(written by Islander)
We’re at another installment of this list where I don’t really have any organizing principle to explain why I put these three songs together. They’re just three songs I thought deserved to be on the list, and they happen to come from three really good 2025 albums too, but each one sounds very different from the other two.
IN MOURNING
In Mourning’s 2025 album The Immortal did well for itself in our year-end Listmania. Gonzo put it at No. 11 in his YE list, calling it “loaded with top-tier songwriting and arrangements that never wear out their welcome”. He thinks it might be the band’s best work in the nearly 20 years since Shrouded Divine. DGR named The Immortal his Album of the Year in the final segment of his Top 50 rollout, calling it “a source of way more neck-aches in the back-half of my year than I should be willing to admit.”
Speaking for myself, The Weight of Oceans is one of my favorite albums of the last decade and a half, and so I was happy that The Immortal frequently reminded me of the great strengths of that earlier full-length. As my friends mentioned, it’s great to hear the band up the tempos and the chug-fests on the new record, while still lacing the songs with so much beauty — and still making them feel titanically heavy. I thought “North Star” was a prime example of what makes their newest album so compelling, and it ranks high on the addictiveness scale too.
Forgive the pun, but it does bring the weight of oceans (and oceanic wonder), delivering both immense, thudding heaviness and vast, flowing waves of ethereal melodic sheen. The soaring singing, mighty roars, and enraged howls work together extremely well, and the band add to the song’s dynamic facets with furiously jackhammering bursts, distressing tremolo’d fevers, and a guitar solo that’s so forlorn it’s wrenching.
North Star‘s punchiness is powerful, but so is its dark emotional power, and it’s infectious for both reasons. As in other instances of decision-making for this list, I was also influenced in choosing the song by the fact that the band made it the subject of an excellent video, a mostly animated tale that suits the moods of the music very well.
https://inmourning.bandcamp.com/album/the-immortal
https://www.facebook.com/inmourningband/
CYTOTOXIN
Here’s another song from an album that made the No. 1 spot on one of our year-end lists, in this case the one sent our way by Professor D. Grover the XIIIth. Cytotoxin’s Biographyte even motivated him to come out of hiding and review it for us. Here’s an excerpt from his YE list article:
Cytotoxin have both the talent and the songwriting acumen to elevate themselves, and Biographyte is the perfect example, mixing the precise riffing and beefy slams of Nuklearth and the balls-out guitar pyrotechnics of Gammageddon into a flawless distillation of everything that makes the band great.
In putting the album at the No. 22 spot on his own list, DGR called it a “rapid-fire battering ratcheted up to a completely new technical level”, “a hair-raisingly fast album that jams so much into a collective of four-minute songs that airlines will probably charge extra to ship a box of the physical release of it given the sheer weight of the thing.”
Like those two dudes, I’ve been a Cytotoxin fan for a lot of years, listening with interest as their style has evolved. I also agree that Biographyte is generally insane, with a level of technical speed and mastery that doesn’t take long to drop jaws and spin heads, combined with the kind of battering-ram brutality and roaring vocal hostility that contastingly appeals to the basest of instincts.
To be honest, however, it’s an album that requires a lot of close attention and repeat listening to identify distinctions among the songs. Giving it just one go is likely to leave most people exhausted, skinless, and splayed out on the ground.
I felt like something from the album needed to be on this list, but I didn’t have any clear idea which song it should be. “Eventless Horizon” and the album’s title track were among the contenders, but I picked “Condemnesia“, a song that was released (with a video) as a single very early last year, I think before the new album was even announced.
When I first heard the song I wrote: “Staying true to Cytotoxin’s stylistic strengths, the song is equal parts freakishly head-spinning, brutishly head-smashing, and ferociously decimating — and with some glorious finger-tapped soloing in the mix too.” It’s both murderous and mercurial, and I especially enjoyed watching the bandmembers do their things in the video.
https://cytotoxin.bandcamp.com/album/biographyte
https://www.facebook.com/Cytotoxinmetal/
JORDSJUK
In this installment of the list I’ve been picking songs that did well for themselves on some of our year-end lists, even though that’s never been a necessary qualification for what goes on here. The object is to hail individual infectious songs, which may or may not have appeared on albums that anyone thought were among the best of the year.
But having said that, I do find myself being influenced to check out songs I hadn’t heard before, or to listen to them again, when I see albums being spotlighted on lists we’ve published. And that’s what I did with Jordsjuk’s album Naglet til livet after I saw it on an excellent year-end list we shared from The Goat Tavern.
I had listened to parts of the album, with the intention of eventually listening to all of it, before being reminded of it by The Goat Tavern’s list. After hearing all of it (at last), I found myself in complete agreement with his YE list write-up for the record, including this:
“Naglet till Livet is Norwegian to its core with its sound and feel, and it’s got a countless number of fantastic riffs to offer (‘Skreddersøm‘ being a perfect example!). It feels natural, authentic and you can sense the experience and skill of the musicians throughout the album.”
“Skreddersøm” turns out to be the song I chose for this list, though others were also deserving. It doesn’t last long but it quickly gets the blood rushing with a brazenly blazing and blaring riff that doesn’t let go.
Combine that with furiously thundering beats, other riffs that menacingly writhe, morbidly pulse, and maniacally vibrate, plus scorch-the-earth howls and bowel-loosening bass-lines, and you have one hell of a song. For a track so short, Jordsjuk impressively pack a lot of changing sensations and moods into their rampage. And if you haven’t yet listened to the whole album, get on that ASAP.
https://jordsjuk.bandcamp.com/album/naglet-til-livet
https://www.facebook.com/jordsjuk/