Yes, I’m still doing this

It’s the end of the year again and I’m writing a list about some of the music I enjoyed this year. Same procedure as every year! But what’s different this time is that I’m better off than I was last year. My mental health is improving steadily thanks to a combination of group therapy, medication, and abstinence from caffeine and alcohol, I’m working on at least two cool things to be released in 2026, and I’ve been to Iceland on vacation and saw actual live puffins, which is probably also doing a lot of the heavy lifting for the aforementioned mental health improvements. And looking over the list of great music that I had the privilege of listening to this year, I think that what resonated with me over the last twelve months might reflect that.

All of these are good in some form or another, but to make the list, an album needs to be a little bit more than that and be part of my life for at least a short time of the year. I know that this is highly subjective, but this is my little corner of self-expression on the Internet, so, come on. Primarily, I picked albums that I could somehow link to memorable events, situations or oddities I lived through, but I also picked music that I thought was interesting. Some albums I picked for the Gesamtkunstwerk, others because they summoned a specific vibe. As always, it’s highly personal, therefore subjective, and perhaps a bit pretentious, but hey, that’s me. I’m also neither a journalist nor a native speaker, so keep that in mind while you scan the text for grammar and spellign erorrs and potential journalistic malpractice. Please think of me less as music critic and more of a kid spilling all their toys on the floor, going „look at all these cool things I’ve got.“ That’s all this is.

Best Cover Art

Before I go into the entries for this year’s list, I’d like to write a few words about some cover art I saw this year. Let’s make it an award, like I did a couple of years ago!

The easy thing would have been to declare Desmond Doom the winner like I did a couple of years ago, with this year’s Bats at the Beach. Somewhere around mid-year, however, a review on AMG made me aware of the simply awesome artwork (and excellent band name) of Ultra Raptör’s Fossilized. On a more serious note, I was also briefly considering Epica’s masterfully unsettling cover art for Aspiral. Then I came along some truly magnificent piece of cover artwork that I will talk about later because it’s featured in the main entries. But what actually made the list was Verminus Contempt by Plague Curse, for its cover art features a swarm of legally distinct Skaven from Warhammer. Which you can’t beat if you ask me. So, congratulations, Plague Curse. Great album too, by the way.

YAENNIVER: ANGRY WOMAN

Let’s get one of the non-Metal entries out of the way first, though there are two songs on ANGRY WOMAN in which Jennifer Weist, the behind artist YAENNIVER, employs harsh vocals as a deliberate stilistic choice to underscore her anger. Which was what drew me in initially when my partner showed it to me while on a car ride, because when you bring Metal tropes into non-Metal genres such as (German) Hip Hop, I’m interested. I spent the following weeks waiting for the album, especially when my partner recommended me the audiobook version of Jennifer Weist’s autobiography (called Nackt, if you’re interested), which for me was one of the most engaging reads/listens for me this year. The album in itself, however, when it came out, took a little while for me to click, and that’s probably on me. Because there’s a wide feminist angle to – I know, who would have thunk! – ANGRY WOMAN that I wrote off as too „instagrammy“ at first, while it’s in fact my problem that even I, a (mostly) straight, white cis man who is doing his best to unlearn the many toxic views culturally imposed on gender and sexuality, felt uncomfortable at times when listening to some of the lines on the album. I guess I’m still not there yet, so maybe I needed to hear songs such as PRETTY VACUNTS and the absolute banger that is MÄNNER LOL. Who am I to critique that, anyway? ANGRY WOMAN is angry, furious at times even, but also funny, and most importantly, honest. After reading the autobiography, I have the feeling that this album is exactly what Jennifer Weist wanted to make, and I respect that a lot.

KPop Demon Hunters (Soundtrack from the Netflix Film / Deluxe Version)

Shut up, it’s my list.

