liberation Through Hearing, but here Modder triumphs in fully fleshing it out.
On Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun, Modder succeeds in evoking an assortment of influences while maintaining the band’s distinct identity. From the Korn-fed intro of “Stone Eternal” to the Gojira-glazed grooves of “In the Sun,” the album packs a broad range of sounds into its forty-two minutes. Each one of the album’s six tracks brings unerringly heavy riffs. “Mather” begins with a Prodigy-induced flourish, then drops into a disgustingly dense lurch that shakes the room like a herd of mammoths tromping past. Guitars, bass, and electronics weave an intricate tapestry, with melodies and countermelodies coalescing into grooves thicker than a bowl of oatmeal (“Stone Eternal,” “Mutant Body Double”). The drumming flits and hammers, with actual and programmed drums enabling quick shifts between sludge and breakbeat (“Chaoism”). This five-piece flaunts chops, and they pack them into an easily digestible package.
Even if Modder’s latest is a barrel of fun, its imperfections hold it back from greener pastures. For starters, the mix is distractingly crowded. I suspect the goal was to create a concussive bombshell that rattles listeners to the core. While effective on that front, there are times when the sludgy crunch warps into over-compressed artifacts (“Stone Eternal,” “Mather”). This may be a challenge with the merger of styles, where the electronic elements don’t require the auditory depth needed to express the timbre of acoustic drums or bass. Instead, the music gets rammed through the aural equivalent of Fat Man’s Squeeze, coming out the other side flat and jarring. Another issue with Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun is immediacy. Both sludge and dance emanate a hypnotic sheen onto their styles, whether through towering, droning riffs or persistent electro-throbs. This makes great music for focusing on other tasks, but rarely did I stay engaged for an entire listen. If the goal is to surpass the novelty of instrumental electrosludge, something more is needed. As it is, Modder has strung together fun moments without enough cohesion. If you remove one of the songs or reorder them, the end result doesn’t change substantially, indicating that the whole is no greater than the sum of its parts.
Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun is a study in cross-genre pollination that bears fruit worth sampling, but won’t sustain you for long. I really like the idea of what Modder has concocted, but the album would have benefited from further refinement. A more dynamic mix would immediately boost listenability, and upping their songwriting game could help push their brand of electrosludge past the point of novelty and into territory with more active engagement and longevity. Modder oozes potential, but there’s ultimately not enough on Destroying Ourselves for a Place in the Sun to keep me coming back.

Rating: Mixed
DR: 5 | Format Reviewed: 320 kpbs mp3
Label: Consouling Sounds / Lay Bare Recordings
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: October 3rd, 2025
#25 #2025 #BelgiumMetal #ConSoulingSounds #ConsoulingSoundsRecords #DestroyingOurselvesForAPlaceInTheSun #ElectricWizard #ElectronicDanceMusic #ElectronicMetal #Electronica #ElectronicaMetal #Electrosludge #FearFactory #Gojira #InstrumentalMetal #InterArma #Korn #LayBareRecordings #Mastodon #Modder #Oct25 #Prodigy #Psychedelic #Review #Reviews #Sleep #Sludge #SludgeMetal #TheProdigy

#belgiummetal #consoulingsounds #consoulingsoundsrecords #destroyingourselvesforaplaceinthesun #electricwizard #electronicdancemusic
find you on :butterfedy1: fediverse @[email protected] · 2024-11-03 · 14:20 UTC

Did anyone hear about bigtech investing in #nuclear energy to supposedly power 'ai'? here's a supposed article that sounds like it's copy-pasted straight from the nuclear lobby's press release (you can tell because they write "clean energy" as opposed to "toxic waste generating energy that poisons children and placed in bombs to damag the #genetics of people in parts of the world bankers want to harvest").
Amazon bought a nuclear-powered #datacenter in march and now they are investing $500 million in "small modular reactors". The nuclear lobby must be thrilled that everyone seems to be too distracted with the election to even talk about this. This news from amazon came a day after google announced it has big plans to go nuclear over the next decade or so.
in case anyone needed another reason to boycott m$, amaz, and goog....
#pollution #cancer #eugenics #warmachine #weaponsindustry #amazon #google #aws #microsoft #refugeecultivation #modernslavery #datacenters

#datacenter #amazon #eugenics #google #microsoft #aws
Rob Pegoraro @[email protected] · 2024-02-17 · 04:53 UTC

The Virginia General Assembly is now past the halfway mark of its first session under Democratic control since the 2021 session, and I have to admit that I expected a little more out of my state’s legislature now that Republicans can’t quietly sink decent bills in committees as they did in the House of Delegates in the previous two-year session.
It’s not that the Western Hemisphere’s oldest continuous law-making body–I can’t write that without noting that for the first time in its 405-year history, the House is led by a Black man, Speaker Don Scott (D.-Portsmouth)–has been spinning its wheels in this session. As of Tuesday’s “crossover day,” the deadline for each chamber to pass any non-budget bill that the other may consider, more than a thousand bills have survived that deadline in our state’s unusually short legislative session.

They include a raft of gun-control measures, some of which attracted Republican votes and may escape a veto from Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), as well as various bills to protect Virginians from the enforcement of abortion bans (you can also think of them as forced-birth laws) in other states.
Other accomplishments by either house, in some cases by both, haven’t landed in as many headlines but deserve some recognition: streamlining rural broadband buildout, ending legacy admissions to public colleges and universities, banning unadvertised junk fees, extending health care to undocumented immigrant children, and legalizing the customary cyclist practice of treating stop signs without crossing traffic as yield signs.
I also appreciate how the General Assembly hasn’t rubber-stamped Youngkin’s ploy to help the Washington Capitals and Wizards move to Alexandria’s Potomac Yards neighborhood. That arena belongs in downtown D.C. on top of multiple Metro lines.
And yet the General Assembly has still missed major opportunities–even setting aside Dems postponing votes for constitutional amendments to end felony disenfranchisement and protect same-sex marriage and abortion rights until next year’s session.
(Constituional amendments must pass in separate General Assembly sessions before going to a popular vote, so I can understand how timing them for the same year as legislative elections makes them more obvious campaign issues.)
In particular, it’s disgraceful how often Democrats have quietly sunk decent bills in committees that would have put some limits on the ability of people and even companies to throw money at politicians. Virginia’s lax campaign-finance laws amount to legalized bribery of candidates and elected officials, and Dems in Richmond should be embarrassed to have done so little to fix that. Again.
On a lesser and more local level, I’m also annoyed that a measure to allow municipalities to ban noisy and polluting gas-powered leaf blowers got punted to next year’s session. Related: It’s still dumb how often cities and counties have to get a permission slip from Richmond to do things that would have little to no effect on their neighbors.
And then there are the cases where legislators didn’t even introduce bills that should have had a chance of passing. For example, four years after we couldn’t finish an anti-SLAPP bill to close Virginia to libel tourists, nobody tried to introduce one this year. And a year after a bill to restore direct online filing of state taxes got quashed in a House committee, nobody tried to fix that either.
I’ll be thinking about that last failure when I once again file our state taxes on paper. And when I vote this fall–as I will and as I always do, because I’ve already seen how much my state has changed, one election at a time. And because however grumpy I might get about one season’s legislative results, I’m not going to practice childlike citizenship by holding my voting breath until other people do the work.
https://robpegoraro.com/2024/02/16/progress-in-virginia-still-demands-some-patience/
#antiSLAPP #campaignFinance #crossoverDay #directTaxPrep #GlennYoungkin #HouseOfDelegates #leafBlowers #Richmond #VirginiaDemocrats #VirginiaGeneralAssembly #VirginiaIFile #VirginiaSenate

#antislapp #campaignfinance #crossoverday #directtaxprep #glennyoungkin #houseofdelegates
find you on :butterfedy1: fediverse @[email protected] · 2024-12-06 · 09:11 UTC

CW: negative thoughts and feelings, potential warning signs
i have RANDOMLY found a #songwriter, #musician, #blogger and #artist who has a #wordpress site and is being censored by #fakebook for their political views (supporting a non-corporate aligned party/candidate). They use #ubuntu, judging by the ugly screenshots that they've shared showing falsebook's repression tactics. Fb have repressed this person DURING AN ELECTION in this person's country. The person is getting questions from friends about why he has unfriended them, and seems to have had a very large following on fb. Unfortunately this person doesn't provide any meaningful contact details on their Wordpress blog site anymore. They appear to be giving up on writing #music and have stated that they don't have the creativity to continue producing new music. They seem to have given up on selling albums and on performing at live venues also, i feel an urgent need to reach out to this person and inform them about #fediverse, they have not mentioned fediverse or mastodon in their LONG history of blogging.
It sux to see this happen to yet another person, but this time not be able to reach out.
Any ideas?
#electionInterference #repression #falsebook #askFedi

#fediverse #wordpress #music #ubuntu #askfedi #artist
Elena Rossini @[email protected] · 2024-12-05 · 13:23 UTC

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“Think of grief, anger, worry as bricks or planks of wood. Stop staring at the materials, half believing they were delivered to you by mistake, half expecting a truck to haul them away. Accept that these are your materials right now. Start building.”
– Maggie Smith, from her book Keep Moving
I’ve been feeling a lot of grief, anger and worry since the morning of November 6th 2024, when the results of the US presidential election were announced. Never in a million years I would have expected a convicted felon, an openly xenophobic, racist, transphobic misogynist and insurrectionist to be voted by half the country and allowed to ascend – yet again – to the most powerful job in his country. All this aided and abetted by a group of tech billionaires.
Four years is a long time. But it can also go by fast: ask this to any parent of a small child. As they say: the days are long but the years are short.
Instead of wallowing in this grief and anger, I have resolved to make this time – these four years – matter. It makes me feel better and more empowered to set some high goals, so that by January 2029 I could look back and think to myself: I have grown and helped others during these tumultuous four years. I made good use of that time.
Thus, “my so-called sudo life”.
What does “my so-called sudo life” mean?
sudo (short for “superuser do”) is a command on Unix systems that grants “superpowers” to a user, allowing them to execute commands with elevated privileges, like an admin.
This cartoon by xkcd was the first Linux joke I ever got:
I found it apt to name a blog about my new journey of (mostly tech) resistance and empowerment after that command line.
4 Goals for the next 4 years
In the days following November 6th I sketched a plan – for my own self care: set 4 goals for the next 4 years – 2 internal (self-improvement) and two “external” (helping others).
Goal 1: learn Linux, a free, open source operating system to set myself free from Big Tech monopolies. Sub goal no. 1: become so proficient in Linux that I could create a Linux computer, a Linux tablet and a Linux phone for my child (when the time comes, she’s 3 now). Sub goal no.2: become so proficient I can host my own Fediverse instance.
Goal 2: learn a new foreign language. I’m already fully fluent in Italian (my mother tongue), English and French. I love how learning a new language feels energizing and allows you to better understand new cultures. Well, I haven’t officially picked a new language yet. It’s currently a toss-up between Spanish (which I already understand well, because it’s similar to Italian) and Japanese (my favorite country to visit and added bonus: I could interact with people on MissKey). For the challenge aspect I’m leaning towards Japanese… yet I acknowledge Spanish would be a more realistic goal.
Goal 3: start doing presentations in high schools and universities about the Fediverse and FOSS projects, in order to raise awareness about the toxic side of Big Tech and the free, open-source alternatives that already exist and are much better from an ethical / digital sovereignty point of view.
Goal 4: help make the Fediverse a more diverse place, safer and more welcoming for people of color.
The rebellion will be federated
In a previous blog post I wrote:
What do billionaires and kleptocrats want? Uninformed, impulsive citizens driven by emotions (fear, rage, anxiety) instead of critical thinking. This way, they are so much easier to manipulate – for the gains of kleptocrats.
And:
A healthy (in body and mind), active, frugal, sociable, mostly offline citizen who is highly educated and informed, in full control of their data, avoiding Big Tech’s platforms and algorithms, with a positive self-esteem and self-image, is probably persona non grata for [these] tech billionaires.
I found goals that will propel me forward for the next four years – with a sense of hope. And that feels awesome (amidst all this chaos and sorrow).
4 Years
I’m in the unique position of being able to measure time in comparison to a US presidential term: I was heavily pregnant during the January 6th 2021 U.S. Capitol attack; my child was born during the early days of the Biden presidency and will turn 4 after Trump is sworn in as president.
Over the course of 4 years I have seen my tiny human grow, get stronger and develop new intellectual and motor skills. So many skills! I remember when she could barely hold a spoon in her hand. Now she builds impossible structures with LEGOs. She went from being non-verbal and communicating through cries to… speaking two languages fluently. She actually loves correcting my French pronunciation from time to time (“rue” “en dessous”). We figured out she understands a bit of English, too, but keeps that knowledge secret from us.
You can grow and learn so much in four years.
Power
This is my so-called sudo life, where I am giving myself superuser privileges… and I look forward to seeing what kind of person I will be in four year’s time. More than anything, I hope I will be part of a community of like-minded people, working towards the same goals.
This blog – or journal – is for accountability… to keep me motivated on these goals. And to share lessons I learned, hoping to inspire others to take steps towards greater digital sovereignty.
It feels very Wizard of Oz like: “You’ve always had the power my dear, you just had to learn it for yourself.”
We already have so much power. There has never been a better time to take on superuser privileges (with care).
I shared my goals. What will be yours?
Elena

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https://elenarossini.com/2024/12/introducing-my-so-called-sudo-life/
#BigTech #digitalSovereignty #empowerment #floss #foreignLanguages #foss #freedom #Japanese #languages #linux #mySoCalledSudoLife #Spanish

#bigtech #digitalsovereignty #floss #foreignlanguages #foss #japanese
Sky Dancing @[email protected] · 2026-05-08 · 17:49 UTC

Finally Friday Reads: The Chaos Times

“It’s now safe to go out to dinner in The Nation’s Capital!” John Buss, @repeat1968

Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The chaos surrounding voting rights continues to play out across many southern states. I’ve shared the craziness going on down here in Lousyana. It seems today’s news on voting rights and gerrymandering shenanigans were handled by Supreme Court judges in Virginia. It’s looking like Orange Caligula and his Republican enablers will be getting the Midterm Election chaos they seek. Our primary election is coming up in 8 days. Our U.S. Congressional representatives are not on the ballot as they should be.
Will the Virginia Supreme Court Decision impact more than just Virginia? That seems to be the question being asked in the national conversation. David A. Lieb and Geoff Mulvihill report the story for the AP. “Virginia Supreme Court strikes down Democrats’ redrawn US House maps, giving Republicans a win.” It’s difficult to believe that so much disruption can happen in modern times.
The Virginia Supreme Court on Friday struck down a voter-approved Democratic congressional redistricting plan, delivering another major setback to the party in a nationwide battle against Republicans for an edge in this year’s midterm elections.
The court ruled 4-3 that the state’s Democratic-led legislature violated procedural requirements when it placed the constitutional amendment on the ballot to authorize the mid-decade redistricting. Voters narrowly approved the amendment April 21, but the court’s ruling renders the results of that vote meaningless.
Writing for the majority, Justice D. Arthur Kelsey wrote that the legislature submitted the proposed constitutional amendment to voters “in an unprecedented manner.”
“This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void,” he wrote.
Democrats had hoped to win as many as four additional U.S. House seats under Virginia’s redrawn U.S. House map as part of an attempt to offset Republican redistricting done elsewhere at the urging of President Donald Trump. That ruling, combined with a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision severely weakening the Voting Rights Act, has supercharged the Republicans’ congressional gerrymandering advantage heading into this year’s midterm elections.
Redistricting could change the House Map. This is the next question the article addresses.
Mid-decade redistricting so far has resulted in 14 more congressional seats that Republicans believe they could win and six more seats that Democrats think they could win, putting the GOP up by eight. But some of those seats could be competitive in the November election, making the results uncertain. Redistricting is still being litigated in several states.
There is a map showing the general changes that have occurred following the Supreme Court decision, which has disrupted the entire concept of gerrymandering and its illegality. The Guardian reports today on the situation in Tennessee, which could eliminate its one black majority Congressional seat. We worry about that here in Louisiana. “Tennessee Republicans redraw maps to erase last Democratic, Black-majority district. Move comes days after supreme court ruling weakened Voting Rights Act protections against racial gerrymandering.” George Chidi has the analysis.
Tennessee’s Republican-dominated legislature passed redistricting maps on Thursday, eliminating the state’s one Democratic, Black-majority congressional district a week after the US supreme court effectively gutted a major section of the Voting Rights Act.
The move cracks Tennessee’s ninth congressional district, which covers Memphis, into three pieces, each of which contains almost exactly a third of the city’s Black voters. The new maps mean that all nine of Tennessee’s congressional districts are Republican-leaning.
The district had closely occupied the south-west corner of the state. Now three districts snake out from Memphis’ dense center, with two crossing the Tennessee River to reach Nashville’s suburbs 200 miles away.
“If Republican policies are so great, why are we changing the lines to rig elections?” asked Vincent Dixie, a state representative from Nashville, during debate on Thursday, pleading for Republicans to refrain. “Where is your humanity in this?”
As Democratic lawmakers spoke, the house speaker directed state troopers to remove a section of the audience in the gallery, which had begun shouting.
Justin Jones, a state Democratic representative, described Cameron Sexton, the Tennessee house speaker, as the “grand wizard in chief”, and handed a Republican lawmaker a Confederate flag. Jones offered amendments to the bill, which the speaker ruled had been submitted in an untimely manner. Jones described that as a “Jim Crow process”.
The redistricting comes eight days after the supreme court’s landmark Callais v Landry decision, which invalidated swaths of the Voting Rights Act which had restrained state governments from drawing congressional districts that left Black voters at a political disadvantage.
Despite demands from Donald Trump for conservative states to conduct mid-decade redistricting, Tennessee had refrained from taking action before the court’s ruling. But Sexton said the redraw will “ensure the state’s representation in Washington reflects its conservative values”.
Khaya Himmelman has more information about the Virginia situation in Talking Points Memo. “Virginia State Supreme Court Strikes Down Dem Redistricting Proposal.”
In a major loss for Democrats on Friday, the Virginia state Supreme Court rejected, in a 4-3 decision, the state’s recently approved redistricting proposal, which could have given Democrats four additional congressional seats, improving their chances of taking control of the U.S. House this year.
The proposal, which was introduced as a way to offset the impact of the Trump administration’s mid-cycle gerrymandering blitz, was narrowly approved by voters in a special election earlier this month.
The Supreme Court ruled that the process by which lawmakers moved forward the redistricting proposal violated the state’s constitution.
“In this case, the Commonwealth submitted a proposed constitutional amendment to Virginia voters in an unprecedented manner that violated the intervening-election requirement in Article XII, Section 1 of the Constitution of Virginia,” the state Supreme Court’s majority opinion read.
“This violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void,” it continued. “For this reason, the congressional district maps issued by this Court in 2021 pursuant to Article II, Section 6-A of the Constitution of Virginia remain the governing maps for the upcoming 2026 congressional elections.”
Election analysts underscored that this is a major victory for Republicans, though the political environment could still be a considerable drag on their midterms changes.
G. Elliott Morris has an analysis up today that breaks down the statistical assumptions the Supreme Court used. This comes from his site Strength in Numbers. “The simple statistical error Republican Supreme Court justices used to gut the VRA. The Court says vote dilution can be proven only after controlling for “controlling” racial polarization rather than partisan polarization. This is a nonsensical and impossible test.” For a kid who hated her algebra classes, I sure live in the realm of statistical and econometric analysis now. It helps to understand the numbers, believe me.
The six Republican-appointed justices on the United States Supreme Court have found a magical solution to political polarization. All you have to do is take a partisan election result and subtract out the effects of party loyalty on the result.
That, more or less, is what the Court wrote when it invalidated the Voting Rights Act last week. In Louisiana v. Callais, decided 6-3 on April 29, 2026, the conservative majority told voting-rights plaintiffs they must now “control for party affiliation” before their evidence of racial bloc voting will count under Section 2.
That sounds like a neutral statistical fix, but in reality, it’s a bad control — an error called “conditioning on a mediator variable“ that would get your paper sent back to you with lots of red ink in statistics 101. The problem is that in modern America, party isn’t a variable that operates independently of race. Rather, political party is largely downstream of one’s race. If you subtract the effects of political party from the analysis of polarization, you are subtracting away the very evidence of polarization you are trying to study!
This is important (not just a piece for nerds) because Republican legislatures are already moving ahead with new partisan and racial gerrymanders based on SCOTUS’s new theory. Tennessee passed a 9-0 GOP map this week that splits Memphis’s majority-Black and solidly Democratic 9th District into three majority-white, Republican-leaning seats. Mississippi’s governor has called a special session for May 20. Louisiana is losing at least one of its majority-Black districts. And Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina could be next. (On this week’s podcast, David and I recap these new gerrymandering efforts that are unfolding with unprecedented haste.)
This week’s Chart of the Week is: a simple table (and one causal diagram) that shows how the Court’s new test makes racial polarization vanish on paper, while it is very much still alive in real life.
This is the decision that will dilute the vote of New Orleans and every black citizen of Louisiana. Again, here’s the link to the Governor’s site announcing the decision to gerrymander the state prior to voting for our Congressional Representatives. “Governor Jeff Landry Suspends Only U.S. House Primary Elections Following Supreme Court Ruling.” My mind boggles every time I read anything on this.
Governor Jeff Landry issued an executive order suspending Louisiana’s closed party primary elections only for offices of U.S. Representative in response to the recent decision by the United States Supreme Court in Louisiana v. Callais. EO attached.
“The best way to end race-based discrimination is to stop making decisions based on race,” said Governor Jeff Landry. “Here in Louisiana, we’re proud to lead the nation on this charge. Allowing elections to proceed under an unconstitutional map would undermine the integrity of our system and violate the rights of our voters. This executive order ensures we uphold the rule of law while giving the Legislature the time it needs to pass a fair and lawful congressional map. I would like to thank Attorney General Liz Murrill for her hard work throughout this process”
The ruling issued on April 29 found Louisiana’s current congressional district map, enacted under SB 8 during the 2024 First Extraordinary Session, to be an unconstitutional gerrymander. The decision effectively reinstates a lower court injunction prohibiting the state from conducting congressional elections under the invalidated map.
As a result, the state’s closed party primary elections for U.S. House seats, previously scheduled for May 16, 2026, and the second primary set for June 27, 2026, are suspended. Early voting for the May election was set to begin May 2. Other offices and ballot measures scheduled for May 16 will continue as planned. This suspension will only apply to the U.S. House races.
I do feel like I’ve been disenfranchised. And again, please remember the impact the SAVE Act will have on Women and Transexual individuals. Democracy Docket has this analysis of the Tennessee situation. “‘Jim Crow on steroids’: Tennessee gerrymander included nixing rule that voters must be notified about new districts.” The analysis is provided by Jacob Knutson.
In the aggressive congressional gerrymander they adopted Thursday, Tennessee Republicans also removed a provision in state law requiring the government to alert voters about changes to their designated polling places when electoral lines are redrawn.
Transparency groups and state lawmakers have warned that the change is likely to exacerbate voter confusion caused by state Republicans’ abrupt adoption of new congressional maps just months before the 2026 midterm elections.
One leading democracy advocate called it “Jim Crow on steroids.”
Before Thursday, state law required county election commissions to “immediately” notify voters by mail when their polling place or precinct changed because of redistricting. Among other notices, alerts also had to be published in newspapers. The law was meant to ensure that voters know where to cast their ballots during early voting or on election day.
But in their bill repealing a five-decade prohibition on mid-decade redistricting, Republicans included an amendment that only requires county election commissions to post a notice about redrawn congressional districts on their “official website, if one exists.”
Under the repeal, which is expected to be signed into law by Gov. Bill Lee (R), the secretary of state also has to publish a notice, but mail and newspaper notices are no longer required to inform voters about changed boundaries.
Deborah Fisher, the executive director of the Tennessee Coalition for Open Government (TCOG), a nonpartisan transparency group, said in a release Thursday that the change was likely meant to reduce costs, though she warned that the voting public will be harmed when it takes effect.
“When polling places or precincts are changed, more effort should be made to reach affected voters, not less,” Fisher said.
Republicans had to repeal the prohibition on mid-decade redistricting before they pushed through their new congressional map, which cracks the state’s only majority-Black district between three separate districts.
Because of the new map, several local voting areas were shifted into new congressional districts. That means polling places likely changed for hundreds of voters across the state.
While debating the map in the Tennessee Senate Thursday, Sen. Heidi Campbell, a Democrat who represents Nashville, accused Republicans of intentionally misleading voters through the notice change.
“We’re not just redrawing the map. We’re making sure people don’t have to be told the map changed,” Campbell said.
Reacting to the notice change Thursday, Norman Ornstein, a prominent political scientist formerly with the American Enterprise Institute, called it “Jim Crow on steroids” in a social media post.
It’s clear to me that we really have something to worry about. We’re busy here in Greater New Orleans with actions. Please consider finding out how you can help our country’s voting system.
What’s on your Reading, Action, and Blogging list today?

