It really felt like 2025 was going to be a pretty average year for music, but, luckily, October has arrived with a head spinning amount on new music. I’ve carried Sybax and Wing! over from September as they are too good to have missed on my month off. We have a lot to get through, there’s a lot of great music, so I’ll just get on with it.
The Lynkify links will take you to the featured song on a list of streaming services. Click the link and then select the song on the streaming service of your choice.
Sybax
Twin
Post Rock / Electronica
French duo, Sybax, seem to have decided to take their sound in a darker direction with their new album. It’s not that it is more aggressive than the debut, but it is a lot more intense. On top of hat, and you can almost dance to some of their new material. Kinda.
Twin is presented as a two disc album, where the first disc is more electronic post rock, and the second leans into a dance vibe and goes much harder.
Bolton, the album opener, is a moody electronic track that incorporates samples about UFOs, while the second track, Poole is some really driving post rock, with an early M83 feel. Disc 1 however, has some fairly well worn tropes in it. Sybax’s use of samples aren’t that original, but they are used well.
Even the Chaplin dialogue taken from the film The Dictator works. It’s an overused sample but Sybax really makes it soar, with the music really giving the legendary words a vital energy.
Disc 2 starts with a blood curdling scream that lets you know that the album has just changed gears; and its opening track, Happy Dirty Body is the album’s call to arms. This is where the album moves from post rock to electronica. Its low slung, post punk bass kicks off with some real menace, joined by some filthy acid squelch, all which combines to make a filthy dance track and is the album’s highlight. There are a few twists and turns on disc 2, (Un) Lucky is strangely Noir jazz before it starts to mutate, get noisier and morph into another bass heavy dance banger, while the blown out bass and towering electronics on Holy Smile round out the album, laying waste to all around it and topping off an incredible disc 2.
This is the most interesting post rock album I’ve heard since last year’s Overhead the Albatross album and that is some very high praise. I’ve had my review copy of Twin since July and it’s still in heavy rotation. Twin is a great blend of post rock and electronica and I’m very sure that I’ll be talking about it again on my end of year list in December.
https://lynkify.in/song/happy-dirty-body/2OC7p63w
Wing!
MISSED IT JUST THE ONCE
Instrumental Hop Hop / Electronica
MISSED IT JUST THE ONCE a debut ep, but you’d be hard pushed to work that out by just listening to it. According to Bandcamp, this EP is trying to channel the sound of London, but instead of aping Burial’s bleak sound, Wing! sounds like it’s soundtracking a far more glitzy side of the city. However, not everything has to be sad boi electronica, and Wing!’s fusion of post rock and trip hop has a wonderful swagger to it, inspiring more of a strut in the listener than your more usual trip hop chin stroke.
But enough about the mood, what’s the music like? DJ Shadow would be the best touchstone. It’s hip hop beats with a loose, jazzy drumming reminds me of Endtroducing, but there’s something about the drums and the dubby bass that also reminds me of Bowery Electric, although Wing! are far more uptempo (relatively).
The closer, In a Second I will need a Second, has a jazzy, post rock feel to it, but far more light and uplifting than that description sounds. It’s like sunlight in musical form and a great closer to a very impressive debut.
https://lynkify.in/song/let-the-rest-go/xj4qS4ue
Burial Waves
Washed Clean
Alt rock / Post Hardcore
Burial Waves released an ep way back in 2021 that blew me away. I just couldn’t get enough of it and then they just disappeared. Seeing that this band is a side project, with the members being in other long established acts, I was afraid that the Holy Ground ep was all we were going to get. But here we are four years later and the band’s debut finally arrives.
Washed Clean builds on that ep and really delivers on the promise the band showed. The band steps up from the first track Causer, with his huge low end and nervous, highly strung sounding guitars and just stomps into your ears with some glorious alt rock.
One of my favourite things about this album is how the band uses the bass guitar. It’s right up front in the song writing. Silver Streets in particular has a great filthy bass line that just shakes the room when played loudly.
