Seattle Space Needle in the fog, Dec. 31, 2025, photo by Akash Pamarthy for The Seattle Times

(written by Islander)

Yesterday a newsletter I subscribe to (“This, Not That“) compiled quotations by many famous writers about New Year’s Day and the ending of the previous year, some of them humorous, some of them depressing, some of them wise. One of the quotes, by Charles Lamb, seemed to sum up all the others: “No one ever regarded the First of January with indifference.”

I’m certainly not indifferent. I’m determined… determined not to let the day go by without posting here about new music, notwithstanding the likelihood that many people are too hungover or sleep-deprived to wreck their heads with our preferred sonics today. It’s a compulsion of long standing, one that has resulted in our making some kind of music post 365 days a year, or close to that, with fewer than a dozen missed days over the 16+ years of our site’s existence.

As it always does, the new year of heavy music won’t waste much time taking off and achieving orbit velocity. We’ve already seen and spotlighted lots of songs from albums slated for release in the new year’s first quarter, and more will begin surfacing at an accelerated rate after this relatively slow week ends. I’ve picked an array of recent surfacings in this New Year’s Day column.

But, for better or worse, we haven’t completely finished reflecting in other ways on the music that 2025 brought us, including a few of today’s picks. Continue reading »