#GerryMandering #JimCrowOnSteroids #Louisiana #LouisianaVCallais #SupremeCourt #Tennesse #Virginia #votingRights

#gerrymandering #jimcrowonsteroids #louisiana #louisianavcallais #supremecourt #tennesse
Sky Dancing @[email protected] · 2025-02-01 · 19:40 UTC

Lazy Caturday Reads: The Fascist Takeover Is Progressing Rapidly
Good Afternoon!!

By Johan Hendrik Caspar Kern

The dismantling of the U.S. Government by Elon Musk and Donald Trump is beyond breathtaking. I put Musk’s name first because he appears to be the one who is issuing orders while Trump golfs or rants on social media. I couldn’t possibly discuss the damage in a blog post–there is just too much happening at once. We are watching a fascist takeover in real time. Meanwhile, the Democrats are doing nothing to stop it.
From what I can tell, Trump/Musk have already destroyed the Justice Department and the FBI. Musk has taken control of the Treasury’s computer system that controls all government’s payments, including Social Security. They are working to get rid of as many federal employees as they can, either by firing them or convincing them to quit. They are purging websites of important public information. Soon, Trump plans to install tariffs that will cause serious inflation and damage relationships with our closest allies Canada and Mexico.
One thing I know for sure: this country will never be the same. I only hope we can stop it from becoming a dictatorship. If the Democrats remain supine, it may not be possible.
Some important reads for today:
Garrett Graff at Doomsday Scenario: Musk’s Junta Establishes Him as Head of Government.
I’ve long believed that the American media would be more clear-eyed about the rise and return of Donald Trump if it was happening overseas in a foreign country, where we’re used to foreign correspondents writing with more incisive authority. Having watched with growing alarm the developments of the last 24 and 36 hours in Washington, I thought I’d take a stab at just such a dispatch. Here’s a story that should be written this weekend:

February 1, 2025
By William Boot

WASHINGTON, D.C. — What started Thursday as a political purge of the internal security services accelerated Friday into a full-blown coup, as elite technical units aligned with media oligarch Elon Musk moved to seize key systems at the national treasury, block outside access to federal personnel records, and take offline governmental communication networks.

With rapidity that has stunned even longtime political observers, forces loyal to Musk’s junta have established him as the all-but undisputed unelected head of government in just a matter of days, unwinding the longtime democracy’s constitutional system and its proud nearly 250-year-old tradition of the rule of law. Having secured themselves in key ministries and in a building adjacent to the presidential office complex, Musk’s forces have begun issuing directives to civil service workers and forcing the resignation of officials deemed insufficiently loyal, like the head of the country’s aviation authority.
The G-7 country’s newly installed president, a mid-level oligarch named Donald Trump, appeared amid Musk’s moves to be increasingly merely a figurehead head of state. Trump is a convicted felon with a long record of family corruption and returned in power in late January after a four-year interlude promising retribution and retaliation against foreign opponents and a domestic “Deep State.” He had been charged with attempting to overthrow the peaceful transition of power that had previously removed him from office in 2021, but loyalist elements in the judiciary successfully blocked his prosecution and incarceration, easing his return to power.
Over the last two weeks, loyalist presidential factions and Musk-backed teams have launched sweeping, illegal Stalin-esque purges of the national police forces and prosecutors, as well as offices known as inspectors-general, who are typically responsible for investigating government corruption. While official numbers of the unprecedented ousters were kept secret, rumors swirled in the capital that the scores of career officials affected by the initial purges could rise into the thousands as political commissars continued to assess the backgrounds of members of the police forces.

The mentally declining and aging head of state, who has long embraced conspiracist thinking, spent much of the week railing in bizarre public remarks against the country’s oppressed racial and ethnic minorities, whom he blamed without evidence for causing a deadly plane crash across the river from the presidential mansion. Unfounded racist attacks on those minorities have been a key foundation of Trump’s unpredicted rise to political power from a career as a real estate magnate and reality TV host and date back to his first announcement that he would seek the presidency in 2015, when he railed against “rapists” being sent into the country from its southern neighbor.

In one of his first moves upon returning to the presidency, he mobilized far-right paramilitary security forces to begin raids at churches, schools, and workplaces to identify and remove racial minorities, including those who had long lived in harmony with the country’s white Christian majority. He also immediately moved to release from prison some 1,500 supporters who had participated in his unsuccessful 2021 insurrection, including members of violent far-right militias who promptly upon release swore fealty to him in any future civil unrest.
Underscoring his apparent disconnection from reality, reports surfaced that the president had ordered military forces to unleash an environmental catastrophe and flood regions of a separatist province known as California that is led by a high-profile political opponent. The order underscored how the military, which had resisted Trump’s unconstitutional power grabs in his first administration, was now led by a subservient defense minister, a favored TV personality with no experience in management who faced an embarrassing series of allegations about his drunken behavior in the workplace.

The conclusion:

Throughout the week’s fast-moving seizure of power—one that seems increasingly irreversible by the hour—neither loyalist nor opposition parliamentary leaders raised meaningful objection to the new regime or the unraveling of the country’s constitutional system of checks and balances. A few members of the geriatric legislature body offered scattered social media posts condemning the move, but parliament — where both houses are controlled by so-called “MAGA” members handpicked for their loyalty to the president — went home early for the weekend even as Musk’s forces spread through the capital streets.
It was unclear what role, if any, Musk’s forces would allow parliament to have in the new governmental structure by the time it returned to the national assembly known as Capitol Hill.

I hope you’ll read the whole piece at the Substack link.
This story (which Dakinikat posted yesterday) is huge. Now there are new and even more dangerous developments (see additional stories on this below.)
The Washington Post: Senior U.S. official exits after rift with Musk allies over payment system.

The highest-ranking career official at the Treasury Department left the agency after a clash with allies of billionaire Elon Musk over access to sensitive payment systems, according to three people with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private talks.
David A. Lebryk, who served in nonpolitical roles at Treasury for several decades, announced his retirement Friday in an email to colleagues that was obtained by The Washington Post. President Donald Trump named Lebryk acting secretary upon taking office last week. Lebryk had a dispute with Musk’s surrogates over access to the payment system the U.S. government uses to disburse trillions of dollars every year, the people said. The exact nature of the disagreement was not immediately clear, they said.

By Bettina Baldassari

Officials affiliated with Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” have been asking since after the election for access to the system, the people said — requests that were reiterated more recently, including after Trump’s inauguration. Tom Krause, a Silicon Valley executive who has now been detailed to Treasury, is among those involved, the people said. Krause did not respond to requests for comment….
When Scott Bessent was confirmed as treasury secretary on Monday, Lebryk ceased to be the acting agency head. Trump administration officials placed Lebryk on administrative leave before he announced he would step down, two of the people said.
Typically only a small number of career officials control Treasury’s payment systems. Run by the Bureau of the Fiscal Service, the sensitive systems control the flow of more than $6 trillion annually to households, businesses and more nationwide. Tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people across the country rely on the systems, which are responsible for distributing Social Security and Medicare benefits, salaries for federal personnel, payments to government contractors and grant recipients, and tax refunds, among tens of thousands of other functions.

The clash reflects an intensifying battle between Musk and the federal bureaucracy as the Trump administration nears the conclusion of its second week. Musk has sought to exert sweeping control over the inner workings of the U.S. government, installing longtime surrogates at several agencies, including the Office of Personnel Management, which essentially handles federal human resources, and the General Services Administration, which manages real estate. (Musk was seen on Thursday visiting the GSA, according to two other people familiar with his whereabouts, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal matters. That visit was first reported by the New York Times.) His Department of Government Efficiency, originally conceived as a nongovernmental panel, has since replaced the U.S. Digital Service.

More at the WaPo.
Tim Reid at Reuters: Exclusive: Musk aides lock Office of Personnel Management workers out of computer systems.
Aides to Elon Musk charged with running the U.S. government human resources agency have locked career civil servants out of computer systems that contain the personal data of millions of federal employees, according to two agency officials.
Since taking office 11 days ago, President Donald Trump has embarked on a massive government makeover, firing and sidelining hundreds of civil servants in his first steps toward downsizing the bureaucracy and installing more loyalists.
Musk, the billionaire Tesla CEO and X owner tasked by Trump to slash the size of the 2.2 million-strong civilian government workforce, has moved swiftly to install allies at the agency known as the Office of Personnel Management.
The two officials, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, said some senior career employees at OPM have had their access revoked to some of the department’s data systems.
The systems include a vast database called Enterprise Human Resources Integration, which contains dates of birth, Social Security numbers, appraisals, home addresses, pay grades and length of service of government workers, the officials said.
“We have no visibility into what they are doing with the computer and data systems,” one of the officials said. “That is creating great concern. There is no oversight. It creates real cybersecurity and hacking implications.”
Officials affected by the move can still log on and access functions such as email but can no longer see the massive datasets that cover every facet of the federal workforce.
Greg Sargent at The New Republic: Trump and Elon Musk Just Pulled Off Another Purge—and It’s a Scary One.
President Donald Trump has granted Elon Musk unprecedented power to carry out his war on the “deep state.” The justification for this is supposed to be that the government is corrupted to its core precisely because it is stocked with unelected bureaucrats who are unaccountable to the people.
Musk, goes this story, will employ his fearsome tech wizardry to root them out, restoring not just efficiency to government but also the democratic accountability that “deep state” denizens have snuffed out—supposedly a major cause of many of our social ills.
The startling news that a top Treasury Department official is departing after a dispute with Musk shows how deeply wrong that story truly is—and why it’s actively dangerous. The Washington Post reports that David Lebryk, who has carried out senior nonpolitical roles at the department for decades, is leaving after officials on Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, sought access to Treasury’s payment system:
Lebryk had a dispute with Musk’s surrogates over access to the payment system the U.S. government uses to disburse trillions of dollars every year, the people said. The exact nature of the disagreement was not immediately clear, they said.
The news raises a complicated question: WTF??? Why is Musk’s DOGE trying to access payment systems inside the Treasury Department? It’s not clear what relevance this would have to his ostensible role, which is to search for savings and inefficiencies in government, not to directly influence whether previously authorized government obligations are honored.

Cliffhanger, by Stefanie Roberti

Another question: Did Trump directly authorize Musk to do this, or did he not? Either answer is bad. If Trump did, he may be authorizing an unelected billionaire to exert unprecedented control over the internal workings of government payment systems. If he did not, then Musk may be going rogue to an even greater extent than we thought….
Former officials I spoke with were at a loss to explain why Musk would want such access. They noted that while we don’t yet know Musk’s motive, the move could potentially give DOGE the power to turn off all kinds of government payments in a targeted way. They said we now must establish if Musk is seeking to carry out what Trump tried via his federal funding freeze: Turn off government payments previously authorized by Congress. The White House rescinded the freeze after a national outcry, but Trump’s spokesperson vowed the hunt for spending to halt will continue. The former officials are asking: Is this Treasury power grab a way to execute that?
“Anybody who would have access to these systems is in a position to turn off funding selectively,” said Michael Linden, a former OMB official who is now director of Families Over Billionaires, a group fighting Trump’s tax cuts for the rich. “The only reason Musk wants to get himself in there must be because he wants to turn some things off.”
Read more at TNR. I got my Social Security check this month. Will I get one in March?
More fascist takeover news:
This is a long one by Mike Masnick at Techdirt: Elon’s Twitter Destruction Playbook Hits The US Government, And It’s Even More Dangerous.
Remember how Elon Musk destroyed Twitter by ripping apart its infrastructure without understanding it? Now imagine that same playbook applied to the federal government. It’s happening, and the stakes are exponentially higher. When reviewing Kate Conger and Ryan Mac’s book “Character Limit” last fall, I highlighted two devastating patterns in Musk’s management: his authoritarian impulse to (sometimes literally) demolish systems without understanding them, and his tendency to replace existing, nuanced solutions with far worse alternatives (even when those older systems probably did require some level of reform). Those same patterns are now threatening the federal government’s basic functions.
Let’s be crystal clear about what’s happening: A private citizen with zero Constitutional authority is effectively seizing control of critical government functions. The Constitution explicitly requires Senate confirmation for anyone wielding significant federal power — a requirement Musk has simply ignored as he installs his loyalists throughout the government while demanding access to basically all of the levers of power, and pushing out anyone who stands in his way.
The parallel to Twitter is striking and terrifying. At Twitter, Musk’s “reform” strategy transformed a platform used by hundreds of millions for vital communication into his personal megaphone, hemorrhaging somewhere between 60-85% of its revenue in the process. But Twitter was just a private company. Now he’s applying the same destructive playbook to the federal government, where the stakes involve not just user experience or advertising dollars, but the basic functioning of American democracy.
The constitutional violations here dwarf the Twitter debacle. Where Musk merely broke a social media platform through incompetence last time, he’s now breaking the actual mechanisms of governance — and doing it with the same reckless playbook that turned Twitter into a ghost town. As Conger and Mac, who documented the Twitter disaster, point out, even the specific tactics are being recycled:
The email landed in employees’ inboxes with the subject line: “Fork in the Road.” The message in the email was stark: Accept a sweeping set of workplace changes or resign.
That was the note that millions of federal employees received around 5 p.m. on Tuesday. It echoed a similar message that thousands of workers at Twitter got from Elon Musk in late 2022 after he bought the company.
[….]
Mr. Musk, who also leads Tesla and SpaceX, has enlisted the help of a team of loyalists to assess agencies and make cuts, the same thing he did during the Twitter takeover.
Steve Davis, the head of Mr. Musk’s tunneling startup, The Boring Company, helped oversee cost-cutting at Twitter and now leads DOGE. Brian Bjelde, a longtime human resources executive at SpaceX who also helped during the Twitter takeover, is now an adviser to the Office of Personnel Management.
Michael Grimes, a top banker at Morgan Stanley who helped lead Mr. Musk’s Twitter acquisition, is expected to take a senior job at the Commerce Department.
One of Mr. Musk’s software engineers at Tesla, Thomas Shedd, was named the head of “Technology Transformation Services” at the General Services Administration, which helps manage federal agencies. Mr. Shedd promptly employed a Musk tactic: asking for proof of engineers’ technical chops.
Mr. Shedd asked for engineers to sign up for sessions in which they could share “a recent individual technical win,” according to an email sent to more than 700 employees on Tuesday night and viewed by The Times.

Read the rest at Techdirt.
Zoe Schiffer at Wired: Elon Musk’s Friends Have Infiltrated Another Government Agency.
Elon Musk’s minions—from trusted sidekicks to random college students and former Musk company interns—have taken over the General Services Administration, a critical government agency that manages federal offices and technology. Already, the team is attempting to use White House security credentials to gain unusual access to GSA tech, deploying a suite of new AI software, and recreating the office in X’s image, according to leaked documents obtained by WIRED.

By Otar Imerlishvili

Some of the same people who helped Musk take over Twitter more than two years ago are now registered as official GSA employees. Nicole Hollander, who slept in Twitter HQ as an unofficial member of Musk’s transition team, has high-level agency access and an official government email address, according to documents viewed by WIRED. Hollander’s husband, Steve Davis, also slept in the office. He has now taken on a leading role in Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Thomas Shedd, the recently installed director of the Technology Transformation Services within GSA, worked as a software engineer at Tesla for eight years. Edward Coristine, who previously interned at Neuralink, has been onboarded along with Ethan Shaotran, a Harvard senior who is developing his own OpenAI-backed scheduling assistant and participated in an xAI hackathon.
“I believe these people do not want to help the federal government provide services to the American people,” says a current GSA employee who asked not to be named, citing fears of retaliation. “They are acting like this is a takeover of a tech company.”
The team appears to be carrying out Musk’s agenda: slashing the federal government as quickly as possible. They’re currently targeting a 50 percent reduction in spending for every office managed by the GSA, according to documents obtained by WIRED.
There also appears to be an effort to use IT credentials from the Executive Office of the President to access GSA laptops and internal GSA infrastructure. Typically, access to agency systems requires workers to be employed at such agencies, sources say. While Musk’s team could be trying to obtain better laptops and equipment from GSA, sources fear that the mandate laid out in the DOGE executive order would grant the body broad access to GSA systems and data. That includes sensitive procurement data, data internal to all the systems and services GSA offers, and internal monitoring software to surveil GSA employees as part of normal auditing and security processes.
The access could give Musk’s proxies the ability to remote into laptops, listen in on meetings, read emails, among many other things, a former Biden official told WIRED on Friday.
NPR: Trump administration purges websites across federal health agencies.
At the direction of the Trump administration, the federal Department of Health and Human Services and its agencies are purging its websites of information and data on a broad array of topics — from adolescent health to LGBTQ+ rights to HIV.
Several webpages from Centers for Disease Control and Prevention with references to LGBTQ+ health were no longer available. A page from the HHS Office for Civil Rights outlining the rights of LGBTQ+ people in health care settings was also gone as of Friday. The website of the National Institutes of Health’s Office for Sexual & Gender Minority Research Office disappeared. (Most of these pages could still be viewed through the Internet Archive.)
The changes at the CDC and NIH are examples of a broad push by the Trump administration on gender issues under an executive order titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” That order directs agencies throughout the government to stop offering “gender identity” as a choice on government forms and to end funding of “gender ideology.”
Another order, signed by Trump, takes aim at “diversity, equity, and inclusion” across the federal government.
On Friday, however, many pages that did not seem related to “gender” or “diversity” had also been taken down, such as AtlasPlus, an interactive tool from CDC with surveillance data on HIV, viral hepatitis, STDs and TB. Also gone missing: a page with basic information about HIV testing. The CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index, a tool that assesses community resilience in the event of natural disaster was also taken down.
“The removal of HIV- and LGBTQ-related resources from the websites of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other health agencies is deeply concerning and creates a dangerous gap in scientific information and data to monitor and respond to disease outbreaks,” the Infectious Disease Society of America said in a statement. “Access to this information is crucial for infectious diseases and HIV health care professionals who care for people with HIV and members of the LGBTQ community and is critical to efforts to end the HIV epidemic.”
One striking example of the vanishing information: The CDC pulled down the website that houses data collected by the nation’s largest monitoring program on health-related behaviors among high schoolers.
Pages related to the CDC’s Division of Adolescent and School Health, which administers the program, were also unavailable.
The Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System tracks key metrics on nutrition, physical activity, tobacco and drug use, sexual behavior and other areas. The program was created 35 years ago and includes a national survey that researchers rely on to measure how behaviors influence health and design prevention measures.
“It’s the way the nation understands adolescent health,” says Stephen Russell, a sociologist at the University of Texas at Austin who studies adolescent health. “The disappearance of that data is stunning.”
Shane Harris at The Atlantic (published yesterday): FBI Agents Are Stunned by the Scale of the Expected Trump Purge.
This afternoon, FBI personnel braced for a retaliatory purge of the nation’s premiere law-enforcement agency, as President Donald Trump appeared ready to fire potentially hundreds of agents and officials who’d participated in investigations that led to criminal charges against him.
A team that investigated Trump’s mishandling of classified documents was expected to be fired, four people familiar with the matter said. Trump has long fumed about that investigation, which involved a raid on his Mar-a-Lago estate that turned up hundreds of classified documents he had taken after he left the White House four years ago.
David Sundberg, the head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, is also being fired, these people added. Sundberg is a career FBI agent with more than two decades of experience, and he oversees some of the bureau’s most sensitive cases related to national security and counterintelligence. Current and former officials told me they are worried that those investigations could stall, at least temporarily, if a large number of agents are suddenly removed. A spokesperson at the Washington Field Office declined to comment.

By Marcella Cooper

Trump’s retribution is not limited to those who investigated him personally. Administration officials are reviewing records to identify FBI personnel who participated in investigations of the January 6 assault on the Capitol by his supporters, people familiar with the matter told me. That could potentially involve hundreds if not thousands of agents, including those who interviewed and investigated rioters who were later prosecuted. Shortly after taking office, Trump pardoned about 1,500 of the rioters and commuted others’ sentences.
There is no precedent for the mass termination of FBI personnel in this fashion. Current and former officials I spoke with had expected Trump to exact retribution for what he sees as unjust and even illegal efforts by the FBI and the Justice Department to investigate his conduct. But they were stunned by the scale of Trump’s anticipated purge, which is taking aim at senior leaders as well as working-level agents who do not set policy but follow the orders of their superiors.
This afternoon, some FBI personnel frantically traded messages and rumors about others believed to be on Trump’s list, including special agents who run field offices across the country and were also involved in investigations of the former president.
Trump’s efforts to root out his supposed enemies might not withstand a legal challenge. FBI agents do not choose the cases assigned to them, and they are protected by civil-service rules. The FBI Agents Association, a nonprofit organization that is not part of the U.S. government, said in a statement that the reports of Trump’s planned purge are “outrageous” and “fundamentally at odds with the law enforcement objectives outlined by President Trump and his support for FBI Agents.”
The mass firings could imperil the nomination of Kash Patel, whom Trump wants to run the FBI in his administration. Just yesterday, Patel had assured senators during his confirmation hearing that the very kinds of politically motivated firings that appear to be in motion would not happen.
This is a genuine emergency. Remember it only took Hitler about a year and a half to establish a dictatorship in Germany. Is anyone working to oppose Trump and Musk? It sure doesn’t seem like it.
Robert Tait at The Guardian: Trump’s revenge agenda has shocked officials who ‘didn’t think it was going to be this bad’, insiders say.

Federal government workers have been left “shell-shocked” by the upheaval wreaked by Donald Trump’s return to the presidency amid signs that he is bent on exacting revenge on a bureaucracy he considers to be a “deep state” that previously thwarted and persecuted him.
Since being restored to the White House on 20 January, the president has gone on a revenge spree against high-profile figures who previously served him but earned his enmity by slighting or criticising him in public.
He has cancelled Secret Service protection for three senior national security officials in his first presidency – John Bolton, the former national security adviser; Mike Pompeo, who was CIA director and secretary of state; and Brian Hook, a former assistant secretary of state – even though all are assassination targets on an Iranian government hit list.
The same treatment has been meted out to Anthony Fauci, the infectious diseases expert who angered Trump after joining the White House taskforce tackling Covid-19 and who has also faced death threats.
Trump has also fired high-profile figures from government roles on his social media site and stripped 51 former intelligence officials of their security clearances for doubting reports about Hunter Biden’s laptop as possible Russian disinformation….
“The most common refrain I’m hearing from people who have left but are still talking to people on the inside is: ‘I knew it was going to be bad but I didn’t think it was going to be this bad,’” said Mark Bergman, a veteran Democratic lawyer who has been in contact with some of those who fear being targets of the retribution Trump repeatedly vowed on the campaign trail….
A bit more:
There are ominous signs that the spirit of retribution will continue – or get worse.
Last week, in tactics more redolent of totalitarian regimes the United States has historically been at odds with, federal workers were warned of “adverse consequences” if they failed to report their colleagues who refused to comply with the administration’s purge of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs, or tried to sustain the programs with coded language.
Elaine Godfrey at The Atlantic: Democrats Wonder Where Their Leaders Are.

The Democrats are angry. Well, at least some of them.
For months, party activists have felt bitter about Kamala Harris’s election loss, and incensed at the leaders who first went along with Joe Biden’s decision to run again. They feel fresh outrage each time a new detail is revealed about the then-81-year-old’s enfeeblement and its concealment by the advisers in charge. But right now, what’s making these Democrats angriest is that many of their elected leaders don’t seem angry at all.

