Continuing the /amodelofcontrol.com review of 2025 – which this week is the twentieth /Tracks of the Year list on this site. Next week will be the wrap of the best albums of 2025.

/Countdown/Tracks/History

/Countdown /Tracks /#1s on Spotify

/2024 /The Last Year /Extinction
/2023 /Skindred /Gimme That Boom
/2022 /SRSQ /Someday I Will Bask In The Sun
/2021 /ACTORS /Killing Time (Is Over)
/2020 /seeming /End Studies
/2019 /SCALPING /Ruptured
/2018 /IDLES /Television
/2017 /Zola Jesus /Siphon
/2016 /School of Seven Bells /Signals
/2015 /CHVRCHES /Playing Dead
/2014 /seeming /The Burial

/2013 /Seabound /Nothing But Love
/2012 /Death Grips /Hacker
/2011 /Frank Turner /One Foot Before The Other
/2010 /In Strict Confidence /Silver Bullets
/2009 /Yeah Yeah Yeahs /Zero
/2008 /Mind.in.a.box /What Used To Be (Short Storm)
/2007 /Prometheus Burning /Battery Drain
/2006: No tracks of the year list
/2005 /Grendel /Soilbleed & /Rotersand /Exterminate Annihilate Destroy
/2004: No tracks of the year list

The tracks of the year post is often the hardest to collate and write. It is perhaps because I have so much choice – even from just the /Tracks of the Month posts in my /Tuesday Ten series this year, I had 30 tracks to choose from (needless to say, it’s not unusual for me to be writing about more than ten tracks each month!), and it’s also not unusual for a few more to pop into consideration in one way or another. For example, the release list file that I keep recorded 345 relevant releases to consider – and that by no means covered everything. In other words, there’s been a whole lot of new music this year once again.

Music is such a part of my life that I’m generally listening to music when I’m on my own. Even just going by my Last.fm stats, I’ve listened to 18,717 songs during the “qualifying” period for this list (see below) – made up from 13,842 unique songs, and 4,120 artists. Some struck a chord, some were older, and others will not have made an impression at all. Working from home, for the most part, helps – music has long soundtracked my working day when I’m not on calls – and I like to try and vary and expand what I’m listening to. I’ve also continued DJing both on livestreams and in-person, and as always, this list will be far more than just industrial music.

A note on “eligibility” for this list. If the song was released between 01-Dec 2024 and 30-Nov 2025 and/or featured on an album of new material in that same timeframe, it counts.

I run /amodelofcontrol.com as what might be called a “labour of love”. I’ve written about music for twenty-eight years, over twenty of those years under this website banner, and I continue to want to celebrate all that is great about this corner of the musical realm. So this site continues to exist – with no external funding aside from a tiny amount from Patreon, and no paid-for advertising – and I will continue to do so as long as I want to do it, and as long as people want to read it.

So thanks for reading, contributing, offering comments, or being one of those people that makes the music I want to write about. Look forward to more from me about the music I listen to in 2026.

/amodelofcontrol.com now has a Patreon page, at this stage purely as a potential way of helping to cover the running costs of the site. There is absolutely no compulsion to do so: if you feel you can chuck a small amount to the site each month, that would be appreciated.

/50-/41 – /40-/31 – /30-/21 – /20-/11 – /10-/01

/YARD
/Trevor
/YARD

YARD are one of a number of bands to come out of what is clearly a fertile Irish alternative scene at the moment, and this trio lean heavily toward industrial-influenced noise rock. The first track on their first EP – following a good number of singles – perhaps is the first track I can think of with the title Trevor, but this is anything but mundane, and nor is it about a person. A lengthy build-up gives way to a grimy, powerful rhythm, before morphing into danceable, rough-edged techno-industrial as the vocalist mutters about “Checking outside for Trevor” – which turns out to be the name of a stolen bike, and the track ends in a rampaging coda that turns everything up to eleven. Amazingly this is not the first song I’ve heard about having your bike stolen…

/Electric Callboy
/Elevator Operator

The more I hear of Electric Callboy, the more I question how they do it. Really, this shouldn’t work: a band whose primary influences appear to be early-2000s dance music like Cascada (they have, of course, covered Every Time We Touch) and Slipknot, and they make heavy use of both sides of this bizarre coin. Elevator Operator was one of a number of singles from them this year, and it is an example of exactly why this band are so entertaining. The chorus is melodic and sweet, you could crush rocks with the breakdown, and when it slams into life, you need to hold on tight before you get left behind. They are not a serious metal band particularly – instead they appear to have decided to live their best life playing the music they love, and I can’t help but wonder if they are as surprised as everyone else the way that this has caught on…

