On 21st December 2025, Swedish post-hardcore stalwarts Refused played their final gig in the group’s hometown of Umeå. A sweaty and teary affair, Refused unleashed a rolling broadside over a brisk 90 minutes, unfurling the entirety of the band’s dedication to weighty and outspoken hardcore in a fierce and conclusive salvo.
As tastefully monochrome images of the band embracing were dragged and dropped onto social pages, you would assume that after thirty-plus years of sonic vitriol the group might sit back for a bit of R&R; a bit of fika maybe? Maybe this would have been the right move considering the sum of their next enterprise: doom metal/free jazz/noise-rock project, Backengrillen.
Comprising Refused’s vocalist Dennis Lyxzén,…
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Brisbane’s 
Arriving two years after 
Working with some musical legends and renowned musicians (often both) can be a blessing and a curse. On one hand, you not only gain specific experience, but it means you have capabilities and are doing something right. On the other hand, when you have to go on your own and present your individually conceived music, it might be a burden if you are not able to come up with something that is at least above average.
Divided by Dusk is a mysterious, otherworldly album that sounds like a folktale and feels like walking into the forest just as the sun is setting, not knowing what wonders may await. Will one encounter enchanting creatures, gypsy caravans, a traveling circus ~ or the simple magic of fox and bear, moonlight and stream?
Ghanaian singer 
The title As Human carries a multitude of meanings. What is it like to be human, or to pass as human? At what juncture might one lose or gain one’s humanity? The Chicago band calls the title track “a meditation on vulnerability and the small triumphs that come with choosing to feel, even when it hurts.” 
It’s all blurring together. Ambient is emo now. Rap sounds like harsh noise. Drum’n’bass is basically bedroom pop. And 
Does 50 minutes of heady and chaotic free jazz appeal to you? Good. 
One of many bands to have explored the country’s more perilous frontiers of DIY culture, Brighton-based bass & drum sludge-punk-noise-rock duo 
Postulate soundtracks a shattered life, mixed and strewn beneath your feet. The album vibrates with menace, as if every track were cut from the same glass that explodes outward in the poem accompanying it. “To your fear, another is added — the fear of windows. / Your transparent, imagined shield has become a weapon of entropy, / tense and ready to kill, / piercing your fragile flesh with a thousand fragments. / Stay away from windows. / Better to move through corridors. / Remember the rule of two walls.” 
A recording consisting solely of the sound of water droplets? As the practice of field recordings continues to expand and extend in to multiple forms of music, that notion is not as odd as it once might have seemed. But this reissue of Shizukutachi by Japanese sound artist 
Luminous, barely breaking the silence with miniscule gradations and returns, a Jacob’s Ladder of chimes ushers in 
After a decade of silence, Chloe Harris returns as 
Between 2023 and 2024, 
On November 1, 2024, The Cure released