You ever had that feeling that you watched a movie to see what everyone was talking about, thought it was pretty fun, assume you’ll forget about it in a few days but then catch yourself singing its many songs weeks later? When even AMG talked about the soundtrack to this movie, I felt like I needed to check it out. So I grabbed my partner, we sat through the movie, and went to bed thinking that this was a fine movie. And then, a couple of days later, the singing started. Now, months later, we’re listening to Takedown while driving, Golden while running, and I’ve heard slanderous rumours that I once croaked Soda Pop while in the shower.

I know that the KPop industrial complex has its own problems and that this animated movie as well as its soundtrack are carefully crafted industry products, but sometimes I don’t like to be cranky and old and try to enjoy music for what it is.

Tetrarch: The Ugly Side of Me

I stumbled upon Tetrarch on Youtube, where the Almighty Algorithm (not that one) presented me with a short about Tetrarch guitarist Diamond Rowe being the first black female guitar player getting a signature edition, which is awesome in itself. Turns out however the band is a great listen for everyone of us aging millenial metal kids who got their introduction to metal by early 2000‘s Nu Metal, for better or for worse. In other words, when I shared two music videos of Tetrarch’s most recent album The Ugly Side of Me with my partner, she told me later that she immediately wanted to tell her mom to get out of her room like it was 2003 again. All jokes aside, the album is full of bangers.

Svarta Havet: Månen ska lysa din väg

I’m always glad to find a Black Metal band that’s explicitly anti-fascist, plus when there’s a fox on the cover, I just have to check it out. Good thing I did, because over the course of the year, Månen ska lysa din väg by Svarta Havet has become a steady and reliable part of my rotation. It has just the right mix of crusty energy and dark, sometimes even melancholic atmosphere that I want from an album like this.

Vanessa Funke: Requiem

My mental health improving does not mean that I’m losing my love for – or enjoyment of – Black Metal of the atmospheric or depressive kind, and this year I’d like to highlight Requiem by Vanessa Funke. Last year’s Void landed in my honorable mentions, but this year’s album is so good or at least resonated so much with me that I think it would have been dishonest to not put it onto this list. Because I felt this album whenever I listened to it this year, and it reminded me a lot of a time when I was first getting into Black Metal and discovering how surprisingly welcoming it can feel to fall into its harsh and dark soundscape. In a way, listening to this album feels like coming home to me. In addition, I’m always for giving solo artists a boost, however small the boost I can give might be.

BAWRS

A couple of years ago (2023, I guess?) I put Wunderbare Welt by German rapper Fatoni on my top spot for that year, and I stand by that. Little did I know at that time that this would come with discovering fellow collaborators Juse Ju and Edgar Wasser, which makes 2025 the perfect year to be dropping a full collaboration album. Because, you know, long time fans had to wait for years, whereas I just had to stumble upon their first single, Nein! Doch! Ohh! and be happy to live in a timeline that’s not completely broken (nice things still happen). And while it’s not reaching the heights I felt with Wunderbare Welt, it’s still great. Fatoni is doing his thing, Edgar Wasser is funny as he ever was, and Juse Jus is freaking angry for all the right reasons. Unfortunately, my buddy Narkson and I didn’t get tickets for the tour, but at least we got this album, and we listened to it after driving home from Hamburg after one of Murs’s last gigs, which makes me sound like I know my Hip Hop, and I like that.

Harakiri For The Sky: Scorched Earth

Even though 2025 turned out to be a less depressing year than 2024, I’m still a sucker for melancholic, depressive music. So far, Melodic Death Metal has been there for me for twenty years in different configurations, and especially in today’s environment of hyper-technical guitar virtuosos, I’m grateful for bands that eschew the Guitar Olympics in favour of atmospheric compositions that pick me up where I’m standing emotionally, rather than doing me a bamboozle with overly long and intricate guitar theatralics.

Harakiri For The Sky do this masterfully, however up until this year they have been somewhat underplayed in my library, for reasons I will get into in a moment. For now, Scorched Earth, their 2025 album, ticks all the right boxes for me. It conjures a melancholy I feel deep in my soul, a feeling of undefined loss, mourning, and anger against an unjust and cruel world.

