2025 – A YEAR IN REVIEW(S): THE DISAPPOINTING

(Andy Synn kicks off his annual week-long take-over of the site with a round-up of albums that he couldn’t, in good conscience, include in either his “Good” or “Great” lists)

Webster’s Dictionary defines “disappointing” as “failing to meet expectations“… and that’s what we’re here to talk about today, not the albums we don’t like, not the artists we  hate (there’s more than enough room for that sort of negativity elsewhere on the internet, I’m sure), but those releases from 2025 which just didn’t quite make the cut this year.

And let me be clear about something, every one of these artists/albums featured here today is one that I was either already a fan of, or was hoping to become a fan of, prior to each of these releases, so what I’m not looking for is for people to use this as an excuse simply to bash bands, or their fans, just because they’ve got some weird grudge against them.

Rather, this is a place for us to express our sense of disappointment, to air our feelings about those artists/albums who failed to live up to our standards (or, indeed, their own), so that we can move on to better, brighter things over the next few days as I round-up all the “Good” and “Great” albums I’d like you all to check out (if you haven’t done so already).

Before then, however, prepare yourselves… the only way out is through!

AFSKY – FÆLLESSKAB

We’ve written, for the most part pretty glowingly, about Afsky enough over the years for it to be pretty firmly established that we’ve enjoyed most (if not all) of their previous work(s).

Which, unfortunately, is what makes it so galling – you might even say disappointing – to have to include Fællesskab in this particular part of my year-end round-up.

Oh, it’s not a terrible album by any means – in fact it even has its moments of greatness (closer “Svanesang” in particular is almost worth the price of admission on its own, it’s just a shame that it’s such a slog to get there) – and the decision to incorporate a more folk-ish feel to the melodies is, on paper, a laudable one (even if, in practice, they’re rarely strong enough to carry a whole song).

But, the fact remains – well, from my perspective anyway – that there’s just something missing this time around, resulting in an album that falls far, far short of what we know Afksy is capable of. Better luck next time, maybe?

FORLORN – AETHER

If you’ve been following the site for a while you’ll probably know that it’s very rare for me to include a new band here… but the thing is that, for the most part, it’s not even really Forlorn‘s fault that they’ve ended up here.

After all, they’re a talented enough band – though the performance of vocalist Megan Jenkins is the only part of the album that really stands out from the crowd – but their PR people made the cardinal error of over-promising (throwing around terms like “Midsommar Metal” and “the new face of Folk Horror” as if they could make these statements true and/or meaningful just by repeating them often enough) for an album (if just 8 tracks, 3 of which are interludes, of largely forgettable groove-metal guitars, totalling barely more than 26 minutes of music, can be called an “album”) that was then pretty much destined to under-deliver.

Of course, multiple media outlets, etc, have already anointed them as “the next big thing”, so their success if pretty much a foregone conclusion at this point (hence why I don’t feel too bad about airing my counter-opinion here)… I just hope that whatever they do next has significantly more substance to it, in order to actually justify the hype.

KATATONIA – NIGHTMARES AS EXTENSIONS OF THE WAKING STATE

Now this one hurts… Katatonia are not only a seminal act, but also one which we here at NCS have been huge fans of for as long as we can remember.

But, as seminal as they may be, they’re not perfect, and Nightmare As Extensions of the Waking State isn’t the first time they’ve stumbled along the way either.

That being said, I don’t want to pick sides in the recent split… though you are, of course, free to read whatever you like into recent events and how they may (or may not) have impacted the band’s new album… and would just rather focus on the fact that so much of Nightmares… is just so boring.

It’s the sort of album that looks like Katatonia, sounds like Katatonia (sometimes a little too much, to be honest, as there’s definitely some unconscious melody recycling going on here and there), but just doesn’t feel like the Katatonia we know they can be, ultimately leaving no particularly strong impression, no distinct sense of identity, beyond the suggestion that you’d probably be better off just listening to Sky Void of Stars, The Fall of Hearts, or Night Is The New Day again instead while you wait for the band to rediscover their mojo again.

