Welcome to my topic of the year where I talk about all the music that inspired me enough to bang out a paragraph about it. No seriously, I wrote so many characters that the forum rejected my post and I had to revise the intro (and eventually split into two posts).
This took me over two months to write, so I don’t intend to keep you in the intro any longer than necessary. Let’s start with the list and I hope you find some things you enjoy!
村越葵 (Aoi Murakoshi) - Out of the Blue
Let’s start off the Z awards with a band, and actually the most recent entry on this list! Something so far out of the realm of what most visual kei fans listen to that I expect many to skip over this entry in my list. I wouldn’t advise you do that. I came across Aoi Murakoshi late in the year, when I was fiending for some jazz and asked fellow forum administrator @CAT5 for some recommendations. He sent me a lot of music - most of which I have yet to give a proper listen - and this was one of the albums that stood out to me. Album covers have a way of speaking to me and Aoi’s gaze is hypnotic. The way she stands there with the saxophone intrigued me so I sat down to listen. I got lost in her world. I don’t know much about her musical career or what she’s been up to but this album is some excellent jazz! Some most excellent instrumental jazz indeed. Maybe it’s because it’s December and I’m in the mood for it, but this album really does match the season. Out of the Blue starts off strong with Solar and then only gets better from there. The piano goes absolutely hard in the paint, commanding even more of my attention than the saxophone, but there’s plenty of sax too! The sax and the piano are the two most commanding instruments in each track so if that’s not for you, then I completely understand. I look forward to following more of her career - her Apple Music page suggests this is her debut album!
BAND-MAID - SCOOOOOOP
Everyone has a guilty pleasure and mine is BAND-MAID. I like BAND-MAID, shoot me. The girls keep it simple but the formula is quite frankly hitting all the right spots: who know Japanese girls dressed as French maids playing metal would go so hard? I even got my friend to respect them and he puts me on to new releases when they pop up for him. That’s the kind of appeal BAND-MAID are about and they know how to deliver. 8 tracks is short and sweet and its short length (28 minutes) makes you want to listen again and again. The highlight of this mini is when the vocalist lets out an emotional scream release near the end of What is justice?. I also like how the other four members get a chance to show off their instrumental chops with Lock and Load. The bass, guitar, and keys go off on a frenzy of metal justice. Lock and Load is surely the hardest song on the entire release. Don’t sleep on BAND-MAID!
betcover!! - 勇気
betcover!! is one of my newer discoveries this year, coming in later in the year when I requested a plethora of jazz music from @CAT5. I actually added many things, betcover!! being one of them. betcover!! is the musical project of Yanase Jiro, based in Tokyo, Japan, formed in 2015. Their newest album 勇気 (Yuuki), is a great slice of jazz, indie rock, and art rock. I’m not gonna lie, this album took a while to click. Mostly because I listen to music while partaking, and I have to deal with tire noise and lots of moving sounds outside. That is at odds with this very textured album, which not only demands attention but silence for the more subtle elements to poke through. For example, there’s an entire seven minutes long experimental odyssey which was lost on me the first few times I heard it because I could just not hear the atmosphere. There’s acoustic guitar being strummed so lightly that it sounded acapella to me! Then there’s tracks like the boisterous ゴーゴースチーム, so good that it got a music video, that are at complete odds with the energy and chaos that it brings. If you’re looking for a slice of refined jazz with some experimentation, I highly recommend betcover!!!
Blu-swing - GOODTIMES
Three cheers to good times and GOODTIMES. For those not in the know, Blu-swing is a Japanese jazz band formed in 2004 that plays a fusion of jazz, club music, and city pop. This leads to some of the best music you’re gonna find me recommending this year. They made their major debut in 2008 with the album “Revision,” which ranked first on club charts and third on J-pop charts in major record stores. Since then they have released multiple works, including live albums and production work, both domestically and internationally, and they haven’t missed a step. GOODTIMES is their latest album and it starts with a most exuberant opening before digging into the groove and delivering up some smooth jazz with Ukiyo. It may be a short track but it’s a banger and a great official introduction into the album. I knew I was in for something special almost instantly listening to GOODTIMES. One of the biggest highlights is the emotional solo in “Spark”, which cuts through the atmosphere and speaks to the soul in a way that only overdriven guitar could. One main detraction is that it’s a bit too short at just a half hour, but you know what? You can just play it again! If you’re looking for some solid jazz, look into this!
