some buncha nerds

Here's a life hack for time-poor music fans. If you ignore all new releases within your chosen genre for an entire calendar year, then you get to read a whole bunch of Album of the Year lists at your convenience and listen to ONLY the best stuff.

Which is to say: I have a couple more music recs that aren't, like, hrr grr arrgh blargh Satan! Recs that have maybe a passing chance of appealing to the majority of you who aren't into extreme metal! I also have some recs that probably only Zook and Liriaen and Kimara should even bother glancing at, let alone listening to if they haven't already, but I'll stick those at the bottom of the post. Because it seems like a lot of the best "metal" of 2025 was actually quite mild and accessible, or even just straight up crossover stuff that wasn't really metal at all but appealed to a lot of metalheads for its dark ambiance and experimentality.

Album recs, normal person edition

The Spin by Messa: Smoky, jazzy female vocals over a goth-tinged canvas of reverb-heavy guitar and driving beats. I don't think I've found a single AotY list in my whole search that did not include this album in the top couple of spots. Technically it's doom metal but I really don't think you need to be a doom metal fan, or a metal fan in general, to appreciate this; it's just gorgeous.

Here, have a music video! It's more aesthetic than riveting, but it does feature the extremely attractive singer on a motorbike and is a good representative sample of the album. If you bounce off this song, there's nothing here for you; if you like it, oh boy do you have a treat coming with the rest of the album. <3



Camgirl by Crippling Alcoholism: I honestly have no idea what to call this. It's not metal, though metalheads have been loving it; it's too heavy to be post-punk or goth rock or synthwave, but it has elements of all of them. It's dark and dreamy and wonderful and I have listened to it so many times in the last few days. (Disclaimer: this is a concept album about a sex worker, and I can only make out about half of the lyrics. Quite possibly it's sympathetic and thoughtful? I'm choosing to hear it as sympathetic and thoughtful. But I can't rule out the presence of bigoted shit in the less intelligible parts, and I haven't bothered to listen to any band interviews about the inspiration behind the album, so I cannot in good faith vouch for them as anything other than auditorily enjoyable.)

There might be more coming; in particular, there are new albums by Ainsoph and Calva Louise that come highly recommended and based on their first couple of tracks have a lot of promise, but I haven't found time to give them a full listen yet. But I honestly just want to spend a while listening to The Spin and Camgirl on repeat before I delve into anything else. They're SO GOOD.

Album recs, hrr grr argh Satan edition

Scapulimancy by Hedonist: This is fantastically fun, catchy, filthy death metal with brutal vocals and chugging Bolt Thrower-esque riffs. It's not an album that prompts any sophisticated or nuanced response in me whatsoever; it's an album that scoops the thoughts out of my brain and replaces them with nothing but primitive satisfaction. I don't headbang but this band makes me want to. Just. FUCK yes.

Heritage by Structure: Bear with me. You're all alone in the middle of a black night ocean that is maybe a real body of water or maybe a metaphor for your filthy conscience, being dragged down into the unfathomable depths by an anchor tied to your feet. Looking up as you sink, you see the cosmic sparkle of millions of stars refracting through the water's surface from far above. This is death/doom at its best and I am thoroughly smitten.

My movie-watching roll has slowed a little, but I've still watched a few things over the last couple of weeks. One I hated so much that I'm not even going to mention it here because I want to let the memory fade (probably nothing anyone else will have deep feelings about, just this Scandinavian horror flick my library streaming app happened to be promoting that hit some squicks I didn't know I had). The other three are below!

The Craft (1996): Well, we can add this to the list of things I'm glad I didn't get into back in high school. It would have been my whole personality for, like, a semester at least. I would have been even more insufferable than I was during my Buffy phase. New girl Sarah falls in with a clique of three witchy misfits who, empowered by her natural gift for the occult, start using magic to solve their problems in increasingly dangerous ways. This film is an utter delight. Extremely nineties, extremely teen angst (but in a fond, earnest way), too campy to be truly scary but with a really fun and satisfying horror aesthetic. I have so many feelings about those poor downtrodden, miserable girls who tasted power for the first time and went mad with it. There was also some very tempting hateshippy tension between Sarah and Nancy, the coven's leader. I had a feeling if I looked this up on AO3 it would prove to be one of those comparatively rare fandoms where F/F dominates, and I was right; there is nearly as much F/F as all other categories combined. (On the other hand, there are only 125 fics total, which feels very unfair. Filing it away in my mind as a Yuletide option for later this year.)

Ringu (1998): Ring fan mutuals, I'm so sorry, I have failed you. :( I think probably this one was just too similar to its remake for me to enjoy watching them this close together. There were parts I liked better in this older version - especially the close-ups on the dead faces instead of those annoying barely-visible flashes the 2002 version does, and the fact that the little boy seems happier and better-adjusted in this one - but the suspense wasn't there and the production was less glossy, and I ended up getting interrupted in the middle of the well-digging-out scene and haven't bothered to go back. I might try again in a few years once my memories have faded?

Wake Up Dead Man (2025): When cultish Catholic priest/culture warrior Monsignor Wicks is murdered, suspicion naturally falls on Father Jud, the recently assigned assistant priest who has made no secret of his opposition to Wicks' vicious preaching style. The brainwashed congregation all turn on him, but Detective Benoit Blanc is convinced of Father Jud's innocence and enlists his help to expose the true murderer.

I think this might be my favourite Benoit Blanc movie to date. It's not as clever as Knives Out or as funny as Glass Onion, but it has so much heart and soul and kindness to it, even and especially when its tongue is planted firmly in its cheek. It is neither pro- nor anti-Catholicism; Wicks is a vile character who embodies the bigoted, exploitative, self-aggrandising side of the Church, while Jud embodies the earnest love, faith and self-forgetfulness of the Church as it should be. Not to be weird about an imaginary Catholic priest but Jud is also kind of hot, in a vaguely Adam Driver-ish way that's mostly ears and angles. I enjoyed his screen presence a lot.