The closer, Suitors rounds the album out with a great blast of guitars, affirming everything you’ve experienced and making sure the album stamps itself in your memory as it comes to an end.
It’s taken a long time to get this album, but I’m very happy to report that this is everything I hoped it would be.
https://lynkify.in/song/fresh-nerve/rK0YyqZF
Worriedaboutsatan
All The Way / Hawk, Wind & Fire
Techno
Worried is mostly an ambient producer and has made a lot of great ambient out albums, a few of which have featured on the blog over the years.
Here he slips off his usual style and strays into modular techno, inspired by Factory Floor. And it’s brilliant. Two new tracks and a great remix of pulsing, driving techno, aching for dry ice and strobes, or at least getting a speeding ticket as you get lead footed while driving with it on.
I know this isn’t Worried’s main sound, but it’s kind of a pity that we don’t get more heads down bangers from him.
It doesn’t seem to be on Spotify, so I’ve added a bandcamp ink.
IAN
Come on Everybody, Let’s do Nothing!
Post Metal
IAN (no one in the band is called IAN) have been turning heads in the heavier side of the music world with their debut, Come on Everybody, Let’s do Nothing!, mixing post rock and post metal in a very entertaining way.
They play punishing, sludgy post metal, as indebted to Neurosis as Cult of Luna, but it’s the cello that gives the band its edge, that extra dimension that most of the post metal crowd don’t have. It allows the band a more dramatic side, a side that is more lush, more cinematic than post metal bands normally achieve.
The closer, Not Erotic / Cop Film is an epic beast of a track that showcases the band’s strengths. It’s slow building dread as the guitar fuzz overwhelms the strings leading to some dissonance and riffs before it pivots back into lush strings. The song is a masterclass in long form, noisy post rock and is a fantastic way to finish a great album.
Hopefully we’ll see them at Arctangent this year.
https://lynkify.in/song/not-erotic-cop-film-end-credits/4OcxehqO
Coastlands
Coastlands
Alt rock / blackened hardcore / Screamo (maybe)
For some reason, the first singles from this album made me think that this was going to be a post metal album. And while there’s definitely post metal on here, this album is so much more varied and interesting than those genre constraints.
The band lull you in with the opening track, a moody bit of HEALTH like electronica invites you to lower your guard, there’s even an acoustic guitar break in the song. It’s going to be fine, the album reassures you, and moves into Hollowing, a track that starts like some of the heavier shoegaze bands out there before the blackened / screamo vocals kick in and the band show their true colours. And from there on the band don’t sit still.
Mors is a moody, instrumental, post rock track, slowly building atmosphere, that launches into Vessels. Vessels is a face melting slab of blackened post metal, until it effortlessly morphs into an alt rock song and then back again. It’s an unusual choice and a great example of how uninterested Coastlands are with conventional song structures, or conventional anything really.
Is it post metal? Is it alt rock? Is some of this screamo or blackened hardcore? I’m not sure. There’s a lot going on here. But what I can say for sure is that this is a band melting all their influences into their own unique sound and nailing it. Coastlands is easily one of the most varied and interesting albums I’ve listened to all year.
https://lynkify.in/album/coastlands/TPu1TFi3
Nightbus
Passengers
Indie / Electronica
It’s always interesting seeing a band develop over their first singles to their debut album. In some cases you can see a clear development of a band honing their sound and finding their feet in the world. In other cases you can see a band lose everything that made them interesting, as they move into the music business properly and have management / a label guide the band in a more “commercial” direction.
Nightbus have improved greatly from their first singles and have moved on from their early Joy Division obsession. And while that Joy Division post punk sound is still in the band’s DNA, there’s been a move to the dance floor, and you can feel the influence of acts like The XX and Ladytron. And it’s much, much more interesting.