By Monika Seidenbusch

“I assumed that we would be prepared to meet the moment, and I was wrong,” Shannon Watts, the founder of the gun-control group Moms Demand Action, told me. “It’s like they’ve shown up to a knife fight with a cheese stick.”
For all the people in Watts’s camp, the party’s response to Donald Trump’s first 12 days in office has been maddening at best and demoralizing at worst. After Trump issued pardons or commutations for the January 6 rioters last week, including the ones who attacked police officers, no immediate chorus of anger came from what is supposed to be the next generation of Democratic talent, including Maryland Governor Wes Moore, California Governor Gavin Newsom, and former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, another 2028 hopeful, who is on tour selling a young-adult version of her autobiography, has told interviewers, “I am not out looking for fights. I am always looking to collaborate.”
After Trump threatened Colombia with tariffs, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries attempted to reassure the confused and fearful rank and file with the reminder that “God is still on the throne,” which seemed a little like saying, “Jesus, take the wheel.” And people were baffled after the Democratic National Committee responded on X to Trump’s first week in office by channeling a quainter time in American politics and dusting off an Obama-era slogan to accuse him of being “focused on Wall Street—not Main Street.” “Get new material!” one person suggested in the replies, a succinct summary of the other 1,700 comments.
The limp messaging continued this week, after Trump’s administration on Monday issued a federal-funding freeze, including for cancer research and programs such as Meals on Wheels. The next day, Jeffries called for an emergency caucus meeting to hammer out a forceful “three-pronged counter-offensive.” But that emergency meeting would not actually take place until the following afternoon. (By the time lawmakers were dialing in, the White House had already rescinded the order.) Jeffries’s Senate counterpart, Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, scowling over his glasses, offered his own sleepy—and slightly unsettling—assessment of the moment: “I haven’t seen people so aroused in a very, very long time.”
Some Democrats say they are hopeful that a new chair of the DNC, who will be elected today, will give the now-rudderless party a bit of direction—a way to harness all that arousal. The committee leads the party’s fundraising apparatus and coordinates with its sister organizations on Senate and House campaigns. But a chair can’t do much if the party’s own lawmakers aren’t willing to swap out the mozzarella for something a little sharper.
I’m not holding my breath.
More stories to check out:
NBC News: Trump administration forces out multiple senior FBI officials and January 6 prosecutors.
NBC News: Pentagon removes major media outlets, including NBC News, from dedicated workstations in new ‘rotation program.’

Reuters: Crashed US Army Black Hawk unit was responsible for doomsday readiness.
WTF? Politico: ‘There will be many casualties’: Panama girds for war as Rubio opens talks.
Stephen Greenhouse at The Guardian: Trump’s disregard for US constitution ‘a blitzkrieg on the law’, legal experts say.
CNN: Trump prepares to revoke legal status for many migrants who arrived under Biden.
The Daily Beast: Trump Orders Schools to Ease Sex Assault Rules.
AP: Trump fires the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Things are getting really bad and are likely to get worse. Where are the Democrats? Where are the protests in the streets? Is it too late to save democracy?

#Democrats #DepartmentOfJustice #fascistTakeover #FBI #GeneralServicesAdministration #governmentPaymentsSystem #OfficeOfPersonnelManagement #purgeOfHealthWebsites #treasuryDepartment

#democrats #departmentofjustice #fascisttakeover #fbi #generalservicesadministration #governmentpaymentssystem
Electro Wow @[email protected] · 2025-12-09 · 05:46 UTC

Ihsa Kent isn’t just any DJ; he’s the wizard who pulls off an exotic fusion between Melodic House and hypnotic grooves seasoned with Eastern motifs. ✨😌🔊 This unique sound shines in his new collab, “Desire,” with Amir Farhoodi. #MelodicHouse #Music #News
🔗 https://www.electrowow.net/ihsa-kent-amir-farhoodi-release-desire

#melodichouse #music #news
find you on :butterfedy1: fediverse @[email protected] · 2024-11-12 · 17:10 UTC

In an recent interview Matt Taibbi has a LOT of very interesting things to say about the state of the internet. Also this....
>The [US] election is already a massive turning point in American history because its essentially exposed the entire cultural framework of the country as having no influence and having been lost to its audience, and that's something we've never seen before in this country. It's fascinating(....) Everything is on the table now. This is maybe the end of everything for NATO, for the intelligence services(....) these agencies that we fund so heavily can't even answer the most basic questions about their own populations, they don't even understand things that the average barber in a small town in America gets without ANY funding. These people are so locked up in their own hermetically sealed bubble of stupidity that they can't see beyond their own prejudices, and so that makes them dangerous and useless and expensive. So its ironic but it worries me too [with respect to assassination attempts on Trump] because their continued bureaucratic existence is at stake." #MattTaibbi on #AfshinRattansi #GoingUnderground
he says he's being "suppress[ed]" by the #muskrat today also.
FULL INTERVIEW by
https://mf.b37mrtl.ru/files/2024.11/672efb1a85f54016b70b2421.mp3
1/2

#matttaibbi #muskrat #goingunderground #afshinrattansi
1001 Other Albums @[email protected] · 2026-01-02 · 07:00 UTC
CW: Albums the Fediverse Loved in 2025 (CW'd because it's a looooooong post)
Albums the Fediverse Loved in 2025
And here we have it: a list of 151 albums (plus a few artists/labels in general) that kept 64 of us going in 2025, nearly 75% of those 2025 releases and the rest earlier gems! Given our collective eclectic tastes, voting/ranking was not attempted, but bolded titles and post tags indicate albums that were submitted by multiple Fedizens. Genre tags are included as tasting notes (apologies if I got any wrong), each title is linked to its Bandcamp/Songlink when possible, and footnotes list who submitted each album along with extra comments they included (warning: comments may include MOAR ALBUMS; also note: footnotes look way better on the blog). So, click and listen away – perhaps you’ll find a new-to-you album that gets you through 2026!
Thanks so much to the Fedizens who joined in, it’s so nice to see familiar faces from the 1001 Other Albums project as well as some new ones! And, as always, it’s lovely to get a glimpse of how diverse our tastes in music are, and to see people trying something new solely based on a random Fedi recommendation. The Fedi music community truly is a bright spot, and I personally am immensely grateful for it. 🙏🏻

Band – Title (year released, place of origin; genre)footnote

Action/Adventure – Ever After (2025, US; pop-punk)1
AFI – Silver Bleeds the Black Sun… (2025, US; post-punk, gothic rock)2
Against Me! – White Crosses (2010, US; punk rock)3
Alkaline Trio – Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs (2024, US; punk rock)4
Am I in Trouble? – Spectrum (2025, US; avant-garde black metal)5
Ami Taf Ra – The Prophet and the Madman (2025, US/Morocco; Moroccan gnawa, gospel, jazz)6
An Abstract Illusion – Woe (2022, Sweden; atmospheric black/death/prog metal)7
Analog Africa (label, in general) (1960s-80s, Africa; reissues)8
Anna Tivel – Animal Poem (2025, US; indie folk)9
Archon Satani – The Righteous Way to Completion (1997, Sweden; death ambient/black industrial)10
Ashbreather – La Grande Bouffe (2025, Canada; progressive sludge/death metal)11
Au4 – …And Down Goes The Sky (2013, Canada; prog rock)12
aya – hexed! (2025, UK; electronic, noise)13
Bad Cop/Bad Cop – Lighten Up (2025, US; punk rock)14
Baghed – Smear Campaign (2025, US; punk rock)15
Bank Myna – Eimuria (2025, France; post-rock/metal, doom gaze, slow core)16
Belle and Sebastian – Push Barman to Open Old Wounds (2005, Scotland; indie pop)17
Benedicte Maurseth – Mirra (2025, Norway; folk, jazz)18
Bill Frisell – Harmony (2019, US; folk-jazz)19
Black Flower – Kinetic (2025, Belgium; Ethio-jazz, Afrobeat, dub)20
Bon Iver – SABLE, fABLE (2025, US; indie folk/pop)21
Brittany Davis – Black Thunder (2025, US; cosmic jazz, r&b/soul, singer-songwriter)22
CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso – Papota (2025, Argentina; experimental trap, hip-hop, EDM, jazz, Latin pop)23
Caroline Shaw / Attacca Quartet – Orange (2019, US; classical, ambient, folk)24
Castle Rat – The Bestiary (2025, US; fantasy heavy metal)25
Causa Sui – Pewt’r Sessions 1 (2011, Denmark; psych/stoner rock)26
Celeste – Woman of Faces (2025, UK; neo-soul, jazz, singer-songwriter)27
Charlie Hunter, Carter McLean featuring Silvana Estrada – s/t (2018, US/Mexico; jazz)28
Circuit des Yeux – Halo on the Inside (2025, US; singer-songwriter, experimental)29
Civic – Chrome Dipped (2025, Australia; punk)30
clipping – Dead Channel Sky (2025, US; hip-hop)31
Dan Mangan – Natural Light (2025, Canada; indie rock/folk)32
Daniela Pas – Spira (2023, Italy; singer-songwriter, electronic, experimental)33
Data Rebel – Single Cell (2025, UK; electronic, IDM, ambient)34
Dax Riggs – 7 Songs for Spiders (2025, US; blues metal/shoegaze blues)35
Deafheaven – Lonely People With Power (2025, US; blackgaze, metal)36
Degraved – Spectral Realm of Ruin (2025, US; death metal)37
Delobos – Cabal (2025, Spain; post-alt rock, post-rock, psychedelia)38
Devil ANTHEM. – Profound Rebuild (2025, Japan; J-pop)39
Die Spitz – Something to Consume (2025, US; punk, alt rock)40
Divide and Dissolve – Insatiable (2025, Australia; doom, drone, neo classical)41
Dödsrit – Mortal Coil (2021, Sweden; atmospheric/melodic black metal, blackened crust)42
Dool – The Shape of Fluidity (2024, Netherlands; rock, alternative)43
downy – 8th Album/Untitled (2025, Japan; math rock/post-rock)44
Drab Majesty – Completely Careless (2012-2015) (2016, US; darkwave, shoegaze, dream pop)45
Dropkick Murphy – For The People (2025, US; Celtic punk)46
Eikichi Yazawa – I believe (2025, Japan; rock)47
El Pino & The Volunteers – The Long-lost Art of Becoming Invisible (2009, Netherlands; alt country/folk)48
Elli De Mon – Raìse (2025, Italy; blues, dialect, garage, psychedelic)49
Eric Church – Evangeline vs. The Machine (2025, US; country)50
Ethmebb – Allo Babar et les Caramboleurs (2025, France; progressive melodic blackened death power metal)51
Ex-Vöid – In Love Again (2025, UK; indie pop/rock)52
EYES – Spinner(2025, Denmark; hardcore, noise rock)53
FACS – Wish Defense (2025, US; noise rock, neo-post-punk)54
Faetooth – Labrynthine (2025, US; fairy doom/stoner metal)55
False Aralia (label) – ALL the new 12-inch singles (2025, US; abstract electronic)56
Fever Ray – The Year of the Radical Romantics (2025, Sweden; experimental, electronic, pop)57
FOKALITE – Fokas, Lite & Four Shooting Riddles (2025, Japan; J-pop)58
Françoise Hardy – La question (1971, France; French pop, Brazilian saudade/bossa nova)59
Fust – Big Ugly (2025, US; rock)60
Geese – Getting Killed (2025, US; art/experimental rock)61
Gnome – King (2022, Belgium; stoner/prog/hard rock)62
Habak – Mil orquídeas en medio del desierto (2025, Mexico; melodic crust)63
Hallelujah the Hills – DECK (2025, US; indie rock)64
HANABIE – Bucchigiri Tokyo (2024, Japan; metalcore)65
Hatchie – Liquorice (2025, Australia; indie/dream pop)66
Hole – Live Through This (1994, US; alt rock)67
IAN – Come On Everybody, Let’s Do Nothing! (2025, UK; experimental, post-rock/metal)68
Igorrr – Amen (2025, France; experimental/avant-garde metal)69
Imperial Triumphant – Goldstar (2025, US; experimental metal)70
In the Womb of the Universe – Searching for Sunrise (2024, US; electronic, synthpop)71
In the Woods… – Otra (2025, Norway; avant-garde metal)72
Insomnium – Shadows of the Dying Sun (2014, Finland; melodic death metal)73
Jade Bird – Who Wants to Talk About Love (2025, UK; folk rock, singer-songwriter)74
JER – Death of the Heart (2025, US; ska punk)75
Jethro Tull – Thick as a Brick (1972, UK; prog rock)76
Judas Priest – Invincible Shield (2024, UK; heavy metal)77
Just Mustard – We Were Just Here (2025, Ireland; post-punk, noise, shoegaze, trip hop)78
Kaku P-Model – unZIP (2025, Japan; experimental, electronic)79
Kieran Hebden and William Tyler – 41 Longfield Street Late ‘80s (2025, UK; electronic)80
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Float Along – Fill Your Lungs (2013, Australia; psychedelic pop)81
Kostnatění – Přílišnost (2025, US; avant-garde black metal)82
Küenring – In Search of Paradise (2025, Austria; heavy metal/hard rock)83
L.A. Salami (artist, in general) (UK; folk, post-modern blues, acoustic, rock)84
Labyrinthus Stellarum – Rift in Reality (2025, Ukraine; atmospheric/cosmic black metal)85
Lorien Testard – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Original Soundtrack) (2025, France; soundtrack)86
Lorna Shore – I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me (2025, US; death metal/deathcore)87
Lucy Dacus – Forever is a Feeling (2025, US; indie rock, folk-pop, singer-songwriter)88
Maeror Tri – Multiple Personality Disorder (1993, Germany; ambient, noise, drone)89
Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force – Khadim (2025, Germany/Senegal; mbalax, experimental, dub techno)90
Marshall Allen – New Dawn (2025, US; avant-garde jazz)91
Max Cooper – On Being (2025, UK; electronic, ambient, avant-garde)92
Messa – The Spin (2025, Italy; doom metal)93
Michel Legrand – The Essential Michel Legrand Film Music Collection (2005, France; soundtrack, compilation)94
MIKE – Showbiz! (2025, US; hip-hop/rap)95
Miynt – Rain Money Dogs (2025, Sweden; indie/bedroom rock)96
Modern English – Mesh & Lace (1981, UK; post-punk)97
Momma – Welcome to My Blue Sky (2025, US; alt/indie rock)98
more eaze & claire rousay – no floor (2025, US; experimental, ambient, avant-pop, sound collage)99
Moron Police – Pachinko (2025, Norway; concept album)100
Morris Kolontyrsky – Origination (2025, US; ambient, drone, experimental)101
Nærværet – Når Man Ser Inn I En Annens Hjerte (2024, Sweden/Norway; experimental, field recording, tape manipulation/loops)102
Nailed to Obscurity – Generation of The Void (2025, Germany; melodic/prog death/doom metal)103
Nicolas Gombert & James Weeks / Apartment House – G O M B E R T (2025, Flanders/UK; contemporary classical)104
Nora Brown and Stephanie Coleman – Lady of the Lake (2023, US; folk)105
Nout – Live Album (2024, France; alternative, punk, rock, jazz, noise)106
Olga Anna Markowska – Iskra (2025, Poland; modern classical, ambient)107
Ozzy Osbourne – Ozzmosis (1995, UK; heavy metal)108
Pino Palladino & Blake Mills – That Wasn’t a Dream (2025, Wales/US; experimental jazz)109
Point Mort – Le Point de Non-retour (2025, France; blackened crust postcore)110
Plague of Carcosa – In The Dreamless Deep (2025, US; doomnoise, experimental metal)111
Population II – Maintenant Jamais (2025, Canada; art/prog/psychedelic rock)112
Primal Scream – XTRMNTR (2000, Scotland; experimental electro-rock)113
Priscilla Block – Things You Didn’t See (2025, US; country, singer-songwriter)114
Psychonaut – World Maker (2025, Belgium; post-metal)115
Queens of the Stone Age – Alive in the Catacombs (2025, US; rock)116
Radiopuhelimet – Kosminen Tiedottomuus (2020, Finland; alt rock)117
Rebecca Foon & Aliayta Foon-Dancoes – Reverie (2025, Canada; modern classical)118
Rivers of Nihil – s/t (2025, US; death/prog metal)119
Rogue Jones – Dos Bebés (2023, Wales; folk, indie pop)120
Shayfer James – Summoning (2025, US; noir-pop, dark cabaret)121
Shedfromthebody – Whisper and Wane (2025, Finland; doomgaze, [post-]metal)122
Shepherds of Cassini – In Thrall to Heresy (2025, New Zealand; prog metal)123
Silvana Estrada – Vendrán Suaves Lluvias (2025, Mexico; singer-songwriter)124
Silvana Estrada (with Charlie Hunter) – Lo Sagrado (2017, Mexico/US; singer-songwriter)125
Širom – In the Wind of Night, Hard-Fallen Incantations Whisper (2025, Slovenia; instrumental avant-garde imaginary folk)126
SKC & The Poem – s/t (2025, Belgium; alt/folk rock)127
SKLOSS – The Pattern Speaks (2025, US/Scotland; space gaze, post-metal)128
Soulwax – All Systems Are Lying (2025, Belgium; electronic alt rock)129
Spiritbox – Tsunami Sea (2025, Canada; metalcore)130
State Azure – The Light That Remains (2025, UK; electronica, ambient, downtempo)131
Stereolab – Switched On Volumes 1-5 (2024, UK/France; avant-pop)132
Steve Tibbetts – Close (2025, US; jazz fusion)133
Stick To Your Guns – Keep Planting Flowers (2025, US; hardcore)134
Suede – Antidepressants (2025, UK; post-punk, gothic rock)135
Summer Walker – Finally Over It (2025, US; R&B, singer-songwriter)136
Susan Bear – Algorithmic Mood Music (2024, Scotland; electronic, alt-pop)137
Swansea Sound – Twentieth Century (2023, Wales; indie pop)138
TDJ (artist, in general) (Canada; electronic)139
Terveet Kädet – Lapin Helvetti (2015, Finland; hardcore punk)140
Tool – Lateralus (2001, US; prog rock/metal, art rock)141
The Bug Club – “Have U Ever Been 2 Wales” (2025, Wales; indie rock)142
The New Eves – The New Eve Is Rising (2025, UK; avant-garde/art rock)143
Trio del Mango – Cómelo (2025, US/Puerto Rico; experimental, noise)144
Turnstile – Never Enough (2025, US; alt rock)145
UNIVERSITY – McCartney, It’ll Be OK (2025, UK; punk, noise rock)146
Water Damage – Instruments (2025, US; experimental psych/drone-rock)147
Weakened Friends – Feels Like Hell (2025, US; indie rock)148
Weirs – Diamond Grove (2025, US; trad folk, experimental noise)149
Wet Leg – moisturizer (2025, UK; indie rock)150
White Lies – Five V2 (2019, UK; post-punk)151
X-Cetra – Summer 2000 (Y2K 25th Anniversary Edition) (2025, US; sleepover core, dance-pop)152
Yara Asmar – everyone I love is sleeping and I love them so so much (2025, Lebanon; modern classical/ambient)153
Yugen Blakrok – Anima Mysterium (2019, South Africa; hip-hop)154
Yws Gwynedd – Codi/ \Cysgu (2014, Wales; indie rock)155

