Album of the Year 2025
For the past several years I haven’t released an official top 5 album of the year list. The music honestly hasn’t been that great and some years I’ve struggled to find 5 brand new things I enjoyed. This year was much different. LOTS of great new music came out. Without further ado, here’s the list from 5 down to 1. Enjoy
Honorable Mentions:
Marbin, Brad Mehldau and Donny McCaslin all had great releases this year. I just didn’t find myself coming back to them as much as I did the albums on this list. Definitely check them out though.
5. Bela Fleck’s BEATrio
You always expect magic with Bela Fleck and this album delivers. I didn’t know much about the project and just saw it on a “new jazz release” list and was blown away from the first listen. The groovy basslines really stood out to me and I was highly surprised to learn there wasn’t a bass player on the album and that it was harpist Edmar Casaneda. I found myself returning to this album regularly when I wanted something more “chill and laid back” but it also provides a world of depth for active listening.
4. The Devil to Pay in the Backlands- Jack the Joker
This album came completely out of left field. I had never heard of this band until this year and was sent the album on the recommendation of a friend. It. Hits. Hard. I honestly never expected to listen to prog metal from Brazil, I didn’t know there was a huge prog scene there tbh, but here we are. The Devil to Pay features some of the best prog bass playing I’ve ever heard. He does such a great job of not just copying the guitar parts (something I hate about a lot of metal bassists) and actually adds layers of depth to the songs. The album is full of bangers but Sun might be my favorite of them.
3. I knew Everything But I Forgot It- Zac Vanacoro
Full disclosure Zac is a colleague of mine at school. I promise he didn’t threaten to take my lunch money if I didn’t put him on my list though. I actually like this album! Which was a surprise to me as Zac usually likes terrible music. His song writing though is an entirely different side of him. I found myself constantly coming back to this album and went a solid month with this being the only thing I listened to. It was one of the top albums I listened to all year and his 9 minute epic about a vampire “Only Loser Left Alive” was my most listened to song of the year. Nice work Zac. It didn’t suck.
2. The Blue Nowhere- Between the Buried and Me
It is unfathomable to me that a Btbam album didn’t get the number one spot on my list. They usually do by default, especially since this is their best album since Coma Ecliptic (my favorite album of all time). The Blue Nowhere is the closest thing to Coma that they’ve released. Prog metal in a major key with insane dynamics, mood shifts, intensity ranges. God Terror will eat your soul. I know several people who couldn’t finish the track because it was so intense. The front half hits hard as hell and slowly releases to the finish. It’s near perfect. At this point nothing will dethrone Coma simply because of the nostalgia factor but if you’re new to Btbam, this is a great place to start.
1. Enter Branch- Nick Zoulek
I have loved Nick’s music since the moment I discovered it. It is the perfect mix of heady, intense, melodic and emotional. Rushing Past Willow, his previous album, is easily in the top 10 of all time list for me. I fully expected Enter Branch to be RPW 2.0. It is not. What we get instead is one of the best modern classical albums of the decade. I said it. It’s not just a technical showpiece for saxophone like his freshman album. EB features deeply composed pieces with multiple instruments and vocalists. “Arrive” is my favorite of these types of pieces on the album while Vision truly is my favorite on the album. It’s prog metal on a single saxophone. In the end the deciding factor between this and Btbam was that I did in fact listen to Enter Branch MANY more times in its entirety. No matter what you normally listen to, you’ll like this one.
There you have it. The best of 2025 according to me. So the best of 2025. I’ll see you in 2026. Happy listening and thanks for reading!
