by Dan Goldin
Welcome to FUZZY MEADOWS, our recap of this week's new music. We're sharing our favorite releases of the week in the form of albums, singles, and music videos along with the "Further Listening" section of new and notable releases. It's generally written in the early hours of the morning and semi-unedited... but full of love and heart. The list is in alphabetical order and we sincerely recommend checking out all the music we've included. There's a lot of great new music being released. Support the bands you love. Spread the word and buy some new music.
BLONDE REVOLVER
“Want It All” + “Meglomaniaxe”
Melbourne synth punk band Blonde Revolver kick off the new year with two new singles (following a demo released back in December). “Want It All” and “Meglomaniaxe” pick up where their full length left off, blending bratty hardcore and garage punk into something buzzing, radiant, and immediately engaging. With each song showing off the band’s unbridled spitfire energy, “Meglomaniaxe” and “Want It All” are equal parts aggressive and punchy as much as they are blistering with oversized shout along hooks. There’s a churn and burn kind of shimmer to “Meglomaniaxe,” a wonderfully snide fuck you of a punk song, while “Want It All” opts for a destructive and repetitive scourge of blissful anthemic chaos.
DEGRAVED
“Pariah of Death and Darkness”
Our introduction to Degraved came last year via the band’s cavernous split with Cystic, pairing together two of Seattle’s most uncompromising death metal bands. With a new album on the way via the great Dark Descent Records, Degraved have self released Premonition of Blasphemy, a live in-studio rehearsal EP featuring three of the tracks from their upcoming record. “Pariah of Death and Darkness” is a colossal pit of searing despair, the low end growl and spidery riffs as bleak as they are gargantuan. Captured in shades of black and gray, this is death metal that lurks in the shadows, the sound rippling with a static current and threatening to come unglued at the seams as they dig their murky crypt ever deeper, lumbering from one demonic riff to the next.
ISMATIC GURU
“An Incredible Amount of Overwhelming Information” LP
After four dynamic and freaked out EPs, Buffalo’s Ismatic Guru let it all congeal with An Incredible Amount of Overwhelming Information, a full length pairing each of their previous efforts with yet another new EP. The 26 track record just might be 2025’s first essential album, the oeuvre of their releases cohesive yet dextrous, their brand of splintered “egg punk” combusting and convulsing in equal measure, a delightful cataclysmic ooze of jittery art punk excellence. The duo of John Toohill (Science Man) and Bran Schlia (Helmsley) run through songs at dizzying speeds, overloading avalanches of 8-bit indebted melodies and impeccably tight serpentine rhythms into frenzied bursts of sordid hooks and a recklessly demented glow. The full scope of the Ismatic Guru vision has arrived, and it’s best experienced in full. Go buy the LP.
SÖLEX
“Small World”
Televised Suicide, Australia’s finest hardcore label, had the best December imaginable. While most are reluctant to release records into the year end void, the Western Australia label shared essential and profoundly great new albums from both Total Defeat and Gaoled, while also releasing the first track from Sölex’s self-titled EP, due out in February. “Small World” is brash and brutal, sludgy and mid-paced at times, propulsive and deranged at others. There’s an unhinged sense of mental deterioration as the song stampedes and staggers forward with a violent dose of psychedelic hardcore, rampaging into a delightfully corrosive refrain as the framework simply bleeds from impenetrable swarms of noise and distortion.
THA GOD FAHIM & NICHOLAS CRAVEN
“Dump Gawd: Hyperbolic Time Chamber Rap 4” EP
Look, I’ll be the first to admit that Tha God Fahim releases records at a rate that’s impossible to truly digest. He’s released six new records over the last three months (and eight new records over the last six months), the last six exclusively produced by Nicholas Craven. Void of guest features, Fahim is seemingly working entirely outside the industry these days, spitting rhymes like a man possessed without a care in the world. While the pace is daunting, there’s no diminishing returns, Tha God Fahim can’t be stopped, his rhymes a mix of street corner stream of conscious and sage like wisdom, the combination of the two often as perplexing as it is low key brilliant. With a never ending flow of bars that defy all odds, Fahim is an underground legend of his own design. The Hyperbolic Time Chamber Rap series, which began in November and has already reached volume four, is increasingly rewarding, Fahim and Craven’s interwoven magic only finding a deeper understanding as they continue their all too prolific onslaught.
WHELPWISHER
“Halo”
I’m pretty sure we’ve said it before and I know I’ll say it again: Ben Grigg always writes earworms. Best known as a member of Babe Report and Geronimo!, the Chicago musician returns to Whelpwisher, his basement recorded solo project for Same Mistakes, the end result of a songwriting exercise to write and record a new song every day for two weeks. Due out at the end of the month, the album’s three preview tracks would suggest it was time well spent, each of the songs ripping into fuzzy indie territory with their own unique touches. Grigg’s sense of dissonance and melody pairs together perfectly, highlighted on “Halo,” a song both heavy and jangly, pop sludge painted in brilliant colors with syrupy hooks galore, glorious tonality, and feedback that works like superglue. The timeline would suggest the songs aren’t overthought and they would appear to be all the better for it.
YOUNG WIDOWS
“Call Bullshit”
After an eleven year absence, Young Widows have returned, and not a moment too soon. The Louisville post-hardcore luminaries are set to release a new album, Power Sucker, in March via Temporary Residence (Mogwai, Beak>, Party Dozen), a record that finds the trio sounding hungrier than ever. With a mixture of brute force and brainy structures, Young Widows are able to capture stadium sized hooks while retaining an unnerving grit and a slurred charm. The band continue to take a minimalist approach to their unique blend of noise rock and raw swaggering post-hardcore, every thud and nuanced shift in dynamics delivered with maximum impact. They’re still seething and abrasive, but “Call Bullshit” blends a hard as nails demeanor with a mountainous groove, embracing the grease amid the sonic dirt.
Further Listening:
7XVETHEGENIUS "Death of Deuce (Deluxe)" LP | BOLDY JAMES "Single File Line" | BUCK GOOTER "King Kong Lives" | DOSEONE & STEEL TIPPED DOVE "All Portrait, No Chorus" LP | EDDIE KAINE & RIM "Never Stop" (feat. Che Noir) | FACET "Crndll" | FUST "Spangled" | GREAT GRANDPA "Junior" | GREG FREEMAN "Colorado (Acoustic Live)" | HAUNTED HORSES "Four Watchtowers" | HEARTWORMS "Extraordinary Wings" | JAPANESE BREAKFAST "Orlando In Love" | LAMBRINI GIRLS "Cuntology 101" | LIQUIDS "Tennesee Rose" LP | MISANTHROPIC "Necrotic Embalmment" | MOGWAI "Fanzine Made of Flesh" | MOURN "Alegre Y Jovial” | NILÜFER YANYA “Live on KEXP” | QUALMS "Drowning In Obedience" EP | ROSE CITY BAND "Radio Song" | SHARP PINS "I Can't Stop" | SLEEPER'S BELL "Room" | SQUID "Building 650" | TAXIDERMISTS "Shoot" | VACUOUS "In His Blood"