Smote - Songs from the Free House (2025)

I'm so surprised that I have just found Daniel Foggin aka Smote's new album in Tethered Hand's summary of the best post-rock albums of 2025! I'm surprised because by pure coincidence I will be covering Tethered Hand's release... tomorrow! It's also interesting because it shows how diverse post-rock music can be as Smote's music is just on the border of the genre, yet impresses with similar elements as more traditional post-rock projects.

Foggin blends so many things in his musical cauldron, man! The album starts like a perfect drone release, but then it shifts from desert rock into post-rock passages into space rock psychedelia. And then there is this thing with the flute music whatever you can call it. Listening to this album is genuinely like a road trip with new things to appreciate in every minute of the passing soundscape. And in reality the trip takes place on a desert in outer space and you are in a heavy tank, rocking on the uneven surface of the planet.

The album feels extremely heavy with the heaviness of doom and sludge, even if, quite frequently, it becomes calm and almost soothing. How is it possible? The quiet fragments are designed to emphasize everything else, like the ethereal choral chants in Chamber or the slow guitar riffs everywhere else. It's difficult to imagine an album so diverse and at the same time so coherent: the form changes but the mood stays the same til the end. Ah, yes, and Lankum's Ian Lynch is here too!

Songs from the Free House costs 8 EUR (6.99 GBP).

Check: Wynne

Country: UK

Genre: heavy space rock

Label: Rocket Recordings

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Tsarewitch - Yer (2025)

Drones and pipe organ sounds sounds like a perfect combination to me. So I had to take a closer look at this EP. Released by Alexander Yordaki, an artist from Moldova who wanted to draw people's attention to the situation in his homeland, the elusive Gaugazia in the southern part of Moldova.

Thematically speaking, it's worth taking a look at the artist's description of this album where he briefly talks about who the Gaugaz people are and what is the danger for them right now (spoiler alert, like in most cases in our part of the world, the answer is "Russia"). So go to his Bandcamp and read it. And then maybe Wikipedia to have a better idea of the complexity of this case. (and yes, I'm happy to say that it's my first Moldavian artist on the blog, not to mention a Gaugaz one!)

Musically speaking, the EP is one composition made of sloooow and deeeep sound of pipe organs with some subtle additions in the form of "recordings from Yalpug, a steppe valley in Comrat where a dry riverbed divides the suburb from the town" and a bit of spoken word samples towards the end. The whole thing feels extremely nostalgic and it's not a coincidence as it is a piece of very personal music about what one person sees as a home.

Yer costs 1 EUR.

Check: Yer

Country: Moldova

Genre: pipe organ drone

Label: Reflection Nebula

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adele dazeem - Metanoia (2025)

They are named after actress and singer Idina Menzel (whose first name was famously mispronounced by John Travolta, resulting in her using "Adele" in multiple occasions afterwards), they come from London and they released their first EP last autumn. This blend of shoegazey atmosphere and post-punk vibes caught my attention immediately.

The EP is short, but still it's clearly well done: there are parts that are noisy, there are parts filled with darker, coldwave approach to music, there are some curious instrumental parts too. Their compositions are designed to go on and on, mesmerizing the audience with the harsh trance-inducing passages and overwhelming with noisy guitars. I'm very happy that the musicians don't consider the end of lyrics as the end of their songs: I'd say that in this case, the songs really start after the post-punk vocals disappear. But it's only my instrumental-noise bias probably.

Metanoia costs 6 EUR (5 GBP).

Check: Misère

Country: UK

Genre: noisy coldwave

Label: Sonic Cathedral

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L.O.E. - Chiaroscuro (2025)

So the post-rock gods decided that at the end of 2025, two British bands released some particularly dark-sounding and awe-inspiring albums. I've covered Civil Service here and now I NEED to drop something about Last of Eden aka L.O.E. Maybe it's the zeitgeist, but if it means that we're going to get so good and poignant albums then... Well, then there is at least one bright side of what's going on.

Another common feature with Civil Service is the main theme of the album, as it is a "cinematic exploration of duality—the contrasts between light and dark, despair and hope". What is so striking about this quotation is that it is all clearly audible in music. The dark-sounding guitars, overwhelming and touching, tell the story that inspired the band, the personal struggles of their bassist who has serious problems with his health, but still makes everything to go on and win against all odds with sheer determination. The heaviness of this music with occasional samples and slower moments is a perfect illustration for what a human existence feels like more often than not. 

