July was a month dominated by singles whose aim was to prepare us for the full-length releases of the bands later in the year. It was also a month of increased experimentation with the boundaries of existing or perceived music genres. We salute the added ceremonial elements and the moments of psychedelia in the new album by Emptiness as well as the Jazz moments within the sound of English Heretic who describe the music as “Eight dark nightclubs of the soul and their music imagined and reimagined.”
We were utterly excited by the announcement of a new album by The Sick Man of Europe, appropriately teasing us with the release of a single with the evocative title ‘Negative Stimuli’. We were impressed by the debut EP of Horns of Abomination with its exciting combination of relentless muffled vocals and throbbing noisy guitar walls that destroy any boundaries between metal, industrial and noise. Finally a special mention is due to Feverdreamt who seem to have stepped out of their comfort zone to offer an album that celebrates darkwave melancholy and lyricism in the best way possible.
We hope you enjoy our playlist as much as we did preparing it!
We could just copy here the lyrics of the first track of the new album by NEUROSIS, who resurfaced after a decade. But we will only repeat one verse:
“We’ve forgotten how to live, so we suffer.</span<“
The soundtrack of the first month of this Spring of Disquiet contains some very heavy concepts delivered with bone-crushing honesty and emotional weight by all bands, new and well-established ones. We were very happy to welcome two new bands from the dark alternative scene of France, one of which is BUZZKILL with an impressive debut album and the other is Une Vraie Gothique. While the sound of BUZZKILL has a stronger punk character, the multilingual lyrics and the sensual dark electro rhythms and melodies by Une Vraie Gothique, captured our hearts. We have been fascinated by the cinematic inspiration that drives the new project New German Cinema, and we cannot wait to experience this band live in London at the end of May 2026.
Finally, the return of The Twilight Sad and LADYTRON with captivating new albums and videos, made sure that the bittersweet feelings we were experiencing throughout March, were soothed.
We hope you enjoy this playlist as much as we did preparing it. And if you fancy listening to our radioshow on Mixcloud which included some of these releases you can do so from this link.
Music for the longest night of the year, music for the end of the year. These were our favourite underground music releases from around the world from December 2025. We presented these albums with added information about live gigs that these bands have planned for 2026 during our live radioshow which you can access from our Mixcloud profile.
Fans of heavy music, horror movies and experimentation witnessed a unique five and a half hour symphony of sonic doom from bands that held nothing back and gave the word ‘scary’ a new sound. That was a carefully curated night draped in sacrificial red light, with all bands leaving their own mark and sharing the love for hardcore music and storytelling that can scare everyone else but the crows. From the very beginning, the feeling that we were in a gathering of friends was very strong, a rare quality to be witnessed even in intimate gigs.
If our only focus on this monthly playlist was on the Cure‘s new album, then this would be a much longer summary and it would also not be very fair for the other releases of the month. For now let’s just say that this much anticipated new album ‘Songs of a Lost World‘ is a release that is much different than anything else from the band’s discography by exploring dark ambient and heavy rock sounds.
Another noteworthy album was Nick Carlisle‘s ‘Sailors On The Roiling Sea‘. With glam, psych and everything in between and with an abundance of synthesizers and social perceptiveness, Nick Carlisle has offered us an album, whose sound comes from the past but it refers to the present and the future in a fresh way. The only debut album in this playlist was Queen Willow‘s ‘Restful Tales of The Shapeless Seasons‘. Dreamy, ethereal, and folk sounds are beautifully combined with otherworldly lyrics that make them attractive winter sonic stories.
In the post-punk part of the soundtrack, we have been treated to a great teaser single from Minuit Machine whose melodies and vocals we have greatly missed. We are waiting impatiently for the full album release. We were very happy to listen to the new albums by Monsieur Crane and Position Parallele. Both releases flirt with synth-pop in different ways (Monsieur Crane by adding coldwave elements to his album ‘Les Ravages Du Temps‘ and Position Parallele by focusing on pop aesthetics in their album ‘AIGUILLE A DECOUDRE‘ ) and both seem to rely less on the attractive melodies of the recent past.