MeloDeath can go in different directions, and while I will always have a place in my heart for anthems such Ordinary Story or an open invitaiton to the mosh pit like Lost to Apathy, Scorched Earth is something that I felt deeply within myself for a couple of weeks this year.

So why did I hesitate to put them on this list? Well, HFTS stirred up a controversy a couple of years ago when they featured a far-right singer on one of their albums. They got called out, apologized and stated that they had been misled by the singer, who had stated that she had previously left far-right politics behind. They even, as to their own accord, tried to get the songs featuring the singer pulled off the album before release. And that’s it. As with Alcest, who have a much more complicated history, the Internet seems to be unforgiving, and in case of HFTS I did go along with it for a certain amount of time, even when Fire, Walk with Me from the album Arson turned out to be one of my favourite MeloDeath songs of all time. But at some point, it became ridiculuos to me. First of all, people make mistakes, and as a social worker, I just have to believe that people can change, in one direction or another. Which is why I believe in second, third and even forth chances. And second, if you allow me to go on a tangent for a moment, what’s more appaling to me than making mistakes is that we set unachievable standards for hard-working artists that sometimes can’t even afford to do this whole music thing full-time (and therefore maybe can’t afford all the background chekcs that they need to do) while using devices and software made by megacorporations that actually support the rise of actual fascism in the world. In other words: I believe there’s a special place in hell for people who call out bands and artists on Instagram, a platform whose boss should be in jail, for a mistake they made years ago, all while still using Spotify to listening to music, supporting the system that actually exploits artists (which includes another shitty CEO as well right-wing podcasters. Your monthly subscription fee goes to these people, too). How can you guys feel righteous all while feeding the exact machine that is built to destroy art, culture and ultimately personal freedom?

Give people a freakin’ chance to redeem themselves is all I’m saying, y’all.

NevBorn: Alkaios · Part II · the Peacock

I’m not always in the mood for some Prog Metal, but when it hits, it hit hard for me. Readers well-versed in the lore of this blog – so, no one – will remember that NevBorn made it onto this list a couple of years back with the first part of their concept album circle depicting the twelve labours of Heracles. I like the second part even better, even if I sometimes lack the time and energy to listen to it in full. It’s a multi-layered, one-hour-journey through ancient Greek mythology that’s rich in atmospheric build ups and energetic releases, satisfying, often meditative, but always coherent and ultimately confident in what it wants to achieve. Plus, name-dropping The Ocean as one of the musical sources of inspiration definitely checks out and is a huge plus in my books. I’d also like to highlight the crunchy bass line in KNOSSOS – while not overly complicated, I enjoyed it so much in the context of the song that I made a note earlier this year to mention it.

Byzantine: Harbingers

I have to be honest. There are two reasons why I picked this up. The first one is because the amazing cover art – another contender for best of the year. Second is that when I came across the album, I just had finished reading A Memory Called Empire by Arkady Martine, and Byzantine as a word, place and culture was still on my mind after an interview on a podcast with the author. Anyway, none of this has to do anything with the actual music, which I’m happy to say is great. I loved this from the first play, partly because it vaguely reminded me of an old Brainstorm record that’s still on my hard drive after all those years.¹ While other bands often rely on just a couple of riffs or go overboard with complexity, Byzantine bring a whole bag of memorable riffs, grooves, melodies and songparts that they weave elegantly into songs that avoid the easy trap of feeling like a show off. Everything sits where it is supposed to be, creatively playing with clichés without re-inventing the wheel. It’s an album I will go back to a lot, and maybe I will steal an idea or two for my own. Wink wink.

Changeling: Changeling

I poo-pooed the idea of the Guitar Olympics a couple of entries before, but occasionally I enjoy a display of great musicianship if it comes with great composition. Luckily, Changeling, yet another album that drew me in by its phenomenal cover art, is just that. It’s high-performing, high concept music that builds upon layers on layers and throws in unexpected instrumental or compositional elements at just the right moments to add another layer of variance. Even though its at times a bit too clean in its production for my personal taste, I enjoyed listening to it a lot, and I can only respect the high level of songwriting, performance and production this monumental record displays.