The band is coming for this year's Dunk!Festival and I'm more than happy to witness this music live. Oh and the aforementioned music gods also decided to have two post-rock albums last year that included the same quotation from Alan Watts (writer, researcher of the Eastern philosophies) with All Is Violent being first in July. So that's fun, isn't it?

Chiaroscuro costs 11 EUR (9 GBP).

Check: I Was Not Magnificent

Country: UK

Genre: dark post-rock

Label: Hopeful Tragedy Records/Fontana North

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The Lions Constellation - New Moon Rising (2025)

This year I already posted about ARIMA, melodic and noisy guitar rock music from Spain, but not really as they are from the Basque Country. Now I have The Lions Constellation, melodic and noisy guitar music from Spain, but not really as they are from Catalonia. It took 15 years (!) for the band to release their second album, but I'm gonna call it: it was really worth it.

I love shoegaze music that can impress with the noisy side and the catchy side as well. When listen to this album, released last autumn (I still haven't caught up with the new year releases!), I can hear exactly this. Take Allison for example: obviously the first thing I checked was if it was a cover, but no: and instead of focusing on the other Allison's hazy atmosphere, it presents a fantastic melody and catchy flow that makes it closer to the third Allison, the one from The Kills. It's a banger and still isn't my favourite one here.

The very shoegaze-like atmosphere is, on the other, the main focus in some spaces too, especially in When You Dream, which HAS TO be a reference to When You Sleep, right? Same vibes. But the melodic, hit-heavy shoegaze generally overshadows anything else on the album with A Long Life Is Not a Real Life being my favourite song here as it features my beloved way of using guitars in noisy music genres.

New Moon Rising costs 9 USD.

Check: A Long Life Is Not a Real Life

Country: Catalonia/Spain

Genre: catchy shoegaze

Label: Shelflife

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Cicada - 凝視白色的邊界 Gazing the Shades of White (2025)

Ah, yes, some high-brow entertainment! The Taiwanese small orchestra that features violin, cello, piano keys and an acoustic guitar, came back with another brillant release (there's too many for me to count, really) that transforms geography into music and feels as artistic as mysterious.

The band is around for over 15 years now. In this time, the band "has woven Taiwan’s mountains, seas, and landscapes into sound". This time, the geographical inspirations are broader as the artists draw inspiration from the wintery sceneries of Iceland, Greenland or New Zealand. The cold, the ice, the whiteness, it's all enchanted into classical music notes. However, it's not like we are served with droney white noise, quite the opposite, there is a lot going on. Perhaps not something I'd associate with the winter stillness, but maybe the inspirations were rather subtle.

"Through delicate sound and moments gathered on the road, Cicada turns the disappearance of eternal landscapes into intimate encounters between music and listener". And the music in questions is particularly magical.

凝視白色的邊界 Gazing the Shades of White costs 15 USD.

Check: 凝視白色的邊界 Gazing the Shades of White

Country: Taiwan

Genre: orchestral neoclassical

Label: WINDIE Music

Cicada - 走入有霧的森林 Hiking in the Mist (2019)

Cicada - 不在的你們都去了哪裡 White Forest (2017)

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Civil Service - DARK /// (2025)

They released their debut album in 2024 and now are following it with the sophomore album or maybe a continuation of the first one. They are from UK, but are not Public Service Broadcasting side project (even if some of the samples suggest so). Civil Service is a band I did not have on my radar, but my post-rock society turned my attention to.

And it's such a good thing they did. The new album begins in the best way possible: with a collaboration with Overhead, the Albatross' Luke Daly on vocals. But even when he leaves the track list, some parallels to my favourite British post-rockers are still audible (the child speaking in Black Giraffes for examples), although this is more classic post-rock than the one featured on I Leave You This. But it's not *THAT* traditional. The beautiful violin soundscapes complimenting the heavy guitars work like charm, the inclusion of samples and vocals enriches the composition while the subtle electronica provides the final touch.

As mentioned already, DARK /// is a continuation of the themes from /// LIGHT, but while the debut album was focused on the humankind's main quest in life: finding something that could be seen as a meaning of existence, the second album "shifts focus to the immovable obstacles in our way". The way the guitars sound feels so dark (Every Beam Of Light Is An Invitation To Death!!!) to me and dark post-rock is what I want. I love this album, if I have found it earlier, it'd certainly make my AOTY charts.

DARK /// costs 8 EUR (7 GBP).

Check: Black Giraffes

Country: UK

Genre: complex post-rock

Label: A Cheery Wave/Ripcord Records

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