If you want to a hold a mirror to the current state of the world through art, then look no further than the artists who are creating music from the darkest corners of the spectrum. The climate of everything in 2025 was no better place to find it either. You don’t need to be told for the umpteenth time that the timeline and the hellscape are at an all-time intersect, but what’s most interesting about the albums featured on this list — now in its third year — is how this particular scene unassumingly produces the most with making provocative substance from it through a loud, yet quiet consistency that can easily get overlooked when we start talking about the best of the rest each year.

This year’s list is also pretty remarkable for a few strange occurrences that don’t typically happen all at once. You’ve got two albums where one band is led by the father of the drummer of a different band also listed here. In that latter band is the brother of the guitarist of an entirely different band who have also made one of the year’s standouts. There’s the respective solo efforts from two different members of CEREMONY. Add in the fact that your favorite hardcore band from the 2001 Warped Tour lineup arguably put out the best contemporary interpretation of the goth-punk sound, it’s safe to say we’ll never seen worlds colliding in this way ever again. A sign of the times, indeed. These are the Best Industrial, Noise Rock & Post-Punk Albums of 2025.

Activity – A Thousand Years In Another Way [Western Vinyl]

Activity began during one of the strangest states of existence — 2020, to be exact — with the release of their debut album, Unmask Whoever. We’re still navigating that bizarre reality, with a growing sense of disconnect becoming increasingly normalized. On the Brooklyn four-piece’s third album, A Thousand Years In Another Way, they tap into the bleaker matter of the now (and near-future) marred by a heavy sense of anxiety in everything. This nightmarish timeline manifests through a sonic syncing of cavernous art-rock, a post-mortem of post-punk, and alternative dimension of shoegaze shaped through a eerie, experimental electronic slant. While the album delves deep into a dark conscious of humanity oft hidden in plain sight, it also discovers portals to escape it all, even if it means leaving this world altogether, with their sound being the force which opens that door to a possible inverse.

AFI – Silver Bleeds the Black Sun… [Run for Cover Records]

Though Silver Bleeds the Black Sun… may stake its heart at the altar of Sisters of Mercy, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Bauhaus, you probably won’t be able to recount too many times where a band has made idol worship sound so form-fitting — never mind one in which AFI are reinventing themselves in their veteran stage of their career 34 years in. Davey Havok’s vocals are supernatural, having aged like the finest of Bordeaux for the role, brooding behind clocks and worlds unmade in lower register and letting out a full moon howl upon the sight of holy visions and blasphemy. Razor-chorded guitars cut straight into undead dance heartbeats and new wave synthesizers spanning voids, discovering a new path of cohesion within AFI’s dark energy. It in turn unites the band’s glossed arenacore conflagration with the timeless flame of goth rock, embodying the spirits who walked this plane before while ascending to their rightful place on the pulpit alongside them.

Anthony Family – Live From An Ordinary Place [Pure Noise Records]

Anthony Family is the alter-ego of CEREMONY guitarist Anthony Anzaldo. Spoiler: his music under the moniker does not sound anything like the visceral hardcore-punk grated for the pit à la Violence, Violence nor the eventual stark post-punk glum spirited through the Rohnert Park greats’ latter work. That actually isn’t too surprising either when you consider he’s been a driving force behind the band’s sharp sonic evolutions every step along the way. In his own right, Anzaldo has dabbled in cold wave exteriors through various incarnations over the years, but Anthony Family sounds fully formed in its lust, be it for a life authentic that brushes against societal norms, or more carnal, intimate fantasies for ’80s post-punk-adjacent synth-pop on his debut album, Live From An Ordinary Place. At this trajectory, his vehicular innuendos have the natural makings for a future addition to the aforementioned Cruel World or Substance lineups that will satiate those looking for their modern day Yazoo and Howard Jones fixes accented with subtle black eyeliner.

Bambara – Birthmarks [Wharf Cat Records / Bella Union]

Every time you hear Bambara, you’re immediately transported to some place wicked. The scenery is occupied by empty streets where the weather is raw and cold, and some ominous shit is about to go down. Usually there’s mysterious woman involved as is the might of God. There’s a fire ready to burgeon from the sternums of the adopted Brooklyn post-punk trio to face whatever head on, shedding light on whatever comes racing toward them in the headlights speeding straight at them at 80 miles per hour. Birthmarks continues wearing Bambara’s dangerous Southern gothic-meets-city vampire aesthetic sharply, but in the years since releasing their 2022 EP, Love On My Mind, their inner fire has been brooding all the more so. The temperature in the air climbs immediately from streaks of heat lightning riffs. There’s some story about a woman name Elena singing country karaoke in dead confetti and the evocation of Jesus Christ when everything between all parties get a little murderous. Say all the prayers you can — this night is about to get insane…