/Cold In Berlin
/Hangman’s Daughter
/Wounds

After some years of exploring doomy, metallic sounds, Cold In Berlin have pivoted back toward their gothic origins recently, and their current sound suits them well. Lead single Hangman’s Daughter is underpinned by an ominous synth pulse, while the band hammer out a piledriving rhythm section for vocalist Mya to howl her words of pain and fury over. Ostensibly a murder ballad in origin (woman spurns a man, he kills the woman he “loves”, she haunts him after death), it also pointedly highlights the ways women have to try and survive abusive men (both physically and psychologically). Like all Cold In Berlin songs, absolutely nothing is held back, and this formidable band continue to be one to pay attention to.

/Prolapse
/Err on the Side of the Dead
/I Wonder When They’re Going To Destroy Your Face

Sure, they reformed a decade ago for a few shows (I saw them supporting Mogwai), but I don’t think I was the only one that didn’t expect a new album, and certainly not one 26 years after the last. They remain an unusual band – a seven-piece, with two vocalists (Mick Derrick and Linda Steelyard) and three guitarists, and a distinct feeling that Derrick and Steelyard are, at points, attempting to sing entirely different songs at the same time while their bandmates gamely press on forward. Thus, one of the joys of their return is that the unresolved tension remains – you never quite know where the band will go next. The magnificently-titled Err on the Side of the Dead is six minutes of nervous, edgy force – waves of guitars, brittle rhythms and grumbling from Mick Derrick, while Linda Steelyard provides a voice on his shoulder, or that’s how it sounds. Their raw, unpolished sound won’t be for everyone, but then it wasn’t in the first place, either…

/Pulp
/Spike Island
/More

How’s your memory of the past? Of some of the most formative moments in my younger life, they are now sketchy at best, and I only remember that they were great, but not most of the details. But as Jarvis Cocker drily notes on Pulp’s unexpected comeback single, your memory plays some real fucking tricks on you as the years pass. Much like the rest of More, there’s no gigantic, epoch-changing single, it’s more insidious than that. Pulp have changed, grown up, and the feeling here is to live in the now and make something of this, rather than constantly referring back to a past that might not have quite been as great as you hope it was.

/Mojave Phone Booth
/Unrelated
/Blood Doctor Volume One

A country mile from the industrial rock of Snake River Conspiracy, Tobey Torres-Doran and Mitchell J Doran teamed up with Lynn Farmer of Meat Beat Manifesto for this project, that frankly edges into noisy, experimental industrial at points and for many will be a step too far. The relentless mechanical grind of Unrelated, whose rhythm pattern sounds like a giant machine inching into life, complete with the screeching of metal on metal as an effect some will love, and some will absolutely hate. Torres-Doran’s familiar-sounding vocals float over the top of this, making what would otherwise be a very harsh track indeed that bit more palatable. A fascinating experiment (as is the rest of the album, actually).

/The Northern Territories
/In Our Darkest Hour (Something New Is Born)
/A Star In Orbit Still

A Swedish duo that reappeared after twenty-five years of silence, their melancholic, slow-paced synthpop still sounds pretty different to their peers. No dancefloor bangers from this group, instead lush balladry that is for solo listening. Their comeback single was this stately song, that swells with orchestral synths and a deep sense of loving hope that things will get better. It still feels like those better days are a little way away yet, but songs like this help salve the despair.

/Death Pill
/Craterface
/Sologamy

The quite brilliant Ukrainian trio Death Pill, have, like the rest of their nation, been through an awful lot since Russian illegally invaded and occupied part of their country. But, it appears, they have poured their frustration and anger into their second album SOLOGAMY.

The best and most immediate track on the album is the rampaging Craterface, that clatters out of the speakers on a relentless D-Beat and riff after riff assaults the ears, as the band face down their self-doubt and negative feelings, giving it a name and just fucking daring it to bring them down.

/Bill Leeb
/Neuromotive (Sehr Geil One) Rhys Fulber Remix
/Machine Vision

The only releases from FLA and Bill Leeb (as a solo artist) were a pair of remix works, and the most impressive track was a remix on the solo release Machine Vision, where Rhys Fulber took on Neuromotive and made some radical changes. A whole host of elements were reworked, but most notably it felt like a fun throwback to the FLA era of the early-nineties, where the band were the last word in futuristic, electro-industrial music, and indeed set a template that a great many artists have since followed. This remix of Neuromotive is all sleek rhythms, bubbling synths and Bill Leeb leaving his (treated) vocals a bit deeper into the mix, and frankly is the best FLA(-family) track in a while.