Footnote Number. Fediverse username(s): Comments

poisonous ↩︎
buffyleigh: My emotional support album of the year. I’ve been a fan of AFI since 2000 but haven’t liked an album since 2006. The second I heard the first single “Behind The Clock”, my expectations for this album skyrocketed, and they were absolutely exceeded. It sounds nothing like anything they’ve ever done, and yet it feels like this was the album they’ve always been moving towards. Song of the year goes to the entirety of side A, and Davey Havok’s unexpectedly different sound on this album is my overall favourite vocal performance of year. ↩︎
Braininabowl ↩︎
umrk: top album requested by my kids in the car this year ↩︎
brh ↩︎
RolloTreadway: The most gloriously unhinged album I’ve heard this year. Twists together ideas from everywhere without the slightest consideration of whether doing so might be normal or accepted. The kind of album where a classic French chanson or some deep filthy funk just appears out of nowhere and then is never referred to again. It shouldn’t work but it absolutely does. ↩︎
gavin57: That last one is an all-timer. It’s astonishing. ↩︎
platenworm ↩︎
rachelcholst ↩︎
3rik: This has been a year for nighttime music and music for trying to sleep. ↩︎
swampgas: definitely my most played this year. A sludgy, deathdoom concept album about greed and gluttony and corruption thats riffy and groovy af. These are driving rhythms that chug hard! ↩︎
MichaelMcWilliams: The one album that tops my list this year also appears in the 1001 Other Albums list. Band website offering free download of the album: https://au4.ca ↩︎
brh ↩︎
poisonous ↩︎
jake4480 ↩︎
mbr ↩︎
riff: Most “Wait why did i never listen to this band before ?” of the year. ↩︎
keefeglise ↩︎
eamonn ↩︎
_slotek_ ↩︎
onuryasar: My kind of, very balanced Indie Pop: just the right amount of Indie but not too much and just the right amount of Pop but not too much 🙂 ↩︎
icastico ↩︎
santialone ↩︎
eamonn ↩︎
burnitdown || MetalheadDana ↩︎
cloudtripper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_e5kKzlFqU&list=RD8_e5kKzlFqU&start_radio=1 ↩︎
nevar23 ↩︎
debonaire: Recency bias is pushing me to three Silvana Estrada albums. I love her voice, I love the music, I love her with Charlie Hunter. ↩︎
otherdog ↩︎
fistfulofdave: Aussie punk in the vein of The Saints and Radio Birdman. ↩︎
rothko ↩︎
Chigaze: what happens when four guys to go a cottage in Ontario, find a flow state, and record an album over a few days. I got to see them play the album through at the Winspear in Edmonton and it’s way up there on my concert experience list. ↩︎
evilchili: The Italian singer and composer’s debut is a hypnotic journey of loops, bloops, and dramatic and impassioned vocalizations. ↩︎
nellie_m ↩︎
fistfulofdave: Blues metal? Shoegaze blues? I don’t know or care, I like it. ↩︎
tym || niels ↩︎
jake4480 ↩︎
santialone ↩︎
Kingu ↩︎
tym || demon6 ↩︎
otherdog ↩︎
MetalheadDana: I listened to this album when it first came out in 2021 but for some reason it didn’t click with me. But apparently 2021 Dana had horrible taste in music, because in early 2025 I randomly tried Dodsrit – Mortal Coil again and fell in love and have been obsessed with it all year, it’s the perfect blend of crust punk and black metal and I love it. ↩︎
TG_Esq ↩︎
rustynail ↩︎
alicemcalicepants ↩︎
Chigaze: nails it just as a solid Dropkick’s album but goes farther with songs made for the times. “Who’ll Stand With Us” and “School Days Over” are amazing workers songs while “Chesterfields and Aftershave” takes me back to my own grandfather. ↩︎
thesinkingbelle ↩︎
Braininabowl ↩︎
riff: Most listened this year. ↩︎
Mark52 ↩︎
Moss ↩︎
e (eva) ↩︎
steveroyle: Leaving out Never Enough by Turnstile as I’m sure that’ll get plenty of votes. ↩︎
fistfulofdave: Angular, noise rock, neo-post punk. Unsettling, laid-back, yet aggressive. And yes it was the last album Steve Albini recorded. ↩︎
MetalheadDana || demon6 ↩︎
soundclamp: Runner-ups – https://lineimprint.bandcamp.com/album/muzak-for-the-encouragement-of-unproductivity; https://myheartaninvertedflame.bandcamp.com/album/my-heart-an-inverted-flame-apparitions-split; https://timbarnes.bandcamp.com/album/lost-words-1 ↩︎
buffyleigh: I’ve known of Fever Ray since first seeing the TV show Vikings, but I for some reason didn’t check them out further until this year, when their s/t album came up for a blog post. I was floored. As it happens, their kinda sorta live album was set to come out soon after my first listen of the s/t, so I got caught up on the full Karin Dreijer discography, got super duper obsessed with their spectacular ARTE concert (which is essentially the same versions performed on the new album), and proceeded to be immensely inspired – nay, awakened – by this artist. ↩︎
Kingu ↩︎
onuryasar: I’ve first discovered the song Apocalypse by Cigarettes After Sex (I know, late comer), which brought me to Greg Gonzalez’s Wikipedia page, that says “Gonzalez was heavily inspired by French singer Françoise Hardy and her album La question”. I remember this album being mentioned in my Fedi timeline recently, so I gave it a spin and it turned on and on for the remainder of the year. [Editor’s note: Also see the 1001 OA spotlight on this album from earlier this year!] ↩︎
rachelcholst ↩︎
mynameistillian ↩︎
burnitdown ↩︎
demon6 ↩︎
donutage: I was a bit skeptical of this, and sure, in a 52-song project there’s some unevenness, but between the sheer audacity of the attempt & the frequent successes it scores, definitely one of the more remarkable records of the year. ↩︎
Tak ↩︎
e (eva) ↩︎
Lizahadiz ↩︎
mbr ↩︎
brh ↩︎
umrk: my fav album released in 2025 ↩︎
superflippy ↩︎
raisedfist ↩︎
gavin57 ↩︎
Mark52: Jade Bird has been by far my most listened to album this year. ↩︎
poisonous ↩︎
derthomas: I kept coming back to this album because it just fits every mood. It’s peak Jethro Tull if you ask me, it’s perfect in any way. Also the Steven Wilson Remaster sounds incredible. ↩︎
burnitdown ↩︎
jebeyer: a longer list is here – https://www.buymusic.club/list/whistlingkitty-some-of-my-favorite-2025-releases ↩︎
thesinkingbelle: honorable mentions – Scare – In The End, Was It Worth It; Creatvre – Toujours Humain ; Guck – Gucked Up ; AVTT/PTTN – AVTT/PTTN; Saor – Amidst the Ruins ; Jessica93 – 666 tours de periph’ ; Deadguy – Near-Death Travel Services;  LS Dunes – Violet;  Aesop Rock – I Heard It’s A Mess There Too ; Fishbone – Stockholm Syndrome ; Dead Pioneers – Po$t American ; Ethereal Wound – Defile | Demise;  Sci Fi Industries – Initial States ↩︎
soundclamp ↩︎
cloudtripper ↩︎
rustynail ↩︎
derthomas: My AOTY from a very underground Heavy Metal band from Austria. ↩︎
platenworm ↩︎
raisedfist ↩︎
thesinkingbelle ↩︎
t4s: Honorable mentions – The Halo Effect, Machine Head, Heaven Shall Burn, Spiritbox, Jinjer, Allegaeon ↩︎
rachelcholst ↩︎
3rik ↩︎
Wintergr33n: Percussion-driven music from Senegal on a self-released album: https://ra.co/news/82509. ↩︎
platenworm: 5 things that ruled my world musically this year:
– The Analog Africa Label
– The Artist L.A. Salami
– The knowledge that you can have too much music
– The knowledge that you can make your solo debut album when you are 100 years old……Hail Hail Marshall Allen
– And that everybody loved Ozzy ↩︎
nellie_m: The music project that somehow touched me most deeply was the result of two years of work by Max Cooper. „Powerful works of art have traditionally sprung from some source deep within an artist and, if they strike the right tone, resonate with an audience to leave a lasting mark. But what if that equation were reversed: what if an artist were to draw their inspiration from deep within their audience, and use that to reflect those ideas, emotions, hopes, fears, pains and aspirations back to us?…“ ↩︎
niels || TG_Esq || sentynel || otherdog || umrk ↩︎
eamonn ↩︎
jake4480 ↩︎
steveroyle ↩︎
alicemcalicepants ↩︎
BramMeehan ↩︎
avi_miller: All three fall into the more ambient realm, and they all are absolutely phenomenal. I love music that is based more around textures and creating a mood than creating a melody, and this year had some really good ones. ↩︎
niels ↩︎
TG_Esq ↩︎
3rik ↩︎
raisedfist ↩︎
keefeglise: Compositions by Nicholas Gombert and James Weeks. Performed by Apartment House. Flanders/UK. Contemporary Classical (Debatable! Gombert died in 1560.) ↩︎
evilchili: Two hipster kids from Brooklyn play 100 year old Appalachian folk tunes and make them come alive. Honest, reverential, and true. ↩︎
riff: “Instantly burned in my brain” this year (well, it was actually their KEXP session from april that blew my mind, but since i have to submit an album, it’ll do nicely 🙂 ). ↩︎
avi_miller ↩︎
derthomas: I discovered this album this year on a metal journey (yeah, late to the party) and I loved it. It’s my favourite Ozzy album. ↩︎
_slotek_ ↩︎
mbr ↩︎
tym: Oh and not a brand new release, but the remaster and new tracks for the 20th anniversary reissue of ‘Takk…’ by Sigur Rós are pretty great. That and ( ) are still what I listen to the most, this year and apparently every year. ↩︎
Kingu ↩︎
epu: I had all but forgotten party drug enthusiasm tracks like ‘higher than the sun’ from 1991, and it turns out they made so many albums since I last tuned in. This one really resonates with my reaction to USpol this year. It rekindled my love for this band; I bought Evil Heat import on CD, my first physical purchase since last year. ↩︎
Mark52 ↩︎
sentynel ↩︎
Braininabowl ↩︎
jiiruu ↩︎
avi_miller ↩︎
jiiruu || t4s || gavin57 ↩︎
Steffi ↩︎
superflippy ↩︎
rustynail: most played ↩︎
sentynel ↩︎
debonaire ↩︎
debonaire ↩︎
TwoClownsEating: I discovered this band in 2025. Absolutely incredible, I’ve bought their entire catalogue and had the privilege to see them live a few months ago. Unbelievably good musicians. Magical music. ↩︎
jomel: 2025 was a great year for Belgian music. Stef Kamil Carlens, co-founder of dEUS has released a gem with his new band The Poem. I have seen SKC twice this year, once in a solo gig, and the second time (in less then 2 weeks) for the “worst Case scenario” rewind from (and so with) dEUS, those two concerts were fabulous, and at the time, I wasn’t expecting this release.
Bonus Albums: The live album from Depeche Mode – Memento Mori: Mexico City; Arvo Pârt – Credo (released Alpha Classics label) which includes his “hits”  – Credo , Fratres , Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten (my favourite one)  https://outhere-music.com/en/albums/arvo-part-credo; 2025 Bryan Ferry release, with Amelia Barrat as female lead singer/speaker. Some of his material came from the 70’s and were updated, it’s a timeless album, and elegant as always https://soundcloud.com/bryanferry/sets/loose-talk-4 ↩︎
jebeyer ↩︎
jomel: (AKA 2manydj’s) Yep, those guys will make you dance, and rock, I guess they’ve listened to Kraftwerk & Front242. ↩︎
Tak ↩︎
nellie_m ↩︎
cloudtripper ↩︎
_slotek_ ↩︎
t4s ↩︎
Lizahadiz ↩︎
slamma ↩︎
e (eva): algorithmic mood music was my fav last year! but i’m still listening to it and i didn’t submit anything then. ↩︎
Steffi ↩︎
BramMeehan: I’ve listened to so much TDJ, though no one release in particular. ↩︎
jiiruu ↩︎
buffyleigh: There’s so many other albums I’d love to list here for exposure, but it feels more honest to list this masterpiece, my first obsession of the year, courtesy of catching their amazing set at the big Black Sabbath/Ozzy send-off concert. I mean, I even titled my AOTY list “Forty Six & 2”, since that was the first song Tool played there and got my attention. Said list is here. ↩︎
epu: Ok, this one’s kind of a cheat, it’s an EP.
2024, my friend turned me on to Bug Club for its lo-fi production aesthetic, humor and infectious fun/dark undertones. Marriage from 2023 album ‘Rare Birds: Hour of Song’ was the hook.
You can get this band straight into your heart and mind with this EP. And it takes me back to that one time I did go to Wales. ↩︎
jomel: This newcomer British female band has written the ultimate feminist anthem as opening track. || RolloTreadway: I don’t tend to be very much of a rock person, so for a big brash rock record to have such an impact on me must say something. It’s noisy and it’s loud and it has guitars and drums and punkiness. And, er, flutes. Harmonicas. Cellos. Weird interpretations of bible stories. All chaos and absurdity and celebration and being absolutely done with the patriarchy and above all else fun. So much fun. ↩︎
soundclamp ↩︎
santialone ↩︎
steveroyle ↩︎
jebeyer ↩︎
donutage: far & away my number 1; an angry & desperate neo-grunge banger. Sonia Sturino is a force of nature. ↩︎
RolloTreadway: In parts weird and experimental, in others traditional. Here there’s strange droney noise, and then there’s some light, old-fashioned fiddle playing. Electronic distortion, a choir recorded live outdoors singing a simple hymn. It’s an astonishingly creative and unique folk record. ↩︎
donutage: not as jaw-dropping as their debut (my runaway 2022 fave), but with a lot of the same qualities. It’s dancy, smart, & sexy, without ever once being submissive. || slamma ↩︎
alicemcalicepants ↩︎
slamma ↩︎
keefeglise ↩︎
evilchili: Afro-futurist South African Hip-Hop Mysticism. Blakrok instantly became my favourite female MC. ↩︎
Steffi ↩︎
#AOTY #AOTY2025 #CastleRat #Deafheaven #DieSpitz #Faetooth #ListenToThis #Messa #music #musicDiscovery #RiversOfNihil #TheNewEves #WetLeg
#aoty #aoty2025 #castlerat #deafheaven #diespitz #faetooth
1001 Other Albums @[email protected] · 2026-01-02 · 07:00 UTC
CW: Albums the Fediverse Loved in 2025 (CW'd because it's a looooooong post)
Albums the Fediverse Loved in 2025
And here we have it: a list of 151 albums (plus a few artists/labels in general) that kept 64 of us going in 2025, nearly 75% of those 2025 releases and the rest earlier gems! Given our collective eclectic tastes, voting/ranking was not attempted, but bolded titles and post tags indicate albums that were submitted by multiple Fedizens. Genre tags are included as tasting notes (apologies if I got any wrong), each title is linked to its Bandcamp/Songlink when possible, and footnotes list who submitted each album along with extra comments they included (warning: comments may include MOAR ALBUMS; also note: footnotes look way better on the blog). So, click and listen away – perhaps you’ll find a new-to-you album that gets you through 2026!
Thanks so much to the Fedizens who joined in, it’s so nice to see familiar faces from the 1001 Other Albums project as well as some new ones! And, as always, it’s lovely to get a glimpse of how diverse our tastes in music are, and to see people trying something new solely based on a random Fedi recommendation. The Fedi music community truly is a bright spot, and I personally am immensely grateful for it. 🙏🏻

Band – Title (year released, place of origin; genre)footnote

Action/Adventure – Ever After (2025, US; pop-punk)1
AFI – Silver Bleeds the Black Sun… (2025, US; post-punk, gothic rock)2
Against Me! – White Crosses (2010, US; punk rock)3
Alkaline Trio – Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs (2024, US; punk rock)4
Am I in Trouble? – Spectrum (2025, US; avant-garde black metal)5
Ami Taf Ra – The Prophet and the Madman (2025, US/Morocco; Moroccan gnawa, gospel, jazz)6
An Abstract Illusion – Woe (2022, Sweden; atmospheric black/death/prog metal)7
Analog Africa (label, in general) (1960s-80s, Africa; reissues)8
Anna Tivel – Animal Poem (2025, US; indie folk)9
Archon Satani – The Righteous Way to Completion (1997, Sweden; death ambient/black industrial)10
Ashbreather – La Grande Bouffe (2025, Canada; progressive sludge/death metal)11
Au4 – …And Down Goes The Sky (2013, Canada; prog rock)12
aya – hexed! (2025, UK; electronic, noise)13
Bad Cop/Bad Cop – Lighten Up (2025, US; punk rock)14
Baghed – Smear Campaign (2025, US; punk rock)15
Bank Myna – Eimuria (2025, France; post-rock/metal, doom gaze, slow core)16
Belle and Sebastian – Push Barman to Open Old Wounds (2005, Scotland; indie pop)17
Benedicte Maurseth – Mirra (2025, Norway; folk, jazz)18
Bill Frisell – Harmony (2019, US; folk-jazz)19
Black Flower – Kinetic (2025, Belgium; Ethio-jazz, Afrobeat, dub)20
Bon Iver – SABLE, fABLE (2025, US; indie folk/pop)21
Brittany Davis – Black Thunder (2025, US; cosmic jazz, r&b/soul, singer-songwriter)22
CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso – Papota (2025, Argentina; experimental trap, hip-hop, EDM, jazz, Latin pop)23
Caroline Shaw / Attacca Quartet – Orange (2019, US; classical, ambient, folk)24
Castle Rat – The Bestiary (2025, US; fantasy heavy metal)25
Causa Sui – Pewt’r Sessions 1 (2011, Denmark; psych/stoner rock)26
Celeste – Woman of Faces (2025, UK; neo-soul, jazz, singer-songwriter)27
Charlie Hunter, Carter McLean featuring Silvana Estrada – s/t (2018, US/Mexico; jazz)28
Circuit des Yeux – Halo on the Inside (2025, US; singer-songwriter, experimental)29
Civic – Chrome Dipped (2025, Australia; punk)30
clipping – Dead Channel Sky (2025, US; hip-hop)31
Dan Mangan – Natural Light (2025, Canada; indie rock/folk)32
Daniela Pas – Spira (2023, Italy; singer-songwriter, electronic, experimental)33
Data Rebel – Single Cell (2025, UK; electronic, IDM, ambient)34
Dax Riggs – 7 Songs for Spiders (2025, US; blues metal/shoegaze blues)35
Deafheaven – Lonely People With Power (2025, US; blackgaze, metal)36
Degraved – Spectral Realm of Ruin (2025, US; death metal)37
Delobos – Cabal (2025, Spain; post-alt rock, post-rock, psychedelia)38
Devil ANTHEM. – Profound Rebuild (2025, Japan; J-pop)39
Die Spitz – Something to Consume (2025, US; punk, alt rock)40
Divide and Dissolve – Insatiable (2025, Australia; doom, drone, neo classical)41
Dödsrit – Mortal Coil (2021, Sweden; atmospheric/melodic black metal, blackened crust)42
Dool – The Shape of Fluidity (2024, Netherlands; rock, alternative)43
downy – 8th Album/Untitled (2025, Japan; math rock/post-rock)44
Drab Majesty – Completely Careless (2012-2015) (2016, US; darkwave, shoegaze, dream pop)45
Dropkick Murphy – For The People (2025, US; Celtic punk)46
Eikichi Yazawa – I believe (2025, Japan; rock)47
El Pino & The Volunteers – The Long-lost Art of Becoming Invisible (2009, Netherlands; alt country/folk)48
Elli De Mon – Raìse (2025, Italy; blues, dialect, garage, psychedelic)49
Eric Church – Evangeline vs. The Machine (2025, US; country)50
Ethmebb – Allo Babar et les Caramboleurs (2025, France; progressive melodic blackened death power metal)51
Ex-Vöid – In Love Again (2025, UK; indie pop/rock)52
EYES – Spinner(2025, Denmark; hardcore, noise rock)53
FACS – Wish Defense (2025, US; noise rock, neo-post-punk)54
Faetooth – Labrynthine (2025, US; fairy doom/stoner metal)55
False Aralia (label) – ALL the new 12-inch singles (2025, US; abstract electronic)56
Fever Ray – The Year of the Radical Romantics (2025, Sweden; experimental, electronic, pop)57
FOKALITE – Fokas, Lite & Four Shooting Riddles (2025, Japan; J-pop)58
Françoise Hardy – La question (1971, France; French pop, Brazilian saudade/bossa nova)59
Fust – Big Ugly (2025, US; rock)60
Geese – Getting Killed (2025, US; art/experimental rock)61
Gnome – King (2022, Belgium; stoner/prog/hard rock)62
Habak – Mil orquídeas en medio del desierto (2025, Mexico; melodic crust)63
Hallelujah the Hills – DECK (2025, US; indie rock)64
HANABIE – Bucchigiri Tokyo (2024, Japan; metalcore)65
Hatchie – Liquorice (2025, Australia; indie/dream pop)66
Hole – Live Through This (1994, US; alt rock)67
IAN – Come On Everybody, Let’s Do Nothing! (2025, UK; experimental, post-rock/metal)68
Igorrr – Amen (2025, France; experimental/avant-garde metal)69
Imperial Triumphant – Goldstar (2025, US; experimental metal)70
In the Womb of the Universe – Searching for Sunrise (2024, US; electronic, synthpop)71
In the Woods… – Otra (2025, Norway; avant-garde metal)72
Insomnium – Shadows of the Dying Sun (2014, Finland; melodic death metal)73
Jade Bird – Who Wants to Talk About Love (2025, UK; folk rock, singer-songwriter)74
JER – Death of the Heart (2025, US; ska punk)75
Jethro Tull – Thick as a Brick (1972, UK; prog rock)76
Judas Priest – Invincible Shield (2024, UK; heavy metal)77
Just Mustard – We Were Just Here (2025, Ireland; post-punk, noise, shoegaze, trip hop)78
Kaku P-Model – unZIP (2025, Japan; experimental, electronic)79
Kieran Hebden and William Tyler – 41 Longfield Street Late ‘80s (2025, UK; electronic)80
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Float Along – Fill Your Lungs (2013, Australia; psychedelic pop)81
Kostnatění – Přílišnost (2025, US; avant-garde black metal)82
Küenring – In Search of Paradise (2025, Austria; heavy metal/hard rock)83
L.A. Salami (artist, in general) (UK; folk, post-modern blues, acoustic, rock)84
Labyrinthus Stellarum – Rift in Reality (2025, Ukraine; atmospheric/cosmic black metal)85
Lorien Testard – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Original Soundtrack) (2025, France; soundtrack)86
Lorna Shore – I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me (2025, US; death metal/deathcore)87
Lucy Dacus – Forever is a Feeling (2025, US; indie rock, folk-pop, singer-songwriter)88
Maeror Tri – Multiple Personality Disorder (1993, Germany; ambient, noise, drone)89
Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force – Khadim (2025, Germany/Senegal; mbalax, experimental, dub techno)90
Marshall Allen – New Dawn (2025, US; avant-garde jazz)91
Max Cooper – On Being (2025, UK; electronic, ambient, avant-garde)92
Messa – The Spin (2025, Italy; doom metal)93
Michel Legrand – The Essential Michel Legrand Film Music Collection (2005, France; soundtrack, compilation)94
MIKE – Showbiz! (2025, US; hip-hop/rap)95
Miynt – Rain Money Dogs (2025, Sweden; indie/bedroom rock)96
Modern English – Mesh & Lace (1981, UK; post-punk)97
Momma – Welcome to My Blue Sky (2025, US; alt/indie rock)98
more eaze & claire rousay – no floor (2025, US; experimental, ambient, avant-pop, sound collage)99
Moron Police – Pachinko (2025, Norway; concept album)100
Morris Kolontyrsky – Origination (2025, US; ambient, drone, experimental)101
Nærværet – Når Man Ser Inn I En Annens Hjerte (2024, Sweden/Norway; experimental, field recording, tape manipulation/loops)102
Nailed to Obscurity – Generation of The Void (2025, Germany; melodic/prog death/doom metal)103
Nicolas Gombert & James Weeks / Apartment House – G O M B E R T (2025, Flanders/UK; contemporary classical)104
Nora Brown and Stephanie Coleman – Lady of the Lake (2023, US; folk)105
Nout – Live Album (2024, France; alternative, punk, rock, jazz, noise)106
Olga Anna Markowska – Iskra (2025, Poland; modern classical, ambient)107
Ozzy Osbourne – Ozzmosis (1995, UK; heavy metal)108
Pino Palladino & Blake Mills – That Wasn’t a Dream (2025, Wales/US; experimental jazz)109
Point Mort – Le Point de Non-retour (2025, France; blackened crust postcore)110
Plague of Carcosa – In The Dreamless Deep (2025, US; doomnoise, experimental metal)111
Population II – Maintenant Jamais (2025, Canada; art/prog/psychedelic rock)112
Primal Scream – XTRMNTR (2000, Scotland; experimental electro-rock)113
Priscilla Block – Things You Didn’t See (2025, US; country, singer-songwriter)114
Psychonaut – World Maker (2025, Belgium; post-metal)115
Queens of the Stone Age – Alive in the Catacombs (2025, US; rock)116
Radiopuhelimet – Kosminen Tiedottomuus (2020, Finland; alt rock)117
Rebecca Foon & Aliayta Foon-Dancoes – Reverie (2025, Canada; modern classical)118
Rivers of Nihil – s/t (2025, US; death/prog metal)119
Rogue Jones – Dos Bebés (2023, Wales; folk, indie pop)120
Shayfer James – Summoning (2025, US; noir-pop, dark cabaret)121
Shedfromthebody – Whisper and Wane (2025, Finland; doomgaze, [post-]metal)122
Shepherds of Cassini – In Thrall to Heresy (2025, New Zealand; prog metal)123
Silvana Estrada – Vendrán Suaves Lluvias (2025, Mexico; singer-songwriter)124
Silvana Estrada (with Charlie Hunter) – Lo Sagrado (2017, Mexico/US; singer-songwriter)125
Širom – In the Wind of Night, Hard-Fallen Incantations Whisper (2025, Slovenia; instrumental avant-garde imaginary folk)126
SKC & The Poem – s/t (2025, Belgium; alt/folk rock)127
SKLOSS – The Pattern Speaks (2025, US/Scotland; space gaze, post-metal)128
Soulwax – All Systems Are Lying (2025, Belgium; electronic alt rock)129
Spiritbox – Tsunami Sea (2025, Canada; metalcore)130
State Azure – The Light That Remains (2025, UK; electronica, ambient, downtempo)131
Stereolab – Switched On Volumes 1-5 (2024, UK/France; avant-pop)132
Steve Tibbetts – Close (2025, US; jazz fusion)133
Stick To Your Guns – Keep Planting Flowers (2025, US; hardcore)134
Suede – Antidepressants (2025, UK; post-punk, gothic rock)135
Summer Walker – Finally Over It (2025, US; R&B, singer-songwriter)136
Susan Bear – Algorithmic Mood Music (2024, Scotland; electronic, alt-pop)137
Swansea Sound – Twentieth Century (2023, Wales; indie pop)138
TDJ (artist, in general) (Canada; electronic)139
Terveet Kädet – Lapin Helvetti (2015, Finland; hardcore punk)140
Tool – Lateralus (2001, US; prog rock/metal, art rock)141
The Bug Club – “Have U Ever Been 2 Wales” (2025, Wales; indie rock)142
The New Eves – The New Eve Is Rising (2025, UK; avant-garde/art rock)143
Trio del Mango – Cómelo (2025, US/Puerto Rico; experimental, noise)144
Turnstile – Never Enough (2025, US; alt rock)145
UNIVERSITY – McCartney, It’ll Be OK (2025, UK; punk, noise rock)146
Water Damage – Instruments (2025, US; experimental psych/drone-rock)147
Weakened Friends – Feels Like Hell (2025, US; indie rock)148
Weirs – Diamond Grove (2025, US; trad folk, experimental noise)149
Wet Leg – moisturizer (2025, UK; indie rock)150
White Lies – Five V2 (2019, UK; post-punk)151
X-Cetra – Summer 2000 (Y2K 25th Anniversary Edition) (2025, US; sleepover core, dance-pop)152
Yara Asmar – everyone I love is sleeping and I love them so so much (2025, Lebanon; modern classical/ambient)153
Yugen Blakrok – Anima Mysterium (2019, South Africa; hip-hop)154
Yws Gwynedd – Codi/ \Cysgu (2014, Wales; indie rock)155