Lorien Testard: Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 (Original Soundtrack)

There’s two things that I admire most about surprise megahit videogame Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. First, it’s the story, worldbuilding and writing of writer Jennifer Svedberg-Yen, who, as a writer and worldbuilder myself, deeply respect for what she and the rest of the writing team pulled off here. In a world in which writers struggle to gain respect and get often overlooked within the creative industries, it was refreshing and a ray of hope to have her appear on podcasts and in interviews. It’s something to cheer for, it rules that this exists, and I believe that people will tell their children of this game decades from now.

In a similar fashion – and that’s the second thing – it’s the story of composer Lorien Testard, who, as the popular story goes, was discovered by the game’s director on Soundcloud. It’s any aspiring composer’s dream, or at least it was mine for a long time and I’m projecting here. But that’s not all, because after being brought on the project, Testard cooked as if his life depended on it. There’s this meme I found on the Internet in which the game director asks for a couple of tracks for the game and a person subtitled as Lorien Testard plays a burning piano, and I can’t remember the last time gamers made a meme about a game’s composer.

The eight hours of music are, in itself, a bit too long for me to listen to on a regular basis, but I’ve clocked in seventy hours in the game and it’s a wild ride. From comparatively simple yet effecitve accordeon, piano or choir arrangements, to some of the game’s better known themes, the introspective Flying Waters battle theme, to surreal beach vibes, to the absolutely, positively insane synthesizer in Rain from the Ground, to tunes that wouldn’t feel out of place in a classic JRPG, to veering into the at times almost Ayreon-like rock opera Une vie à t’aimer, this soundtrack rules and I wonder what Lorien Testard’s hard drive must look like.

Månegarm: Edsvuren

A couple of years ago, I listened to Månegarm’s self-titled album, Månegarm (duh). It starts with the truly amazing Blodörn, which is just one of the best Folk/Pagan Metal tracks ever made, which probably colored my opinion of the other tracks on the album. And then I somehow lost sight of them² and their following releases until this year, when I saw their newest album, Edsvuren, being reviews by Angry Metal Guy, and suddenly I remembered that I just had to just check it out. And I’m so glad I did. It’s an album full of absolute bangers made by people who understand their genre and their craft so well that it’s just a joy to listen to them. While many better know bands of the Folk, Pagan and Viking variety seem to tread water creatively, Månegarm seem to overflow with intersting ideas, making it impossible to forget what is almost a punk anthem (En Blodvittneskrans), the strong opener (I skrogsfruns famn³) or the soulful title track, Edsvuren. At the same time, the album sounds like actual metal, which in this time and age apparently is not a given with Folk bands, lending it enough authentic rawness and grit to make it a great experience.

Moron Olice: Pachinko

A late addition to this list that I would have almost missed if it weren’t for occasionally sharing recommendations with my buddy from A Dance In Yellow, three minutes in I knew that I had to add it to the list. The songwriting is off the hook, playful and energetic, genre-hopping, surprising and even a little silly in a „I can’t believe they pulled that off“-kind of way. Parts of it sound like the Soundtrack to one of the newer Mario Karts and if you’ve never actually listened to the music in Mario Kart, this is one of the highest compliments I can pull out of my hat of writing devices (because say what you want about Nintendo, they know how to do great music). If I’d have had more time to listen to it before the cut-off date, I probably would have more things to say about it, but this is Prog at its finest, masterfully executed, and it’s about a sentient Pachinko machine, which manages to feel like a shitpost and a deeply profound observation at the same time.

I’d also recommend to read the album description on their Bandcamp page, which made me a little teary-eyed.

Emma-Jean Thackray: Weirdo

Another album I stumbled upon by listening to a podcast (shoutout to MusicTech’s Forever Studio), I resonated with the themes of mental health. And that I am, well, a weirdo.