/THE KINGS OF BLACK MAGIC
/BURN YOU THE FUCK ALIVE
/THE KINGS OF BLACK MAGIC

The latest project from Brant Showers continues in the broad vein of his other work (∆AIMON and SØLVE). His fascination with ritual music, slow and powerful rhythmic work and volume (even turned down, this is a loud release) continues, but this feels closer to earlier ∆AIMON material, but with clean vocals rather than any distortion. The piano-led minimalism of BURN YOU THE FUCK ALIVE is the most fascinating track, though: slowed down to an absolute crawl, the cavernous space of the track only serves to make it even more oppressive. I’ve been following Brant’s work for the best part of fifteen years, and anything he’s involved with will always be of interest.

/50-/41 – /40-/31 – /30-/21 – /20-/11 – /10-/01

/PUPIL SLICER
/Fleshwork
/Fleshwork

There was something about the band’s second album Blossom that didn’t quite click with me (and I’ve tried again since, and it just didn’t work), but from the release of the title track this year, it seems Pupil Slicer decided to go full force. Apparently this track was originally intended to be a collaboration with HEALTH (!) that didn’t work out, and perhaps it actually worked out in their favour. This is a brutal track: thick, heavy riffage with a huge low end that owes more to Godflesh than it does any modern metalcore, and it is all the better for it.

/SARIN
/Terminal Stage
/Searching Hell

Emad Dabiri (for they are SARIN) released a ferocious new album at the end of the year – the first album under the name in six years. Like a number of other techno-industrial artists, too, this saw a shift toward more overtly industrial stylings, and Terminal Stage is probably the most brutal of the lot. A song seemingly about US gun violence and the terrifying stats around deaths in the country in peacetime, it glowers through the lens of punishing beats and classic EBM synths and has a ferocity that makes it a really striking track. In many ways, too, it feels like a modern – and even angrier – update to the FLA classic Gun, which was written about a similar subject…

/girli
/Better Undressed

A good number of women in alternative music at the moment are blurring genre ideas and couldn’t give two fucks what the press think of them, and frankly most of them sound all the better for it. I’d been familiar with some of girli’s previous work thanks to my wife playing them, and their set supporting Scene Queen in London in September was very good indeed – with a distinct feeling that girli’s songs mostly fell into two camps: one where they despair about relationships, the other fiercely feminist. Latest single Better Undressed doesn’t exactly break that mould, but it’s still great: an electro-pop-punk song that sees girli struggling with a friendship, as they want to get undressed and fuck instead. We’ve all been there, right?

/The Birthday Massacre
/Sleep Tonight
/Pathways

It’s been another busy year for these dark-synth-rock veterans (they’ve now been around for over twenty years), including a near-entirely sold out UK tour (and a couple of weeks of dates, too, not just two or three). Their tenth album, Pathways, was introduced by this track that is classic TBM. Delicate, twinkling synths and Chibi’s sweet vocals are punctuated by crushing guitar riffs, demonstrating the effortless ability that the band have long had to be able to walk the tightrope between dark and light. The chorus is big, catchy and memorable, the song lyrically continues the fascination of the band with the fear of the dark and the unknown, particularly at night. The Birthday Massacre continue to succeed because they found their style, stuck to it, but crucially keep finding ways to make their new work interesting.

/Sleek Teeth
/The River

One of a couple of great new singles from this LA duo in 2025 – following on from their excellent releases last year – this one took on a theme that a number of other artists also picked up on this year, and that is of people who’ve drifted into or revealed abhorrent views that make them incompatible with friendship. The anger is mostly contained to the lyrics here, although the vocal delivery is notably less melodic than on other single Same, that’s for sure. Instead the aggression comes from the synths that scream an upbringing on hard-edged EBM, and a relentless beat that suggests the best way to deal with that anger and disappointment is to stomp your troubles away on the dancefloor.

/Deathboy
/I Forget Better (Single Mix)
/I Forget Better

The first Deathboy single in some time turned out to be an impressive return. Scott Deathboy is older, wiser, and more reflective on a that owes something to the dark, blissed-out trip-hop of Massive Attack (especially live, where the cavernous bass became all the more obvious). A song about memory and recollection, how time and your own psyche can twist and refashion those memories for better and worse, it is an intriguing return and I can only hope that more new music is to come.