MALEVICH – UNDER A GUILDED SUN

I was a big fan of Malevich‘s previous album, Our Hollow (and the subsequent Trembling and Dowsed EP as well) and yet there was just something missing from their new album that ultimately left me cold.

The passion is still there, sure, and the familair pieces are all still present and correct, but they just don’t fit together as cleanly or as clearly, and too many of the songs – which have a much longer average length this time around, which might be part of the issue – spend too long searching for a sense of purpose that too often seems to elude them.

That being said, I’m still oddly well-disposed towards the album (the songs which do find their way under my skin are more than welcome to stay there, even if the end count for what works vs what doesn’t makes Under A Guilded Sun seem like it would have worked better as an EP) and the band, and I’m sure that enough of our readers will continue to support them (and some of you probably even love this record, and think that I’ve got rocks in my ears) despite this odd blip.

SHEDFROMTHEBODY – EVERYTHING OUT THERE HAS TEETH

Spoiler alert: this is one of two Shedfromthebody releases that will be making an appearance this week, but while Whisper and Wane was another welcome addition to to Doom-gaze diva’s discography (you can read more about it here, if you like), Everything Out There Has Teeth ended up being a perfect example of diminishing returns,

Don’t get me wrong, the execution is still stellar (though the heavier riffs seem a little tacked on this time around) it’s just that Shedfromthebody‘s second album in less than a year doesn’t seem to know what, or who, it wants to be, resulting in an awkward mish-mash of ideas and potential (yet, ultimately, unfulfilling) directions that – in sharp contrast to the project’s previous knack for weaving together different, often disparate, dynamics – fails to come together into anything resembling a coherent album.

Perhaps, sometimes, less actually is more.

SPIRITWORLD – HELLDORADO

I first fell in love with Spiritworld (aka “Cowboy Ringworm“) when I saw them back in 2022 – where they performed as a last minute addition at that year’s Northwest Terror Fest – and then fell even more in love with them after the release of Deathwestern later that year (even going so far as to include it in my “Personal Top Ten of 2022”, along with another band from this list).

So when I tell you – without exaggeration but with a great deal of anguish – that Helldorado is a bad album, a scattered and uneven mess of half-hearted Hardcore and half-assed radio-rock that feels like a desperate attempt at ingratiating the band with the Metal mainstream (which isn’t always a bad thing, but definitely is when it feels this forced), I hope you can understand that I do so not out of malice but with an overwhelming feeling of dismay and, yes, disappointment.

There’s a solid EP’s worth of ass-kickers here (which even includes some of the album’s more “mainstream-friendly”, by Metal standards anyway, moments) but it’s hard for me to listen to them when I know the rest of the record is going to be such a let-down.

TRIBAL GAZE – INVEIGHING BRILLIANCE

And, finally, this one absolutely vies with Helldorado for the title of the year’s biggest disappointment… but for very different reasons.

I mean, I loved… loved… The Nine Choirs and its brutally heavy blend of savage smarts and gargantuan, neanderthal groove (that’s why it ended up in my Top Ten albums of the year) and have been raving about the band – who, alongside their similarly underrated peers in Ashen and Baest, I always felt deserved more hype and attention than some of their more infamous, magazine-friendly peers – ever since.

But on Inveighing Brilliance it feels as though, in attempting to step up their game and compete on bigger stages – most notably by adding a touch more technicality to their sound, especially in the drums – they’ve lost what original made them seem so special (to me anyway) and now just sound kind of like everyone else.

It doesn’t help, either, that for all its big, booming sound and meaty, muscular grooves, there’s actually surprisingly little substance to the album – three of its ten tracks come in at under 2 minutes (and though that’s not necessarily a bad thing, the fact that the title track is just 90 seconds of aimless ambience only compounds the issue) and final track “Lord of Blasphemy” pretends to be 6 minutes, but actually cuts off less than half way through, only to pad out its run time with several minutes of utterly pointless drum noodling – and while a few songs (notably “Guarding the Illusion” and “To The Spoils of Faith”) show flashes of the old magic, that just isn’t enough for me… maybe it will be for you.