![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/a1551646191_10.jpg\")
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10. Medekine
Baggy Pants Music
[Self Released]<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a unique idea: Nu metal\u2019s first bedroom pop album. Ben Gibbard and Jimmy Tamborello remaking Hybrid Theory from memory. Four Tet having his life changed by Japanese nu metal act Gun Dog<\/a> instead of Aphex Twin. Medekine\u2019s Baggy Pants Music is that album. It fantasizes of headlining Summer Sonic Festival, then writes a soundtrack for that fantasy. In this, Baggy Pants Music feels like somebody imagining what kind of nu metal they wish they could make and burning their imagination straight to a CD. Guitars that sound like USB ports, not amps. Drums triggered by keyboard keys, not sticks. The reason it transcends all the metal bands trying, and failing, to disguise their metalcore presets with \u2018authentic\u2019 guitar tones is because it never sounds like something it isn’t, which is an album made by someone alone in their room, who’s \u201cfeeling every little piece of dream\u201d while trying to will it into reality. In another time, in another place, songs like \u201cLament Of Innocence,” \u201cSquirm\u201d and \u201cRIU\u201d would be re-recorded at expensive studios with 5-figure a day budgets, now they arrive like the obsessed over demos Mike Shinoda made when Linkin Park was still Xero. But this only tells half of Baggy Pants Music\u2019s story, the other half is in the breezy, J-pop indebted tracks like \u201cFamiliar Faces\u201d and \u201cRound the Block,\u201d both of which contribute mightily to the album\u2019s excellent pacing. When elements from the heavy hitting \u201cMirror Match\u201d get repurposed for the gentle walkabout of \u201cRound the Block\u201d just try not to be impressed at how natural it feels. Baggy Pants Music is charmingly human, aware of its limitations and making the most of it instead of struggling against them. Not small, tiny. That\u2019s not to say it doesn\u2019t deserve to be big either. – Holiday Kirk<\/p>\n 9. Swollen Teeth We\u2019re almost five years into a nu metal revival that felt impossible as recently as the year before that, and 2025 has been the first year since The Nu Metal Agenda got underway where it\u2019s felt like a legitimate wave of new young bands has arrived. And while that\u2019s exciting as hell, some of the constituent elements of our genre didn\u2019t fully pass through the bottleneck. This year\u2019s crop of new bands have funk\u2019s bounce and metal\u2019s grind in spades, but so far modern nu metal has struggled to access the power of persona that was so fundamental to the legend-building work of the genre\u2019s first wave. <\/p>\n Enter Swollen Teeth. With their zombie masks and hospital gowns, their visual vibe evokes Slipknot so blatantly it would unacceptable if they weren\u2019t the first truly excellent, truly metal nu metal band to emerge in the revival era. But masks and riffs wouldn\u2019t themselves have been enough to catch the ears of genre godfathers like Sid Wilson and Ross Robinson\u2013from the first second of Ask Nothing, it\u2019s immediately clear that Swollen Teeth understand that nu metal only truly works if it\u2019s as much theatre as it is music. Ask Nothing<\/a> revives the nu-bounced, hook-forward death metal Slipknot dragged out of the cellars of Iowa back in 99 by drowning it in a psych-horror dreamscape of ambience and a truly haunted production that makes the band\u2019s periodic swerves into Davisian nursery rhymes (\u201cFour Wars\u201d) or cursed DJ breakdowns (\u201cMedicine\u201d) pop all the more, but it\u2019s the world-building that truly sets up this band as bigger than a record. References to the \u201chorns down\u201d, the band\u2019s fanglike symbol, formed by inverting the classic metal hail, pre-load fans with a unifying gesture, while the lyrics of the record itself constantly circle the kind of committed identity-creation we haven\u2019t had since we had to take Marilyn Manson out back for the world\u2019s good. <\/p>\n Ask Nothing is as wildly creative, diverse, and bursting with energy as anything nu metal has done since the turn of the millennium, and heavier than any of it. On \u201cCar Crash 2\u201d, frontman Megaa pauses everything in the middle of the track to introduce everyone in the band by their monikers, shouting out \u201cSun\u201d, \u201cSkutch\u201d, \u201cHog\u201d, and himself as information we\u2019re all gonna need to on hand from here out, displaying the kind of endless assurance that was once the calling card of nu metal\u2019s solar era. Ask Nothing isn\u2019t an album, it\u2019s a mythos, and Swollen Teeth are exactly what nu metal needs today.