/Antigen Shift
/Because I Want

This Canadian project, these days the work of Nick Theriault and Jairus Khan, has been around for as long as I can remember, but fascinatingly is still finding ways to explore new realms in their electronic sounds. This track, noticeably heavier in atmosphere and delivery than much of their work over the years, brings voice and choral samples to bear in a dense, crushing track that roils like a choppy sea in a storm, with bass-led beats that remind of dubstep in slow motion. It packs an awful lot into four minutes, with nods to about five genres and entire sections that take us into different places than before, but it works brilliantly.

/Garbage
/Chinese Fire Horse
/Let All That We Imagine Be The Light

Thirty years on from their remarkable debut – and the unexpected success of it – Garbage remain a formidable force, and a fair part of that is down to Shirley Manson’s vocals and lyrics. The latest album pulls no punches in dealing with politics, misogyny, self-image and mental health, and perhaps the most impressive track here is Chinese Fire Horse. The unusual title comes from Manson being born in 1966, and thus according to the Chinese Zodiac, is a Fire Horse – and this song bristles with someone that is entirely fucking done with men – it will always be men, sadly – telling her that she’s too old, not attractive, and not a good singer any more. As Manson notes from the off: “wait a fucking minute“. The song is a propulsive, powerful synth-rock track that is full of hooks, spits venom, and entirely refutes those that may put Manson down. Thirty years on, Garbage still have a lot to say and to pay attention to.

/genCAB
/Open Grave
/Open Grave EP

The first brand-new single from David Dutton in a little while is quite the track – a pulsating electro-industrial track that has his trademark mix of industrial force and melodic, swooning choruses, and it’s his best track in a long time. A song seemingly about fight-or-flight, escaping situations before they spiral out of control, it’s something that resonates, I can tell you. The release is made all-the-more essential by a ferocious take on Last, the sometimes-overlooked track from the Nine Inch Nails 1992 release Broken.

/Skunk Anansie
/An Artist Is An Artist
/The Painful Truth

The band’s latest album tears out of the traps with An Artist Is An Artist, as Skin returns to a subject they’ve looked at a couple of times over their three-decade career: how Skin is seen as an artist by the wider world. Here, Skin confronts ageism and how artists age and develop, dealing with stupid fucking comments on the internet and being asked generic questions: and the song explodes with rage in the chorus. Yep, Skunk Anansie still kick ass, even when an older band. I mean, it was never really in doubt, was it?

/50-/41 – /40-/31 – /30-/21 – /20-/11 – /10-/01

/Charli XCX & John Cale
/House
/Wuthering Heights OST

The summer of 2024 was “Brat Summer”, is it “Wuthering Winter” next? This absolutely remarkable first track sees Charli XCX moving in an entirely different direction, joining forces with experimental legend John Cale to create a ghostly, dramatic piece that uses strings that stab like knives and rolling sheets of noise that create an unsettling, terrifying atmosphere that owes more to the outer reaches of noise and experimental music than anything Charli XCX has ever done. Consider me intrigued for what they hell else that’s coming from this film and soundtrack, that’s for sure.

/LOATHE
/Gifted Every Strength
/

LOATHE’s 2020 album I Let It In and It Took Everything was a grower, that revealed more and more of its brilliance on repeated listens, and with the band having been touring almost constantly since lockdown (and becoming a Big Thing in metal), that long-promised third album is still awaited. But they did throw their fans a bone this year in the form of six minute, one-off single Gifted Every Strength. It picks up from what had come before, and adds even more: lurching, rumbling, bass-heavy metal, mellowed out ambience, staccato grooves… not to mention Kadeem France’s sprawling vocal range and the sense that LOATHE are simply overflowing with ideas, as this track packs in more in six minutes than many bands do across entire careers. That new album can’t come soon enough.

/Scorpion Milk
/Another Day Another Abyss
/Slime of the Times

Mat McNerney (better known to many as Kvohst, the vocalist of the much-missed Beastmilk and Grave Pleasures) perhaps summed up the bin-fire that has been the wider world in 2025 with this song. His “Apocalyptic Post-Punk” is dark, gloomy and grimly entertaining, but this time shedding the dark sexual energy of his previous projects for an atmosphere that takes on the world directly. While other songs sound a bit like prime Killing Joke at points, this song is sleek and economical in messaging (that title refrain gets repeated a lot), as if there isn’t much more to say than how absolutely fucking fucked everything is. Not everything can be solved by one person, and McNerney is making no bones about that: sometimes, you just have to get through it, nothing more.

