I listen to a lot of music. No, really. If I’m not catching up on what my dudes recommend with The Indie Inspection and Ska Punk & Other Junk, or doing homework for the Crushed Monocle Podcast, I’ve got my ear to the ground for what’s next. There’s so much music out there that it’s hard to keep a cohesive list. While the podcast is a great way to discuss a few records each month, I feel I’m undercutting some of the other records that got repeated spins. What’s the remedy? This column! This is The Showcase.
Editor’s note: Sorry about the over-abundance of albums in this installment of The Showcase. But I was kind of swamped in September with Riot Fest, interviews, and prepping for my annual horror-related pieces for Halloween month. I still listened to plenty of records, but I just didn’t have the time or juice to put an article together. Wait. Why am I apologizing? This is more for me to recommend and more for you to listen to!
SOOKS – Taste The Leather
Hailing from Perth, SOOKS has returned with a snarling, teeth-gritting blast of hardcore fury that feels like it’s been marinating in gasoline. The band rips through tempos like they’re stress-testing the concept of velocity itself. Slamming from swaggering, mid-paced stomp to full-blown sonic napalm, the group delivers raw, unfiltered punk energy with a heartbeat that’s all fight, no flight.
Tyjhier – Bloom Where You’re Planted
Bloom Where You’re Planted is a burst of self-reflection wrapped in neo-soul production. In many ways, it’s like a heart-to-heart at 2 a.m. with a friend who has seen some stuff. Despite being personal and vulnerable, Tyjhier never meanders in precious territory. The lesson here is about finding strength and evolution right where you’re standing, even as the ground shifts beneath you. Tyjhier turns her vulnerability into power, channeling rough edges and quiet revelations through beats and soulful textures that glitch and glow in equal measure.
Hooded Menance – Lachrymose Monuments of Obscuration
You kinda already knew the October edition of The Showcase would feature something terrifying, yeah? Hooded Menace have returned from their crypt, and sweet unholy hell – it’s a masterclass in how to stretch death/doom until it bleeds into something else entirely. There’s still death and doom here, but there’s also synth-laced melancholy and trad-metal bravado along with an audacious Duran Duran cover that somehow works. Each track feels like a séance where death, goth, and heavy metal lock arms and waltz across a foggy graveyard. By the time “Into Haunted Oblivion” closes its ten-minute dirge, you’re left gasping, wondering if any band will top this in 2025.
Time Thieves – If You Survive
The best way I can describe Time Thieves is a power pop band that actually meant it. If You Survive takes all sugary hooks and chiming guitars of classic pop and injects them with enough fuzz, frustration, and sneering self-awareness to make them hit like punk anthems. Like many indie bands in the Chicago area, Time Thieves sport that perfect balance of bite and bounce, sounding both radio-ready and totally disinterested in playing the game. What, did you think I wasn’t gonna have a local band in this installment of The Showcase?
Cylindre – Ingenue
Doesn’t it feel like every so-called experimental artist has treated the guitar like radioactive waste lately? That’s why Ingenue hits like a cleansing blast of distortion therapy. Crunchy riffs and feedback-laced layers tear through the noise with glorious shoegaze abandon. Cylindre takes familiar chaos and twists it into something freakishly fresh, like garage rock and post-punk smashing into each other in a haze of noise rock.
Jaleesa – Sodalite
Named after a gemstone linked to clarity and truth, Sodalite lives up to its name by staring straight into the imperfections of being human. Instead of hiding behind gloss or escapism, Jaleesa leans into the bruises and finds something raw and real. Blending classic R&B warmth with soul and a touch of smoky jazz, the album doesn’t offer answers, but it does keep you company in the dark. It quietly reminds you that you’re not the only one feeling it.
Violator – Unholy Retribution
Within thrash as a genre, far too many bands simply try to reinvent it or solely pay homage to the greats. Fortunately, Violator kind of does both, but without feeling reductive. Unholy Retribution is 40 minutes of pure, adrenaline-fed carnage. The songs hit with the precision of old-school greats and the bite of a band that still plays with the sweaty conviction. No cosplaying here: Violator doesn’t posture or pander. They make genuinely aggressive thrash in its purest form.
Snooper – Worldwide
These Nashville weirdos crank their berserk art-punk into overdrive with hyperactive tempos and sugar-rush hooks. Despite being a punk outfit, they have just enough twitchy electronic flourishes that make the chaos feel futuristic. It’s fast, it’s unhinged, and it’s oddly hopeful. You know, kinda like The Showcase!