Footnote Number. Fediverse username(s): Comments

poisonous ↩︎
buffyleigh: My emotional support album of the year. I’ve been a fan of AFI since 2000 but haven’t liked an album since 2006. The second I heard the first single “Behind The Clock”, my expectations for this album skyrocketed, and they were absolutely exceeded. It sounds nothing like anything they’ve ever done, and yet it feels like this was the album they’ve always been moving towards. Song of the year goes to the entirety of side A, and Davey Havok’s unexpectedly different sound on this album is my overall favourite vocal performance of year. ↩︎
Braininabowl ↩︎
umrk: top album requested by my kids in the car this year ↩︎
brh ↩︎
RolloTreadway: The most gloriously unhinged album I’ve heard this year. Twists together ideas from everywhere without the slightest consideration of whether doing so might be normal or accepted. The kind of album where a classic French chanson or some deep filthy funk just appears out of nowhere and then is never referred to again. It shouldn’t work but it absolutely does. ↩︎
gavin57: That last one is an all-timer. It’s astonishing. ↩︎
platenworm ↩︎
rachelcholst ↩︎
3rik: This has been a year for nighttime music and music for trying to sleep. ↩︎
swampgas: definitely my most played this year. A sludgy, deathdoom concept album about greed and gluttony and corruption thats riffy and groovy af. These are driving rhythms that chug hard! ↩︎
MichaelMcWilliams: The one album that tops my list this year also appears in the 1001 Other Albums list. Band website offering free download of the album: https://au4.ca ↩︎
brh ↩︎
poisonous ↩︎
jake4480 ↩︎
mbr ↩︎
riff: Most “Wait why did i never listen to this band before ?” of the year. ↩︎
keefeglise ↩︎
eamonn ↩︎
_slotek_ ↩︎
onuryasar: My kind of, very balanced Indie Pop: just the right amount of Indie but not too much and just the right amount of Pop but not too much 🙂 ↩︎
icastico ↩︎
santialone ↩︎
eamonn ↩︎
burnitdown || MetalheadDana ↩︎
cloudtripper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_e5kKzlFqU&list=RD8_e5kKzlFqU&start_radio=1 ↩︎
nevar23 ↩︎
debonaire: Recency bias is pushing me to three Silvana Estrada albums. I love her voice, I love the music, I love her with Charlie Hunter. ↩︎
otherdog ↩︎
fistfulofdave: Aussie punk in the vein of The Saints and Radio Birdman. ↩︎
rothko ↩︎
Chigaze: what happens when four guys to go a cottage in Ontario, find a flow state, and record an album over a few days. I got to see them play the album through at the Winspear in Edmonton and it’s way up there on my concert experience list. ↩︎
evilchili: The Italian singer and composer’s debut is a hypnotic journey of loops, bloops, and dramatic and impassioned vocalizations. ↩︎
nellie_m ↩︎
fistfulofdave: Blues metal? Shoegaze blues? I don’t know or care, I like it. ↩︎
tym || niels ↩︎
jake4480 ↩︎
santialone ↩︎
Kingu ↩︎
tym || demon6 ↩︎
otherdog ↩︎
MetalheadDana: I listened to this album when it first came out in 2021 but for some reason it didn’t click with me. But apparently 2021 Dana had horrible taste in music, because in early 2025 I randomly tried Dodsrit – Mortal Coil again and fell in love and have been obsessed with it all year, it’s the perfect blend of crust punk and black metal and I love it. ↩︎
TG_Esq ↩︎
rustynail ↩︎
alicemcalicepants ↩︎
Chigaze: nails it just as a solid Dropkick’s album but goes farther with songs made for the times. “Who’ll Stand With Us” and “School Days Over” are amazing workers songs while “Chesterfields and Aftershave” takes me back to my own grandfather. ↩︎
thesinkingbelle ↩︎
Braininabowl ↩︎
riff: Most listened this year. ↩︎
Mark52 ↩︎
Moss ↩︎
e (eva) ↩︎
steveroyle: Leaving out Never Enough by Turnstile as I’m sure that’ll get plenty of votes. ↩︎
fistfulofdave: Angular, noise rock, neo-post punk. Unsettling, laid-back, yet aggressive. And yes it was the last album Steve Albini recorded. ↩︎
MetalheadDana || demon6 ↩︎
soundclamp: Runner-ups – https://lineimprint.bandcamp.com/album/muzak-for-the-encouragement-of-unproductivity; https://myheartaninvertedflame.bandcamp.com/album/my-heart-an-inverted-flame-apparitions-split; https://timbarnes.bandcamp.com/album/lost-words-1 ↩︎
buffyleigh: I’ve known of Fever Ray since first seeing the TV show Vikings, but I for some reason didn’t check them out further until this year, when their s/t album came up for a blog post. I was floored. As it happens, their kinda sorta live album was set to come out soon after my first listen of the s/t, so I got caught up on the full Karin Dreijer discography, got super duper obsessed with their spectacular ARTE concert (which is essentially the same versions performed on the new album), and proceeded to be immensely inspired – nay, awakened – by this artist. ↩︎
Kingu ↩︎
onuryasar: I’ve first discovered the song Apocalypse by Cigarettes After Sex (I know, late comer), which brought me to Greg Gonzalez’s Wikipedia page, that says “Gonzalez was heavily inspired by French singer Françoise Hardy and her album La question”. I remember this album being mentioned in my Fedi timeline recently, so I gave it a spin and it turned on and on for the remainder of the year. [Editor’s note: Also see the 1001 OA spotlight on this album from earlier this year!] ↩︎
rachelcholst ↩︎
mynameistillian ↩︎
burnitdown ↩︎
demon6 ↩︎
donutage: I was a bit skeptical of this, and sure, in a 52-song project there’s some unevenness, but between the sheer audacity of the attempt & the frequent successes it scores, definitely one of the more remarkable records of the year. ↩︎
Tak ↩︎
e (eva) ↩︎
Lizahadiz ↩︎
mbr ↩︎
brh ↩︎
umrk: my fav album released in 2025 ↩︎
superflippy ↩︎
raisedfist ↩︎
gavin57 ↩︎
Mark52: Jade Bird has been by far my most listened to album this year. ↩︎
poisonous ↩︎
derthomas: I kept coming back to this album because it just fits every mood. It’s peak Jethro Tull if you ask me, it’s perfect in any way. Also the Steven Wilson Remaster sounds incredible. ↩︎
burnitdown ↩︎
jebeyer: a longer list is here – https://www.buymusic.club/list/whistlingkitty-some-of-my-favorite-2025-releases ↩︎
thesinkingbelle: honorable mentions – Scare – In The End, Was It Worth It; Creatvre – Toujours Humain ; Guck – Gucked Up ; AVTT/PTTN – AVTT/PTTN; Saor – Amidst the Ruins ; Jessica93 – 666 tours de periph’ ; Deadguy – Near-Death Travel Services;  LS Dunes – Violet;  Aesop Rock – I Heard It’s A Mess There Too ; Fishbone – Stockholm Syndrome ; Dead Pioneers – Po$t American ; Ethereal Wound – Defile | Demise;  Sci Fi Industries – Initial States ↩︎
soundclamp ↩︎
cloudtripper ↩︎
rustynail ↩︎
derthomas: My AOTY from a very underground Heavy Metal band from Austria. ↩︎
platenworm ↩︎
raisedfist ↩︎
thesinkingbelle ↩︎
t4s: Honorable mentions – The Halo Effect, Machine Head, Heaven Shall Burn, Spiritbox, Jinjer, Allegaeon ↩︎
rachelcholst ↩︎
3rik ↩︎
Wintergr33n: Percussion-driven music from Senegal on a self-released album: https://ra.co/news/82509. ↩︎
platenworm: 5 things that ruled my world musically this year:
– The Analog Africa Label
– The Artist L.A. Salami
– The knowledge that you can have too much music
– The knowledge that you can make your solo debut album when you are 100 years old……Hail Hail Marshall Allen
– And that everybody loved Ozzy ↩︎
nellie_m: The music project that somehow touched me most deeply was the result of two years of work by Max Cooper. „Powerful works of art have traditionally sprung from some source deep within an artist and, if they strike the right tone, resonate with an audience to leave a lasting mark. But what if that equation were reversed: what if an artist were to draw their inspiration from deep within their audience, and use that to reflect those ideas, emotions, hopes, fears, pains and aspirations back to us?…“ ↩︎
niels || TG_Esq || sentynel || otherdog || umrk ↩︎
eamonn ↩︎
jake4480 ↩︎
steveroyle ↩︎
alicemcalicepants ↩︎
BramMeehan ↩︎
avi_miller: All three fall into the more ambient realm, and they all are absolutely phenomenal. I love music that is based more around textures and creating a mood than creating a melody, and this year had some really good ones. ↩︎
niels ↩︎
TG_Esq ↩︎
3rik ↩︎
raisedfist ↩︎
keefeglise: Compositions by Nicholas Gombert and James Weeks. Performed by Apartment House. Flanders/UK. Contemporary Classical (Debatable! Gombert died in 1560.) ↩︎
evilchili: Two hipster kids from Brooklyn play 100 year old Appalachian folk tunes and make them come alive. Honest, reverential, and true. ↩︎
riff: “Instantly burned in my brain” this year (well, it was actually their KEXP session from april that blew my mind, but since i have to submit an album, it’ll do nicely 🙂 ). ↩︎
avi_miller ↩︎
derthomas: I discovered this album this year on a metal journey (yeah, late to the party) and I loved it. It’s my favourite Ozzy album. ↩︎
_slotek_ ↩︎
mbr ↩︎
tym: Oh and not a brand new release, but the remaster and new tracks for the 20th anniversary reissue of ‘Takk…’ by Sigur Rós are pretty great. That and ( ) are still what I listen to the most, this year and apparently every year. ↩︎
Kingu ↩︎
epu: I had all but forgotten party drug enthusiasm tracks like ‘higher than the sun’ from 1991, and it turns out they made so many albums since I last tuned in. This one really resonates with my reaction to USpol this year. It rekindled my love for this band; I bought Evil Heat import on CD, my first physical purchase since last year. ↩︎
Mark52 ↩︎
sentynel ↩︎
Braininabowl ↩︎
jiiruu ↩︎
avi_miller ↩︎
jiiruu || t4s || gavin57 ↩︎
Steffi ↩︎
superflippy ↩︎
rustynail: most played ↩︎
sentynel ↩︎
debonaire ↩︎
debonaire ↩︎
TwoClownsEating: I discovered this band in 2025. Absolutely incredible, I’ve bought their entire catalogue and had the privilege to see them live a few months ago. Unbelievably good musicians. Magical music. ↩︎
jomel: 2025 was a great year for Belgian music. Stef Kamil Carlens, co-founder of dEUS has released a gem with his new band The Poem. I have seen SKC twice this year, once in a solo gig, and the second time (in less then 2 weeks) for the “worst Case scenario” rewind from (and so with) dEUS, those two concerts were fabulous, and at the time, I wasn’t expecting this release.
Bonus Albums: The live album from Depeche Mode – Memento Mori: Mexico City; Arvo Pârt – Credo (released Alpha Classics label) which includes his “hits”  – Credo , Fratres , Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten (my favourite one)  https://outhere-music.com/en/albums/arvo-part-credo; 2025 Bryan Ferry release, with Amelia Barrat as female lead singer/speaker. Some of his material came from the 70’s and were updated, it’s a timeless album, and elegant as always https://soundcloud.com/bryanferry/sets/loose-talk-4 ↩︎
jebeyer ↩︎
jomel: (AKA 2manydj’s) Yep, those guys will make you dance, and rock, I guess they’ve listened to Kraftwerk & Front242. ↩︎
Tak ↩︎
nellie_m ↩︎
cloudtripper ↩︎
_slotek_ ↩︎
t4s ↩︎
Lizahadiz ↩︎
slamma ↩︎
e (eva): algorithmic mood music was my fav last year! but i’m still listening to it and i didn’t submit anything then. ↩︎
Steffi ↩︎
BramMeehan: I’ve listened to so much TDJ, though no one release in particular. ↩︎
jiiruu ↩︎
buffyleigh: There’s so many other albums I’d love to list here for exposure, but it feels more honest to list this masterpiece, my first obsession of the year, courtesy of catching their amazing set at the big Black Sabbath/Ozzy send-off concert. I mean, I even titled my AOTY list “Forty Six & 2”, since that was the first song Tool played there and got my attention. Said list is here. ↩︎
epu: Ok, this one’s kind of a cheat, it’s an EP.
2024, my friend turned me on to Bug Club for its lo-fi production aesthetic, humor and infectious fun/dark undertones. Marriage from 2023 album ‘Rare Birds: Hour of Song’ was the hook.
You can get this band straight into your heart and mind with this EP. And it takes me back to that one time I did go to Wales. ↩︎
jomel: This newcomer British female band has written the ultimate feminist anthem as opening track. || RolloTreadway: I don’t tend to be very much of a rock person, so for a big brash rock record to have such an impact on me must say something. It’s noisy and it’s loud and it has guitars and drums and punkiness. And, er, flutes. Harmonicas. Cellos. Weird interpretations of bible stories. All chaos and absurdity and celebration and being absolutely done with the patriarchy and above all else fun. So much fun. ↩︎
soundclamp ↩︎
santialone ↩︎
steveroyle ↩︎
jebeyer ↩︎
donutage: far & away my number 1; an angry & desperate neo-grunge banger. Sonia Sturino is a force of nature. ↩︎
RolloTreadway: In parts weird and experimental, in others traditional. Here there’s strange droney noise, and then there’s some light, old-fashioned fiddle playing. Electronic distortion, a choir recorded live outdoors singing a simple hymn. It’s an astonishingly creative and unique folk record. ↩︎
donutage: not as jaw-dropping as their debut (my runaway 2022 fave), but with a lot of the same qualities. It’s dancy, smart, & sexy, without ever once being submissive. || slamma ↩︎
alicemcalicepants ↩︎
slamma ↩︎
keefeglise ↩︎
evilchili: Afro-futurist South African Hip-Hop Mysticism. Blakrok instantly became my favourite female MC. ↩︎
Steffi ↩︎
#AOTY #AOTY2025 #CastleRat #Deafheaven #DieSpitz #Faetooth #ListenToThis #Messa #music #musicDiscovery #RiversOfNihil #TheNewEves #WetLeg
#wetleg #theneweves #riversofnihil #musicdiscovery #music #messa
1001 Other Albums @[email protected] · 2026-01-02 · 07:00 UTC
Albums the Fediverse Loved in 2025
And here we have it: a list of 151 albums (plus a few artists/labels in general) that kept 64 of us going in 2025, nearly 75% of those 2025 releases and the rest earlier gems! Given our collective eclectic tastes, voting/ranking was not attempted, but bolded titles and post tags indicate albums that were submitted by multiple Fedizens. Genre tags are included as tasting notes (apologies if I got any wrong), each title is linked to its Bandcamp/Songlink when possible, and footnotes list who submitted each album along with extra comments they included (warning: comments may include MOAR ALBUMS). So, click and listen away – perhaps you’ll find a new-to-you album that gets you through 2026!
Thanks so much to the Fedizens who joined in, it’s so nice to see familiar faces from the 1001 Other Albums project as well as some new ones! And, as always, it’s lovely to get a glimpse of how diverse our tastes in music are, and to see people trying something new solely based on a random Fedi recommendation. The Fedi music community truly is a bright spot, and I personally am immensely grateful for it. 🙏🏻

Band – Title (year released, place of origin; genre)footnote

Action/Adventure – Ever After (2025, US; pop-punk)1
AFI – Silver Bleeds the Black Sun… (2025, US; post-punk, gothic rock)2
Against Me! – White Crosses (2010, US; punk rock)3
Alkaline Trio – Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs (2024, US; punk rock)4
Am I in Trouble? – Spectrum (2025, US; avant-garde black metal)5
Ami Taf Ra – The Prophet and the Madman (2025, US/Morocco; Moroccan gnawa, gospel, jazz)6
An Abstract Illusion – Woe (2022, Sweden; atmospheric black/death/prog metal)7
Analog Africa (label, in general) (1960s-80s, Africa; reissues)8
Anna Tivel – Animal Poem (2025, US; indie folk)9
Archon Satani – The Righteous Way to Completion (1997, Sweden; death ambient/black industrial)10
Ashbreather – La Grande Bouffe (2025, Canada; progressive sludge/death metal)11
Au4 – …And Down Goes The Sky (2013, Canada; prog rock)12
aya – hexed! (2025, UK; electronic, noise)13
Bad Cop/Bad Cop – Lighten Up (2025, US; punk rock)14
Baghed – Smear Campaign (2025, US; punk rock)15
Bank Myna – Eimuria (2025, France; post-rock/metal, doom gaze, slow core)16
Belle and Sebastian – Push Barman to Open Old Wounds (2005, Scotland; indie pop)17
Benedicte Maurseth – Mirra (2025, Norway; folk, jazz)18
Bill Frisell – Harmony (2019, US; folk-jazz)19
Black Flower – Kinetic (2025, Belgium; Ethio-jazz, Afrobeat, dub)20
Bon Iver – SABLE, fABLE (2025, US; indie folk/pop)21
Brittany Davis – Black Thunder (2025, US; cosmic jazz, r&b/soul, singer-songwriter)22
CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso – Papota (2025, Argentina; experimental trap, hip-hop, EDM, jazz, Latin pop)23
Caroline Shaw / Attacca Quartet – Orange (2019, US; classical, ambient, folk)24
Castle Rat – The Bestiary (2025, US; fantasy heavy metal)25
Causa Sui – Pewt’r Sessions 1 (2011, Denmark; psych/stoner rock)26
Celeste – Woman of Faces (2025, UK; neo-soul, jazz, singer-songwriter)27
Charlie Hunter, Carter McLean featuring Silvana Estrada – s/t (2018, US/Mexico; jazz)28
Circuit des Yeux – Halo on the Inside (2025, US; singer-songwriter, experimental)29
Civic – Chrome Dipped (2025, Australia; punk)30
clipping – Dead Channel Sky (2025, US; hip-hop)31
Dan Mangan – Natural Light (2025, Canada; indie rock/folk)32
Daniela Pas – Spira (2023, Italy; singer-songwriter, electronic, experimental)33
Data Rebel – Single Cell (2025, UK; electronic, IDM, ambient)34
Dax Riggs – 7 Songs for Spiders (2025, US; blues metal/shoegaze blues)35
Deafheaven – Lonely People With Power (2025, US; blackgaze, metal)36
Degraved – Spectral Realm of Ruin (2025, US; death metal)37
Delobos – Cabal (2025, Spain; post-alt rock, post-rock, psychedelia)38
Devil ANTHEM. – Profound Rebuild (2025, Japan; J-pop)39
Die Spitz – Something to Consume (2025, US; punk, alt rock)40
Divide and Dissolve – Insatiable (2025, Australia; doom, drone, neo classical)41
Dödsrit – Mortal Coil (2021, Sweden; atmospheric/melodic black metal, blackened crust)42
Dool – The Shape of Fluidity (2024, Netherlands; rock, alternative)43
downy – 8th Album/Untitled (2025, Japan; math rock/post-rock)44
Drab Majesty – Completely Careless (2012-2015) (2016, US; darkwave, shoegaze, dream pop)45
Dropkick Murphy – For The People (2025, US; Celtic punk)46
Eikichi Yazawa – I believe (2025, Japan; rock)47
El Pino & The Volunteers – The Long-lost Art of Becoming Invisible (2009, Netherlands; alt country/folk)48
Elli De Mon – Raìse (2025, Italy; blues, dialect, garage, psychedelic)49
Eric Church – Evangeline vs. The Machine (2025, US; country)50
Ethmebb – Allo Babar et les Caramboleurs (2025, France; progressive melodic blackened death power metal)51
Ex-Vöid – In Love Again (2025, UK; indie pop/rock)52
EYES – Spinner(2025, Denmark; hardcore, noise rock)53
FACS – Wish Defense (2025, US; noise rock, neo-post-punk)54
Faetooth – Labrynthine (2025, US; fairy doom/stoner metal)55
False Aralia (label) – ALL the new 12-inch singles (2025, US; abstract electronic)56
Fever Ray – The Year of the Radical Romantics (2025, Sweden; experimental, electronic, pop)57
FOKALITE – Fokas, Lite & Four Shooting Riddles (2025, Japan; J-pop)58
Françoise Hardy – La question (1971, France; French pop, Brazilian saudade/bossa nova)59
Fust – Big Ugly (2025, US; rock)60
Geese – Getting Killed (2025, US; art/experimental rock)61
Gnome – King (2022, Belgium; stoner/prog/hard rock)62
Habak – Mil orquídeas en medio del desierto (2025, Mexico; melodic crust)63
Hallelujah the Hills – DECK (2025, US; indie rock)64
HANABIE – Bucchigiri Tokyo (2024, Japan; metalcore)65
Hatchie – Liquorice (2025, Australia; indie/dream pop)66
Hole – Live Through This (1994, US; alt rock)67
IAN – Come On Everybody, Let’s Do Nothing! (2025, UK; experimental, post-rock/metal)68
Igorrr – Amen (2025, France; experimental/avant-garde metal)69
Imperial Triumphant – Goldstar (2025, US; experimental metal)70
In the Womb of the Universe – Searching for Sunrise (2024, US; electronic, synthpop)71
In the Woods… – Otra (2025, Norway; avant-garde metal)72
Insomnium – Shadows of the Dying Sun (2014, Finland; melodic death metal)73
Jade Bird – Who Wants to Talk About Love (2025, UK; folk rock, singer-songwriter)74
JER – Death of the Heart (2025, US; ska punk)75
Jethro Tull – Thick as a Brick (1972, UK; prog rock)76
Judas Priest – Invincible Shield (2024, UK; heavy metal)77
Just Mustard – We Were Just Here (2025, Ireland; post-punk, noise, shoegaze, trip hop)78
Kaku P-Model – unZIP (2025, Japan; experimental, electronic)79
Kieran Hebden and William Tyler – 41 Longfield Street Late ‘80s (2025, UK; electronic)80
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Float Along – Fill Your Lungs (2013, Australia; psychedelic pop)81
Kostnatění – Přílišnost (2025, US; avant-garde black metal)82
Küenring – In Search of Paradise (2025, Austria; heavy metal/hard rock)83
L.A. Salami (artist, in general) (UK; folk, post-modern blues, acoustic, rock)84
Labyrinthus Stellarum – Rift in Reality (2025, Ukraine; atmospheric/cosmic black metal)85
Lorien Testard – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Original Soundtrack) (2025, France; soundtrack)86
Lorna Shore – I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me (2025, US; death metal/deathcore)87
Lucy Dacus – Forever is a Feeling (2025, US; indie rock, folk-pop, singer-songwriter)88
Maeror Tri – Multiple Personality Disorder (1993, Germany; ambient, noise, drone)89
Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force – Khadim (2025, Germany/Senegal; mbalax, experimental, dub techno)90
Marshall Allen – New Dawn (2025, US; avant-garde jazz)91
Max Cooper – On Being (2025, UK; electronic, ambient, avant-garde)92
Messa – The Spin (2025, Italy; doom metal)93
Michel Legrand – The Essential Michel Legrand Film Music Collection (2005, France; soundtrack, compilation)94
MIKE – Showbiz! (2025, US; hip-hop/rap)95
Miynt – Rain Money Dogs (2025, Sweden; indie/bedroom rock)96
Modern English – Mesh & Lace (1981, UK; post-punk)97
Momma – Welcome to My Blue Sky (2025, US; alt/indie rock)98
more eaze & claire rousay – no floor (2025, US; experimental, ambient, avant-pop, sound collage)99
Moron Police – Pachinko (2025, Norway; concept album)100
Morris Kolontyrsky – Origination (2025, US; ambient, drone, experimental)101
Nærværet – Når Man Ser Inn I En Annens Hjerte (2024, Sweden/Norway; experimental, field recording, tape manipulation/loops)102
Nailed to Obscurity – Generation of The Void (2025, Germany; melodic/prog death/doom metal)103
Nicolas Gombert & James Weeks / Apartment House – G O M B E R T (2025, Flanders/UK; contemporary classical)104
Nora Brown and Stephanie Coleman – Lady of the Lake (2023, US; folk)105
Nout – Live Album (2024, France; alternative, punk, rock, jazz, noise)106
Olga Anna Markowska – Iskra (2025, Poland; modern classical, ambient)107
Ozzy Osbourne – Ozzmosis (1995, UK; heavy metal)108
Pino Palladino & Blake Mills – That Wasn’t a Dream (2025, Wales/US; experimental jazz)109
Point Mort – Le Point de Non-retour (2025, France; blackened crust postcore)110
Plague of Carcosa – In The Dreamless Deep (2025, US; doomnoise, experimental metal)111
Population II – Maintenant Jamais (2025, Canada; art/prog/psychedelic rock)112
Primal Scream – XTRMNTR (2000, Scotland; experimental electro-rock)113
Priscilla Block – Things You Didn’t See (2025, US; country, singer-songwriter)114
Psychonaut – World Maker (2025, Belgium; post-metal)115
Queens of the Stone Age – Alive in the Catacombs (2025, US; rock)116
Radiopuhelimet – Kosminen Tiedottomuus (2020, Finland; alt rock)117
Rebecca Foon & Aliayta Foon-Dancoes – Reverie (2025, Canada; modern classical)118
Rivers of Nihil – s/t (2025, US; death/prog metal)119
Rogue Jones – Dos Bebés (2023, Wales; folk, indie pop)120
Shayfer James – Summoning (2025, US; noir-pop, dark cabaret)121
Shedfromthebody – Whisper and Wane (2025, Finland; doomgaze, [post-]metal)122
Shepherds of Cassini – In Thrall to Heresy (2025, New Zealand; prog metal)123
Silvana Estrada – Vendrán Suaves Lluvias (2025, Mexico; singer-songwriter)124
Silvana Estrada (with Charlie Hunter) – Lo Sagrado (2017, Mexico/US; singer-songwriter)125
Širom – In the Wind of Night, Hard-Fallen Incantations Whisper (2025, Slovenia; instrumental avant-garde imaginary folk)126
SKC & The Poem – s/t (2025, Belgium; alt/folk rock)127
SKLOSS – The Pattern Speaks (2025, US/Scotland; space gaze, post-metal)128
Soulwax – All Systems Are Lying (2025, Belgium; electronic alt rock)129
Spiritbox – Tsunami Sea (2025, Canada; metalcore)130
State Azure – The Light That Remains (2025, UK; electronica, ambient, downtempo)131
Stereolab – Switched On Volumes 1-5 (2024, UK/France; avant-pop)132
Steve Tibbetts – Close (2025, US; jazz fusion)133
Stick To Your Guns – Keep Planting Flowers (2025, US; hardcore)134
Suede – Antidepressants (2025, UK; post-punk, gothic rock)135
Summer Walker – Finally Over It (2025, US; R&B, singer-songwriter)136
Susan Bear – Algorithmic Mood Music (2024, Scotland; electronic, alt-pop)137
Swansea Sound – Twentieth Century (2023, Wales; indie pop)138
TDJ (artist, in general) (Canada; electronic)139
Terveet Kädet – Lapin Helvetti (2015, Finland; hardcore punk)140
Tool – Lateralus (2001, US; prog rock/metal, art rock)141
The Bug Club – “Have U Ever Been 2 Wales” (2025, Wales; indie rock)142
The New Eves – The New Eve Is Rising (2025, UK; avant-garde/art rock)143
Trio del Mango – Cómelo (2025, US/Puerto Rico; experimental, noise)144
Turnstile – Never Enough (2025, US; alt rock)145
UNIVERSITY – McCartney, It’ll Be OK (2025, UK; punk, noise rock)146
Water Damage – Instruments (2025, US; experimental psych/drone-rock)147
Weakened Friends – Feels Like Hell (2025, US; indie rock)148
Weirs – Diamond Grove (2025, US; trad folk, experimental noise)149
Wet Leg – moisturizer (2025, UK; indie rock)150
White Lies – Five V2 (2019, UK; post-punk)151
X-Cetra – Summer 2000 (Y2K 25th Anniversary Edition) (2025, US; sleepover core, dance-pop)152
Yara Asmar – everyone I love is sleeping and I love them so so much (2025, Lebanon; modern classical/ambient)153
Yugen Blakrok – Anima Mysterium (2019, South Africa; hip-hop)154
Yws Gwynedd – Codi/ \Cysgu (2014, Wales; indie rock)155