/Delilah Bon
/Bush
/Princeless Princess EP

Delilah Bon’s best songs are when she brings together her rage and humour, and the rampaging, booming Bush is absolutely one of those. A call to arms to women not to shave their body hair for the benefit of others, and instead to look great naturally by their own choice and style (and what people do with their own bodies, by the way, is entirely their choice!), the song is a hoot as she crams in verse after verse of garden metaphors and some genuinely hilarious lines, but there’s enough of Deliliah’s trademark snarl in the song to remind that there is a serious message here amid an insanely catchy, entertaining song. As I said when I first reviewed this a few months ago, though, don’t let yourself sing it out loud in the office – unless you’ve got a really progressive office…

/Senser
/Ryot Pump
/SONIC DISSIDENCE

Senser have been touring relatively regularly for some time, but this year’s new album was their first in a decade or so – and was led in by the shit-kicking single Ryot Pump. There’s no intro to speak of, instead the song gallops out of the speakers from the first second, as Heitham Al-Sayed spits his disgust at openly racist shitheads in public, and politicians emboldened to fall over each other to be the harshest on those with the least. It is angry, political and exactly what I love about Senser.

/Watch/YouTube

/The Tiger Lillies
/Stupid Life
/Serenade From The Sewer

The Tiger Lillies are nothing but prolific – anyone who knows every single song of theirs is likely a savant – and their latest album, celebrating the seedy underbelly of the Soho of past decades, is tender and hilarious in equal measure. The song that we were humming for hours after their recent shows at Wilton Music Hall, though, was this one: that celebrates a life of non-conformity, and makes extensive use of the word “Stupid”, to the point that it’ll be the only word you hear for a while after you play it. It’s anything but stupid, mind: a fun lollop through the band’s signature, Brechtian cabaret style with tongue deeply in cheek.

/Vacuous
/In His Blood
/In His Blood

I’m a bit out of the loop these days in extreme metal terms – I still love parts of the wider genre, I just don’t always have the time to hunt out the new stuff. But this one caught me immediately. Vacuous aren’t fucking about with this track: from the first second it jumps down your throat and just keep on punching. Everything is on point – the drumming, the thick, nasty riffs, the savage vocals, and at points it has a distinct old-school Black Metal feel, particularly at the vicious tempo that most of the track rattles past at. But then it slows down for the headbanging breakdown, and you know we’re back into the kind of Death Metal territory that will make any metalhead want to grunt along. Worried that the best Death Metal was in the past? Vacuous are here to tell you that you’re dead wrong.

/Bloodywood
/Tadka
/Nu Delhi

Who knew a song about the joys of cooking and sharing food could be so much damned fun? Perhaps we should have known that Indian (Nu-)Metal band Bloodywood could have done this, though: their take on the metal music that they clearly love comes through the lens of their own cultural experiences, and it has made their music distinctly different – but no less slamming. Tadka, then, sees them explaining the joy of cooking for friends and guests while providing a huge, sing-a-long and mosh-a-long chorus, and the video, that clearly includes one of the band’s mothers as they attempt to cook up a feast, is an absolute hoot.

/BLACKGOLD
/Dance Like That
/EP Phone Home

Blackgold have been a fast-rising band in the UK, and are perhaps the band most keen on resurrecting Nu-Metal right now (as they note on their FB Bio: “Your mum’s favorite Nu metal band”). They certainly have the chops: their previous songs have been a punchy mix of rap and metal that provide groove, mosh-friendly breakdowns and no little humour, but Dance Like That feels like taking things to another level. Sure, you can see the breakdown coming a mile off, and there are references to Crazy Town, Limp Bizkit and Slipknot in the lyrics and sound, but fuck it – this song is a hook-laden monster, and I can’t help but feel that this song will absolutely destroy live.

/Nova Twins
/N.O.V.A
/Parasites & Butterflies

I wasn’t all that taken with the initial singles from this fast-rising duo’s second album, and then N.O.V.A dropped like an atom bomb. A big, rap-rock boast of a track, where they finally get the confidence to step forward and say “we’re fucking great”. It rolls forward on a mighty, floor-crushing groove, that only gets even more power as it explodes into that giant, chant-along chorus. The video sees them at the heart of a chaotic, sweaty gig (with a Dalmatian posing backstage alongside them at points), and they look Cool As Fuck. Nova Twins are going to be stars, mark my words.

/50-/41 – /40-/31 – /30-/21 – /20-/11 – /10-/01

/Nevada Hardware
/The Suburbs Dream of Violence
/Split Scene

I was there when Big Beat took over some London clubs for a while, and industrial artist Doug Jones (he is Nevada Hardware) is clearly a big fan of the genre too. The Suburbs Dream of Violence is a wild, noisy joyride: thundering, careering-out-of-control drums underpin a grab-bag of acid synths, hooks and layer-after-layer of samples that would be utterly overwhelming if it wasn’t so much fucking fun. Like mainlining pack after pack of Haribo, shotgunning six cans of Red Bull, and a few lines of something inadvisable, this is fast, dirty and hugely entertaining, even if it might not feel quite so great the next morning – your ears will be ringing like crazy for a start, never mind what it will have done to your body.