Clipse - Let God Sort Em Out
Clipse is two brothers from the hood who came back after an extended hiatus with plans to take the game over. Or something like that. It’s honestly not far from the truth, because Let God Sort Em Out was an album I had on my many nightly walks to get beer. And their way of promoting this album both before and after the drop is a textbook example of how to promote a release. They teamed up with producer Pharrell to deliver thirteen bangers; equal parts release and assertions of just how good their pen is. I don’t actually know which one of the brothers is better because sometimes I think Pusha has the better verse and then Malice just says some shit that makes me think. The song I chose to represent the album truthfully doesn’t represent the album all that well - while most of the songs are best described coke flows over precision Pharrell beats, The Birds Don’t Sing is a dedication to their parents and is a song I think should be heard by everyone. I also have to call out Tyler the Creator for snapping on his feature on P.O.V. - I don’t really vibe with a lot of his raps these days but that verse was heat. Finally, I gotta call out Malice’s rhyme scheme on F.I.C.O. because he turns a simple scheme into something far more complex. Really, the enjoyment of this albums revolves around how much you vibe with the production. I can see how the sparse, cold beats can be a turn-off for those who require more colorful instrumentation. However, I think it’s a good pair for the coke rap that comprises most of the album. Let God Sort Em Out shows that these old heads still got the fire inside to compete and also still have things to say. I wonder if they’ll branch out and choose a different producer going forward, or if their collaborations with Pharrell will continue. I’m just happy to see a rap album that has the artists really backing themselves with the belief that they’ve put out a quality product. Most albums haven’t stuck around in this era of short attention spans and moving onto the next hot thing, but the Clipse have put in effort to keep the record in the public’s consciousness.
deftones - private music
Listen, I’m not a big Deftones fan - I missed the boat in terms of them being influential to my taste as that era was replaced with visual kei - but when they drop an album, I listen out of respect. They influenced many of the bands that I listen to on a daily basis, so even though I may not find their approach as revolutionary as I would had I listened to them earlier, I still believe there’s a way for me to “understand”. I went into private music blind and was rewarded with a pretty sick album. It was released at the perfect time of year - songs like “infinite source” just feel like the end of summer, y’know? The album immediately hits you with a wall of riffs in opener “my mind is a mountain” before settling into a thick groove that’s unsettlingly familiar. It does a great job at establishing that Deftones is a band that plays with tone and texture to great effect. Some people say Deftones have never released a mediocre album and I can see that. Imagine that - they’re decades in and they’re still redefining what it means to be creative, trippy, haunting, beautiful, uplifting, seductive, and timeless. I gotta listen to more Deftones.
DEXCORE - WE WERE HERE
DEXCORE deliver again with an uncompromising slam of everything that makes up modern visual kei deathcore. Uncompromising is the key word as there are seventeen tracks and rarely do they hit you with a ballad for breathing room. The album literally starts “Everything about you is fucking disgusting” and then hits you with one of Kagami’s classic roars over some heavy riffs. Even if many of the songs follow the same pattern, they all end up feeling different due to Kagami’s soaring delivery during choruses. There are some lighter moments scattered throughout such as previous singles THE LIGHT and Savior, as well as album ender Busted piano, but you have to get through a lot of aggression to discover them! In the wake of bassist TO-RU’s passing, this album takes on some more sentimental shades. Even the album title unintentionally reflects that DEXCORE were out to make a statement: WE WERE HERE.
downy - 第八作品集『無題』
downy drops another banger! Their ninth album - also titled Mudai, no shocker there if you know anything about them - is equal parts mysterious and haunting. It would be reductive to call it dissonant chords over thick bass notes, dark electronics, and wild drumming, but that’s what downy delivers in spades. It beckons the listener deeper with each track. This is a very easy album to throw on and zone out to, but at the same time it’s a complicated and textured album with a lot to chew on. The song structures are not simple by any means and the avant-garde presentation complicates matters further. There is not one accessible track on this album, but that’s what makes it genius; you want to listen again and again. downy’s rhythm section is fantastic - the drummer leads the assault with complicated, inspired rhythms while the bassist holds down the low end with thick, fuzzed out notes. It’s key to the kind of sound they are going for. Less is more with enjoying Mudai - let the album guide you instead of trying to control the journey, and be rewarded with some amazing post-rock. This is thinking music for real.
Earl Sweatshirt - Live Laugh Love
I did not expect Earl to drop anything this year so the announcement of Live Laugh Love caught me by surprise. I thought it was a joke at first judging it solely by the title, but when I realized it was real I got mildly excited. Gone are the days where I would be hype over an Earl Sweatshirt release because he’s changed up and become very inaccessible from his Doris days, but as long as it’s not as bad as EAST I’ll still check him out. He flows off beat almost the entire time and his rhyme schemes are very dense, almost MF DOOMish in some aspects and has some influence from fellow rapper MIKE. The beats are almost entirely samples and loops and the songs are almost all on the short side - only two songs break the three minute mark and many songs are around 90 seconds long. The lyrical content is about mature topics and what’s on Earl’s mind these days. I would also say gone are the days of the rapper that had lots of doubts about himself, the world, and was grappling with depression because on this album he sounds hungry but also like he found some of the answers that he was seeking in just growing up and giving himself time. It’s also good to hear songs like FORGE and Gamma (need the <3) finally get a studio version after he’s been performing them live for years. Is this his strongest? If you ask me, no, that’s still probably Doris or IDLSIDGO. But as far as his “new style” goes this resonated with me more than Some Rap Songs and leaves FEET OF CLAY in the dust. I need to spend more time with Voir Dire so no comparison to that. Honestly, I think he’s wrung out all the juice that he can with this style and he needs to change his flow up once more, so I’ll be excited to see where the wordsmith goes next.