\u00a0– Josh Rioux<\/a><\/p>\n 8. Fleshwater 2025 was a major breakout year for Fleshwater. When you start out a year with an arena tour opening for Deftones, you’ve definitely discovered an endless sky. There was no doubt the level of excitement there must have been among fans of Fleshwater and even Vein, of whom Fleshwater shares most of their lineup, when the band announced a new album in the summer of this year. Unfortunately I missed the train whenever We’re Not Here to Be Loved took off, and since then to be present in a time Fleshwater dropped new music was something that was undoubtedly going to be an experience to behold. <\/p>\n A lot of people were skeptical if Fleshwater could follow up their debut, and honestly a lot of still don\u2018t think it’s as acceptable as the previous, but I firmly believe that this album not only is an excellent sequel but also something that stands on its own and shows significant growth from the band as a whole. Rather than try to make the same album twice, 2000: In Search of an Endless Sky tells us that band is willing to branch out for their overall sound. The overall musically ability between Marisa Shirar’s melodies, Anthony Didio\u2019s riffs and the chemistry that comes from the rest of the band, each track is a correspondence of proven growth and tightness. Songs like \u201cJetpack\u201c and \u201cLast Escape\u201c show that the band knows what the fans like and expect: jumpy riffs and melodies that make you feel like you\u2019re exploring a different plane of existence, but with drastic shifts with tracks like \u201dBe Your Best\u201d and \u201cSilverine\u201d, the band is willing to explore a slower, more in depth look at their musical process. Nu metal is what you make of it, and there is nothing more nu metal than shaping your own identity. Fleshwater does that with no apologies. <\/p>\n I had the pleasure of finally experiencing Fleshwater live in concert on their support tour for this album and it was hands down one of the best concert experiences I\u2019ve ever had, a show that literally had me come out of my mosh retirement. I have no doubt that the next time I see Fleshwater, it will be in a much bigger venue. And I will be brought out of mosh retirement once again. – Stephan Carrizales<\/a><\/p>\n 7. Deathtape If you remember your adolescence fondly no you don\u2019t. Either you\u2019ve forgotten what it was really like or you\u2019re just way luckier than the rest of us. You\u2019re sweating in places you\u2019ve never sweated before, you\u2019re growing hair in places you don\u2019t want hair to be, your face is breaking out in boils like a goddamn plague from the Bible. Adolescence is a horror movie that climaxes with the realization you have left the only era of your life in which you didn\u2019t have to think about sex or death. And there\u2019s no going back. Twelve years of innocence, a lifetime of sin.\u00a0<\/p>\n As a band of teenagers, Deathtape are close enough to adolescence to remember what most adults forget, which is that this shit fucking suuuuuuckssss!!!! Their debut EP, the appropriately titled Adolescence, is a warning for anyone looking to take a trip down memory lane; turn back now.\u00a0<\/p>\n If you\u2019re sick of modern nu-metal\u2019s relentless Deftones worship, this is the cure. Deathtape gives a middle finger to \u2018nu-gaze\u2019 with some viciously raw music and the most visceral screaming I\u2019ve heard on a nu metal record in ages. They\u2019re a band that blew up on TikTok that sounds nothing like a band that blew up on TikTok. Slipknot inspired, I\u2019m not sure if they\u2019ve heard a second band honestly, but these have more in common with deep cuts like \u201cTattered and Torn\u201d or \u201cNo Life\u201d than \u201cDuality\u201d and \u201cPsychosocial.\u201d Deathtape understands that what most of Slipknot\u2019s progeny don\u2019t get which is that their real frontman was Joey Jordison, pushing and pushing and pushing each song to their breaking point before finding a way to push them even further. Deathtape get it and let their drummer, Ryan Joyce, lead the way through all 25 minutes of Adolescence. You can hear the band scrambling to catch up to his runaway sense of tempo, falling just a little behind the beat before snapping to attention. If they used a click track to record these songs, it doesn\u2019t show, they rush forward as recklessly as those first inciting blasts of testosterone and hormones, exciting and excruciating in equal measure. When \u201cWrists\u201d gets abruptly devoured by \u201cScenery\u201d\u2019s threshing machine riff it might be the most thrilling nu metal moment of the year. Meanwhile, lead singer Abenamar Honrubia is too young to understand what\u2019s torturing him and also to consider that he might need his voice to, like, talk someday. He is screaming, shouting, weeping and wailing all over these songs with terrifying abandon, untamed and wild like a young Daryl Palumbo.