Despite the subject matter, the album is a lot of fun and I enjoyed listening to it more often than I initially thought, due to me not really being into this kind of music. A classic case of being roped in by the themes and the humor, than, over time, having the actual music grow on me, to the point that I’m actually kind of into it. Well played, here is a small percentage of my hard-earned cash so this can become, as weird as it might sound, my new comfort listen.

clipping. Dead Channel Sky

This is mostly on this list because I went to a show in Hamburg and it was one of the best I’ve ever seen. I’ve had been listening to clipping. for a few years now, but rather casually, and I hadn’t kept up with their recent output. However, after their live show blew me away, I checked out their most recent album, and it’s killer. I usually don’t care that much for the aesthetics of electronic glitches and faulty equipment noises and what have you in art, but here it’s part of the core concept and it’s done in a way that I find highly enjoyable and interesting. It’s fast, dark, and always engaging.

Fallujah: Xenotaph

How can I, the guy who made it his mission to write a story called Xenogramm and whose favourite movie monster is the Xenomorph, not fall for a title like Xenotaph? It helps that I’m a massive fan of Fallujah’s Dreamless and Empyrean, but even if that was my entry into Fallujah discography, I guess I would have loved it. It’s techy, it’s space-y, it’s dreamlike and feels as vast as the universe itself. The addition of clean vocals, although evoking fears of „mainstreaming“ in less secure personalities, fits rather well, and is a natural evolution in the context of Empyrean and Dreamless, which I decided to view as its own trilogy of albums. Anyway, Xenotaph is great, and I can’t wait to see them in February when they open for Omnium Gatherum in Hamburg. I’m gonna get a tour shirt so hard, you guys.

C418: Wanderstop

Like everybody and their proverbial dog, I raved about the big emotional video game of 2025 a couple of paragraphs ago. But there’s another game from this year that not only brought me to tears, but utterly destroyed me. It’s called Wanderstop. You should definitely stop reading immediately and at least put it on your Steam wishlist.

While I felt its story and themes deep in my heart, I strongly believe that the soundtrack’s balance between almost weightless, playful levity and deeply emotional, melancholic introspection plays a big role in why I resonated so much with the game. There is a warm quietness about it that has so much character and perfectly captures the mood of slowing down, brewing a cup of tea, and sitting down outside to just… be for a moment, allowing yourself to exist for a while without so many (self-imposed) expectations weighing you down. I’ve been there; I’ve been at a point at which I had to slow down, and I guess I’m still recovering from trying to do too much at once.

Go play Wanderstop. Then have a good cry, like I just had when I put on the soundtrack to write this entry. Have a pause. And then, can we talk about how parts of this soundtrack sound like the tunes to a forgotten Legend of Zelda game, in absolutely the best way?

Heretoir: Solastalgia

I know what you’re going to think – it’s another album I got into because of the awesome cover art. And while the giant, prehistoric, black and white bird of terror feeding on its prey might have something to do with me checking out this album (as well as recommendign it), I’m actually here because I’ve always wanted to get deeper into Heretoir. The reason is Retreat to hibernate from their 2011 self-titled album, a song that wound up in a lot of my playlists when I started using music streaming in the mid 2010‘s. And damn, they’ve come a long way since then. Solastalgia is a deep-cutting mix of melancholy and aggression, musically presenting glimmers of hope shining within an ever-growing darkness, beautiful, sad and terrifying at the same time, a fitting soundtrack for the dark timeline we’ve ended up in. And then ending the whole musical journey with just the right In Flames cover song – not the best In Flames song, not by far, but the right In Flames song for this album⁴, mind you – is just a stroke of genius.