/Nuovo Testamento
/Picture Perfect
/Trouble

After a couple of years of relentless touring – and raising their profile enormously – this trio finally released new music this summer, which retained their commitment to dancefloor-bound, lovelorn songs that are full of hooks. Interestingly, though, this EP saw their horizons expanded a little, into early 90s dance music in particular, and the charging lead single Picture Perfect took us into Italo Disco-meets-piano house without, somehow, making it sound like a pastiche. That might because the whole group commit fully to what they are doing, and have a clear love of the source material that they are drawing from. As well as that, though, their ability with an irresistable chorus remains, and thus Picture Perfect is yet another banger I can expect to hear at their gigs in future…

/Alison Goldfrapp
/Reverberotic
/Flux

I’ve found Alison Goldfrapp’s solo work mostly a little bit too…derivative of late: most of it leaning too hard into 80s electronics that it borders on pastiche, but there are glittering moments, and Reverberotic is the best of the bunch. A track full of woozy synths and lurching rhythms, with secondary synths that flutter across the mix like stardust, and Goldfrapp uses the full extent of her impressive vocal range to create a smouldering, sexy track that’s the best thing she’s put her name to in ages.

/Nine Inch Nails
/As Alive As You Need Me To Be
/Tron: Ares OST

The album released as the soundtrack to TRON: Ares by Nine Inch Nails is, mostly, musical score work (as might be expected), but it does contain a few new NIN songs that are very much worth the price of admission alone – certainly from reports I’ve heard, it’s vastly better than the leaden film itself. Lead single As Alive As You Need Me To Be is a four-minute thrill ride that is the most direct, immediate NIN song in many years. Mostly electronic, leaning into modern techno influences too, but Reznor has long been savvy enough to pay attention to trends around him, and uses those stylings well to provide the base to a savage, dense chorus that gets the hooks in quickly. The track then begins a disintegration in the coda that blows apart the vocals with effects to amazing effect, and the end result is a track that can be added the canon of the best NIN songs.

/HEALTH
/VIBE COP
/CONFLICT DLC

The new HEALTH album is released this coming weekend, so was just too late to be considered featuring, but there was no doubt one of the songs from it was going to be featured here, as they are a hell of a set so far. VIBE COP was the one that really grabbed me by the throat: it starts off at full-throttle, as a monstrous industrial metal groove (think Prong in the Cleansing era, the kind of gigantic, industrial-powered metal sound that could power cities), and takes a breath for a trademark, melodic chorus that slows everything down and allows you to breathe in the moshpit, too. The middle eight is gentle piece of ambience, pretty much, before the guitars tear back in and blow you through the wall. HEALTH aren’t fucking about, that’s for sure…

/Suede
/Dancing With The Europeans
/Antidepressants

The most striking song by far on the latest Suede album is not the first where they’ve made reference to Europe, although classic B-side Europe Is Our Playground was a brooding, electronic-tinged song, set after dark. Dancing With The Europeans is the opposite, a soaring, upbeat song that celebrates connection with others – be that in the sweaty crowd of another euphoric Suede show, or in the disparate region that is Europe (and of course, that bloc that we left). Suede, amazingly, are still a band full of life, full of ideas, and are still able to release brilliant songs like this, 35 years into their career. Long may it be so.

/Author & Punisher
/Titanis (feat. Kuntari)
/Nocturnal Birding

Things not expected in 2025: an Author & Punisher album where all the track titles are of birds, and feature samples of bird song (not all immediately obvious thanks to sample manipulation). The track that introduced the album, though, is named after a bird otherwise known as the “terror bird” (a callback to the A&P track that most of us heard first), a prehistoric predatory bird that must have been fucking terrifying. One of a number of collaborative tracks on the album, this one brings in Indonesian tribal artist Kuntari to add additional percussion, and the result is a track that is loud and heavy enough to crush you underfoot: an astonishing display of sonic power from Tristan Shone, who continues to evolve and develop his mechanical, industrial-leaning doom.

/Harpy
/Last Time
/VII

Originally released in the summer, this mighty song also appeared on Harpy’s first EP released at the end of last month. Balancing neatly the industrial-goth and metal elements that make up Harpy’s distinctive sound, it stomps through the speakers on a bass-heavy, distorted groove as Harpy spins tales of dark, nihilistic desire ( “we’re all going to die tonight that’s fine” and “fuck me like it’s the last time“) that seem perfectly appropriate in an era where we don’t know how much longer the world has left. So why not fuck and have some fun in this hellscape instead?

