15 Great Hardcore Punk LPs of 2025 (That We Didn’t Review… Until the Very Last Day)

The title of Total Nada’s debut full-length translates to Here and Now, and opening with the title track immediately establishes the band’s core position: there is no future rupture to wait for, catastrophe is already here.

Aquí y Ahora unfolds through occupied lands, extractivism, and liquid capital that burns lives while rewriting history. Across the record, authoritarian rule appears as a self-perpetuating death machine, with tracks like “Fallas Crónicas,” “Lamebotas,” and “Máquina” framing capitalism as a system that produces misery by design, cycling endlessly through exploitation, disposal, and blame without ever stopping its gears. Human lives are reduced to expendable pieces, guarded by bootlickers and bureaucrats who mistake order for legitimacy.

Based in Montreal, Québec, with a Colombian vocalist delivering the anti-illusion political lyrics in Spanish, Total Nada play a style where everything fast and resistant in punk collides. While the band’s second EP flirted with death rock and goth influences, Aquí y Ahora marks a full return to barebones punk that’s urgent, relentless, and stripped to its foundations. This might be the fastest band operating today without drifting into metal, grindcore, or crust territory, just pure hardcore punk that instantly reminded me of how much I loved Los Crudos the first time I heard them as a teenager. And as many Europeans already witnessed during Total Nada’s shows across the continent in early 2025, they are also one of the absolute best live bands right now. Simply put, this is the best punk release of the year.

The first time I heard Belgrade’s STATICØ was in 2022, when they covered the timeless Bastard classic “Misery,” and their fierce live performance immediately pushed me to check out their Italian-titled EP, Il Nostro Cimitero, on Refuse Records.

Three years later, the band returns amid mass protests in Serbia and the ongoing genocide in Gaza, this time recording as a five-piece, with the added second guitar giving the songs more space, weight, and maturity. Absurdity of This World sounds angrier and more direct than ever, packed with sharp riffs and an even stronger political charge. The message is clearly shaped by the Balkan realities and the Middle East, unafraid to call things by their name while raging against global injustice driven by greed, colonialism, and rising fascism in all its forms.

There’s no theatrical detour with an Italian title this time, as Absurdity of This World is as straightforward as it gets, while still drawing heavily from Italian, Scandinavian, Japanese, and US hardcore traditions, cementing STATICØ as a Balkan standout and one of the most important bands to come out of Serbia in recent years.

When I first heard Galway’s An Slua a few years ago, their brilliant sense of humor immediately set them apart, and it’s no exaggeration to say they’ve since become one of my favorite bands in the current wave of the Oi! genre. Needless to say, I was more than ready for their debut full-length.

One of the first things that stands out on Sure Look It is the artwork, featuring the Grianán of Aileach ring fort illustrated by the legendary Sean Fitzgerald, known for his work with Extreme Noise Terror, Raw Noise, and Riistetyt. Seeing Sean’s art on an Oi! record is unexpected, and it signals a shift in tone, because Sure Look It can’t be written off as a humorous release. This is a far more serious and urgent statement than their earlier EP.

The name An Slua comes from Gaelic and roughly translates to “the crowd,” historically referring to the collective body of ordinary people rather than elites. In that sense, it mirrors Oi Polloi (another great band), whose name stems from the ancient phrase hoi polloi, meaning “the common people,” and that parallel feels entirely intentional.

Musically, Sure Look It is a tough slab of twin-guitar-driven Oi! punk, powered by a fast, heavy, and physical take on the genre. Gruff vocals, big choruses, and pounding drums dominate, with production that stays deliberately rough and ready. There’s also a strong rock’n’roll backbone, with power-chord swagger that recalls Cock Sparrer and Angelic Upstarts without resorting to nostalgia.

The use of Gaelic is purposeful rather than romantic, most clearly on “Saoirse don Phalaistín,” where solidarity with Palestine is voiced through a language charged by colonial repression, linking Irish memory to international struggle. Elsewhere, housing, privatization, and profiteering take center stage, with landlords, developers, and politicians framed as parasites feeding on basic needs, while everyday life collapses into debt, exhaustion, and quiet humiliation. The anger stays grounded in the gentrification, housing estates gutted by Airbnbs, boxes carried by precarious workers, and rubbish piling up. Songs like “Dry Shite” and “Arseways” turn inward, addressing burnout and inherited despair, where rage feels justified but useless unless turned into action.

That intensity is balanced by warmth and loyalty, especially on “Gifts from Galway,” where love, friendship, and belonging to the land (in a non-nationalistic sense) become reasons to endure rather than escape. This is exactly what I love most about Oi! records, avoiding abstract theorizing or distant political language in favor of lived working class themes and experiences that feel real. True to its name, Sure Look It frames making a change as messy and exhausting, but sustained through solidarity with the comrades right beside you.

Sympos have built a reputation through a steady run of EPs and a sharp (pun intended) sense of humor that carries over into their videos, which feel more like enthusiastic outpours of street-level storytelling than simple promos. I was especially surprised by their skateboarding video, which added an unexpected and refreshing angle to their aesthetic.

To The Dogs (also the name of one of my favorite Tragedy songs) distills everything they do well into twelve tracks that avoid the clichéd, meatheaded and boneheaded pitfalls of the genre, favoring smart, chugging punk rock driven by their pounding rhythm section and an instinctive grasp of melody. This is Oi! that hits hard but stay nimble, shifting between stomp, speed, and swagger, always anchored by big shout-along choruses. After countless listens before the album’s release, the lead single “F/Bank Punks Not Dead” still stands to me as the catchiest track and remains my top dog, which is exactly why I hate it when bands drop songs like that in advance, getting you fully addicted before the rest of the record even arrives.