Black Eyes – Hostile Design [Dischord Records]

Coming of age in the Aughts, one thing was for sure: Black Eyes walked hard with their artsy noise-punk so that much hipper scenes like Brooklyn and Los Angeles could run with those ideas big time. Across two albums, the former five-piece ushered in the turn of the 9/11 era of a new millennium with an incomprehensible sound that hit hard and was definitively an acquired taste. Guitars that could dagger and crash through walls, a doubling up on drummers and bassists, free jazz brass attacks, all while shouts and screams grated across them. It was truly a moment when waving your freak flag in the pit was not just more than welcome, but actually pushing those genre boundaries audibly further out. 21 years later, the band’s return album, Hostile Design, meets its members in a different stage of their life where all of that noise is tempered through of hypnotic gesticulation of dub, but arguably more politically focused on point when the D.C. band’s activism through art is needed more than ever.

Chat Pile & Hayden Pedigo – In The Earth Again [The Flenser]

Not since Explosions In the Sky’s Friday Night Lights soundtrack have many artists been able to fully capture so specifically a beautifully broken Americana in one sprawling, captivating soundscape. We’re just over 20 years removed from that point in the timeline, but if there is to be a worthy attempt at giving us a sequel deserving for these end times here in the United States, then it comes from one state north of Texas in the collaborative release from sons of Oklahoma City in apocalyptic noise-rockers Chat Pile and avant-garde fingerpicker Hayden Pedigo, In The Earth Again. Though the Venn diagram of their musical styles converge toward the same fading scenery from opposite ends of the sonic spectrum, its clash in energy makes sense of how it gravitated toward one another. With Pedigo’s hand in theirs, Chat Pile are able to etch details ornate deep within the grimier heaviness of existentialism, wrought and sewed more so from when everything around you is slowly but surely dying.

Expose – ETC [Quindi Records]

As the brainchild of vocalist and drummer Trent Rivas, the experimental noise rock collective ETC has since expanded exponentially in numbers since its embryonic stages as Rivas’ solo outlet, taking on guitarists Jeff Stephens and Duke Guisness, synthesizer James Novick, bassist Jake Getz, viola player Coleman Sawyer, and saxophonist Brian Bartus alongside contributions throughout from scene peer Ray Monde of the experimental psych-pop duo Monde UFO. There are many limbs, creative minds, and ideas floating through their discordant swirl of genre-clashing noise on their just-released debut full-length, ETC. At times, the album brandishes gnarled teeth from the roots of hardcore only to implode from the universe’s own chaos by way of loud, calamitous cosmic jazz, only then to regenerate into synthetic orbs and heavy plumes of post-punk smoke. That barely cracks the surface in descriptor of an incomparable listening experience for those who prefer their noise rock albums far outside conventional lines.

FACS – Wish Defense [Trouble In Mind Records]

As the last recording of Steve Albini arriving on a plane where David Lynch no longer walks among us in these evil times, there is something strangely poetic to be said about the timing in this universe giving us Wish Defense, the sixth studio effort from FACS. Like Lynch, the Chicago experimental noise-rock trio have explored space-time continuums in their work as well as places often left unknown by most eyes in that which lives deep within the dark recesses of the duality of man — a “tulpa,” if you will. Only fragments of their sound can be characterized as “Lynchian,” however. The noisy art-rock of guitarist and vocalist Brian Case, bassist Noah Leger, and returning drummer Van Herik have become more intensified from this turn inward after testing gravitational limits on the mortal coil with 2023’s Still Life In Decay. What Wish Defense presents is a magnified combustion of these existential elements.

HEALTH – CONFLICT DLC [Loma Vista Recordings]

For the last few years, HEALTH have been touring with arena rock bands like modern pop-metal giants Sleep Token and emo-core pioneers Pierce the Veil. There’s been a positive ruboff from them on the Los Angeles industrial noise trio as they continue putting themselves out there with artists from outside their own digital-influenced world in pursuit of leveling up their own game. CONFLICT DLC is HEALTH is doing just that fully powered up — on their own terms. This remains a far cry from the noiseniks’s insular DIY Smell scene days, yet it keeps the ethos of clashing with the void at its core. Massively so, in an even wider screen continuum on the timeline from where the exploded diagram that was their 2022 effort, RAT WARS, left off. Voltage is turned up to 20 and the noise barrier is set to thunderous as heavy duty rave riffs and violent machine drums ripple through the dystopia. Buried somewhere in there, Jake Duzsik’s holographic vocals permeate through brutalism, clenching our collective fears of dying, and simulation theories with one thread of hope left to cling onto. If there was any reason not to kill yourself, this would be it.

