Best of 2025, Not from 2025

Cataloguing a now-40-year-old's increasingly juvenile entertainment picks from the past year, even when he wasn't hanging out with his kid. Not usually things that were released within the past year, unless they were suitably retro.

Ranking the Agalloch albums & EPs

Everything they did reminded me of other things, but their hodgepodge of blackened neofolk post-metal or something or other was still probably the most iconic soundtrack to my early wanderings in the harsh post-education world. And thanks to a premature break-up, their discography remains distinctive and digestible. Here are my The Top 11 Agalloch Things.

Ranking the Testament albums

With eerie guitar leads and tomblike production conjuring the sonic equivalent of horror movie video covers, these guys were the only other thrash band I really cared about besides Metallica, and they seemed to pull off their inevitable 90s decline and senior regrouping better than their peers, even if I didn't keep up with all of it.

Beware! For it is my Top 13 Old and New Testaments!

Ranking the Bruce Dickinson albums

At the height of my Maiden mania, I was pleased to learn that Bruce Dickinson had solo albums (often involving other alumni too), but I hadn't realistically expected them to be as good as they were, sometimes far surpassing what the bigger band was doing at the same time. And other times, not so much. Here are my Top 7 Bruce Discs-inson.

Ranking the Ozzy Osbourne albums

The short-lived period where I preferred Ozzy's solo career over Black Sabbath ended as soon as I heard more than a couple of their songs, but he was still good for a fun retro session every now and then. But with a revolving door of so many talented musicians, there must be some substance to the discography, right? Here are my Top 13 Ozzy "Solo" Albums, now I've given them a listen.

Best of 2024, Not from 2024

Continuing to rest in the comfort zones of retro styles, but my new calling as a junior roleplaying Game Master kept me from stagnating and got me scribbling furiously on notepads again. Welcome to this year's influential round-up of Some Things I Liked This Year, Not Necessarily Also Produced This Year, Although Some Were.

Top VII Final Fantasy 7 themes

I don't know whether Final Fantasy VII is the best game in the series or has the best soundtrack, I've only played about 2½ of them, but as a late landmark of my gaming childhood, it's always had a special place in my heart.

I've often listened to Nobuo Uematsu's soundtrack as background music over the years, which kept the dimming memories flickering, but a recent nostalgic playthrough with the next generation restored the missing visuals and brought the music back to life, like when you use the Phoenix summon.

Here are some of my favourites, why not.

Best of 2023, Not from 2023

Full-time work and full-time parenting left negative time for personal pissing about for most of this year, but hacks like passive audiobooks in work-prep time and secret subtitled anime when she's watching My Little Pony kept me sane.

Here are the things I enjoyed discovering (or sometimes revisiting) in 2023, some of which were even released in 2023, though mostly not.

Ranking the Iced Earth albums

Iced Earth* was my proudest independent comparatively-obscure heavy metal discovery of my teens, so I was delighted that wearing a Horror Show T-shirt to some university rock society events led to me being known as "Iced Earth Guy" to a couple of people.

I don't know if they were ever quite my favourite band. Maybe briefly, but the familiar problem of faded glory that affects many bands' discographies felt particularly frustrating for being on such a compact scale. Never releasing anything really worthwhile ever again and being overtaken by politics and toxic personality didn't help either.

Still, nostalgia and riffs. Here's a retrospective of My Top Few Iced Earth Albums And The Rest.

Actually, I can't be bothered. Here's one of these instead:

* I never noticed how dumb the name sounds.

Ranking the Pantera albums

Appreciating a nice melody and atmosphere over an aural assault, I was always a bit of a wussy metal fan. But if I did feel like kicking a cat, choice songs from a very specific period of Pantera's infamously selective career used to hit the perfect spot between nu metal aggro and death metal armageddon.

Let's see. Here are my "Top 9" Pantera Albums, of which I should at least like a couple.

Ranking the Star Trek film soundtracks

As inconsistent across productions as their inextricably associated visuals, the Star Trek movie soundtracks are naturally evocative for fans of the films, but many are also worthwhile on their own merits. I mean, probably. It's not like anyone knows.

Here are my The Top 13 Star Track Sound Treks.

Best of 2022, Not from 2022

Squeezing work around full-time parenting cut into my self-improvementindulgence time this year. I may not have read any long novels, but I did see the entirety of Peppa Pig several times over and learned all the names of multiple generations of plastic ponies.

Here's what I managed to scrape together for my out-of-calendar cultural year.

Ranking the Dead Can Dance albums

Subjecting some of my favourite ethereal background music to scrutiny wasn't an easy task, but I'll never learn which ones are worth listening to if I keep falling asleep to them.

It took several passes through to decide my Top 10 Dead Can Dance Albums & E.P.

Ranking the Ghost albums

I wasn't aware of all the contrived mystique and tomfoolery surrounding these retro weirdos until doing this, always being content with the audible gimmick. The Devil's always had the best tunes, but they were never this catchy.

Behold My Ye Top 5 Ghost Albums. That's right, I don't only like decrepit things.

Ranking the Led Zeppelin albums

I came to Led Zeppelin too late and wizened for the legendary band to have much personal significance, or even to remember that listening to them is an option most of the time, however much I enjoyed it. Their discography is even more concise than The Who's, but I was similarly indifferent about reaching the end or even wading out much beyond the ones I really liked.

This is no passionate affair, but should prove to be a long, neglectful relationship. It's The Top 8 Led Zeppelin Albums!

Ranking the Symphony X albums

My first dedicated voyage into progressive metal (I didn't really know what to make of Opeth), Symphony X impressed me with approachable neoclassical flourishes, double-digit, multi-part songs and pompous mythology storytime that was right up my street, but a fairly limited range meant they wouldn't have the staying power of a Dream Theater.

Nostalgic as hades though. Here are my The Top IX Symphony X Opi.

Ranking the Camel albums

Never particularly a stand-out prog band, mainly for being relative latecomers when much progress had already been made and they were doomed to be beleaguered by comparisons.

But their twin humps of lively instrumentals and introspective concept albums are sometimes just the ticket, when you've over-listened to Pink Floyd but aren't desperate enough for Marillion. Almost uniquely for these lists, they might even have got better with age.

Here are The My 14 Top Album Camels.

Ranking the King Crimson albums

The other, weirder favourite of my stereotypical student prog phase, trips with Robert Fripp & Friends were more turbulent than Pink Floyd's, but with such a diverse discography, there was usually something I was in the mood for.

That said, I haven't really listened to them for a while, and never really listened past the '70s anyway. Here Are My The Top 13 King Crimson Albums. Someone else can sort out the live saga and box sets. 

Ranking the Metallica albums

So obvious that I had to check I hadn't done it already since my last 10-year reappraisal (when Ride the Lightning decided to be inextricably part of my memories of Singapore), but also so old-school in the literal sense that it would maybe be better to let my teenage self gush with inexperienced infatuation, if only I'd actually written 'em all.

I could have done something less useless with my increasingly dwindling free time, but let's see how noisy nostalgia clashes with literal dad taste. Here are The Top 10 Metallica Studio Albums (is that all? Lazy).

Best of 2021, Not from 2021

The second childhood of parenting is already corrupting my taste through secondary joy, contrasting with my conventionally mature picks of board games, comics, adventure gamebooks and fighting robot cartoons.

Here is The Best Entertainment That I Happened to Experience Within The Past Year!!!!!!!

Ready, set, come on, let's go!