Top Five Album Revisits That Kept Me Grounded in 2025

Boy, what a scorched wreckage this year has left us in, huh? Between heartbreaks and headaches, misfires and mischief, the rocky road through 2025 has finally reached the edge. Now, it’s time to spearhead towards the next grand adventure — and in these times, it’s just a kickass playlist keeping us company. There have been some noticeable soundtracks that came out swinging this year, but in order to keep me from going batshit in the deep end, nothing quite beats a classic and the mantras they left us with. 

bbno$
bbno$
Broke Records
Street: 10.17.2025
bbno$ = Lil Dicky x Yung Gravy + obscenities said in an Among Us lobby

Humorously infectious with a charm of a reckless adolescent, the hip hop Hoosier bbno$ seemed to be the only one skating through 2025 with good vibes… until his disappearance at the beginning of December. It seems cyberbullying tallied another casualty for the piss-stain troglodytes who speak in brain rot jargon — we just didn’t expect it to take out such a rising personality. His self-titled studio album is all shits and giggles, but dare I say it’s catchy as fuck? Kitsch tracks like “two” and “NSFW” mauled a party-ready putty of house beats and foolhardy lyrics to keep the room jumping. Now, I don’t go up to bat for a celebrity who most definitely doesn’t know who I am, but when his main reason to make music in our March interview was to “have a fun time,” I can’t argue. God forbid someone do any job or hobby because they love it, instead of out of popularity or irony! All just a bobby reminder not to take life so seriously. 

“Fuck it, I’m like / La-la-la-la-la (that’s nice) / La-la-la-la-la (big bag) / La-la!”

Jack White
No Name
Third Man Records
Street: 07.19.2024
Jack White = Black Keys x Dead Weather – The White Stripes

It’s been over a decade since Jack and Meg White parted ways for bigger and better things. That’s evermore apparent as Jack continued to keep his musical chops sharp against the grindstone. No more handcrafted Michel Gondry music videos or bizarre traveling Horehounds — just a man busy to perfect himself. His sapphire-etched album No Name keeps that prowess pointy, sticking to Jack’s signature style of folky, punk blues. The watery rock sound is as if his resophonic guitar and flea market amps were pulled out of a muddy swamp. It’s got a dirty and grimy feel, like a garage band playing in a dingy dive bar in Lava Hot Springs. His real mule-kicker is “Archbishop Harold Holmes” as Jack performs a snake oil sermon to us, the unbeknownst audience. It’s a devil-in-the-detail track that makes me get up and say hallelujah, like I had too much of the communal blood of Christ. No Name showed all of us that Jack White is still cutting like a buffalo!

“Dear friend, if you wanna feel better / Don’t let the devil make you toss this letter / If you’ve been crossed up by hoodoo voodoo / A wizard or the lizard!”

NXCRE & The Villains
FEAN IS WAR
F.E.A.N. ReCoRDS
Street: 08.08.2025
NXCRE & The Villains = Coheed and Cambria + System of a Down

Hell is less of a real place and more of state of mind. Such a collapsing headspace like this trails like putrid skies filled with toxic smoke and cries. As I sat above the filth, a light cut through the charcoal clouds. What I thought were the trumpeting gates to Heaven was flaming bomber wreckage coming back from war, dialing a frantic, yet poetic message: “Mayday, No Hope.” That fallen angel of brimstone was the “raw, unfiltered, imperfection” of NYC band NXCRE & The Villains. That mayday: FEAN IS WAR. Their grungy sound is almost spiritually apocalyptic through moody murmurs and churning riffs, damming whatever God may be. “Dabbington City” and “Indigo” are torturous and heartbreaking, crumbling under the weight of life’s despair. However, the contrast with the darkly uplifting “Usurper” signals an echoing air siren to keep pushing forward. No matter what evil 2025 brought us, FEAN IS WAR was a flickering candlelight shielded by hope.

“The city trembles, oh / They fear the worst, yeah / They need an angel / So I’ll take a shot!” 