JILUKA - XNDII
I’m convinced JILUKA is like Dir en grey in that they’re one of the few bands that everyone has heard and has an opinion on, and if you’re somehow one of the few fans who is new here and doesn’t know who JILUKA is, I suppose this is as good of an introduction as any. JILUKA is a love it or hate it four piece extreme metal band, and XNDII is their latest collection album meant to summarize their activities up until their electro gothic metal era. Perhaps you’ve heard BLVCK or OVERKILL? That’s the new stuff. XNDII is the old stuff, which I happen to prefer at this current juncture, and what can I say? If you like loud and aggressive metal with melodic choruses and insane shredding solos, when there’s a lot to enjoy on XNDII. We even get a “new” track in Moksha (I put it in quotes because it’s actually an older track), and it’s such a sharp break from their EGM material that it makes you wonder why they sat on it. I also think some of their songs were remastered, although I’m not familiar enough with their material to say. What I can say is that it sounds good! My only gripe is that there’s a lot of overlap with XANADU and maybe this album has rendered that one obsolete, but it’s a small quibble in the grand scheme of things. XNDII gud. It’s probably the only JILUKA I need to reach for in a pinch.
Jinjer - Duél
If you ever wanted polyrthymic deathcore band with a beast of a female vocalist that sings as well as she screams, and can pull all this off live with no sweat, then Jinjer is your new favorite band. It certainly was my favorite band the first time that I heard Pisces. With Pisces, as with every song on this album and almost their entire discography, it took time to grow on me. The first song “Tantrum” begins with a few quick taps on the snare drum before launching all hell into the ears, and either you get it or you don’t. I wouldn’t blame you for not getting it. Tati doesn’t rhyme and the music rarely repeats, which gives it a very progressive feel at the expense of being hard to digest. I remember first listening to lead single “Rogue” at 11 in the evening and remarking to my friend that I didn’t get it and that it sounded like a collection of riffs to me. It took me approximately five listens to pick up what they were putting down, and soon it catapulted to being one of my favorites on the entire album. I also remember the other single “Someone’s Daughter” completely bounce off me the first few times I listened to it, but listening in context made it click. There are also slower moments throughout - I don’t recall any harsh vocals in Green Serpent, a song and metaphor both about excessive drinking. This is an album that came and left my rotation all year, depending on my mood I would reach for different tracks, but I would rarely listen to the whole thing in one shot. Make of that what you will.
lynch - GREEDY DEAD SOULS / UNDERNEATH THE SKIN / GOD ONLY KNOWS / THE AVOIDED SUN / SHADOWS / BRINGER
2025 was the year of lynch.! They hit us with re-recordings of GREEDY DEAD SOULS and UNDERNEATH THE SKIN early in the year, and followed that up with re-recordings of THE AVOIDED SUN and SHADOWS later in the year. And as if that wasn’t enough, both drops came with a third disk that featured one new song and several retakes of older songs. One would think so many retakes would get stale quickly but this sound is what lynch. fans have been craving ever since the boys stepped away from this sound. It’s great to hear these songs as a five-piece with good sound quality. I think that SHADOWS might be my favorite out of all the albums, but GREEDY DEAD SOULS and THE AVOIDED SUN needed the face lift the most. Songs like Liberation chord and CULTIC MY EXECUTION have been playing on loop since it dropped. The Universe sounds like a completely different song. I agree with whomever said that I DON’T KNOW WHERE I AM has become a top ten lynch. song with the introduction of new lyrics in Japanese. There are a few changes I’m not entirely sold on - the excerpt at the beginning of vernie is always a good time and I feel the scream at the end of quarter life isn’t the same (but very much appreciated because I missed it on the buried) - but that’s what we have the old versions for! For what they are, the new versions of all six of lynch’s releases this year have been exceptionally solid reinterpretations of their past catalog. It’s a shame the existence of BRINGER EP means we won’t get re-recordings of I BELIEVE IN ME and especially INFERIORITY COMPLEX, but I won’t stop hoping on that just yet.