Angles Mortz combines that 80’s guitar sound with a more dance friendly mood, more New Order than Joy Division. The bass in particular reminds me of Peter Hook, whereas False Prophet has a more heady, narcotic feel to its dance moves. There are some more guitar based tracks on here as well though. Host has a great shoegaze feel to it, with a nice wall of fuzz at the end of the song.
Passengers walks a fine line between indie and dance, blending them together in a way that may not be breaking new ground, but well enough to make them stand out from their peers. This is a warm and welcoming album for the dark nights ahead of us.
https://lynkify.in/song/false-prophet/byWhU6t2
Dawnwalker
The Between
Prog metal
Opening with a prayer bowl ringing and a spoken word meditation, you can tell that Dawnwalker are voyaging off to new horizons. They’ve never been ones to take the obvious path and releasing a 32 minute song is certainly not the easiest way to win the public’s hearts. To add to that, The Between is described by the band as “a guided meditation through death and dying”, but as impenetrable as all of this may sound, The Between is Dawnwalker on top form.
The band’s ever changing roster has expanded to a 12 piece for this track, and they’re using this to push their sound even further than usual. We get everything expected from a DW track, beautiful passages with clean vocals, extreme metal, flutes, strings, electronics and general progginess but this time there’s added sax and a white noise, free jazz freak out. (Not too much sax freak out, thankfully)
The band are obviously pushing the limits of what they can do, but they obviously haven’t reached them as there isn’t one slip on this mammoth track.
Does The Between need to be one, 32 minute track? No, it really doesn’t. It could have been broken into different songs but Dawnwalker are going to Dawnwalker, and we can just be grateful that they’re still making such great music.
They’re not on Spotify but are on other streaming services.
Frayle
Heretics & Lullabies
Metal
It can be difficult when reviewing an album and being unable to pigeonhole the band in a way that’s easy to describe to the reader. Now, this is a great thing for the band in question, there’s so many identikit acts out there, so originality is always prized. But it can make things tricky for a reviewer.
This is a very long winded way to say that Frayle doesn’t sound like most other metal bands. Self described as Heavy, Low, & Witchy, the band has a doomy slow and moody sound, but also has some filthy detuned, almost metalcore riffs. It’s just the way it’s all assembled that makes them stand out so much.
Heavy, low and slow isn’t anything new in metal, that describes the first Sabbath song, but it’s that witchy part that is the special sauce in the band’s sound.
Singer Gwyn Strang’s voice is hushed, almost girlish in places and it really makes Frayle stand out. But this isn’t some twee affectation, it’s used to great effect on songs like Demons. Demons is the first song I’ve ever come across where someone tells their personal demons that they are trapped with her, not the other way around. When the Gwyn whisper / sings “I’m a fucking monster” you believe her.
Frayle has gotten so much heavier since their last album and it’s a change that suits them. The riffs are huge, but only dominate when needed. While the band’s doomy atmosphere is everything, it never becomes a slog. So if you’re looking for something a little different in your metal, or just want some great music, this is a great place to find it.
https://lynkify.in/song/summertime-sadness/pxY5hM4V
Carved into the Sun
Silent Tower
Post Rock
Carved into the Sun lives on the less bombastic side of the post rock spectrum, and this is an album that thrives on mood. Its slow guitar picking and strings are enough to carry the listener off to another world, and even when the band does use distortion, it’s not for cheap thrills, it just adds more depth to the music.
It’s a fairly obvious fact that Cello is a winner in post rock, and here is no exception. The strings add an extra layer, an added drama, that elevates the album and makes it soar. Even when CitS go loud, like on the closer, What Deepest Remains, the band keeps a strong control on their sense of atmosphere. Those guitars may be reaching for the heavens, but they never unbalance the song, instead lock the listener in with them.
It may take a few listens to hear what makes Carved into the Sun stand out, but when they click, it becomes very clear just how good this album really is.
https://lynkify.in/song/what-deepest-remains/He4tvx0j
If you made it through all that, you are a champ! And to be honest, it’s a lot. But we’ll be back next month with some of October’s over spill and whatever November brings.
The ways of exile 