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve hit play on this by now you\u2019re probably cringing at the lyric sheet, with nu metal boilerplate passages such as \u201cYou\u2019re just a fucking disease that I don\u2019t care about!\u201d That\u2019s because you\u2019re supposed to be cringing, let\u2019s see how your teenage diary has held up. Still, it\u2019s worth asking if an album with passages like \u201cDie you motherfucking bitch \/ You’re nothing when your gullet’s in a ditch\u201d is something I should be recommending in the big 2025 but these are ugly, repulsive thoughts presented exactly as such: ugly and repulsively. They\u2019re self condemning in presentation. Listen for yourself, every nasty word sounds like it hurts to sing as much as it hurts to hear. Adolescence isn\u2019t misogynist, it is about misogyny, about what thoughts and feelings like this do when you let them eat you alive. There is no invitation to participate in the violence, you\u2019re shoved back at every turn. Everyone has felt these feelings at some point – these disgusting, unspeakable, violent feelings – we\u2019re lucky bands like Deathtape exist to vent them for us. – Holiday Kirk<\/p>\n 6. Cheem It\u2019s no secret that the Nu’sroom wears our love for Cheem on its sleeve\u20142022\u2019s Guilty Pleasure hit the budding ecosystem of nu-metal Twitter with enough force to remind us pop-punk can be good, actually, nu-metal can be good, actually, and creating a permission structure catchy enough to dance, sing or rap along to. After gracing us with a two-EP cycle that took our Album of the Year spot in 2024, Cheem returned in mid-November with a proper full-length follow-up, Power Move.<\/p>\n Our expectations were sky-high, and the self-branded ‘Nu-Pop from Nu England’ heroes are meeting the moment with some of the most memorable songs of their career. Opener \u201cPivot\u201d is infectiously catchy, from its nostalgic 8-bit intro to memorable hook after memorable hook dissecting the closing chapters of a doomed relationship, and a chorus that will sink into every synapse and leave you tapping your toes at bus stations for months to come. Lines like \u201cIf it\u2019s just a game, we should still be a team\u201d hit hard in their simplicity\u2014Cheem has fully internalized the melodrama and self-aware cheesiness that made pop-punk work, and sure, there are cleverer lines on the album, these guys can write, but it\u2019s stuff like the \u201cPivot\u201d chorus that the crowd will be screaming back at the live shows to come.<\/p>\n The rest of the album is a mix of early Incubus-informed bounce riffs, catchy hooks and refreshingly genre-agnostic collabs\u2014\u201cQuench\u201d includes a verse from simpatico post-hardcore act and occasional tour partners pulses., \u201cSpin Cycle\u201d sports a great verse from Hartford, CT hip-hop hero Dom McClennon, and Brazilian rapper and nu-metal fellow traveler MC Taya shows up to drop an English\/Portuguese guest verse on \u201cElastic.\u201d<\/p>\n These songs are all great, but the brilliance of Power Move is what they represent, and a signpost for where nu-metal can and should go next. Cheem continues to build their well-established resume of cross-genre bills, cross-genre collabs, and tying the various genres in their local scenes together with an international nu-metal movement born from shared bounce-riff obsessed corners of pre- and post-Elon Musk Twitter. It\u2019s unpretentious, unabashedly poppy, and swinging for the arena rock fences with the scrappiness and humility of a band forged in local DIY scenes. If you\u2019ve been sleeping on them until now, Power Move is the perfect opportunity to fix that. – Gabi Brown<\/a><\/p>\n 5. Burnside A lot of discourse around this album has focused on the way it sounds. Certainly, it must. Before you even hear a note of music, \u201cFeel This\u201d opens with a hissing bitcrush of oxygen, when the song kicks in you have to double take. Can the vocals really be this smushed? Why are the drums so much louder than the guitars? How is it so quiet and so loud at the same time? Since I\u2019ve already seen a few dismiss the album out of hand based on this let me posit another idea: the production on this album is fucking awesome. <\/p>\n I\u2019ve always said a good nu metal album is one you can identify on snare alone, New Breed is the first one I\u2019ve heard in a long time that completely succeeds at this. Just hit play on \u201cDown.