Dawn of Ouroboros: Bioluminescence

One thing I like most about Modern Metal ist that despite its seemingly outgoing heaviness, harshness and brutality, artists sometimes choose to use it to conjure warm, introspective and even intimate soundscapes. Which is fitting my mid-thirties, recovering-from-mental-health-issues way of life perfectly. Gone are the days of me heading into the mosh pit to the chorus of fist-pumpingly awesome heroic pathos; these days, I choose to spend my days in a reading chair, covered by a soft blanket, slowly sipping from a cup of tea, careful, because it’s still a bit hot. Don’t laugh. I’m still cool.⁵

Many albums on this list conjure up this vibe for me, but none did it more for me than Bioluminescence by Dawn of Ouroboros. There’s an ambience to its production that, despite all the maximalist force that Metal brings with it by nature, sounds intimate. Let me paint a picture: whenever I listened to Bioluminescence this year, I felt like I was sitting in a café while the snow is piling up outside, warming myself with a cup of tea and the crackling fire of the fireplace, and watching Dawn of Ouroboros giving a club concert on a small stage.

Call it Cozy Metal in lack of a better word, but I was surprised at how much comfort this record gave me this year, whether I was writing a report at work or just riding the train to Hamburg. With confident songwriting and an aura of sophistication that, unlike with many other bands, seems to come just natural (without falling in the trap of feeling arrogant), Bioluminescence was one of the earliest contenders for a spot in this list, and the months since then only solidified this position.

Lacuna Coil: Sleepless Empire

Look, I was a teenager when Lacuna Coil were kind of a big deal, and of course I had a crush when lead singer Cristina Scabbia appeared on the cover of Rock Hard magazine. Crushes, however, do not neccessarily good music make, and since I was a well-balanced person in the 2000s and large parts of the 2010s,⁶ I dismissed the entirety of the Goth Metal genre as not being extreme enough for me, the very extreme and very edgy Dark Tranquillity listener.

What I want to say is that I lost track of Lacuna Coil for a long time, save for Ghost in the Mist, a phenomenal track from 2016‘s Delirium (and following Cristina Scabbia on Instagram back when I was using Instagram, of course). And as with many entries to this list, it was a review on Angry Metal Guy⁷ that made me check out Lacuna Coil’s freshly released new album, Sleepless Empire (fantastic title, by the way). Turns out I love it! By the second spin I was already checking tour dates and bought a ticket for their Hamburg show in November (which I ultimately couldn’t attend because I was sick for the nth-time this year). The rhythm section grooves in all the right ways, the riffs hit harder than some of the more extreme albums on this list, and the vocal performances of both Cristina and co-lead singer Andrea Ferro are creative, emotional and memorable, and I caught myself humming the tunes of songs such as Oxygen or I Wish You Were Dead for days.

Messa: The Spin

I saw Messa at the Lazy Bones festival in 2024, but I somehow forgot keeping up with them. So I basically re-discovered⁸ them for myself when I stumbled upon the music video for The Dress on YouTube one late night, and it took me to another world. Is it fair to rate an album this high because of one song? No, and I’m not doing it, because the rest of the album manages to keep up the magic I felt from this one, single song, with the energetic Fire on the Roof probably being my favourite of the whole seven tracks. But as always, and that’s why I’m doing this whole thing, I’d recommend to listen to the entire album from start to finish. The production feels retro but unique, warm yet mystical, and conjures up images of concerts from decades long gone, smoke-filled venues, and lonesome, almost liminal hotel rooms (I guess the video to The Dress influenced this perception). Songs such as Immolation almost feel like from an old movie that would run late, late in the night, and I can’t help the feeling that there’s a greater theme running through the songs, but I don’t feel that I’m smart enough to get into a full analysis here. I just know that when singer Sara B. goes into the chorus of The Dress and starts singing „All my monsters/ready to feed/coming over/eating my heart“, I can feel a certain kind of pleasant dread that not many bands can manage to give me.

