Hello, reader. There has been some truly excellent music released in the last few weeks. Today, even. Just outstanding stuff. Heavy music is alive and thriving and 2025 is already a great year for new releases. Let's get into it.

Humanity's Last Breath - Anthracite [Single]

Humanity's Last Breath are effectively the soundtrack to the collapse of civilisation as we know it. They are an armageddon-style onslaught from Helsingborg, Sweden, featuring Buster Odeholm, a man who is in not one, but three outrageous bands - Humanity's Last Breath (Guitars), Vildjharta (Drums) and Thrown (drums). He is also something of a prodigy-grade metal producer, and everything he produces sounds absolutely massive, in ways that are hard to describe.

Anyway. They just put out Anthracite and it is a ripper. I need this kind of wailing in my brain and it is exceptionally well put together. A really solid evolution on their previously excellent record Ashen and a love-letter to the rare sort of metal that truly makes your animal brain believe it is in danger. Shocking stuff from a group of deeply gifted lunatics.

Deafheaven - Lonely People With Power [Album]

Deafheaven are a divisive band, because people who like Black Metal for some reason love music only second to gatekeeping and being weird online. 2013's Sunbather was a breakthrough, genre-defying Black / Shoegaze / Ambient / Post-metal record that made a lot of annoying people extremely upset for reasons mostly do with it being excellent, black metal adjacent and not only heard of by 9 people in the forest. This is a grammy-nominated band with a huge amount of history, and a discography as diverse and explorative as it is divisive. There is a lot to love here.

Lonely People With Power, is now probably my favourite of Deafheaven's records. Highlights for me are Amethyst, The Garden Route, Winona and Revelator, although every song on this record comfortably belongs here. It's a moody, intense, ambient, darkwave, post-metal mind-bender of a technical project and I love it.

If you like this, I recommend Infinite Granite, their 2021 full-length. Much less abrasive and brutal, easier to access but ultimately a great showcase of wonderful songwriting and creativity, and lots of melodic moments.

Sleep Token - Caramel [Single]

Sleep Token get entirely too much hate from people who don't really understand what the band are. That's not to say that people are wrong about disliking their music, but there's a lot of pseudo-credibility bullshit in saying 'I hate Sleep Token' in certain metal circles and that annoys me because it's an extremely lazy analysis of a basically interesting project. You don't need to get in your feelings about something that is supposed to be theatrical, dramatic and contrived. They're wearing costumes and have stage names. That's the entire point.

Anyway, they've got a new album coming out on May 9th called Even In Arcadia and Caramel is one of the singles.

Pros: Excellent vocal performance, interesting production, absolute blinder of a final portion of song.
Cons: The fusion of the pop/metal thing is not for everyone, and lyrically the song is fairly literal about the problems the otherwise anonymous Sleep Token members have with parasocial fans.

Sleep Token are strange because their music does something very specific to a certain kind of person who is extremely ready to build a sort of crazed-celebrity, swiftie-style neurosis about a band who I think are basically trying to explore what is possible in the space between metal, pop and modern r&b. They have accidentally built a cult of followers that it seems that they have to some extent lost control of and pop mania is always weird to watch.

The song is pretty cool but I wish it sounded like the final minute all the way through, which really has stones. Awaiting the full-length record, really just to see what they do at this point.

Glare - Sunset Funeral [Album]

Shoegaze is a long-neglected genre that often finds its place playing second-fiddle to the more dominant elements of a band's sound. Acts like Whirr, Nothing, Basement, still find themselves as fringe projects despite constantly putting out beautiful, lush and expansive records, and it's been hard for bands in this world to gain the traction they deserve among the mesh of less melancholic, less multidimensional genres.

But in 2025 we have a major shoegaze revival on our hands, and in a very welcome twist, it's being fused with some really fucking tough metal, too. Bands like Loathe, Slow Crush, Glare - really driving home rich, ambient, emotional guitar music full of space and time.

Glare are one of the genre's current flagship acts. Sunset Funeral is a soft, ethereal, dream-state of a record full of drama and wonder. It's slow, tender and introspective. Gentle in ways and intensive, demanding dark in others. It's open and bright while also being tense and post grunge-y. Special stuff.

Sunset Funeral came out today and I implore you to check it out. Highlights for me are Mourning Haze, Chlorinehouse and Nu Burn. A real success of a record.

Thornhill - Bodies [Album]

Thornhill are an Australian alternative metal band that I don't know a lot about. But on like four separate occasions, something's been playing in the background and I've been like 'what is this?' and then discovered it was Thornhill. So there's something special about their sound to me and I was looking forward to this latest album drop.

Bodies came out today. I really, really like it. It's an industrial-edged, melodic metal record with a rare swagger. Vocal performance is fantastic. There are big riffs all over the place. The drum sound is fucking enormous. The guitar tone sounds like a chainsaw. There are even moments of modern soul in it. The instrumentation and production is extremely satisfying to my brain. Some of this sounds like a more polished, very early Deftones, with all of its discordance and melody and tension. High-energy, high-intensity, metal-club-in-the-matrix stuff.

I need to think more on this because I've only listened to the record twice in full. Rips so far though. Nu-metal revivalism fused with ambient / gaze stuff along with more traditional alternative metal ideas. Powerful.

Highlights: Silver Swarm, Tongues.

Anyway, that's this week. I am sending you love for the weekend. Wishing you great weather and amazing music. Working on something special for next week. Keep your eyes peeled.

Be safe. 🖤 🕶️