Footnote Number. Fediverse username(s): Comments
1. poisonous ↩︎
2. buffyleigh: My emotional support album of the year. I’ve been a fan of AFI since 2000 but haven’t liked an album since 2006. The second I heard the first single “Behind The Clock”, my expectations for this album skyrocketed, and they were absolutely exceeded. It sounds nothing like anything they’ve ever done, and yet it feels like this was the album they’ve always been moving towards. Song of the year goes to the entirety of side A, and Davey Havok’s unexpectedly different sound on this album is my overall favourite vocal performance of year. ↩︎
3. Braininabowl ↩︎
4. umrk: top album requested by my kids in the car this year ↩︎
5. brh ↩︎
6. RolloTreadway: The most gloriously unhinged album I’ve heard this year. Twists together ideas from everywhere without the slightest consideration of whether doing so might be normal or accepted. The kind of album where a classic French chanson or some deep filthy funk just appears out of nowhere and then is never referred to again. It shouldn’t work but it absolutely does. ↩︎
7. gavin57: That last one is an all-timer. It’s astonishing. ↩︎
8. platenworm ↩︎
9. rachelcholst ↩︎
10. 3rik: This has been a year for nighttime music and music for trying to sleep. ↩︎
11. swampgas: definitely my most played this year. A sludgy, deathdoom concept album about greed and gluttony and corruption thats riffy and groovy af. These are driving rhythms that chug hard! ↩︎
12. MichaelMcWilliams: The one album that tops my list this year also appears in the 1001 Other Albums list. Band website offering free download of the album: https://au4.ca ↩︎
13. brh ↩︎
14. poisonous ↩︎
15. jake4480 ↩︎
16. mbr ↩︎
17. riff: Most “Wait why did i never listen to this band before ?” of the year. ↩︎
18. keefeglise ↩︎
19. eamonn ↩︎
20. _slotek_ ↩︎
21. onuryasar: My kind of, very balanced Indie Pop: just the right amount of Indie but not too much and just the right amount of Pop but not too much :) ↩︎
22. icastico ↩︎
23. santialone ↩︎
24. eamonn ↩︎
25. burnitdown || MetalheadDana ↩︎
26. cloudtripper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_e5kKzlFqU&list=RD8_e5kKzlFqU&start_radio=1 ↩︎
27. nevar23 ↩︎
28. debonaire: Recency bias is pushing me to three Silvana Estrada albums. I love her voice, I love the music, I love her with Charlie Hunter. ↩︎
29. otherdog ↩︎
30. fistfulofdave: Aussie punk in the vein of The Saints and Radio Birdman. ↩︎
31. rothko ↩︎
32. Chigaze: what happens when four guys to go a cottage in Ontario, find a flow state, and record an album over a few days. I got to see them play the album through at the Winspear in Edmonton and it’s way up there on my concert experience list. ↩︎
33. evilchili: The Italian singer and composer’s debut is a hypnotic journey of loops, bloops, and dramatic and impassioned vocalizations. ↩︎
34. nellie_m ↩︎
35. fistfulofdave: Blues metal? Shoegaze blues? I don’t know or care, I like it. ↩︎
36. tym || niels ↩︎
37. jake4480 ↩︎
38. santialone ↩︎
39. Kingu ↩︎
40. tym || demon6 ↩︎
41. otherdog ↩︎
42. MetalheadDana: I listened to this album when it first came out in 2021 but for some reason it didn’t click with me. But apparently 2021 Dana had horrible taste in music, because in early 2025 I randomly tried Dodsrit – Mortal Coil again and fell in love and have been obsessed with it all year, it’s the perfect blend of crust punk and black metal and I love it. ↩︎
43. TG_Esq ↩︎
44. rustynail ↩︎
45. alicemcalicepants ↩︎
46. Chigaze: nails it just as a solid Dropkick’s album but goes farther with songs made for the times. “Who’ll Stand With Us” and “School Days Over” are amazing workers songs while “Chesterfields and Aftershave” takes me back to my own grandfather. ↩︎
47. thesinkingbelle ↩︎
48. Braininabowl ↩︎
49. riff: Most listened this year. ↩︎
50. Mark52 ↩︎
51. Moss ↩︎
52. e (eva) ↩︎
53. steveroyle: Leaving out Never Enough by Turnstile as I’m sure that’ll get plenty of votes. ↩︎
54. fistfulofdave: Angular, noise rock, neo-post punk. Unsettling, laid-back, yet aggressive. And yes it was the last album Steve Albini recorded. ↩︎
55. MetalheadDana || demon6 ↩︎
56. soundclamp: Runner-ups – https://lineimprint.bandcamp.com/album/muzak-for-the-encouragement-of-unproductivity; https://myheartaninvertedflame.bandcamp.com/album/my-heart-an-inverted-flame-apparitions-split; https://timbarnes.bandcamp.com/album/lost-words-1 ↩︎
57. buffyleigh: I’ve known of Fever Ray since first seeing the TV show Vikings, but I for some reason didn’t check them out further until this year, when their s/t album came up for a blog post. I was floored. As it happens, their kinda sorta live album was set to come out soon after my first listen of the s/t, so I got caught up on the full Karin Dreijer discography, got super duper obsessed with their spectacular ARTE concert (which is essentially the same versions performed on the new album), and proceeded to be immensely inspired – nay, awakened – by this artist. ↩︎
58. Kingu ↩︎
59. onuryasar: I’ve first discovered the song Apocalypse by Cigarettes After Sex (I know, late comer), which brought me to Greg Gonzalez’s Wikipedia page, that says “Gonzalez was heavily inspired by French singer Françoise Hardy and her album La question”. I remember this album being mentioned in my Fedi timeline recently, so I gave it a spin and it turned on and on for the remainder of the year. [Editor’s note: Also see the 1001 OA spotlight on this album from earlier this year!] ↩︎
60. rachelcholst ↩︎
61. mynameistillian ↩︎
62. burnitdown ↩︎
63. demon6 ↩︎
64. donutage: I was a bit skeptical of this, and sure, in a 52-song project there’s some unevenness, but between the sheer audacity of the attempt & the frequent successes it scores, definitely one of the more remarkable records of the year. ↩︎
65. Tak ↩︎
66. e (eva) ↩︎
67. Lizahadiz ↩︎
68. mbr ↩︎
69. brh ↩︎
70. umrk: my fav album released in 2025 ↩︎
71. superflippy ↩︎
72. raisedfist ↩︎
73. gavin57 ↩︎
74. Mark52: Jade Bird has been by far my most listened to album this year. ↩︎
75. poisonous ↩︎
76. derthomas: I kept coming back to this album because it just fits every mood. It’s peak Jethro Tull if you ask me, it’s perfect in any way. Also the Steven Wilson Remaster sounds incredible. ↩︎
77. burnitdown ↩︎
78. jebeyer: a longer list is here – https://www.buymusic.club/list/whistlingkitty-some-of-my-favorite-2025-releases ↩︎
79. thesinkingbelle: honorable mentions – Scare – In The End, Was It Worth It; Creatvre – Toujours Humain ; Guck – Gucked Up ; AVTT/PTTN – AVTT/PTTN; Saor – Amidst the Ruins ; Jessica93 – 666 tours de periph’ ; Deadguy – Near-Death Travel Services;  LS Dunes – Violet;  Aesop Rock – I Heard It’s A Mess There Too ; Fishbone – Stockholm Syndrome ; Dead Pioneers – Po$t American ; Ethereal Wound – Defile | Demise;  Sci Fi Industries – Initial States ↩︎
80. soundclamp ↩︎
81. cloudtripper ↩︎
82. rustynail ↩︎
83. derthomas: My AOTY from a very underground Heavy Metal band from Austria. ↩︎
84. platenworm ↩︎
85. raisedfist ↩︎
86. thesinkingbelle ↩︎
87. t4s: Honorable mentions – The Halo Effect, Machine Head, Heaven Shall Burn, Spiritbox, Jinjer, Allegaeon ↩︎
88. rachelcholst ↩︎
89. 3rik ↩︎
90. Wintergr33n: Percussion-driven music from Senegal on a self-released album: https://ra.co/news/82509. ↩︎
91. platenworm: 5 things that ruled my world musically this year:
  – The Analog Africa Label
  – The Artist L.A. Salami
  – The knowledge that you can have too much music
  – The knowledge that you can make your solo debut album when you are 100 years old……Hail Hail Marshall Allen
  – And that everybody loved Ozzy ↩︎
92. nellie_m: The music project that somehow touched me most deeply was the result of two years of work by Max Cooper. „Powerful works of art have traditionally sprung from some source deep within an artist and, if they strike the right tone, resonate with an audience to leave a lasting mark. But what if that equation were reversed: what if an artist were to draw their inspiration from deep within their audience, and use that to reflect those ideas, emotions, hopes, fears, pains and aspirations back to us?…“ ↩︎
93. niels || TG_Esq || sentynel || otherdog || umrk ↩︎
94. eamonn ↩︎
95. jake4480 ↩︎
96. steveroyle ↩︎
97. alicemcalicepants ↩︎
98. BramMeehan ↩︎
99. avi_miller: All three fall into the more ambient realm, and they all are absolutely phenomenal. I love music that is based more around textures and creating a mood than creating a melody, and this year had some really good ones. ↩︎
100. niels ↩︎
101. TG_Esq ↩︎
102. 3rik ↩︎
103. raisedfist ↩︎
104. keefeglise: Compositions by Nicholas Gombert and James Weeks. Performed by Apartment House. Flanders/UK. Contemporary Classical (Debatable! Gombert died in 1560.) ↩︎
105. evilchili: Two hipster kids from Brooklyn play 100 year old Appalachian folk tunes and make them come alive. Honest, reverential, and true. ↩︎
106. riff: “Instantly burned in my brain” this year (well, it was actually their KEXP session from april that blew my mind, but since i have to submit an album, it’ll do nicely :) ). ↩︎
107. avi_miller ↩︎
108. derthomas: I discovered this album this year on a metal journey (yeah, late to the party) and I loved it. It’s my favourite Ozzy album. ↩︎
109. _slotek_ ↩︎
110. mbr ↩︎
111. tym: Oh and not a brand new release, but the remaster and new tracks for the 20th anniversary reissue of ‘Takk…’ by Sigur Rós are pretty great. That and ( ) are still what I listen to the most, this year and apparently every year. ↩︎
112. Kingu ↩︎
113. epu: I had all but forgotten party drug enthusiasm tracks like ‘higher than the sun’ from 1991, and it turns out they made so many albums since I last tuned in. This one really resonates with my reaction to USpol this year. It rekindled my love for this band; I bought Evil Heat import on CD, my first physical purchase since last year. ↩︎
114. Mark52 ↩︎
115. sentynel ↩︎
116. Braininabowl ↩︎
117. jiiruu ↩︎
118. avi_miller ↩︎
119. jiiruu || t4s || gavin57 ↩︎
120. Steffi ↩︎
121. superflippy ↩︎
122. rustynail: most played ↩︎
123. sentynel ↩︎
124. debonaire ↩︎
125. debonaire ↩︎
126. TwoClownsEating: I discovered this band in 2025. Absolutely incredible, I’ve bought their entire catalogue and had the privilege to see them live a few months ago. Unbelievably good musicians. Magical music. ↩︎
127. jomel: 2025 was a great year for Belgian music. Stef Kamil Carlens, co-founder of dEUS has released a gem with his new band The Poem. I have seen SKC twice this year, once in a solo gig, and the second time (in less then 2 weeks) for the “worst Case scenario” rewind from (and so with) dEUS, those two concerts were fabulous, and at the time, I wasn’t expecting this release.
  Bonus Albums: The live album from Depeche Mode – Memento Mori: Mexico City; Arvo Pârt – Credo (released Alpha Classics label) which includes his “hits”  – Credo , Fratres , Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten (my favourite one)  https://outhere-music.com/en/albums/arvo-part-credo; 2025 Bryan Ferry release, with Amelia Barrat as female lead singer/speaker. Some of his material came from the 70’s and were updated, it’s a timeless album, and elegant as always https://soundcloud.com/bryanferry/sets/loose-talk-4 ↩︎
128. jebeyer ↩︎
129. jomel: (AKA 2manydj’s) Yep, those guys will make you dance, and rock, I guess they’ve listened to Kraftwerk & Front242. ↩︎
130. Tak ↩︎
131. nellie_m ↩︎
132. cloudtripper ↩︎
133. _slotek_ ↩︎
134. t4s ↩︎
135. Lizahadiz ↩︎
136. slamma ↩︎
137. e (eva): algorithmic mood music was my fav last year! but i’m still listening to it and i didn’t submit anything then. ↩︎
138. Steffi ↩︎
139. BramMeehan: I’ve listened to so much TDJ, though no one release in particular. ↩︎
140. jiiruu ↩︎
141. buffyleigh: There’s so many other albums I’d love to list here for exposure, but it feels more honest to list this masterpiece, my first obsession of the year, courtesy of catching their amazing set at the big Black Sabbath/Ozzy send-off concert. I mean, I even titled my AOTY list “Forty Six & 2”, since that was the first song Tool played there and got my attention. Said list is here. ↩︎
142. epu: Ok, this one’s kind of a cheat, it’s an EP.
  2024, my friend turned me on to Bug Club for its lo-fi production aesthetic, humor and infectious fun/dark undertones. Marriage from 2023 album ‘Rare Birds: Hour of Song’ was the hook.
  You can get this band straight into your heart and mind with this EP. And it takes me back to that one time I did go to Wales. ↩︎
143. jomel: This newcomer British female band has written the ultimate feminist anthem as opening track. || RolloTreadway: I don’t tend to be very much of a rock person, so for a big brash rock record to have such an impact on me must say something. It’s noisy and it’s loud and it has guitars and drums and punkiness. And, er, flutes. Harmonicas. Cellos. Weird interpretations of bible stories. All chaos and absurdity and celebration and being absolutely done with the patriarchy and above all else fun. So much fun. ↩︎
144. soundclamp ↩︎
145. santialone ↩︎
146. steveroyle ↩︎
147. jebeyer ↩︎
148. donutage: far & away my number 1; an angry & desperate neo-grunge banger. Sonia Sturino is a force of nature. ↩︎
149. RolloTreadway: In parts weird and experimental, in others traditional. Here there’s strange droney noise, and then there’s some light, old-fashioned fiddle playing. Electronic distortion, a choir recorded live outdoors singing a simple hymn. It’s an astonishingly creative and unique folk record. ↩︎
150. donutage: not as jaw-dropping as their debut (my runaway 2022 fave), but with a lot of the same qualities. It’s dancy, smart, & sexy, without ever once being submissive. || slamma ↩︎
151. alicemcalicepants ↩︎
152. slamma ↩︎
153. keefeglise ↩︎
154. evilchili: Afro-futurist South African Hip-Hop Mysticism. Blakrok instantly became my favourite female MC. ↩︎
155. Steffi ↩︎
#AOTY #AOTY2025 #CastleRat #Deafheaven #DieSpitz #Faetooth #ListenToThis #Messa #music #musicDiscovery #RiversOfNihil #TheNewEves #WetLeg
#aoty #aoty2025 #castlerat #deafheaven #diespitz #faetooth
Larry Russwurm @[email protected] · 2024-03-30 · 18:55 UTC

It was just said in the news that Donald Trump’s wealth has reached 6.5 billion dollars for the first time ever. This is enough to put him in the top 500 wealthiest people list for the first time. Just don’t expect that figure to stay at 6.5 billion dollars for all circumstances.
For instance, if some socialist put in place a wealth tax in the US, expect that 6.5 billion dollars to inexplicably become 78 cents. If you asked him to transfer all that wealth to you for a dollar, he’d say he can’t because there are too many liens against all that he owns.
If he wanted to take a loan out against all that capital, expect his net worth to suddenly grow. Suddenly he would be worth 15 billion dollars which would receive excellent loan rates.
He wants to be known as one of the wealthiest people in the world. That strokes his ego and also suggests some business acumen. But he had to eat crow when he was ordered to pay a bond above 500 million dollars by the court. Imagine his embarrassment that he could not pay this amount.
Lucky for the Donald, the appeal court changed the amount to 175 million dollars. An amount he says he can pay.
By the way this comes as a merger is completed. An amount that had been disclosed to be worth 22.5 million dollars is now valued at 4 billion dollars. How something can become worth 175 times what it was originally I will leave for you to decide.
Notice how his worth picks up just before he is in a federal election? Suddenly his business acumen looks just fine. That 175 times multiplier looks almost wizardly. Instead of what I choose to call it. I call it creative accounting. After the election, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Donald slipped out of the top 500 richest people. But that might be too late.
https://larryrusswurm.com/2024/03/30/creative-accounting/
#175MillionDolllarsDonaldCanPay #175XMultiplier #225MillionDollarStakeNowWorth4BillionDollars #500WealthiestPeopleList #businessAcumen_ #couldnTPay500MillionDollars #creativeAccounting #DonaldKnownForTakingOutLoansWithInflatedCollateralValues #DonaldTrump #loans #socialism #wealthTax

#175milliondolllarsdonaldcanpay #175xmultiplier #225milliondollarstakenowworth4billiondollars #500wealthiestpeoplelist #businessacumen_ #couldntpay500milliondollars
Larry Russwurm @[email protected] · 2024-03-30 · 18:55 UTC

It was just said in the news that Donald Trump’s wealth has reached 6.5 billion dollars for the first time ever. This is enough to put him in the top 500 wealthiest people list for the first time. Just don’t expect that figure to stay at 6.5 billion dollars for all circumstances.
For instance, if some socialist put in place a wealth tax in the US, expect that 6.5 billion dollars to inexplicably become 78 cents. If you asked him to transfer all that wealth to you for a dollar, he’d say he can’t because there are too many liens against all that he owns.
If he wanted to take a loan out against all that capital, expect his net worth to suddenly grow. Suddenly he would be worth 15 billion dollars which would receive excellent loan rates.
He wants to be known as one of the wealthiest people in the world. That strokes his ego and also suggests some business acumen. But he had to eat crow when he was ordered to pay a bond above 500 million dollars by the court. Imagine his embarrassment that he could not pay this amount.
Lucky for the Donald, the appeal court changed the amount to 175 million dollars. An amount he says he can pay.
By the way this comes as a merger is completed. An amount that had been disclosed to be worth 22.5 million dollars is now valued at 4 billion dollars. How something can become worth 175 times what it was originally I will leave for you to decide.
Notice how his worth picks up just before he is in a federal election? Suddenly his business acumen looks just fine. That 175 times multiplier looks almost wizardly. Instead of what I choose to call it. I call it creative accounting. After the election, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Donald slipped out of the top 500 richest people. But that might be too late.
https://larryrusswurm.com/2024/03/30/creative-accounting/
#175MillionDolllarsDonaldCanPay #175XMultiplier #225MillionDollarStakeNowWorth4BillionDollars #500WealthiestPeopleList #businessAcumen_ #couldnTPay500MillionDollars #creativeAccounting #DonaldKnownForTakingOutLoansWithInflatedCollateralValues #DonaldTrump #loans #socialism #wealthTax

#175milliondolllarsdonaldcanpay #175xmultiplier #225milliondollarstakenowworth4billiondollars #500wealthiestpeoplelist #businessacumen_ #couldntpay500milliondollars
Larry Russwurm @[email protected] · 2024-03-30 · 18:55 UTC

It was just said in the news that Donald Trump’s wealth has reached 6.5 billion dollars for the first time ever. This is enough to put him in the top 500 wealthiest people list for the first time. Just don’t expect that figure to stay at 6.5 billion dollars for all circumstances.
For instance, if some socialist put in place a wealth tax in the US, expect that 6.5 billion dollars to inexplicably become 78 cents. If you asked him to transfer all that wealth to you for a dollar, he’d say he can’t because there are too many liens against all that he owns.
If he wanted to take a loan out against all that capital, expect his net worth to suddenly grow. Suddenly he would be worth 15 billion dollars which would receive excellent loan rates.
He wants to be known as one of the wealthiest people in the world. That strokes his ego and also suggests some business acumen. But he had to eat crow when he was ordered to pay a bond above 500 million dollars by the court. Imagine his embarrassment that he could not pay this amount.
Lucky for the Donald, the appeal court changed the amount to 175 million dollars. An amount he says he can pay.
By the way this comes as a merger is completed. An amount that had been disclosed to be worth 22.5 million dollars is now valued at 4 billion dollars. How something can become worth 175 times what it was originally I will leave for you to decide.
Notice how his worth picks up just before he is in a federal election? Suddenly his business acumen looks just fine. That 175 times multiplier looks almost wizardly. Instead of what I choose to call it. I call it creative accounting. After the election, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Donald slipped out of the top 500 richest people. But that might be too late.
https://larryrusswurm.com/2024/03/30/creative-accounting/
#175MillionDolllarsDonaldCanPay #175XMultiplier #225MillionDollarStakeNowWorth4BillionDollars #500WealthiestPeopleList #businessAcumen_ #couldnTPay500MillionDollars #creativeAccounting #DonaldKnownForTakingOutLoansWithInflatedCollateralValues #DonaldTrump #loans #socialism #wealthTax

#wealthtax #socialism #loans #donaldtrump #donaldknownfortakingoutloanswithinflatedcollateralvalues #creativeaccounting
Larry Russwurm @[email protected] · 2024-03-30 · 18:55 UTC

It was just said in the news that Donald Trump’s wealth has reached 6.5 billion dollars for the first time ever. This is enough to put him in the top 500 wealthiest people list for the first time. Just don’t expect that figure to stay at 6.5 billion dollars for all circumstances.
For instance, if some socialist put in place a wealth tax in the US, expect that 6.5 billion dollars to inexplicably become 78 cents. If you asked him to transfer all that wealth to you for a dollar, he’d say he can’t because there are too many liens against all that he owns.
If he wanted to take a loan out against all that capital, expect his net worth to suddenly grow. Suddenly he would be worth 15 billion dollars which would receive excellent loan rates.
He wants to be known as one of the wealthiest people in the world. That strokes his ego and also suggests some business acumen. But he had to eat crow when he was ordered to pay a bond above 500 million dollars by the court. Imagine his embarrassment that he could not pay this amount.
Lucky for the Donald, the appeal court changed the amount to 175 million dollars. An amount he says he can pay.
By the way this comes as a merger is completed. An amount that had been disclosed to be worth 22.5 million dollars is now valued at 4 billion dollars. How something can become worth 175 times what it was originally I will leave for you to decide.
Notice how his worth picks up just before he is in a federal election? Suddenly his business acumen looks just fine. That 175 times multiplier looks almost wizardly. Instead of what I choose to call it. I call it creative accounting. After the election, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Donald slipped out of the top 500 richest people. But that might be too late.
https://larryrusswurm.com/2024/03/30/creative-accounting/
#175MillionDolllarsDonaldCanPay #175XMultiplier #225MillionDollarStakeNowWorth4BillionDollars #500WealthiestPeopleList #businessAcumen_ #couldnTPay500MillionDollars #creativeAccounting #DonaldKnownForTakingOutLoansWithInflatedCollateralValues #DonaldTrump #loans #socialism #wealthTax

#175milliondolllarsdonaldcanpay #175xmultiplier #225milliondollarstakenowworth4billiondollars #500wealthiestpeoplelist #businessacumen_ #couldntpay500milliondollars
Rob Pegoraro @[email protected] · 2024-03-30 · 03:14 UTC

The Capitals and the Wizards may not win another championship anytime soon, but they will continue playing their home games where they should: in the downtown arena they’ve called home since 1997 as first the MCI Center, then the Verizon Center, followed by the resulting nickname of the Phone Booth, and now Capital One Arena.
That’s the best possible resolution of an interlude in which Monumental Sports and Entertainment had committed to relocating both teams to a new arena to be built in Alexandria’s Potomac Yard neighborhood. The Dec. 13 news of that move seemed driven from the start not by fundamental flaws with the teams’ Gallery Place venue, placed atop three Metro lines, but by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R.) wanting to secure a political legacy.

