2025 was a tough year for me personally, but also one of a lot of wins and some of the most beautiful and both emotionally and aurally hard-hitting independent music to help me through it. In the summer of 2025, me and fellow independent musician Evaleigh finally released our thrash metal collaboration song Own the Unknown that had been in the works for two years, as I first wrote it in 2023. I also released Rhino on the Piano, my first song in a more electronic style with adding a drum machine. Alongside that, I also released an EP, an album, and a few other songs. It's been a busy year for many independent artists, as well the first album in a decade from one of my favorite 90's/00's alt metal bands. Like with my 2024 list, I'll list my top 5 albums of the year with short descriptions of each and a link to my favorite song, and then the rest of what I loved!
OTU
You'll Get Through This
Finnish musician Otu has quickly become one of my favorite musicians recently, resonating with me on several levels. His music is wildly experimental, and while mostly playing metal, genres mean nothing with what he adds to it. From throat singing, to violin, to acapella, played alongside the heaviest sludgiest riffs to grace an album and together with both soaring melodies and fiery screams. The pure healing that I hear on this album is like nothing else, and through it has helped me with my healing as well. I tear up with almost every song, and the song Lost and Found has such a heavy and beautiful riff that sings through the guitar strings as beautifully as his vocals. Lyrics like "Silence wounds the soul, it awakens the violent mind" from Broken Pieces, and "REWIRE THE PROGRAM, HEAD ON! There's a light in the distance, it shines through the darkness, that won't be erased, but with it we exist, that's the key" from Do You Want to Go Back?, the simple yet direct "JUST BE YOURSELF" from Grit, or even "They drop their bombs, while we sing our songs" from They Drop Their Bombs have really stood out to me and hit hard in those tough moments. I've worked through a lot screaming or crying along and headbanging along to this beautifully heavy album, and what a perfect title. You'll Get Through This.
Otu - Do You Want to Go Back Again?
Buy the album on Bandcamp (Preferably on Bandcamp Friday where Bandcamp waives their fee so Otu gets all of the sales money)
Bonus: Otu - You're Still There
Otu released another album in 2025, fittingly titled You're Still There that continues the vast array of sound and raw emotional healing of You'll Get Through This, with heavy releases of anger with jumpdafuckup riffs like The System and the spastic thrash of Hit Song, fuzzy grunge that's both beautifully melodic, empowering, and heavy with Take the Wheel and Hold My Hand, You're Not There, breaking the silence with I Feel Alive, and the amazing closer Thanks for the Tears which could not be a more fitting titled song. Like a 555 frequency, it feels like a return to yourself whole and authentic, and I do thank Otu for the tears of release with this song. The way he produced the song too is like nothing I've ever heard, with gargantuan orchestral breaks fading in and out in parts of the song, chromatic walks up and down each guitar string, and a beautiful compliment between bass and piano. Then there's a song like Full Heart, Cold Heart which mixes a little bit of everything.
Otu also has his albums on CD or Vinyl here: https://elasticstage.com/otumusic
Ursula's Cartridges
Cleanslate! Stalemate! Template!
Following up with another Finnish musician, Ursula's Cartridges, who has a similar experimental creative spirit but with electronic music. His amazing EP Molten Glass Soup 5000 and album Invitation to the Ice Queen's Prom were among my favorites from 2024, both with completely different sounds, and here his 2025 EP Cleanslate! Stalemate! Template! is also among my favorites and a sound like no other. Adorned with an album cover that looks right out of a Rene Magritte painting, Cleanslate! is Ursula's Cartridges unique take on nu jazz that goes heavy on the breakbeats and the bass. Opening with an almost sludgy Medieval Funq, each song stands out in it's own way. Nitpick in Pit Picnic might be my favorite with an amazing interplay of syncopation between all the layers of instruments and samples. Especially the intro's jittery bass, classic breaks, and what almost sounds like bird songs, keeps playing in my head long after listening. That's followed by a close tie for favorite, as Booboo grooves out of the gate with a funky bop sounding right out of the Funky Board levels in Rayman 3. Funnily enough Agatha Aghast follows in both tracklisting and favorites, with a swaggering stroll like something out of a Pink Panther or Inspector cartoon. Like all of his releases, Ursula's Cartridges takes inspiration from nearly every side of electronic music and makes it his own, with Cleanslate! Stalemate! Template! sounding right at home with either the Y2K Norweigan nu jazz scene, or one of his own albums.
