Albums 2025 - Top Ten

To borrow from a Brent Cobb album title, the dominant musical theme for me this year was "ain't rocked in a while."  Despite auditory excursions into electro, drum & bass, and country music, my craving for guitar riffage and six-string shredding was strong, and 2025 delivered.  Long time favorites like Deftones and Ghost returned with late career highlights while the next generation of Gen Z artists inspired by Gen X sounds - Doomsday, Die Spitz, and Rocket - picked up guitars and released outstanding debut albums.

These are my top ten favorite albums of 2025, in alphabetical order by artist name . . . .

Client_03:  Testbed_Assembly  (Client_03, 7/4/25)

Electro has roots in krautrock, funk, and the cut-up rhythms of the nascent hip-hop scene - a cyborg groove built on 808s, synthesizers, and vocoders that moved b-boys and inspired techno's early pioneers.  It's the soundscape of a dystopian sci-fi future, and as the potential horrors of artificial intelligence dominated news cycles this year, mysterious UK electro artist Client_03 dropped his debut album.  Incorporating touches of acid, techno, synthwave, and dubstep, Testbed_Assembly is primarily an instrumental album, but sparse lyrics convey the nightmare of modern alienation in the shadow of unrelenting technological progression - but, hey, at least you can boogie to it.  

 

Brent Cobb & The Fixin's:  Ain't Rocked in a While  (Ol' Buddy, 7/11/25)

Georgia native and self-proclaimed "songwriter-singer" Brent Cobb took a different tack this year with his seventh album and his first with co-credit to his backing band, "the Fixin's.”  Best known for his laid-back country-pickin' musical aesthetic, this time Cobb imbued Ain't Rocked in a While with the shit-kickin' rock n' roll spirit of 70's legends like Lynyrd Skynyrd, AC/DC, Black Sabbath, and Led Zeppelin.  Though it might not expand on the classic rock canon, this one does give Cobb a chance to let loose in a way he hasn't done, apparently, in a while.  Rock on, brother.

 

Deftones:  private music  (Reprise, 8/22/25)

Bucking all expectations for a band that launched amidst the nu-metal movement of the mid-90’s, Sacramento, CA, alternative metal stalwarts and nu-gaze pioneers Deftones have been going from strength to strength for thirty years straight.  With nary a career misstep, longevity and reliability might be their primary superpowers, but this band always finds new ways to expand their trademark sound from album to album.  private music, produced by Nick Raskulinecz and featuring new bass player Fred Sablan, is their tenth album, and it's among their finest in a catalogue full of classics.

   

Die Spitz:  Something to Consume  (Third Man, 9/12/25)

Austin, TX, rockers Die Spitz delivered their debut album in 2025, and it's easily one of the best rock albums released this year, and in many years. Produced by Will Yip and issued by Jack White's Third Man Records, Something to Consume is a furious whirlwind of punk rock, grunge, goth rock, shoegaze, and heavy metal concocted and performed by a tight-knit foursome of childhood girlfriends who swap instruments, vocals, and songwriting duties from song to song. The future is bright for Die Spitz. See ‘em live in a small venue while you still can!

   

Doomsday:  Never Known Peace  (Creator-Destructor, 3/28/25)

From the same streets where legends like Exodus, Testament, and Death Angel incubated comes Doomsday - Oakland, CA’s newest and most formidable thrash/hardcore/crossover outfit, and they're really pissed off.  Boasting lightning-fast tempos, thunderous riffs and drums, shredding leads, and beefy production courtesy of Zack Ohren, this band delivered a ripper of a debut album this year, Never Known Peace, and it might be the best in this genre since Power Trip's classic sophomore album from 2017, Nightmare Logic.

   

Ghost:  Skeleta  (Loma Vista, 4/25/25)

Fifteen years into Ghost's career, now packing arenas worldwide, it's no longer a secret that this Swedish occult-metal project has been a one-man labor of love all along.  Tobias Forge - the band's frontman, chief songwriter, and creative director - self-produced and released Ghost's sixth album, Skeleta, this year.  Like its namesake, baring all and stripped to the bone, this is Forge's most personal, sincere, and lyrically vulnerable album yet while serving as a bombastic victory lap with its 80's hair metal sonic aesthetic and soaring guitar solos courtesy of Opeth's Fredrik Åkesson.

   

Goldie (Rufige Kru, Submotive):  Alpha Omega  (London, 5/16/25)

With roots in graffiti, hip-hop, and the UK's early rave scene, Goldie is drum & bass music's loudest champion and celebrity, having co-founded the legendary Metalheadz label in '94, recorded the genre's first critically acclaimed album Timeless in '95, dated Björk, befriended David Bowie, and starred in a James Bond movie. Alpha Omega is Goldie's seventh album, third under his "Rufige Kru" moniker, with co-production by Submotive. With its ominous cyberpunk atmosphere, cavernous subs, and ricocheting drum breaks, this is Goldie's most concise and focused work to date, and it's quintessentially Metalheadz - equally sinister as it is elegant.   

   

MAKTKAMP:  Mental Razzia  (MAKTKAMP, 2/14/25)

Hailing from Oslo, Norway, MAKTKAMP (ie. "power struggle") follow in the footsteps of fellow countrymen Kvelertak (ie. "chokehold") singing in their native tongue while blending black metal, death metal, progressive metal, punk rock, and classic rock.  The band calls this punchy melange of subgenres "smash metal" - a term as silly as it is fitting.  Mental Razzia is their third self-produced album, and with its heart-pumping tempos, clockwork-precise instrumentation, and guttural lead vocals cradled by clean backing harmonies, it's unlike any other this year.

   

The Marcus King Band:  Darling Blue  (Republic, 9/26/25)

Greenville, SC, blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter Marcus King has always blazed his own trail despite the occasional misstep - but the Blue Ridge Mountains always serve as inspiration for his musical journey rooted in southern bucolicism.  Those Appalachian ridgelines guide him on Darling Blue, King's seventh album and fourth under his "Marcus King Band" moniker, produced by Eddie Spear at Macon, GA's Capricorn Studios.  Featuring a cadre of likeminded musical luminaries like Billy Strings, Jamey Johnson, Kaitlin Butts, and Jesse Welles, this is among King's most fully realized works - gliding effortlessly through the sounds of country, folk, blues, rock, R&B, funk, and soul.

   

Rocket:  R is for Rocket  (Transgressive, 10/3/25)

Among a new wave of Gen Z rockers taking cues from their Gen X forebears, Rocket are among its most sonically faithful and sincere.  Anchored by mellifluous vocals and nimble bass playing from frontwoman Alithea Tuttle, this throwback alt-rock foursome from Los Angeles takes inspiration from genre pilars like Smashing Pumpkins, Sonic Youth, Breeders, and Juliana Hatfield on their self-produced debut album - R is for Rocket.  With a cover story in the NME and tours supporting the aforementioned Pumpkins and shoegaze pioneers Ride already under their belt, Rocket have nowhere to go but up.  

  

2025 Runners Up & Honorable Mention here!