Having failed to capitalize on his election in 2021 with durable policy achievements–and having just seen Republicans lose a narrow majority in the state senate and return the General Assembly to Democratic control–Youngkin jumped at the chance to invite Monumental owner Ted Leonsis to bring the Caps and the Wizards across the Potomac.
Leonsis saw the chance to stop worrying about crime and noise outside Capital One Arena and build a sports and entertainment district from scratch with the help of $1.35 billion in subsidies, so of course he accepted that handshake deal.
Alexandrians I know were not nearly as enthusiastic about the prospect of a 20,000-seat venue being plunked down in their midst and what that might mean for traffic and Metro. Democratic leaders in Richmond, meanwhile, revealed themselves comparably skeptical of a financing plan that advertised no downside for Virginia taxpayers but which banked on assumptions that included moving Georgetown basketball games and dozens of concerts to the new arena and having people pay as much as $75 for parking and $731 a night for nearby luxury hotel rooms to generate the taxes to cover those subsidies.
Weeks of Youngkin treating the General Assembly as if it were a lower-level occupant on the org chart at the Carlyle Group, the private-equity firm that made him exceptionally rich, did not advance his arena ambitions. And now with Monumental signing a “strategic partnership” Wednesday with the District to upgrade Capital One Arena and its surroundings–backed by $515 million in public funds–they’re officially defunct.
Which is good, because I didn’t like the thought of redoing the experiment of having our NBA and NHL franchises playing outside of the city center. The Alexandria arena would have at least been next to a Metro stop and next to a walkable neighborhood, unlike the Capital Centre in Landover that introduced me to Georgetown hoops without ever earning any nostalgia from me. But when it had been such an unambiguously good idea to move the D.C. area’s biggest arena to the heart of the District–and when so many other places have seen good things happen when they moved their arenas to their city centers–why would you want to go back on that even a little bit?
https://robpegoraro.com/2024/03/29/city-sized-arenas-belong-in-city-centers/
#CapOneArena #CapitalCentre #CapitalOneArena #Caps #GalleryPlace #Hoyas #Landover #MCICenter #NationalLanding #NHL #PhoneBooth #PotomacYard #USAirArena #VerizonCenter #Wizards

#caponearena #capitalcentre #capitalonearena #caps #galleryplace #hoyas
Rob Pegoraro @[email protected] · 2024-03-30 · 03:14 UTC

The Capitals and the Wizards may not win another championship anytime soon, but they will continue playing their home games where they should: in the downtown arena they’ve called home since 1997 as first the MCI Center, then the Verizon Center, followed by the resulting nickname of the Phone Booth, and now Capital One Arena.
That’s the best possible resolution of an interlude in which Monumental Sports and Entertainment had committed to relocating both teams to a new arena to be built in Alexandria’s Potomac Yard neighborhood. The Dec. 13 news of that move seemed driven from the start not by fundamental flaws with the teams’ Gallery Place venue, placed atop three Metro lines, but by Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R.) wanting to secure a political legacy.

Having failed to capitalize on his election in 2021 with durable policy achievements–and having just seen Republicans lose a narrow majority in the state senate and return the General Assembly to Democratic control–Youngkin jumped at the chance to invite Monumental owner Ted Leonsis to bring the Caps and the Wizards across the Potomac.
Leonsis saw the chance to stop worrying about crime and noise outside Capital One Arena and build a sports and entertainment district from scratch with the help of $1.35 billion in subsidies, so of course he accepted that handshake deal.
Alexandrians I know were not nearly as enthusiastic about the prospect of a 20,000-seat venue being plunked down in their midst and what that might mean for traffic and Metro. Democratic leaders in Richmond, meanwhile, revealed themselves comparably skeptical of a financing plan that advertised no downside for Virginia taxpayers but which banked on assumptions that included moving Georgetown basketball games and dozens of concerts to the new arena and having people pay as much as $75 for parking and $731 a night for nearby luxury hotel rooms to generate the taxes to cover those subsidies.
Weeks of Youngkin treating the General Assembly as if it were a lower-level occupant on the org chart at the Carlyle Group, the private-equity firm that made him exceptionally rich, did not advance his arena ambitions. And now with Monumental signing a “strategic partnership” Wednesday with the District to upgrade Capital One Arena and its surroundings–backed by $515 million in public funds–they’re officially defunct.
Which is good, because I didn’t like the thought of redoing the experiment of having our NBA and NHL franchises playing outside of the city center. The Alexandria arena would have at least been next to a Metro stop and next to a walkable neighborhood, unlike the Capital Centre in Landover that introduced me to Georgetown hoops without ever earning any nostalgia from me. But when it had been such an unambiguously good idea to move the D.C. area’s biggest arena to the heart of the District–and when so many other places have seen good things happen when they moved their arenas to their city centers–why would you want to go back on that even a little bit?
https://robpegoraro.com/2024/03/29/city-sized-arenas-belong-in-city-centers/
#CapOneArena #CapitalCentre #CapitalOneArena #Caps #GalleryPlace #Hoyas #Landover #MCICenter #NationalLanding #NHL #PhoneBooth #PotomacYard #USAirArena #VerizonCenter #Wizards

#caponearena #capitalcentre #capitalonearena #caps #galleryplace #hoyas
find you on :butterfedy1: fediverse @[email protected] · 2024-12-06 · 09:42 UTC

@TomAoki @stefano well said, both.... and havent you heard? Googl, m$ and scam'azon are now all investing in nuclear to poison people and planet, they say "for AI"
see the hashtag #nuclearAmazon / #nuclearGoogle and you'll get the full story. disgusting and opportunistic and a clear sign that bigtech knew what the outcome of the election would be because trump in july talked about more nuclear powered datacenters at a bitcoin conference.
i dont understand why countries are not boycotting and sanctioning the usa, frankly.

#nuclearamazon #nucleargoogle
Rob Pegoraro @[email protected] · 2024-02-17 · 04:53 UTC

The Virginia General Assembly is now past the halfway mark of its first session under Democratic control since the 2021 session, and I have to admit that I expected a little more out of my state’s legislature now that Republicans can’t quietly sink decent bills in committees as they did in the House of Delegates in the previous two-year session.
It’s not that the Western Hemisphere’s oldest continuous law-making body–I can’t write that without noting that for the first time in its 405-year history, the House is led by a Black man, Speaker Don Scott (D.-Portsmouth)–has been spinning its wheels in this session. As of Tuesday’s “crossover day,” the deadline for each chamber to pass any non-budget bill that the other may consider, more than a thousand bills have survived that deadline in our state’s unusually short legislative session.

They include a raft of gun-control measures, some of which attracted Republican votes and may escape a veto from Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), as well as various bills to protect Virginians from the enforcement of abortion bans (you can also think of them as forced-birth laws) in other states.
Other accomplishments by either house, in some cases by both, haven’t landed in as many headlines but deserve some recognition: streamlining rural broadband buildout, ending legacy admissions to public colleges and universities, banning unadvertised junk fees, extending health care to undocumented immigrant children, and legalizing the customary cyclist practice of treating stop signs without crossing traffic as yield signs.
I also appreciate how the General Assembly hasn’t rubber-stamped Youngkin’s ploy to help the Washington Capitals and Wizards move to Alexandria’s Potomac Yards neighborhood. That arena belongs in downtown D.C. on top of multiple Metro lines.
And yet the General Assembly has still missed major opportunities–even setting aside Dems postponing votes for constitutional amendments to end felony disenfranchisement and protect same-sex marriage and abortion rights until next year’s session.
(Constituional amendments must pass in separate General Assembly sessions before going to a popular vote, so I can understand how timing them for the same year as legislative elections makes them more obvious campaign issues.)
In particular, it’s disgraceful how often Democrats have quietly sunk decent bills in committees that would have put some limits on the ability of people and even companies to throw money at politicians. Virginia’s lax campaign-finance laws amount to legalized bribery of candidates and elected officials, and Dems in Richmond should be embarrassed to have done so little to fix that. Again.
On a lesser and more local level, I’m also annoyed that a measure to allow municipalities to ban noisy and polluting gas-powered leaf blowers got punted to next year’s session. Related: It’s still dumb how often cities and counties have to get a permission slip from Richmond to do things that would have little to no effect on their neighbors.
And then there are the cases where legislators didn’t even introduce bills that should have had a chance of passing. For example, four years after we couldn’t finish an anti-SLAPP bill to close Virginia to libel tourists, nobody tried to introduce one this year. And a year after a bill to restore direct online filing of state taxes got quashed in a House committee, nobody tried to fix that either.
I’ll be thinking about that last failure when I once again file our state taxes on paper. And when I vote this fall–as I will and as I always do, because I’ve already seen how much my state has changed, one election at a time. And because however grumpy I might get about one season’s legislative results, I’m not going to practice childlike citizenship by holding my voting breath until other people do the work.
https://robpegoraro.com/2024/02/16/progress-in-virginia-still-demands-some-patience/
#antiSLAPP #campaignFinance #crossoverDay #directTaxPrep #GlennYoungkin #HouseOfDelegates #leafBlowers #Richmond #VirginiaDemocrats #VirginiaGeneralAssembly #VirginiaIFile #VirginiaSenate

#antislapp #campaignfinance #crossoverday #directtaxprep #glennyoungkin #houseofdelegates
Rob Pegoraro @[email protected] · 2024-02-17 · 04:53 UTC

The Virginia General Assembly is now past the halfway mark of its first session under Democratic control since the 2021 session, and I have to admit that I expected a little more out of my state’s legislature now that Republicans can’t quietly sink decent bills in committees as they did in the House of Delegates in the previous two-year session.
It’s not that the Western Hemisphere’s oldest continuous law-making body–I can’t write that without noting that for the first time in its 405-year history, the House is led by a Black man, Speaker Don Scott (D.-Portsmouth)–has been spinning its wheels in this session. As of Tuesday’s “crossover day,” the deadline for each chamber to pass any non-budget bill that the other may consider, more than a thousand bills have survived that deadline in our state’s unusually short legislative session.

They include a raft of gun-control measures, some of which attracted Republican votes and may escape a veto from Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), as well as various bills to protect Virginians from the enforcement of abortion bans (you can also think of them as forced-birth laws) in other states.
Other accomplishments by either house, in some cases by both, haven’t landed in as many headlines but deserve some recognition: streamlining rural broadband buildout, ending legacy admissions to public colleges and universities, banning unadvertised junk fees, extending health care to undocumented immigrant children, and legalizing the customary cyclist practice of treating stop signs without crossing traffic as yield signs.
I also appreciate how the General Assembly hasn’t rubber-stamped Youngkin’s ploy to help the Washington Capitals and Wizards move to Alexandria’s Potomac Yards neighborhood. That arena belongs in downtown D.C. on top of multiple Metro lines.
And yet the General Assembly has still missed major opportunities–even setting aside Dems postponing votes for constitutional amendments to end felony disenfranchisement and protect same-sex marriage and abortion rights until next year’s session.
(Constituional amendments must pass in separate General Assembly sessions before going to a popular vote, so I can understand how timing them for the same year as legislative elections makes them more obvious campaign issues.)
In particular, it’s disgraceful how often Democrats have quietly sunk decent bills in committees that would have put some limits on the ability of people and even companies to throw money at politicians. Virginia’s lax campaign-finance laws amount to legalized bribery of candidates and elected officials, and Dems in Richmond should be embarrassed to have done so little to fix that. Again.
On a lesser and more local level, I’m also annoyed that a measure to allow municipalities to ban noisy and polluting gas-powered leaf blowers got punted to next year’s session. Related: It’s still dumb how often cities and counties have to get a permission slip from Richmond to do things that would have little to no effect on their neighbors.
And then there are the cases where legislators didn’t even introduce bills that should have had a chance of passing. For example, four years after we couldn’t finish an anti-SLAPP bill to close Virginia to libel tourists, nobody tried to introduce one this year. And a year after a bill to restore direct online filing of state taxes got quashed in a House committee, nobody tried to fix that either.
I’ll be thinking about that last failure when I once again file our state taxes on paper. And when I vote this fall–as I will and as I always do, because I’ve already seen how much my state has changed, one election at a time. And because however grumpy I might get about one season’s legislative results, I’m not going to practice childlike citizenship by holding my voting breath until other people do the work.
https://robpegoraro.com/2024/02/16/progress-in-virginia-still-demands-some-patience/
#antiSLAPP #campaignFinance #crossoverDay #directTaxPrep #GlennYoungkin #HouseOfDelegates #leafBlowers #Richmond #VirginiaDemocrats #VirginiaGeneralAssembly #VirginiaIFile #VirginiaSenate

#antislapp #campaignfinance #crossoverday #directtaxprep #glennyoungkin #houseofdelegates
Miro Collas @[email protected] · 2024-11-02 · 03:48 UTC

It's Bisan from Gaza and Will the U.S. Election Bring Relief or More Suffering? - YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LSJX7LG4cVg
#Palestine #Gaza #Israel #USA
#Bisan #wizard_bisan1
@palestine

#palestine #gaza #israel #usa #bisan #wizard_bisan1
Ville Morte @[email protected] · 2026-02-24 · 21:49 UTC

FLOTILLA FLOTILLA FLOTILLA

Grrrnd Zero, samedi 21 mars à 18:00 UTC+1
SOIRÉE DE SOUTIEN AUX FLOTILLES POUR GAZA

Le 21/03 à Grrrnd Zero, 60 avenue de Bohlen à Vaulx en velin.

Malgré le soi disant "cessez-le-feu" l'enclave de Gaza reste encore sous le feu des sionistes. Encore aujourd'hui, la listes des ONG humanitaires actives sur le terrain se voit réduite de nouveau par les autorités israéliennes. Malgré les accords passés avec les USA, l'acheminement de produits de première nécéssité reste bloqué aux portes de Gaza.
Les flotilles n'ont qu'un but, briser le blocus maritime et ouvrir un couloir humanitaire vers Gaza. Elles ont pu, au passé, accumuler suffisament de pression politique et médiatique à l'international pour pousser nos gouvernements européen à changer, même si très légèrement, leur relation à Israêl : la victoire des prisonniers de Filton au Royaume Uni, le rapatriement de certaines ambassades européenes d'israel, l'annulation de contrats de ventes d'armes anglaisse et d'autres contrats commerciaux entre la Croatie et Israêl.
Ces changements peuvent sembler imperceptibles, mais les flotilles sont un bras de levier populaire qui laisse aparaître une lueur d'espoir. Ce format d'action directe est une mobilisation citoyenne, elle sert aussi à briser l'indifférence et la paralysie médiatique. Réunir les populations du monde entier autour de cette lutte sur les mêmes bateaux est encore une action forte de soutien aux Palestien-nes.
Avec les nouvelles frappes contre le Liban et l'Iran de forces israêlo-étatsuniennes, il est encore plus crucial de se mobiliser pour une action directe et unie contre l'impérialisme capitaliste et le colonialisme et l'expansionisme militaire suprémaciste.
Retrouvons-nous alors à Grrrnd Zero le samedi 21 mars à 19h pour une soirée de soutien à la constitution des flotilles de printemps:

La soirée commencera avec une projection réunissant diverses mises en lumière des Palestinien-nes à Gaza. Le bistro zéro vous proposera un repas a prix libre.

Ce soir là, nous inaugurons également le lancement de la radio pirate Wave Zero, embarquée sur la flotille, qui maintiendra un lien en diffusion live via une web+FM Radio entre les bateaux et la terre.
La soirée sera donc rediffusée live sur Wave Zero : https://wavezero.world/

La nuit continuera avec concerts et dj set jusqu'à 1h30, avec:

Naiima Maré
Naiima Maré (Fr) est le projet solo électroacoustique électrifié et synthétisé de Marjolaine, et émergeant de Vaulx-en-Velin (Fr) au début des années 2020. Broderie de rythmes basses fréquences et de mélodies cassées, construites à partir de synthés rudimentaires, et parfois éléments électroniques bruts.
https://frequencescritiques.bandcamp.com/album/d-plier-la-cervelle-secr-te-2
https://soundcloud.com/naiimamare

Deux mille seize
Deux mille seize est un duo electro / weird /pop qui entremêle machines et voix. De sonorités spectrales synthétiques, empruntant à la techno, la dance comme au r'n'b en passant par des influences industrielles, new wave et excentriques, Deux mille seize se cache dans le ciel pour rejaillir dans les abysses. Serpentant dans un labyrinthe electrospectif, la boum n'est pas loin.

Grin Wizard
Grin Wizard est un pirate psychédélique des platines, producteur et défricheur sonore. Pour cette soirée en soutien à la flottille, il naviguera entre disco, funk et electro d’Égypte, du Liban, de Libye, de Palestine ou de Syrie entre autres, tissant des passerelles entre grooves 80s et textures électroniques plus brutes.

Nika Noss
Nika Noss dancefloor hybride-fem Performance de dj-set hybride inspirée des festivités folkloriques d’Europe de l’Est, où iel incarne unx Maître·ssex de Cérémonie comique et hyper-fem, et invite le public à un moment de danse collective autour de musiques pop, disco, house, techno et hyperpop.

Buvette et restauration prix libre sur place
PAS DE CB CASH ONLY
Prix conseillé +/-9€

https://agenda.villemorte.fr/event/soiree-de-soutien-au-shireen-et-a-la-flotille-de-la-liberte-pour-gaza-bistro-zero-avec-naiime-mare-2016-dr-grin

#djset #soireedesoutien #bouffe #concert #lyon
1001 Other Albums @[email protected] · 2026-01-02 · 07:00 UTC
CW: Albums the Fediverse Loved in 2025 (CW'd because it's a looooooong post)
Albums the Fediverse Loved in 2025
And here we have it: a list of 151 albums (plus a few artists/labels in general) that kept 64 of us going in 2025, nearly 75% of those 2025 releases and the rest earlier gems! Given our collective eclectic tastes, voting/ranking was not attempted, but bolded titles and post tags indicate albums that were submitted by multiple Fedizens. Genre tags are included as tasting notes (apologies if I got any wrong), each title is linked to its Bandcamp/Songlink when possible, and footnotes list who submitted each album along with extra comments they included (warning: comments may include MOAR ALBUMS; also note: footnotes look way better on the blog). So, click and listen away – perhaps you’ll find a new-to-you album that gets you through 2026!
Thanks so much to the Fedizens who joined in, it’s so nice to see familiar faces from the 1001 Other Albums project as well as some new ones! And, as always, it’s lovely to get a glimpse of how diverse our tastes in music are, and to see people trying something new solely based on a random Fedi recommendation. The Fedi music community truly is a bright spot, and I personally am immensely grateful for it. 🙏🏻