We absolutely loved all the remixes in the IDM/Industrial album ‘emergency landing‘ by anatoly grinberg & andreas davids which, together with the albums by Despiration, pale, voltarenes, and SANTACRUZ create an addictive set of releases.
The soundtrack of November had many positive surprises from we think it concludes the year with an eclectic mix of music. There is one month left until we wave goodbye to 2024 but until then, we hope you enjoy this playlist as much as we did while preparing it.
The soundtrack of the harvest month, is as rich as a recently reaped crop. It includes all-time familiar names as well as new ones who offered us memorable releases. We will start by praising two of the debut album releases of this month for the richness of their sound and their conceptual originality. They are the albums ‘At The Sound Of The Heart‘ by Whispering Void and ‘Sober Maal’ by De Mannen Broeders. Whispering Void, bring together WARDRUNA’s ceremonial vocals (i.e. Lindy-Fay Hella(current) and Kristian “Gaahl” Espedal (ex-member)), ENSLAVED and TRELLDOM’s prog and black metal hues. The result is truly enchanting.
De Mannen Broeders is a project that had to be created as the personal stories of AMENRA’s frontman Colin van Eeckhout and Tonnie ‘broeder’ Dieleman, a Flemish folk icon, had so many common elements, that they had to be channeled through a common outlet. The debut album is entitled ‘SOBER MAAL‘ which refers to the process of eating a simple meal to express gratitude.
During this month, we welcomed the return of A Place To Bury Strangers with yet another powerfully addictive psych rock album entitled ‘SYNTHESIZER‘. The punk side of this monthly soundtrack, represented by MESTRE and M I C H A E L, combined heavy psych elements as well as bone-cracking social realism, making the albums ‘All of you are so far‘ and ‘Nite Salad‘ and , two of the best of the year.
Finally, Godspeed You!Black Emperor resurfaced with yet a new album with a title that acknowledges the incredible loss of life in Gaza and Lebanon. The album contains six tracks that build up the energy and anticipation through carefully crafted drone/ambient compositions.
We hope you enjoy this playlist as much as we did while creating it!
Perhaps we can admit at this point that this is the best month of the year in terms of its music output and the best playlist of the year in terms of the variety of styles and energies that our favourite releases represent.
The debut albums of this month, from Virgin Vampires and Dreamless Veil, have maintained our interest in great gothic rock and extreme metal music. The former has songs infused with macabre theatricality, and the latter has bone-cracking/grief-infused vocals followed by frantic guitar solos that make us wonder how it might feel to disappear fully.
The new offering by ABU NEIN, coming from a place of profound sadness as the band has admitted, continues to haunt us with melodies that touch some very well-hidden dark chords in our psyche. The punk section of the month’s soundtrack was powerful and socially perceptive as it should be with a new single by SPRINTS, and a new album by Golpe sending rare political resistance vibes to the world from Italy.
Perhaps the most powerful noise/industrial release of the year, is the new album by Dame Area which manages to bring back the (now) rare qualities of dynamin non-hypnotic, non-repetitive industrial music. Alongside it we can enjoy the new album by Phobos Reactor, taking inspiration from powerful old-school industrial rhythms and aesthetics.
This month’s post-punk section includes powerful entries by CROWS, kontrolle and Chain Cult who stress the melodic, the vindictive and the noisy aspects of post-punk.
We believe that the darkest sonic colours were used by the releases of Diablation , Tribes of Medusa and A Swarm of The Sun this month. We believe that only a lived experience can give to people the wisdom of the layers and textures of sadness and darkness and these two albums explore all of them!
Finally, a special mention is necessary for the new albums of The Beauty of Gemina and Tindersticks. The return of Tindersticks revealed a preference for soul-infused songs and an exploration of animation and humour in their video clips.
The new album by The Beauty of Gemina, sounds very personal as if coming from a place of sadness. We have welcomed the return of the melancholic post-punk melodies in the band’s songs also evident in their visuals.
We hope that you enjoy listening to this playlist as much as we did while preparing it.
Unlike others, we love winter and its darkness, and we look forward to the releases of the season. The soundtrack of the first long month of the year had everything from post-folk, to metal and heavy psych. We enjoyed impressive debut releases and promising self-released music and once again we were amazed by the paths that sonic experimentation is able to open in our consciousness.