HOME FRONT – Watch It Die [La Vida Es Un Mus Discos]

HOME FRONT know we’re all baring down the same deathly path. On the Edmonton experimental punk duo’s sophomore effort, Watch It Die, they’re the light in the dark offering an urgent S.O.S. on community and living in the now, reminding you how in spite of everything causing a piece of our spirits to die each day, it doesn’t mean that you need to go it alone. “We’re born alone! We die alone!,” Graeme MacKinnon and Clint Frazier remind us on the listen’s core anthem, “Light Sleeper”, only to turn the age old morbid cliché onto its head with one truth that’s often overlook: “Don’t think you ever have to live alone.” “Fake out the dark to find the light,” another line advises on “EULOGY” before bursting into a revelatory spectacle of synth-charged post-punk served up with a melodic hardcore aggression. Coating gliding synths over their toughened street-punk exterior delivered with earnest conviction, HOME FRONT’s end times anthems are the kind where if you’re lucky to find your people, you’ll at least go down swinging together.

Horsegirl – Phonetics On and On [Matador Records]

Musical academics are once again at the forefront of Horsegirl’s creative approach on their Cate Le Bon-produced sophomore effort, Phonetics On and On, though the application of it resonates differently. Since relocating to New York City so that two of its members can attend NYU, the trio apply a higher learning and their new found cultural surroundings to their sound by retooling its noisier corners into minimalist indie-pop that — much like the repetitive recounting of round numbers on “2468”, the rapid on-and-off energy of “Switch Over”, or the ticking down of the clock in “Frontrunner” — finds the trio methodically arranging each song as if they are a form of sonic architecture where every sung syllable, use of an instrument, and the way a tune bends pop melodies loudly out of the quiet has a purpose in holding up its structure. The idea that its process of addition and subtraction eliminates much of the noise and instead embraces space is simply radical.

Lambrini Girls – Who Let The Dogs Out [City Slang Records]

Lambrini Girls feed off rebuking (and ultimately, breaking) systems, and that is incredibly palpable on their debut album, Who Let The Dogs Out. Don’t let its cheeky title or its songs cute way of framing cuntiness fool you (although, compared to many a talk-shouty kind of British band, their biting humor is actually charmingly charismatic rather than dull…) The duo of Phoebe Lunny and Lilly Macieira pulverize fast, crunchy crisp noise-punk riffs swaddled by punk-pop sing-alongs straight into your face from their collective ire on fire lit by sexism and misogyny, all of the ‘phobias, toxic masculinity, gentrification, and capitalism. Messy and fun at once, Lambrini Girls are deservedly the life of the party where destroying what tries to put you down is the ultimate form of protest.

Lifeguard – Ripped and Torn [Matador Records]

Not many young adults around their age these days care about music made beyond the ’90s timeline, but Lifeguard’s music nerdiness has them done a hell of a favor in making them stand out with an authentically exciting combustible energy. Ripped and Torn, the band’s debut full-length, overdelivers in that regard. It’s an evolution on what they began plotting out back on their 2022 EP, Crowd Can Talk, a promising post-hardcore introduction to the Hallogallo scene leaders, and 2023’s more calculated extension on that noise, Dressed In Trenches. Channeling everything into mono compresses their sound aesthetically into that similarly of their veteran punk guitar heroes, but also emphasizes that unkempt, raw live energy which they hope to connect their music with audiences whenever they’re playing it out in the wild. There’s little left behind the surface of what Lifeguard are doing right now, because it’s all the real deal.

M(h)aol – Something Soft [Merge Records]

M(h)aol is operating on a much different wavelength than when we last heard of the Dublin post-punk band on their outwardly frayed breakthrough sophomore album, Attachment Styles. Though they’ve now refined down to the trio of Constance Keane, Jamie Hyland, and Sean Nolan, they’re no less antagonistic and intent on conjuring up an even louder noise with their third full-length effort, Something Soft, which hears them experimenting beyond the repetition in angularity of its predecessor by engaging with minimalist, industrial high voltages within their frequencies. Still, the off-kilter electricity and urgent rhythms are technically wound and outlined by Keane’s oft-sardonic wry humor, inner monologues tension-gripped, and flooding borderline explosive lyrics peering into the present state of personhood and reflecting it against the cultural-technological symbiosis, grief, and sociopolitical structures which all compound to harden us from the inside-out.

Model/Actriz – Pirouette [True Panther / Dirty Hit]

When people discuss albums that point to where an artist comes into their own, they are talking about albums like Model/Actriz’s Pirouette — a dance-exclamatory execution on New York City’s underground rock scene. The way the listen maneuvers through the dark using a finessed skillset of club pop blurs the industrial complex as a meeting place used in tandem for a noise show and a rave, made all the more complimentary to its energy of it being a “coming out story” written by vocalist Cole Haden. They’re putting listeners’ flexibility and cardio endurance to the test here, too, essentially asking how hard you want to dance to a noise rock album that moves with the essence of Black Dice as if it were fronted by a theater performer who’s been waiting for this moment in the spotlight their entire life.