Band – Title (year released, place of origin; genre)footnote

Action/Adventure – Ever After (2025, US; pop-punk)1
AFI – Silver Bleeds the Black Sun… (2025, US; post-punk, gothic rock)2
Against Me! – White Crosses (2010, US; punk rock)3
Alkaline Trio – Blood, Hair, and Eyeballs (2024, US; punk rock)4
Am I in Trouble? – Spectrum (2025, US; avant-garde black metal)5
Ami Taf Ra – The Prophet and the Madman (2025, US/Morocco; Moroccan gnawa, gospel, jazz)6
An Abstract Illusion – Woe (2022, Sweden; atmospheric black/death/prog metal)7
Analog Africa (label, in general) (1960s-80s, Africa; reissues)8
Anna Tivel – Animal Poem (2025, US; indie folk)9
Archon Satani – The Righteous Way to Completion (1997, Sweden; death ambient/black industrial)10
Ashbreather – La Grande Bouffe (2025, Canada; progressive sludge/death metal)11
Au4 – …And Down Goes The Sky (2013, Canada; prog rock)12
aya – hexed! (2025, UK; electronic, noise)13
Bad Cop/Bad Cop – Lighten Up (2025, US; punk rock)14
Baghed – Smear Campaign (2025, US; punk rock)15
Bank Myna – Eimuria (2025, France; post-rock/metal, doom gaze, slow core)16
Belle and Sebastian – Push Barman to Open Old Wounds (2005, Scotland; indie pop)17
Benedicte Maurseth – Mirra (2025, Norway; folk, jazz)18
Bill Frisell – Harmony (2019, US; folk-jazz)19
Black Flower – Kinetic (2025, Belgium; Ethio-jazz, Afrobeat, dub)20
Bon Iver – SABLE, fABLE (2025, US; indie folk/pop)21
Brittany Davis – Black Thunder (2025, US; cosmic jazz, r&b/soul, singer-songwriter)22
CA7RIEL & Paco Amoroso – Papota (2025, Argentina; experimental trap, hip-hop, EDM, jazz, Latin pop)23
Caroline Shaw / Attacca Quartet – Orange (2019, US; classical, ambient, folk)24
Castle Rat – The Bestiary (2025, US; fantasy heavy metal)25
Causa Sui – Pewt’r Sessions 1 (2011, Denmark; psych/stoner rock)26
Celeste – Woman of Faces (2025, UK; neo-soul, jazz, singer-songwriter)27
Charlie Hunter, Carter McLean featuring Silvana Estrada – s/t (2018, US/Mexico; jazz)28
Circuit des Yeux – Halo on the Inside (2025, US; singer-songwriter, experimental)29
Civic – Chrome Dipped (2025, Australia; punk)30
clipping – Dead Channel Sky (2025, US; hip-hop)31
Dan Mangan – Natural Light (2025, Canada; indie rock/folk)32
Daniela Pas – Spira (2023, Italy; singer-songwriter, electronic, experimental)33
Data Rebel – Single Cell (2025, UK; electronic, IDM, ambient)34
Dax Riggs – 7 Songs for Spiders (2025, US; blues metal/shoegaze blues)35
Deafheaven – Lonely People With Power (2025, US; blackgaze, metal)36
Degraved – Spectral Realm of Ruin (2025, US; death metal)37
Delobos – Cabal (2025, Spain; post-alt rock, post-rock, psychedelia)38
Devil ANTHEM. – Profound Rebuild (2025, Japan; J-pop)39
Die Spitz – Something to Consume (2025, US; punk, alt rock)40
Divide and Dissolve – Insatiable (2025, Australia; doom, drone, neo classical)41
Dödsrit – Mortal Coil (2021, Sweden; atmospheric/melodic black metal, blackened crust)42
Dool – The Shape of Fluidity (2024, Netherlands; rock, alternative)43
downy – 8th Album/Untitled (2025, Japan; math rock/post-rock)44
Drab Majesty – Completely Careless (2012-2015) (2016, US; darkwave, shoegaze, dream pop)45
Dropkick Murphy – For The People (2025, US; Celtic punk)46
Eikichi Yazawa – I believe (2025, Japan; rock)47
El Pino & The Volunteers – The Long-lost Art of Becoming Invisible (2009, Netherlands; alt country/folk)48
Elli De Mon – Raìse (2025, Italy; blues, dialect, garage, psychedelic)49
Eric Church – Evangeline vs. The Machine (2025, US; country)50
Ethmebb – Allo Babar et les Caramboleurs (2025, France; progressive melodic blackened death power metal)51
Ex-Vöid – In Love Again (2025, UK; indie pop/rock)52
EYES – Spinner(2025, Denmark; hardcore, noise rock)53
FACS – Wish Defense (2025, US; noise rock, neo-post-punk)54
Faetooth – Labrynthine (2025, US; fairy doom/stoner metal)55
False Aralia (label) – ALL the new 12-inch singles (2025, US; abstract electronic)56
Fever Ray – The Year of the Radical Romantics (2025, Sweden; experimental, electronic, pop)57
FOKALITE – Fokas, Lite & Four Shooting Riddles (2025, Japan; J-pop)58
Françoise Hardy – La question (1971, France; French pop, Brazilian saudade/bossa nova)59
Fust – Big Ugly (2025, US; rock)60
Geese – Getting Killed (2025, US; art/experimental rock)61
Gnome – King (2022, Belgium; stoner/prog/hard rock)62
Habak – Mil orquídeas en medio del desierto (2025, Mexico; melodic crust)63
Hallelujah the Hills – DECK (2025, US; indie rock)64
HANABIE – Bucchigiri Tokyo (2024, Japan; metalcore)65
Hatchie – Liquorice (2025, Australia; indie/dream pop)66
Hole – Live Through This (1994, US; alt rock)67
IAN – Come On Everybody, Let’s Do Nothing! (2025, UK; experimental, post-rock/metal)68
Igorrr – Amen (2025, France; experimental/avant-garde metal)69
Imperial Triumphant – Goldstar (2025, US; experimental metal)70
In the Womb of the Universe – Searching for Sunrise (2024, US; electronic, synthpop)71
In the Woods… – Otra (2025, Norway; avant-garde metal)72
Insomnium – Shadows of the Dying Sun (2014, Finland; melodic death metal)73
Jade Bird – Who Wants to Talk About Love (2025, UK; folk rock, singer-songwriter)74
JER – Death of the Heart (2025, US; ska punk)75
Jethro Tull – Thick as a Brick (1972, UK; prog rock)76
Judas Priest – Invincible Shield (2024, UK; heavy metal)77
Just Mustard – We Were Just Here (2025, Ireland; post-punk, noise, shoegaze, trip hop)78
Kaku P-Model – unZIP (2025, Japan; experimental, electronic)79
Kieran Hebden and William Tyler – 41 Longfield Street Late ‘80s (2025, UK; electronic)80
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Float Along – Fill Your Lungs (2013, Australia; psychedelic pop)81
Kostnatění – Přílišnost (2025, US; avant-garde black metal)82
Küenring – In Search of Paradise (2025, Austria; heavy metal/hard rock)83
L.A. Salami (artist, in general) (UK; folk, post-modern blues, acoustic, rock)84
Labyrinthus Stellarum – Rift in Reality (2025, Ukraine; atmospheric/cosmic black metal)85
Lorien Testard – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Original Soundtrack) (2025, France; soundtrack)86
Lorna Shore – I Feel The Everblack Festering Within Me (2025, US; death metal/deathcore)87
Lucy Dacus – Forever is a Feeling (2025, US; indie rock, folk-pop, singer-songwriter)88
Maeror Tri – Multiple Personality Disorder (1993, Germany; ambient, noise, drone)89
Mark Ernestus’ Ndagga Rhythm Force – Khadim (2025, Germany/Senegal; mbalax, experimental, dub techno)90
Marshall Allen – New Dawn (2025, US; avant-garde jazz)91
Max Cooper – On Being (2025, UK; electronic, ambient, avant-garde)92
Messa – The Spin (2025, Italy; doom metal)93
Michel Legrand – The Essential Michel Legrand Film Music Collection (2005, France; soundtrack, compilation)94
MIKE – Showbiz! (2025, US; hip-hop/rap)95
Miynt – Rain Money Dogs (2025, Sweden; indie/bedroom rock)96
Modern English – Mesh & Lace (1981, UK; post-punk)97
Momma – Welcome to My Blue Sky (2025, US; alt/indie rock)98
more eaze & claire rousay – no floor (2025, US; experimental, ambient, avant-pop, sound collage)99
Moron Police – Pachinko (2025, Norway; concept album)100
Morris Kolontyrsky – Origination (2025, US; ambient, drone, experimental)101
Nærværet – Når Man Ser Inn I En Annens Hjerte (2024, Sweden/Norway; experimental, field recording, tape manipulation/loops)102
Nailed to Obscurity – Generation of The Void (2025, Germany; melodic/prog death/doom metal)103
Nicolas Gombert & James Weeks / Apartment House – G O M B E R T (2025, Flanders/UK; contemporary classical)104
Nora Brown and Stephanie Coleman – Lady of the Lake (2023, US; folk)105
Nout – Live Album (2024, France; alternative, punk, rock, jazz, noise)106
Olga Anna Markowska – Iskra (2025, Poland; modern classical, ambient)107
Ozzy Osbourne – Ozzmosis (1995, UK; heavy metal)108
Pino Palladino & Blake Mills – That Wasn’t a Dream (2025, Wales/US; experimental jazz)109
Point Mort – Le Point de Non-retour (2025, France; blackened crust postcore)110
Plague of Carcosa – In The Dreamless Deep (2025, US; doomnoise, experimental metal)111
Population II – Maintenant Jamais (2025, Canada; art/prog/psychedelic rock)112
Primal Scream – XTRMNTR (2000, Scotland; experimental electro-rock)113
Priscilla Block – Things You Didn’t See (2025, US; country, singer-songwriter)114
Psychonaut – World Maker (2025, Belgium; post-metal)115
Queens of the Stone Age – Alive in the Catacombs (2025, US; rock)116
Radiopuhelimet – Kosminen Tiedottomuus (2020, Finland; alt rock)117
Rebecca Foon & Aliayta Foon-Dancoes – Reverie (2025, Canada; modern classical)118
Rivers of Nihil – s/t (2025, US; death/prog metal)119
Rogue Jones – Dos Bebés (2023, Wales; folk, indie pop)120
Shayfer James – Summoning (2025, US; noir-pop, dark cabaret)121
Shedfromthebody – Whisper and Wane (2025, Finland; doomgaze, [post-]metal)122
Shepherds of Cassini – In Thrall to Heresy (2025, New Zealand; prog metal)123
Silvana Estrada – Vendrán Suaves Lluvias (2025, Mexico; singer-songwriter)124
Silvana Estrada (with Charlie Hunter) – Lo Sagrado (2017, Mexico/US; singer-songwriter)125
Širom – In the Wind of Night, Hard-Fallen Incantations Whisper (2025, Slovenia; instrumental avant-garde imaginary folk)126
SKC & The Poem – s/t (2025, Belgium; alt/folk rock)127
SKLOSS – The Pattern Speaks (2025, US/Scotland; space gaze, post-metal)128
Soulwax – All Systems Are Lying (2025, Belgium; electronic alt rock)129
Spiritbox – Tsunami Sea (2025, Canada; metalcore)130
State Azure – The Light That Remains (2025, UK; electronica, ambient, downtempo)131
Stereolab – Switched On Volumes 1-5 (2024, UK/France; avant-pop)132
Steve Tibbetts – Close (2025, US; jazz fusion)133
Stick To Your Guns – Keep Planting Flowers (2025, US; hardcore)134
Suede – Antidepressants (2025, UK; post-punk, gothic rock)135
Summer Walker – Finally Over It (2025, US; R&B, singer-songwriter)136
Susan Bear – Algorithmic Mood Music (2024, Scotland; electronic, alt-pop)137
Swansea Sound – Twentieth Century (2023, Wales; indie pop)138
TDJ (artist, in general) (Canada; electronic)139
Terveet Kädet – Lapin Helvetti (2015, Finland; hardcore punk)140
Tool – Lateralus (2001, US; prog rock/metal, art rock)141
The Bug Club – “Have U Ever Been 2 Wales” (2025, Wales; indie rock)142
The New Eves – The New Eve Is Rising (2025, UK; avant-garde/art rock)143
Trio del Mango – Cómelo (2025, US/Puerto Rico; experimental, noise)144
Turnstile – Never Enough (2025, US; alt rock)145
UNIVERSITY – McCartney, It’ll Be OK (2025, UK; punk, noise rock)146
Water Damage – Instruments (2025, US; experimental psych/drone-rock)147
Weakened Friends – Feels Like Hell (2025, US; indie rock)148
Weirs – Diamond Grove (2025, US; trad folk, experimental noise)149
Wet Leg – moisturizer (2025, UK; indie rock)150
White Lies – Five V2 (2019, UK; post-punk)151
X-Cetra – Summer 2000 (Y2K 25th Anniversary Edition) (2025, US; sleepover core, dance-pop)152
Yara Asmar – everyone I love is sleeping and I love them so so much (2025, Lebanon; modern classical/ambient)153
Yugen Blakrok – Anima Mysterium (2019, South Africa; hip-hop)154
Yws Gwynedd – Codi/ \Cysgu (2014, Wales; indie rock)155

Footnote Number. Fediverse username(s): Comments

poisonous ↩︎
buffyleigh: My emotional support album of the year. I’ve been a fan of AFI since 2000 but haven’t liked an album since 2006. The second I heard the first single “Behind The Clock”, my expectations for this album skyrocketed, and they were absolutely exceeded. It sounds nothing like anything they’ve ever done, and yet it feels like this was the album they’ve always been moving towards. Song of the year goes to the entirety of side A, and Davey Havok’s unexpectedly different sound on this album is my overall favourite vocal performance of year. ↩︎
Braininabowl ↩︎
umrk: top album requested by my kids in the car this year ↩︎
brh ↩︎
RolloTreadway: The most gloriously unhinged album I’ve heard this year. Twists together ideas from everywhere without the slightest consideration of whether doing so might be normal or accepted. The kind of album where a classic French chanson or some deep filthy funk just appears out of nowhere and then is never referred to again. It shouldn’t work but it absolutely does. ↩︎
gavin57: That last one is an all-timer. It’s astonishing. ↩︎
platenworm ↩︎
rachelcholst ↩︎
3rik: This has been a year for nighttime music and music for trying to sleep. ↩︎
swampgas: definitely my most played this year. A sludgy, deathdoom concept album about greed and gluttony and corruption thats riffy and groovy af. These are driving rhythms that chug hard! ↩︎
MichaelMcWilliams: The one album that tops my list this year also appears in the 1001 Other Albums list. Band website offering free download of the album: https://au4.ca ↩︎
brh ↩︎
poisonous ↩︎
jake4480 ↩︎
mbr ↩︎
riff: Most “Wait why did i never listen to this band before ?” of the year. ↩︎
keefeglise ↩︎
eamonn ↩︎
_slotek_ ↩︎
onuryasar: My kind of, very balanced Indie Pop: just the right amount of Indie but not too much and just the right amount of Pop but not too much 🙂 ↩︎
icastico ↩︎
santialone ↩︎
eamonn ↩︎
burnitdown || MetalheadDana ↩︎
cloudtripper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_e5kKzlFqU&list=RD8_e5kKzlFqU&start_radio=1 ↩︎
nevar23 ↩︎
debonaire: Recency bias is pushing me to three Silvana Estrada albums. I love her voice, I love the music, I love her with Charlie Hunter. ↩︎
otherdog ↩︎
fistfulofdave: Aussie punk in the vein of The Saints and Radio Birdman. ↩︎
rothko ↩︎
Chigaze: what happens when four guys to go a cottage in Ontario, find a flow state, and record an album over a few days. I got to see them play the album through at the Winspear in Edmonton and it’s way up there on my concert experience list. ↩︎
evilchili: The Italian singer and composer’s debut is a hypnotic journey of loops, bloops, and dramatic and impassioned vocalizations. ↩︎
nellie_m ↩︎
fistfulofdave: Blues metal? Shoegaze blues? I don’t know or care, I like it. ↩︎
tym || niels ↩︎
jake4480 ↩︎
santialone ↩︎
Kingu ↩︎
tym || demon6 ↩︎
otherdog ↩︎
MetalheadDana: I listened to this album when it first came out in 2021 but for some reason it didn’t click with me. But apparently 2021 Dana had horrible taste in music, because in early 2025 I randomly tried Dodsrit – Mortal Coil again and fell in love and have been obsessed with it all year, it’s the perfect blend of crust punk and black metal and I love it. ↩︎
TG_Esq ↩︎
rustynail ↩︎
alicemcalicepants ↩︎
Chigaze: nails it just as a solid Dropkick’s album but goes farther with songs made for the times. “Who’ll Stand With Us” and “School Days Over” are amazing workers songs while “Chesterfields and Aftershave” takes me back to my own grandfather. ↩︎
thesinkingbelle ↩︎
Braininabowl ↩︎
riff: Most listened this year. ↩︎
Mark52 ↩︎
Moss ↩︎
e (eva) ↩︎
steveroyle: Leaving out Never Enough by Turnstile as I’m sure that’ll get plenty of votes. ↩︎
fistfulofdave: Angular, noise rock, neo-post punk. Unsettling, laid-back, yet aggressive. And yes it was the last album Steve Albini recorded. ↩︎
MetalheadDana || demon6 ↩︎
soundclamp: Runner-ups – https://lineimprint.bandcamp.com/album/muzak-for-the-encouragement-of-unproductivity; https://myheartaninvertedflame.bandcamp.com/album/my-heart-an-inverted-flame-apparitions-split; https://timbarnes.bandcamp.com/album/lost-words-1 ↩︎
buffyleigh: I’ve known of Fever Ray since first seeing the TV show Vikings, but I for some reason didn’t check them out further until this year, when their s/t album came up for a blog post. I was floored. As it happens, their kinda sorta live album was set to come out soon after my first listen of the s/t, so I got caught up on the full Karin Dreijer discography, got super duper obsessed with their spectacular ARTE concert (which is essentially the same versions performed on the new album), and proceeded to be immensely inspired – nay, awakened – by this artist. ↩︎
Kingu ↩︎
onuryasar: I’ve first discovered the song Apocalypse by Cigarettes After Sex (I know, late comer), which brought me to Greg Gonzalez’s Wikipedia page, that says “Gonzalez was heavily inspired by French singer Françoise Hardy and her album La question”. I remember this album being mentioned in my Fedi timeline recently, so I gave it a spin and it turned on and on for the remainder of the year. [Editor’s note: Also see the 1001 OA spotlight on this album from earlier this year!] ↩︎
rachelcholst ↩︎
mynameistillian ↩︎
burnitdown ↩︎
demon6 ↩︎
donutage: I was a bit skeptical of this, and sure, in a 52-song project there’s some unevenness, but between the sheer audacity of the attempt & the frequent successes it scores, definitely one of the more remarkable records of the year. ↩︎
Tak ↩︎
e (eva) ↩︎
Lizahadiz ↩︎
mbr ↩︎
brh ↩︎
umrk: my fav album released in 2025 ↩︎
superflippy ↩︎
raisedfist ↩︎
gavin57 ↩︎
Mark52: Jade Bird has been by far my most listened to album this year. ↩︎
poisonous ↩︎
derthomas: I kept coming back to this album because it just fits every mood. It’s peak Jethro Tull if you ask me, it’s perfect in any way. Also the Steven Wilson Remaster sounds incredible. ↩︎
burnitdown ↩︎
jebeyer: a longer list is here – https://www.buymusic.club/list/whistlingkitty-some-of-my-favorite-2025-releases ↩︎
thesinkingbelle: honorable mentions – Scare – In The End, Was It Worth It; Creatvre – Toujours Humain ; Guck – Gucked Up ; AVTT/PTTN – AVTT/PTTN; Saor – Amidst the Ruins ; Jessica93 – 666 tours de periph’ ; Deadguy – Near-Death Travel Services;  LS Dunes – Violet;  Aesop Rock – I Heard It’s A Mess There Too ; Fishbone – Stockholm Syndrome ; Dead Pioneers – Po$t American ; Ethereal Wound – Defile | Demise;  Sci Fi Industries – Initial States ↩︎
soundclamp ↩︎
cloudtripper ↩︎
rustynail ↩︎
derthomas: My AOTY from a very underground Heavy Metal band from Austria. ↩︎
platenworm ↩︎
raisedfist ↩︎
thesinkingbelle ↩︎
t4s: Honorable mentions – The Halo Effect, Machine Head, Heaven Shall Burn, Spiritbox, Jinjer, Allegaeon ↩︎
rachelcholst ↩︎
3rik ↩︎
Wintergr33n: Percussion-driven music from Senegal on a self-released album: https://ra.co/news/82509. ↩︎
platenworm: 5 things that ruled my world musically this year:
– The Analog Africa Label
– The Artist L.A. Salami
– The knowledge that you can have too much music
– The knowledge that you can make your solo debut album when you are 100 years old……Hail Hail Marshall Allen
– And that everybody loved Ozzy ↩︎
nellie_m: The music project that somehow touched me most deeply was the result of two years of work by Max Cooper. „Powerful works of art have traditionally sprung from some source deep within an artist and, if they strike the right tone, resonate with an audience to leave a lasting mark. But what if that equation were reversed: what if an artist were to draw their inspiration from deep within their audience, and use that to reflect those ideas, emotions, hopes, fears, pains and aspirations back to us?…“ ↩︎
niels || TG_Esq || sentynel || otherdog || umrk ↩︎
eamonn ↩︎
jake4480 ↩︎
steveroyle ↩︎
alicemcalicepants ↩︎
BramMeehan ↩︎
avi_miller: All three fall into the more ambient realm, and they all are absolutely phenomenal. I love music that is based more around textures and creating a mood than creating a melody, and this year had some really good ones. ↩︎
niels ↩︎
TG_Esq ↩︎
3rik ↩︎
raisedfist ↩︎
keefeglise: Compositions by Nicholas Gombert and James Weeks. Performed by Apartment House. Flanders/UK. Contemporary Classical (Debatable! Gombert died in 1560.) ↩︎
evilchili: Two hipster kids from Brooklyn play 100 year old Appalachian folk tunes and make them come alive. Honest, reverential, and true. ↩︎
riff: “Instantly burned in my brain” this year (well, it was actually their KEXP session from april that blew my mind, but since i have to submit an album, it’ll do nicely 🙂 ). ↩︎
avi_miller ↩︎
derthomas: I discovered this album this year on a metal journey (yeah, late to the party) and I loved it. It’s my favourite Ozzy album. ↩︎
_slotek_ ↩︎
mbr ↩︎
tym: Oh and not a brand new release, but the remaster and new tracks for the 20th anniversary reissue of ‘Takk…’ by Sigur Rós are pretty great. That and ( ) are still what I listen to the most, this year and apparently every year. ↩︎
Kingu ↩︎
epu: I had all but forgotten party drug enthusiasm tracks like ‘higher than the sun’ from 1991, and it turns out they made so many albums since I last tuned in. This one really resonates with my reaction to USpol this year. It rekindled my love for this band; I bought Evil Heat import on CD, my first physical purchase since last year. ↩︎
Mark52 ↩︎
sentynel ↩︎
Braininabowl ↩︎
jiiruu ↩︎
avi_miller ↩︎
jiiruu || t4s || gavin57 ↩︎
Steffi ↩︎
superflippy ↩︎
rustynail: most played ↩︎
sentynel ↩︎
debonaire ↩︎
debonaire ↩︎
TwoClownsEating: I discovered this band in 2025. Absolutely incredible, I’ve bought their entire catalogue and had the privilege to see them live a few months ago. Unbelievably good musicians. Magical music. ↩︎
jomel: 2025 was a great year for Belgian music. Stef Kamil Carlens, co-founder of dEUS has released a gem with his new band The Poem. I have seen SKC twice this year, once in a solo gig, and the second time (in less then 2 weeks) for the “worst Case scenario” rewind from (and so with) dEUS, those two concerts were fabulous, and at the time, I wasn’t expecting this release.
Bonus Albums: The live album from Depeche Mode – Memento Mori: Mexico City; Arvo Pârt – Credo (released Alpha Classics label) which includes his “hits”  – Credo , Fratres , Cantus in memory of Benjamin Britten (my favourite one)  https://outhere-music.com/en/albums/arvo-part-credo; 2025 Bryan Ferry release, with Amelia Barrat as female lead singer/speaker. Some of his material came from the 70’s and were updated, it’s a timeless album, and elegant as always https://soundcloud.com/bryanferry/sets/loose-talk-4 ↩︎
jebeyer ↩︎
jomel: (AKA 2manydj’s) Yep, those guys will make you dance, and rock, I guess they’ve listened to Kraftwerk & Front242. ↩︎
Tak ↩︎
nellie_m ↩︎
cloudtripper ↩︎
_slotek_ ↩︎
t4s ↩︎
Lizahadiz ↩︎
slamma ↩︎
e (eva): algorithmic mood music was my fav last year! but i’m still listening to it and i didn’t submit anything then. ↩︎
Steffi ↩︎
BramMeehan: I’ve listened to so much TDJ, though no one release in particular. ↩︎
jiiruu ↩︎
buffyleigh: There’s so many other albums I’d love to list here for exposure, but it feels more honest to list this masterpiece, my first obsession of the year, courtesy of catching their amazing set at the big Black Sabbath/Ozzy send-off concert. I mean, I even titled my AOTY list “Forty Six & 2”, since that was the first song Tool played there and got my attention. Said list is here. ↩︎
epu: Ok, this one’s kind of a cheat, it’s an EP.
2024, my friend turned me on to Bug Club for its lo-fi production aesthetic, humor and infectious fun/dark undertones. Marriage from 2023 album ‘Rare Birds: Hour of Song’ was the hook.
You can get this band straight into your heart and mind with this EP. And it takes me back to that one time I did go to Wales. ↩︎
jomel: This newcomer British female band has written the ultimate feminist anthem as opening track. || RolloTreadway: I don’t tend to be very much of a rock person, so for a big brash rock record to have such an impact on me must say something. It’s noisy and it’s loud and it has guitars and drums and punkiness. And, er, flutes. Harmonicas. Cellos. Weird interpretations of bible stories. All chaos and absurdity and celebration and being absolutely done with the patriarchy and above all else fun. So much fun. ↩︎
soundclamp ↩︎
santialone ↩︎
steveroyle ↩︎
jebeyer ↩︎
donutage: far & away my number 1; an angry & desperate neo-grunge banger. Sonia Sturino is a force of nature. ↩︎
RolloTreadway: In parts weird and experimental, in others traditional. Here there’s strange droney noise, and then there’s some light, old-fashioned fiddle playing. Electronic distortion, a choir recorded live outdoors singing a simple hymn. It’s an astonishingly creative and unique folk record. ↩︎
donutage: not as jaw-dropping as their debut (my runaway 2022 fave), but with a lot of the same qualities. It’s dancy, smart, & sexy, without ever once being submissive. || slamma ↩︎
alicemcalicepants ↩︎
slamma ↩︎
keefeglise ↩︎
evilchili: Afro-futurist South African Hip-Hop Mysticism. Blakrok instantly became my favourite female MC. ↩︎
Steffi ↩︎
#AOTY #AOTY2025 #CastleRat #Deafheaven #DieSpitz #Faetooth #ListenToThis #Messa #music #musicDiscovery #RiversOfNihil #TheNewEves #WetLeg
#aoty #aoty2025 #castlerat #deafheaven #diespitz #faetooth