Ozzy Osbourne
Ordinary Man
Epic Records
Street: 02.21.2020
Ozzy Osbourne = Ozzy Osbourne (there is no replacement)

People laughed at me when I told them I broke down crying at work from the news of his passing. I simply told them that they didn’t get it. Ozzy wasn’t the prince of darkness as some malicious entity praying on weak souls. He was a one-of-a-kind artist that showed us no inferno tempts humans like the darkness we fight internally on the daily. I could’ve reached for some blatant Black Sabbath or even dug up Patient Number 9 to see if the flesh was fresh. However, Ordinary Man just hits closer to home. Tracks like “Scary Little Green Men” and “It’s A Raid” are high-level strafing unleashing round after round of armor-piercing lethality. However, “Under The Graveyard” suddenly becomes a Memento Mori swan song to remind us that even dark princes die upon their white horses.

“I ain’t living this lie no more / It’s cold in the graveyard / We all die alone.”

Volbeat
God Of Angels Trust
Vertigo Berlin
Street: 06.06.2025
Volbeat = Dominus + Disturbed + psychobilly Johnny Cash

If you’ve read my concert coverage of Volbeat, you would know my love for those Copenhagen cowboys is steel-plated. Nowadays, I feel like there’s very few rock bands that can hold out against the “butt rock” label (not that there’s anything wrong with that). And Volbeat is one that can be considered the modern day rock legends. I could play such heavy hitters like “Radio Girl” or “Last Day Under The Sun”  and still headband like the day I first discovered them — they truly fucking rock! Their ninth studio album God Of Angels Trust cements that claim. Volbeat keeps their steady heavy riffs and rapid fire percussion to 11 with tracks like “Time Will Heal” and “In the Barn of the Goat Giving Birth to Satan’s Spawn in a Dying World of Doom.” (My fingers started cramping writing that title.) However, the sweet spot comes in the form of “Demonic Depression,” a weighted ferment track reminding people that the world is not so grim after all. SLUG Senior Staff writer wphughes once said the band “satisfies that rock need,” and I totally agree! Now, finish your fucking Year-End Top 5, dammit!

“They call it the deep end of the water line / Whatever it means, but I feel like you’re losing out on life / Don’t call it the end ’cause you need to open up your mind / Whatever it takes.” 

Honorable Mention:

Death Grips
Exmilitary
Self-Released
Street: 04.25.2011
Death Grips = Aphex Twin + 100 Gecs x JPEGMAFIA 

Let me keep my habitual meat-riding to a bare minimum here… I know what you’re thinking: “You’re reviewing an album that came out nearly a decade ago? One that’s critically-acclaimed? Whatever man!” Well listen here you music snob jerk-off, once MC Ride and Zach Hill release another underground firestorm, we’ll get to that! Me reflecting on what makes Exmilitary great is beating a dead horse to rubber cement: experimental sampling, revolutionary sound-mixing, harsh in-your-chest vocals that electric-shock you to the core, stroke, stroke, climax! I especially have been listening to this on repeat through means of bootleg streams and an unofficial cassette from Randy’s Records, which was shortly chewed to thousands of Mylar shreds… Was it a cheap shot to have Exmilitary an honorable mention? Oh yeah! Did I, however, listen to at least two tracks every day since September? Also yes! Was this just a final plea to the band to stop teasing us and to release a fucking album already? The world may never know.

“Oh shit I’m feeling it Takyon / Hell yeah, fuck yeah I feel like killing it Takyon / Alright that’s tight what it’s like to experience Takyon.”

Dishonorable Mention:

Linkin Park
From Zero
EastWest Studios
Street: 11.15.2024
(NEW) Linkin Park = Halestorm x Imagine Dragons

In a new world where Mona Lisa’s crumble and any intellectual property (and historic figure) is a buy-out away from becoming part of the Fortnite headhunt, nothing is truly sacred anymore. It’s a free-for-all, tarnishing reputations and dancing on the gravestone of whatever dignity you had left. And for late great Chester Bennington, his bandmates just couldn’t help to sink their diamond-encrusted grills into the forbidden fruit. From Zero, this foamy used Maxi-pad of corpse commodities and clotted hiccups, was a travesty. Their only saving grace: the radio darling “The Emptiness Machine” with its sonic strike vocals from Bennington’s replacement Emily Armstrong and a brain-knocking nu-metal hook that shoots me back to listening to Skillet in Sunday school. And you want to know my biggest gripe? It’s actually fucking good, but at what cost?

“Let you cut me open just to watch me bleed / Gave up who I am for who you wanted me to be.”

Read more Year-End Top 5s:
Top Five Albums of 2025 for Mesmerizing Busy Minds
Top Five Noisy Albums of 2025 To Burn a Hole Into Your Brain