\u201d It’s like David Silveria\u2019s snare and Clown’s baseball bat against a beer keg mixed together and thrown down a well. It might not always be the loudest thing in the mix but it is the brightest. A straight shot of adrenaline sniped through a mix that otherwise sounds like someone listening to Staind\u2019s Dysfunction in the next room while you\u2019re falling asleep. I mean that as a compliment, of course. For as loud as it may have been mixed it has been mastered very quiet, with headphones you have to turn the volume all the way up to get even close to an acceptable level of hurt. By doing so it puts true catharsis just a bit out of reach so you return to grasp at it over and over again. This isn\u2019t an album you listen to, it\u2019s an album you drown in. One for gray skies, light rain; long walks through too wide suburban streets and abandoned malls. The very first chorus on the album isn\u2019t \u201cCan you feel this?\u201d, it\u2019s \u201cCan you not feel this?\u201d A challenge to delete all the professional ideas about what heavy music should sound like from your brain and just feel this. And when they directly quote the guitar riff from 40 Below Summer\u2019s \u201cStep Into the Sideshow\u201d on \u201cBurn\u201d? <\/p>\n Honestly, it\u2019s like Burnside was daring me not to love it. They failed. – Holiday Kirk<\/p>\n 4. Deftones “Can you feel it?” Chino Moreno asks on “locked club,” the grand, swaggering second track from Deftones’ tenth album, private music. The reaction has been a resounding “yes,” both on the charts and on tour. Reteaming with producer Nick Raskulinecz (Diamond Eyes, Koi No Yokan), Deftones have crafted their strongest, most exuberant collection of songs in at least a decade.<\/p>\n The last five years have not been easy going for the boys from Sacramento. During that time guitarist Stef Carpenter was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, tours were cancelled due to COVID-19, and bassist Sergio Vega left the band on less than amicable terms. At the same time, lead singer Moreno got sober, and viral TikTok clips created a whole new legion of Gen Z fans. It’s fitting that a band so preoccupied with the idea of transformation would weather such tumult and come out the other end not only in one piece but thriving.<\/p>\n Less a reinvention than a rejuvenation, private music. finds the band playing to their strengths, firing on all cylinders, and rediscovering the joy of performing together onstage. A vibrant, unbridled energy runs through the whole album. Note the major key bounce of “milk of the madonna” or how the slate grey harmonics of “Feiticeira” have given way to the sunny, spiky uplift of “infinite source.” “ecdysis,” named for the process through which a reptile sheds its skin, takes a dark, churning riff that would be right at home on Around the Fur and shifts seamlessly into a bright, soaring chorus. With this new energy, the band still finds time for more sensual moments (album centerpiece “souvenir”), chaotic excursions (the whirling “cXz” and the dubby “~metal dreams”), sweeping romance (“i think about you all the time”), and dark menace (“cut hands”). The latter, featuring Adrenaline-era rapping from Moreno and twisted sonics straight out of The Fat of the Land, is a late album highlight. Special shout out to drummer Abe Cunningham who, song after song, threatens to steal the whole show.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ab67616d0000b2734e1da8f011847030ed2450bc.jpeg\")
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Ask Nothing
[Blowed Out Records]<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/a1169169067_16--1-.jpg\")
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2000: In Search of an Endless Sky
[Closed Casket Activities]<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/1765633692_617_image-4.png\")
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Adolescence – EP
[Santa Anna]<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/a0410372096_10.jpg\")
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Power Move
[Self-Released]<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/a3531220659_10--1-.jpg\")
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New Breed
[Drive 45 Records]<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/ab67616d0000b27317e4d3ab44b89f1b62dcc2d6.jpeg\")
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private music.
[Reprise Records]<\/p>\n
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