You might be looking at this and saying “Brennan, it’s almost March, why are you posting an album of the year list 2025 now”. In response to that critique, I will simply echo the words of the Chinese Premier, Zhou Enlai in 1972 who when asked about the French Revolution responded: “it’s too early to say”.
For the past few years, the Album of the Year List has played an odd role in my appreciation of music, it’s sort of this last way to prove once and for all that I am a real music fan, with real taste and lots of evidence to back it up. Every year I really prided myself on compiling a huge list, sorting it meticulously, and showing it off, despite how obviously cumbersome it was. I still like doing that, but it is interesting to reflect on the role it played for me, how it sort of acted as “proof” of my enjoyment of things. This year was a weird one.
Every year I have a moment where I start to wonder if there is any good music being released, if it’s something wrong with me. Maybe I’m the one who just doesn’t get it, I’ve felt that way before about big meaningful albums that I feel like should matter, and just do nothing for me. I think this year, more than any other, I found myself turning off new releases after only a few minutes of listening. I can’t stand a lot of new metal releases, sometimes it just takes one snare hit to know it’s going to be boring.
In light of that, it felt like this album of the year list was really my Alamo, a chance to prove that I still like music and I’m not totally in my own cave. And to be honest with you, it didn’t really give me the catharsis I wanted. I found that what I wanted to show off was sheer mass of listening, but I’ve found that my carefully cultivated taste has made it impossible to say I truly liked that many albums. I can’t stand flat, boring snares, I need to hear you do something interesting with your tones and production, and I don’t feel like I need to slog through boring albums anymore.
Maybe that is the price of taste, tightening that spigot of music consumption that I used to think made someone an erudite, a meaningful person who engaged with art to a deeper and more important degree than others. I guess what this also hints at is that my appreciation for music is in its own way rooted in arrogance, in self importance, which I’ve known for a while. I got into metal in high school, it’s no big surprise that I thought I was better than everyone else behind the walls of Master of Puppets. Those walls are still steadfast, for better and for worse, they’re just made of ambient dub or brutal death metal now.
For me, taste is a double edged sword. I take pride in it, I learn new things about it every day, and it’s a huge part of my identity, I don’t let stupid inane shit pollute my brain. But, on the other hand, it can make me arrogant, isolated and prideful. I take such pride in my taste that the idea of sharing it with others becomes frightening, the fear that it might be rejected can be unbearable. I’ve always cringed when I tell people my favourite music is metal, especially the arcane types of extreme metal I’m obsessed with. But I love this stuff, it truly makes me feel the most like myself, it expresses things I feel, I can’t put it any other way. So, how do you wield taste? I’m not sure I have an answer for that yet, maybe I’ll have an answer next year.
An honest accounting of my 2025 best of list wouldn’t be complete without mentioning that I Did the Right Thing and got off Spotify. This isn’t here to extol my virtue (my etransfer is brenchaudhry@gmail.com by the way), but rather to highlight a structural shift in the way I enjoy music.
The world of streaming is a smooth, endlessly scrolling highway that can take you wherever you want, as long as it’s connected to the highway. I hate this world. I just read an excellent article by Tom Krell that made the point that reclaiming attention isn’t about just deleting instagram or touching grass, but more about clearing space for attention to manifest itself. Attention isn’t a muscle to be flexed, or a subject to be dominated, but a flow, that needs the right conditions to produce itself, to put it in pseudo-Deleuzian terms (that could be the name of this entire website).
Switching to Plex, where I need to download all of my albums and sort them, has been a wonderful experience. I invest so much more meaningful time into researching albums, finding out who played with who, and taking wild chances. I used to just click on a plus sign on Spotify, and forget about an album forever, languishing in an endless, immaterial library. Now I have to weasel it out on Soulseek, or bandcamp or ampwall, I learn about weird niche labels like Northern Doom or Elf Eggs, I needed that friction to give it the meaning I want. I genuinely feel like I’m not a window shopper anymore, I’m something of a curator. That is a special feeling, and I hope this list reflects some of that.
If you have the time and energy to do something like this, it’s not that hard! I have a plex subscription, and a mini PC (like $80 on fb marketplace) that I access using a remote desktop. If my dumb ass can do it, you absolutely can, and I think the rewards have been wonderful.
The Actual List
In keeping with some of my earlier reservations about the AOTY list and its format, I thought it would be more fun to try to come up with some yearbook superlative type categories to highlight some of my favourites. Here they are!
Most Relevant
Who else could it possibly be.
I don’t care that this was technically released in 2024, it’s obviously an album that was culturally digested in 2025. Don’t ever try to tell me how to wax lyrical on my own website.
A major through line of previous writing about music on this website and elsewhere from me, is my ongoing struggle against irony. It’s the cowards way out, the ripcord on any difficult idea that might change you. As everything gets worse and the contradictions come crashing down, you can’t hide anymore. Come outside, be sincere, say something that doesn’t make any sense and fucking mean it. I’m right here with you.