/YOUTH CODE
/No Consequence
/Yours, With Malice

The first new material from Youth Code themselves (even the collaborative release with King Yosef was five (!) years ago) in what felt like an age saw the duo reestablishing themselves at the top of the tree once again. As before, their sound is a punishing, furious hybrid of electro-industrial and hardcore, and on No Consequence, the synths pummel your eardrums while the drums hammer into your chest, while Sarah’s vocals appear to seethe at a one-time friend who has crossed the line one too many times and now, there’s no going back. Youth Code felt like they were rewriting the rules of industrial when they first appeared – coming at it from a totally different perspective helped – and over a decade on, they remain trailblazers that have injected aggression but also a human heart into a genre that sometimes isn’t human enough.

/Bob Mould
/Neanderthal
/Here We Go Crazy

One of the most thrilling, nervy guitar-based songs I heard in all of 2025, Bob Mould crams an awful lot into 133 seconds. Neanderthal blasts past at a pace that befits a song that is apparently about growing up and learning to deal with a level of neurodiversity: confronting demons and other people not wired the same way as you, the decision to “fight or flight”, and how that bubbling rage never quite goes away, even if many of us get better at keeping a lid on it over the years. It is a song that is constantly on the wire, Mould blasting out his vocals at a speed that suggests he feels he might never get a chance to say it. Bob Mould remains one of rocks greatest and most fascinating songwriters in 2025.

/50-/41 – /40-/31 – /30-/21 – /20-/11 – /10-/01

/THE NONE
/On Automatic
/CARE

A band discovered when supporting the Jesus Lizard in London back in January – and they very nearly blew the headliners off the stage. Featuring a one-time member of Bloc Party, but their sound is not indie-rock, but bludgeoning no wave/noise-rock, and their songs are thrilling. Particularly On Automatic, which opens with the kind of ominous riff that you just know is going to destroy you in time, alongside Kaila Whyte’s dramatic vocals. However, there is a bit of restraint in that they let the track build more gradually than you expect, and just when you think it’s going to explode, it drops back to almost nothing. Then all hell breaks lose, and the result is a chaotic, thrilling noise that seems to be entirely made of sharp edges. I’ve always felt that Noise Rock should set your heart racing at it’s best, and this does exactly that.

/Bootblacks
/Only You
/Paradise

There are few post-punk bands who have leaned into the grandeur of the Goth sounds that preceded them, but Bootblacks absolutely nailed exactly that on Paradise this year, and particularly on the magisterial Only You. A huge, reverb-heavy chorus is the centrepiece, but as well as that, the chiming guitars that echo through it… and then the my wife noted that the saxophone solo-led breakdown (apparently unwittingly) echoes Dominion / Mother Russia to spectacular effect. Bootblacks had already made themselves stand out by taking a different approach, but here, they became this luxuriant, fascinating band who take eighties influences and make something vastly bigger than the parts used.

/Clipping.
/Dominator
/Dead Channel Sky

One of the many belters on the latest Clipping. album, Dominator is the thrilling opener to a sprawling album. Sampling the classic techno track by Human Resource of the same name, it grabs us by the hand and leads us directly into the dystopian, technological-dominated world that Clipping shape on Dead Channel Sky. But on this track, it’s not about some nightmarish future, it’s a nightmarish present, where social media and influencers – and AI creations, increasingly – lead followers up the garden path with inane and impossible promises of betterment, both mentally, physically and economically. But the subject matter is weighty, the track is a Grade A fucking Banger: a stripped-back synth hook starts us off before chopped-up samples and, eventually, beats explode the track. The star as ever on this group’s tracks, though, is Daveed Diggs, as he controls the rhythm and power of the track with his extraordinary rapping style, accelerating and slowing down his delivery at will.

/Assemblage 23
/Gone
/Null

The sheer brilliance of the new A23 album has been like returning to meet an old friend after a long absence, and finding them as much of a joy to hang out with as they always were. Thus, picking one song from the album was a tough one – it literally could have been any of them, but Gone hit home hard. A song about losing touch, how friends can change and suddenly disappear from your life without any warning or reason, and how the not knowing is the worst part. He’s covered similar ground before, on the extraordinary Disappoint, but I very much get the feeling that this song is not about death: this is a song about someone who is very much still here, but no longer part of this life. The song itself is glorious, the chorus in particular adding emotional wallop after emotional wallop, and hearing it live earlier in the autumn was one of the highlights of the fucking year.