Irk – The Seeing House
Simply put, The Seeing House is horrifying. But it isn’t horror in the cheap, shock-value sense: It’s horror as philosophy. Imagine a slow-creeping dread that seeps into your bloodstream and refuses to leave. Irk twists math-rock precision into something claustrophobic and primal. With thick, lurching bass lines, crawling tempos, this kind of tension makes silence sound dangerous. There are no easy melodies or comforting releases, just a constant wrestling with the unknown.
Timeshares – Love Me Less/The Farewell Tour
This band simply nails the uneasy peace that comes with getting older. With the one-two punch of Love Me Less and The Farewell Tour, Timeshares deliver a knockout combo of biting sarcasm and reluctant self-awareness, wrapped in a sound Bruce Springsteen and Wilco could envy. The group has seen the world through dirty beer bottles, but they’ve never lost sight of where they came from. Rock ’n’ roll rarely hits this honest, and that’s exactly why they’ll always be one of my all-time favorite bands.
Shiner – BELIEVEYOUME
Some bands either burn out trying to reinvent the wheel or coast on autopilot until the tank runs dry. Shiner has always lived in that tense middle ground where evolution meets obsession. They’ve built their sound brick by brick, refining it without ever sanding down the edges. BELIEVEYOUME feels like the moment all that precision and passion finally detonates. It’s heavy, melodic, and brimming with that restless energy only a lifer band can conjure. This isn’t just another solid release from a cult favorite; it’s the kind of record that should finally shove them into the wider conversation. If you’ve got any love for big riffs and smarter-than-they-need-to-be hooks, you owe this one to your ears.
Vangas – You Left Us In The Spring
Vangas take the sneering swagger of their earlier noise rock chaos and drown it in a suffocating fog of despair. Doesn’t that sound cheerful? Well, it’s the Halloween season here on The Showcase, so what did you expect? Every scream, sax squall, and guitar line bleeds like they’re trying to claw their way out of their own bodies. There’s no ironic distance here – just pure, unfiltered depravity rolled into a monument of raw human collapse. It isn’t pleasant, and it feels real. I’m not really sure if I was ready for grief in noise rock, but you know, why not?
Jobber – Jobber To The Stars
I know there are wrestling references throughout this record. I’m sure said references probably sweeten the deal. But even a jabroni like me – someone who doesn’t know jack about that scene – knows that Jobber To The Stars is a killer rock record. Distorted 90s-esque riffs and sardonic humor make for the kind of album that Teenage Coop in the late 90s would’ve loved. I mean, I still love it now, too!
they are gutting a body of water – LOTTO
While other bands in the shoegaze revival stare at their pedals, they are gutting a body of water prefer to detonate theirs. LOTTO is the band at their sharpest and heaviest, with a haze of feedback and melody that feels less like nostalgia and more like full-on reinvention. As focused as it is strange, the record reveals a band digging deeper into the emotional gravity beneath the fuzz.
Speed Week – Weak Speed
Loud, fast, and a little too clever for its own good, this crew delivers a garage-punk record that thrashes about the back alleys of Melbourne. The songs sneer at corruption and late-capitalist decay while still sounding like the best night out you barely remember. It’s chaotic, razor-sharp, and self-aware enough to laugh through the hangover.
Bloodsports – Anything Can Be A Hammer
Across eight tracks and a couple of warped interludes, Bloodsports flex a brutal kind of precision somewhere between Sonic Youth and Failure. It’s the sound of chaos sharpened into intent (as the album title suggests), but one that knows exactly where to strike.
The Showcase October 2025: Further Listening (classics, essentials, standards, and revisits)
D’Angelo | February 11, 1974 -October 15, 2025
With D’Angelo’s passing, it felt impossible not to dive back into his criminally short but deeply seismic discography. In just 3 albums, he did what most artists spend lifetimes chasing. By melding soul, funk, R&B, and rock into something both dangerous and divine, every note dripped with sensuality and truth. But beneath that velvet voice was a man locked in battle with love, faith, and the weight of his own genius.
I’m no historian, and I’ll never claim to know the man, but for me, D’Angelo belongs in the same breath as Prince and Sly Stone. He obsessed over every detail, chasing perfection because the music mattered that much. And yet, while his craft was sacred, his fame was a curse. I’m not sure any publication has talked about him without turning him into a body rather than an artist. Unfortunately, that brand of contradiction (artist versus object, passion versus pressure) defined him as much as the music did. This is something he didn’t ask for and wasn’t a fan of.
Strip all that noise away, though, and what’s left is a flawless trinity of albums that never needed death to feel immortal. D’Angelo’s music doesn’t change with time; it just keeps reminding you how alive it always was. That’s what it means to be a true artist, defying stardom and legacy. R.I.P. D’Angleo.