In one spectacular year Mr Winter has put himself up there as the Leonard Cohen or Bob Dylan of our time, which is a cliche, but I think he’s up for it. He is heartbreakingly sincere, funny, angry, sad and confused, like we all aspire to be.
More than ever this shit matters, right now, as every one of the powers that be try to scour you of your humanity, of your connections with humans and yourself. In the words of our brave leader, fuck these people. I’m not here.
Most Surprising
I guess it would be a little obvious to say that the winner of the “most surprising” title had no business being as good or interesting as it is. But really, there is absolutely no reason a band called Blastanus should be this invigorating to listen to. You come for the insane saxophone parts, and stay for how well they express that incandescent “am I taking crazy pills” anger of living in this stupid and insulting society of shit we’ve made for ourselves. Sometimes I just feel so disgusted by everything, and I need something that can articulate that shame and anger with sneering precision.
I’ve said it before, but brutal death metal often isn’t the right medium to express genuine anger. Its too technical, too wanky and too horror movie obsessed to really be the province of proper, fuck-shit-up outrage. Something like grindcore is much more suitable for this task, but occasionally a band like Blastanus steps up, and gives you something special.
What makes it all click is just how over the top and crushed in there it is. Each song feels like they’re going to explode out of your speakers like the springs in watch, gravity blast barrages crash through pig squeals, pinch harmonics, and deranged howls alike. Utterly ridiculous saxophone arrangements give your ears a little bit of breathing room before plunging back into the melee. It feels like the perfect sonic complement to modern fascism, assaulting your senses and attention span.
Most Evil
I think I was looking at too many Adrian Smith paintings, or Jes Goodwin sculpts, or just seeing too much of Saskatchewan this year, because I’ve been thinking a lot about chaos, destruction, and barbarism. I’m not going to tell you that this is again, some deeply progressive instinct or Deleuzian paradigm brought forth by the contradictions of our time. I just see a pedal pub cycle past me and think “wouldn’t it feel great to just blow all this shit up?”.
I guess the closest I can come to rationalizing this feeling of pointless asocial-ness is May Chaos Take the World, a longing for some sort of ekpyrosis, returning everything to that primordial oneness, of pure undifferentiated chaos.
That is what Hadoypelagyal express deftly on their antediluvian ass-beater that is Haematophoryktos. It sounds like the world ending, like endless night falling, and the fires of rebirth. It’s fucking evil in that beautiful Adrian Smith, Engra Deathsword type way. This album is foaming at the mouth, baying for the annihilation of luxury apartments, prediction markets, and cheese induced burger shit. I for one am happy to join in and assume the body of our dearly departed Yura, and scream MAY CHAOS TAKE THE WORLD alongside these freaks.
Most Rewarding
When I was like 18, I knew I was going to get broken up with. It wasn’t like there had been a conversation or something like that, I was just feeling the winds change, and I think my subconscious knew it before my conscious did. I was head-over-heels with this girl, in that 18-and-unemployed way, and I felt absolutely miserable about it every day, I was so fucking sad that I knew this thing was dying and it didn’t really have anything to do with me. I’ll always remember taking the bus home from a wilting date, and listening to Sunbather by Deafheaven (always a bad sign for a relationship), and having this thought flash into my brain, that no matter what happened, at least I would have this song.
I feel the same way about this Cloakroom album, it’s like an old friend that has been by my side for a while, an excellent travelling companion across western Canada, and a great listener itself. I’ve muddled my way through a lot of feelings listening to this album, and it has been a good sport about it all, and I really appreciate its patience. Whether it’s the hooks of Ester Wind and Cloverlooper, or the drawl of Bad Larry, or possibly the best song of 2025 in Unbelonging, they can do it all. Sometimes you just realize that wow, this person I’ve known for a while really means so much to me, and I’m so grateful for them. You all know who you are.
Most Exciting
I already talked a bit about some of the boundaries that tend to outline the affect of extreme metal in the Blastanus part. Like in that case though, they are just maps, they aren’t the actual territory. This year, the almighty Defacement released what is, to my mind, one of the most essential and vital pieces of extreme music to grace the genre since Altar of Plagues’ manifesto for the end of all things, Mammal (I’m not sure if I actually believe that yet give me a bit).
I think what I find so exciting and so important about this record is that it takes cavernous, brutal and ferocious death metal and says something devastating with it. Doomed is a harrowing account of feeling completely unrecognized and useless, of being outside the bounds of society. What makes music so emotionally resonant is understanding that it is a sort of reflection of the lifeworld of its creator, transmuted through instruments, production, the performer, any of the different forces at play in the listening experience. Sometimes you’re lost and you don’t know it, and Defacement give voice to the anxiety, anger, grief and yearning that fills that vessel. As the band themselves say, “these are wounds speaking”. It feels somewhat perverse to say I’m excited about that, but maybe a better way to put it is that this fucking matters, and it’s so rare in extreme metal, and I have nothing but the utmost respect and appreciation for this album and the people who made it.