Praise Dio, it's the most wonderful time of the year! That's right, it's time for end-of-the-year lists! I've been compiling my own personal best music lists annually for the last ten-ish years, previously publishing them for friends to see on Facebook. I've largely given the finger to Zuckerberg at this point, so I wasn't sure where my 2025 list was going to live. Fortunately, I made the decision to jump to another dead online medium this year! It was a pretty damn strong year for music, and here are my top 20.

I'm not going to lie, Christmas really snuck up on me this year. To be honest, I'm not even sure if we have all the gifts we need for everyone, and Christmas Eve is tomorrow! This is all to say that if I was more on top of thing, I probably would have written this post earlier. Oh well! Anyway, here are some fitness-related gifts that I personally recommend, or am really interested in trying myself. 

Last Friday I didn't get around to a real recommendations post both because I was busy and because none of the new releases I checked out did much for me, save the new Health album. Tomorrow will be another busy day for me and I get the sense that new releases are winding down for the year, so I put together some recommendations of albums I'm revisiting as I start planning my best of the year list. Most of these were released before I started this little blog, so this will be my first time writing about them. But before we get to the old stuff, I've got one recommendation for new music that came out this week. 

Last night I went to what is almost certain to be my last concert of 2025, a bill of local metal bands at an instrument store/school/coffee shop called Klash Coffee. I had never heard of any of the bands playing, nor had I been to the venue before. But I had a free night and it was a $10 cover (with Toys for Tots donations also strongly encouraged), and a friend agreed to go with, so we braved the subzero temperatures to go check out the show. I'm incredibly glad I did. 

Yesterday, I missed my weekly recommendation post, which I'm happy to say has been quite rare. This was partially due to it being an unusual day for me - I was at home doing things around the house rather than playing music in the course of my day job. But more significant is the fact that I just didn't care for pretty much anything I checked out. I gave several new albums a listen, and most I shut off before finish.

The only album I made it through in its entirety was Conflict DLC by Health. Health is a weird band for me in that I've seen them live and have liked many of their individual songs, but none of their albums in full have sucked me in the way my favorite bands have. They're also such a sprawling band that it's hard to get a handle on their catalog - they're incredibly prolific and have albums, compilations, EPs, collaborations, and soundtracks. This new album is apparently all tracks that were supposed to be included on their last album, Rat Wars. In short, its hard to know where to start with Health. That said, this is a strong collection of songs. In particular, the song "Shred Envy" reminds me of White Zombie, which is always a good thing. Maybe a Rob Zombie collaboration is on the way! 

TL; DR: Listen to the new Health album.

It's Friday, and today's selection of new releases is... bizarre. But, we like bizarre around these parts. We'ce got covers, EPs, collabs, singles, and compilations, oh my! Click through for weirdness!

Fitness and music are two of my major interests, but if anyone follows me on Bluesky, they'll know that politics occupies a similarly large portion of my brain. Sometimes, two of these three major interests converge, and today is definitely one of those moments. Yesterday, I learned about the Turners, members of German-American gymnastics clubs called Turnverein. It strikes me that Americans could benefit greatly by emulating this German movement from the 1800s, and not just physically - maybe I'm being a hopeless optimist, but I think that embracing the teachings of this movement could go a long way towards healing some of the bigger sociopolitical issues in our country today.