Open Head – What Is Success [Wharf Cat Records]

Open Head dare to ask the big question as to what exists outside the borders of New York City in the realm of experimental music. Perhaps it’s this “other” place within their Hudson Valley surroundings which inform the in-betweens on the band’s sophomore outing, What Is Success. Since releasing their debut LP in 2022’s treacherously loud post-punk debut, Joy, and Other Sufferings, founding members in co-vocalists and guitarists Jared Ashdown and Brandon Minervini have expanded their sonic circle to include bassist / synthesizer Jon McCarthy and drummer Dan Schwartz. Their current formation very much has the makings of a proper guitar album, yet they do everything to distort it in a schematic built around industrial noise that sees its architecture wobbling by a destabilization of flux electronic waves and drill trappings. When cross-wired with shouts from the voids of New York City’s no wave history, Open Head create the kind of friction you’d want from resistance against our daily dreads.

R.J.F. – Cleaning Out The Empty Administration Building [DAIS Records]

Cleaning Out The Empty Administration Building doesn’t break the continuum of CEREMONY frontman Ross J. Farrar’s preceding solo patterns, though it’s clear the punk poet has a firmer grip on his sound — and time’s passage — even if it remains a broadly uncategorizable. The mystique is beginning to flesh in full, conjuring psychedelic magic from the smoky air floating between post-punk, no-wave, avant-jazz, and experimental noise — an astutely complimentary canvas of random parts befitting for the abstractions of the poet’s spoken-sung word impressionism — and placing it within the bolder outlines of this equally weird human experience. You may find yourself standing several steps forward into the future than where you last remember leaving off, but so is this strange journey through living when R.J.F. is at the helm of fucking around with the space-time continuum in yet another daring experiment into parts unknown in sound.

Spiritual Cramp – RUDE [Blue Grape Records]

There’s been a theme in this year’s genre list with artists looking at nihilism and all of heavy, bad stuff this world is dealing us with nowadays straight in the eyes, and deciding to live your best life in spite of it as the ultimate revenge. None take that mentality to the extreme more than Spiritual Cramp on the Bay Area post-punks’ RUDE. Whereas the band’s eponymous 2023 debut heard the crew of reformed hardcore dudes still repping some of the San Fran underground scene’s aggressions in their stylistic angles, LP2 further commits them to their RUDE boy aesthetic in a sleek polished side of post-punk and new wave modernity with big banger energy to contend with their inner anarchism and late stage capitalism-incited violence at the supermarket. When vocalist Michael Bingham is finished getting that off his chest, you can bet you’ll find him laying waste to the night with friends on the streets of San Fran because all of the stuff we worry about on the daily is just man-made lame shit anyway.

Vulture Feather – It Will Be Like Now [Felte Records]

Former Wilderness guitarist Colin McCann came back from the brink of death and back to creative life following a break from the music world last year with his new band Vulture Feather. Alongside his fellow bandmate from the criminally underrated Baltimore art-punk band in bassist Brian Gossman alongside drummer Eric Fiscus, the NorCal trio’s debut, Liminal Fields, made the collision between spiritual and natural worlds sound like an epic catharsis befitting as a new lease on life chapter from where his former band left off. The visible atmospheres of an ever-expanding universe continue to reveal new realizations for McCann and company on their sophomore follow-up, It Will Be Like Now. The listen submerges visceral existential emotions against the criss-crashing of anthemic post-punk with a steady-footed ebb to it rhythm. Though the tides of life may intensify, he and Vulture Feather turn its violence into a prayerlike oscillation that opts to ride the storms of life’s seasons out.

YHWH Nailgun – 45 Pounds [AD 93 / Many Hats]

YHWH Nailgun are a noise rock band in the transcendent sense. The canvas of what we’re normally used to hearing from that realm — a steely post-punk sheath, some industrial weight lobbed behind lofty riffs, and an ambiguity of distortion blurring guitars and synthetic wires together — gets recontextualized into its own subversive pop exploration on 45 Pounds. A 20-minute-plus listen equating to a sensory cardio workout, the breakthrough debut from the Brooklyn band challenges sound, color, and motion, and physics really to chronically redesign and align in their direction while never ever fully coming untethered from the center of its shifting gravity. Vocalist Zack Borzone, drummer Sam Pickard, guitarist Saguiv Rosenstock, and keyboardist Jack Tobias busy their soundboard with visceral impulse: Borzone’s hoarse, indecipherable tongue punctuates its firing percussion as rhythms palpitate in a synthetic wilderness. They occasionally rupture and bleed out violently through cut electric jugulars before remerging back into a cellular building block. Listens like these are glaring case studies as to why the rest of what’s being created out there have no reason to be as obvious or predictable as they are.