/The Young Gods
/Appear Disappear
/Appear Disappear

The Young Gods mark forty years as an active band this year, and the Swiss trio seem to show no sign of slowing down yet. Especially when their latest album, and their first album of new material in six years, is their best in decades. The album was heralded by the astonishing three minute blast of the title track, that sees Franz Treichler addressing the band’s habit of taking time between releases and reinventing themselves, but also using his usual cryptic language to do so. As for the song itself? A monstrous rhythm pattern is accompanied by the trademark use of guitar samples and loops to create an irresistible, thundering track that brings the band full circle, back to the wondrous industrial rock that got us all hooked in the first place, and one that flashes by at such a pace that three minutes feels all too short.

/Anna von Hausswolff
/Stardust
/ICONOCLASTS

The astonishing centrepiece of Anna von Hausswolff’s first album in five years is one that builds like the early stages of a volcanic eruption. The musical base is sparse – drums, bass and the ever-present drone of the pipe organ, for the most part – leaving the centre stage to von Hausswolff’s extraordinary voice as she weaves a narrative around the end of something, presumably a relationship: where she says sorry but clearly, the fault is not hers. Looking for more, better, anything than what she has endured, the song swells in intensity until the halfway point, where suddenly it erupts into white-hot fury…before dropping back again and she tries a second time, this time exploding fully as she watches whatever has gone “vaporised into the sky“. The song ends with her near-sobbing “I’m sorry” repeatedly, as if the sheer force of the song has allowed her to expend every ounce of energy she had. An extraordinary track.

/Promenade Cinema
/Runners
/Afterlife

Remarkably, Runners is an eleven year old song, originally released by Dorian’s previous band Berlyn Trilogy, but it here it has been upgraded and reworked. Some of the lyrics are the same, but Emma imbues them with the dramatic delivery that they deserve, and the new chorus in this version is a soaring, fucking magical thing. Promenade Cinema continue to have something about them that none of their peers seem to, and this glorious song shows it off like a glittering gown under the camera flashes of the paparazzi.

/Heartworms
/Extraordinary Wings
/Glutton For Punishment

Amid a wildly eclectic album that takes in a host of styles, the centrepiece and dark heart of the excellent Glutton For Punishment is Extraordinary Wings. This song has a gloomy, quasi-trip-hop base that also takes in Cure-esque, bass-heavy goth, but is brightened by Jojo Orme’s dramatic vocal delivery. It feels like an enigmatic song that appears to judge a destructive other person, before the coda repeats “I don’t wish murder because I got no right“, as if it needs to be repeated as a mantra to stop any action being taken. Despite using fairly obvious influences, this song is as extraordinary as the title, as Orme fashions a song that is striking, beautiful and impossibly dark.

/Rotersand
/Private Firmament (I Fell For You)
/Don’t Become The Thing That You Hated

Are out-and-out dancefloor bangers an endangered breed these days? If so, no-one told Rotersand, as this track is a flat-out exciting example of that so-called dying breed. It is a song seemingly about the dangers of falling for someone hook, line and sinker: that initial rush of blood to the head where you have to go for it, consequences be damned. The way the song is built musically reflects that, to these ears: the build and build until the heart explodes, the calmer moments where the brain takes over the heart just for a moment (with a repeated Spanish phrase as the song builds back up, that translates as “eternal struggle without hope“)…and then all fear is abandoned, and you go all in. Again. This song is incredible, a reminder of how Rotersand have for two decades tapped into the primal urge to dance, sing and live through their songs, and with this they sound better than they ever have before.

/Seeming
/Tomorrow Place
/The World

There has been a steady drip-feed of new songs from Seeming over the second half of the year, culminating in the release of new album The World, at last, just last week. As regular readers of this site will know, Seeming have long been a favourite around here, and Alex Reed’s songwriting remains at the same ridiculously high level after four albums. Thus, I could have picked any number of songs for this list, but this elegant song, to paraphrase my friend Alex at I Die: You Die, is the “right song at the right time”. This song is full of melodies and words that salve, and that swooning chorus I just cannot get out of my head. It comes across as a song of reassurance, where even tomorrow can be better than today, where you don’t necessarily have to be the best version of yourself just to get through the day. The world is mostly a terrible place right now, with not a lot that is good to make things better. But as always, Alex Reed has a way of producing music that does exactly that: and so not for the first time, a song of his is the best of the year.

/50-/41 – /40-/31 – /30-/21 – /20-/11 – /10-/01