Ursula's Cartridges - Nitpick in Pit Picnic
Manifestor Generator
The Eternal Soil
After releasing several amazing albums of other band's albums done in another style and his beautiful solo album Honor the Struggle as Planleft back in 2021, Denis Pauna's new band with the awesome name Manifestor Generator; fitting for an independent artist manifesting this creative independence, is here with their debut EP. Similar to his solo material yet blending it all together, The Eternal Soil is an EP where grunge, thrash, goth rock atmospheres, and even a little death metal all meet as The Sky Never Ends. His music and Manifestor Generator as a band really reminds me of that brief period in the early 90's where artists were taking different styles of metal into their own unique directions, and the gatekeepers weren't around to care yet. Grunge, thrash, death metal, and regular heavy metal weren't seen as category blocks like they got treated as later, instead it was all different sounds to find inspiration. The Eternal Soil of grounding with mother earth, brings three songs of self-journeying, growth, healing, breaking illusions/rusty cages, and returning to yourself. Through The Endless Flow of the primordial void, The Sky Never Ends.
Manifestor Generator - The Sky Never Ends
Buckethead
When the Wind Blew Through Your Branches
Every year Buckethead releases so much amazing beautiful music that ranges from the gentle acoustic to the blisteringly heavy, and it's always such a gift. However if picking one album of his as my favorite from last year, it's this melodic guitar beauty. When the Wind Blew Through Your Branches is a beautiful honoring of a Cypress tree that he had a deep connection with that passed. I can feel and hear the healing through each of the three songs, from the bittersweet melancholy of Tree Friend to All Never Will You Be Forgotten to the coming out of grief into a celebration of the tree's life in The Welcoming Tree, this is pure (he)artwork. Each strum, harmonic ring, chromatic run, and backing drum beat, is full of so much feeling. The deep-toned guitar riff that comes in at the end of Tree Friend to All especially stands out to me. Buckethead has helped me heal a lot myself through his healing, as well as being one of my biggest inspirations for my own music.
Buckethead - The Welcoming Tree
Scythelord
Masters of the Scythe
Scythelord (of whom Vargskelethor Joel is half the band) returns with a new EP of intense thrash, four covers of lesser-known classic metal bands and one original that is one of the most roaring releases of anger in the form of screaming thrash I've heard in a long time. It's awesome to hear them cover a Tank song, a classic heavy metal band that never really gets the appreciation/respect they deserve, and Joel's clean vocals have strengthened a lot over the years and his vocal style really goes well with Algy Ward's unique gruff yet melodic vocals of the original. The Razor cover is great, and I might have to check out Leeway now. I've long known of them, but hearing Scythelord's intense cover of their song Enforcer has me curious about the originals. The Scythelord original Another Day though is on another level. A fiery expression of the effects phone/screen/internet/media addiction can have on people that hits hard in many ways. Be it drama, "news", scrolling, viral videos, or anything for that quick dopamine, it really screams about how people can lose themselves in it and how draining of our energies it really is ("Plug me in, recharge the drain" is a really powerful lyric). The shredding riffs and the robotic vocal effects Joel adds as accents to some of his growls feels so heavy, and the swirling guitar solo is amazing and picks up where their last album Earth Boiling Dystopia left off. Looking forward to hearing where they pick up from after Another Day.
Bonus:
Finger Eleven
Last Night on Earth
The only non-independently released album in this list here (with one other in the other favorites), but after a decade, Finger Eleven's new album is finally here after being in the works since at least 2019. They've been one of my favorite 90's/Y2K metal bands for a long time now, and as I loved 2015's Five Crooked Lines I've been looking forward to this album since seeing a live video of them playing Perfect Effigy in 2019. It was worth the wait, as from the Tip-esque aforementioned Perfect Effigy with that classic 90's alt metal sound to the more Pink Floyd-esque Body and Mind reminding me of Them vs You vs Me's title track, it's got a little bit of everything from their previous albums. The song The Mountain (which feels more like a title track for the album, between the cover and just the overall feel of the album) stands out with a grandiose heaviness that the some of the songs from Five Crooked Lines had, and along with some other songs like Blue Sky Mystery and Laughing at the Storm have an esoteric curiosity to them.
Other favorites:
Buckethead - Whispering Meadow
Buckethead - Hilltop Sanctuary
Buckethead - The Tears That Become Teachers
Buckethead - Cloaked in Wonder
Buckethead - Dreams are Never Lost
Otu - Apocalypse
The Halo Effect - March of the Unheard
Superfluous Motor - Prequalified for Collapse
Myles Oliver - The Tesseract
Buckethead - Dance in Waterfalls
Falsegiver - Спираль
and a few awesome singles:
A high energy house groove that is impossible to not move and dance to, with beautiful vocals and lyrics too: https://open.spotify.com/track/1NShMQTApg0qyecbZdBHle
A short but sweet drum and bass banger that brings to mind classic racing game soundtracks, and would make a perfect addition to any custom racing soundtrack: https://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen/1429070
Trailer - Worm and Bug
Beautiful melancholy grunge song with amazing bass harmonics, with a very deep warm production that reminds me of the Y2K alt rock band Pinback: https://trailerband.bandcamp.com/track/worm-and-bug
Here's to another year prosperous for beautiful creative independence for 2026! More music and comics coming soon!
Listen to my 2025 EP Swans of Urð and album Phases of Waves.
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