The Algorithm: Recursive Infinity

I’ve been a fan of The Algorithm since Brute Force, so hearing about a new album being on its way was good news already. And when I listened to the first single, Graceful Degradation, I instantly knew that this needed to be on the list for this year, because that track slaps. I’m a (mostly) ethical list-maker, however, so I told myself that I would have to listen to the whole album at least twice before putting it on the list, and that turned out to almost be a problem! Because the wait for Recursive Infinity became almost unbearable, especially with my funny brain constantly forgetting and re-checking the release date. I don’t know the last time I put that much anticipation into an album release! Fortunately, it payed off. The album is going hard from start to finish in the usual, effortless mix between Metal and Techno, even throwing in some nice surprises such as the vocoder-supported, almost cinematic-feeling first part of By Design, or the almost Perturbator-esque Rainbow Table, or the closing track fully going into actual cinematic soundtrack territory. In the short time since its release, it has become a reliable part in my rotation, be it at work, as effective deep focus background music while writing, or on the train on the way to visit my family. I like it a lot, which is why its ranking so high on this list.

Master Spy: Maze Runner

Speeeeeeeeeeeed, Speeeeeeeeeeeed Raaacer!

Deep inside me, down the chasms of my soul, there’s the corpse of a theater kid I smothered with a pillow when we had to stage a costumed lipsync performance of Cats in elementary school for some reason. And while I’m not keen to go onto a stage, I kind of love the theatrical, and while Metal in itself is super theatralic, there’s nothing more theatrical within Metal than the epic, tale-telling pathos of Power Metal. Ignore what I said in the Dawn of Ouroboros section about the days of fist-pumping mosh pit anthems being long gone for me, I’m gonna kick my reading chair, exchange the cup of tea for a horn of mead, and hop into my spaceship to enter technicolor hyperspace! My girlfriend says I can move back in with her once I stop singing Speed Racer randomly every five minutes or so, but I don’t want to live in a world in which I don’t sing Speed Racer randomly every five minutes or so. I mean, it’s a race against Lucifer, and a gamble for your life!

All jokes aside, I unironically love Maze Runner with all of my heart. Perhaps it’s because it would’ve been be the perfect gig for a metal festival with my friends back in 2007 or 2008, perhaps because it scratches that particular „musical comic book“ or rock opera itch that I need to to scratch from time to time. But whatever the reason might be, Maze Runner is a short but beautiful collection of seven fun and playful songs that feel glorious, larger than life and – let me say this with love – a bit silly, in the best sense of the word.

The Beths: Straight Line Was A Lie

Apparently, I love the Beths. I almost instantly bought Straight Line Was A Lie when it came out, I deeply related to the lyrics and themes on the album, I cried a litte, I saw them live for the second time this year, I cried a little, I got a tour shirt, and then I realized that the Beths might be one of my favourite bands, maybe of all time, and I cried a little. And I guess it’s that realization that made me put Straight Line Was A Lie on the top spot this year. It’s full of songs that have found a place deep in my heart. Metal, for example, is an instant classic, and it feels like a song that would have played on the radio when I was a little kid, becoming part of the nostalgic rememberance of my childhood. Or take Til My Heart Stops, which I made the mistake to listen to while writing this entry, and now my keyboard is full of tears.⁹ It’s impossible for me to take a single track on this album that is not memorable, it’s all so well-made and feels so authentic, honest and personal, I can’t help but love this. And honestly I’m running out of words to describe it, so perhaps what I’ve already written has to be enough. Just one last attempt at describing what I love about it: I wouldn’t be surprised if ten to twenty years from now, an indie director would direct a coming of age movie taking place in the 2020‘s and pull the entire soundtrack from this album. I bet someone’s already writing a script.

Have a great 2026, all of you.

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1 It’s called Liquid Monster, I recently listened to it, and it still holds up in my opinion.

2 Did I tell you that I got ADHD, dear readers?

3 I’m so glad I’m not doing a podcast or YouTube channel, because I would absolutely butcher the pronounciation.

4 And it’s from the album that got me into Metal, how cool is that.

5 That’s a lie. I was never cool.

6 That’s another lie. I was a turd.

7 It was written by a particular sponge, whose reviews generally seem to align pretty much with my taste. If you ever make it to my part of the world, let me buy you a drink!

8 Did I mention I got ADHD? Because I got ADHD.

9 My girlfriend once described Expert in A Dying Field, the title track from the previous album by The Beths, as „instant sadness.“