Lyrically, the album is born out of everyday frustration but never loses its wit, taking sarcastic jabs at social media fakeness, empty shit-talkers, and the small humiliations of daily life. Several tracks draw directly from their hometown (Waterford, Ireland) itself, especially the title song.

Packed with fists-in-the-air chants, pub-ready hooks, and a strong sense of belonging, To The Dogs is a modern Oi! punk classic proving Sympos are at their best when they keep things simple, fun, and unapologetically direct. We need more Sympos.

SÖT is a new band from the small towns of Lleida and Almacelles in Catalunya, and while I’m still waiting for the vinyl to land in my mailbox, I haven’t been able to stop listening to the digital version since its release. Crema-ho tot features ten brilliant and infectious tracks that lean toward the melodic punk rock of bands like Accidente, Duelo, and Suicidas, and probably a bunch more I’m forgetting.

SÖT’s lyrics, in Castilian and Catalan (English translations included on the vinyl sleeve), articulate politics of care, rage, and collective survival, standing apart from macho or nihilistic punk traditions. There’s also a darker post-punk vibe woven through the songs (think Chain Cult), and I can’t not mention the clear Masshysteri influence. I’ve got a feeling I’ll find even more beauty and more layers in each song once the vinyl is spinning, but it’s already up on Bandcamp as free or pay-what-you-want, and you really should give it a listen.

I tried digging for more info on the band, and while I’m sure these folks have played, or still play, in other excellent groups, this really is a debut record. And it’s so damn good.

P.S. One of the labels involved in co-releasing the album is Nunchakupunk, whose co-founder and our friend Arto Hietikko recently passed away, so that’s another reason to get this record. In loving memory of Arto.

I’ve been trying to pin down a review of Death Spa’s new album ever since it dropped in March, and it remains one of the most challenging records I’ve had to write about this year. Across its ten tracks, the album constantly shifts and pulls you in different directions, building on a foundation of noise rock while folding in prog-leaning guitars, pummeling yet deeply rhythmic drums, and rumbling bass lines. At times it veers into free jazz, industrial or death metal territory, but the music’s restless experimentation ultimately feels secondary to what the record is trying to communicate.

Death Spa is the project of Mia-Rose Malone, a trans woman based in the Pacific Northwest. On Ewwwphoria, the band uses extreme imagery, such as body horror, sci-fi grotesquerie and splatter violence, not for shock value, but because ordinary language simply isn’t enough to describe what systemic transphobia, dysphoria, abuse, and survival actually feel like. These songs document life under a genocidal political project (“Make It Hurt”), where the state polices bodies, criminalizes gender expression, and forces people into impossible choices. The rage here translates as a direct response to legislation, medical prohibition, and the constant threat of incarceration or death for simply existing.

On “Cracked Eggs,” dysphoria is framed as a physiological crisis rather than an identity debate, with testosterone pictured as poison and the absence of estrogen as starvation, making transition a matter of survival rather than self expression. Recurring body horror imagery externalizes the damage caused by being forced into a harmful body and social role, not something inherent to transness. Songs like “Seven Faces” and “Body Horror” give voice to the constant and rational fear of violence faced by trans women, while “Escape From Kirkland” is no fun at all, documenting abuse, isolation, and shame without offering a neat survivor narrative.

When I see end-of-year lists, I often get the sense of a kind of consensual uniformity to include the catchiest records (like the new Home Front) or the latest roid-raging hardcore that ticks all the boxes. Ewwwphoria doesn’t demand repeated listening, it’s rather one of the most challenging records I’ve heard recently.

I’ve got records by at least five different bands called Confront, but the one from Mie, Japan has always been among the dearest to me. I’ve had their Curtain of an Intense Attack EP for quite some time, but it wasn’t until this summer that I finally got my hands on the Trace ～ Early Years Selection LP, which was hard to find in Europe, and absolutely worth the hunt. Almost at the same time, out of nowhere, the band dropped their first proper full-length, Guilty or Not Guilty?, and it’s a total ripper.

Ten tracks, full of fire and emotion, with all the hallmarks of the Japanese “burning spirits” sound: scorching guitar leads, searing solos, relentless drumming, throat-ripping vocals and empowering choruses. All of this delivered with signature Japanese hardcore passion. You don’t need comparisons, Confront have been one of the premier bands in this style for decades, and this LP is a triumphant, full-force return.

From the same city of Mie, Japan, comes another long-standing favorite: Contrast Attitude. But where Confront lean into the “burning spirits” tradition, Contrast Attitude thrive on pure, noise-drenched Discharge worship, and the title of their first full-length since 2009, Discharge Your Noise, couldn’t be more accurate.

The opening track is called “Relentless Assault,” and that’s exactly what you get: an instant barrage of distorted fury. Alongside bands like Reality Crisis, LIFE, and D-Clone, Contrast Attitude have always stood tall as one of the most explosive forces in Japan’s DIY punk underground. The European edition, out via D-Takt & Råpunk, comes with alternate artwork by Rainy from Discharge (the one posted here), which is another perfect match for the record’s unrelenting barbarity. It’s a relentless assault indeed. Time to discharge your noise. Disclose your desires.

I’ve got a habit of checking out anything wrapped in Sugi artwork, and Oulu, Finland’s Kürøishi have stuck with the Japanese master for every release so far, always with a wild boar tearing through the cover. Sugi’s artwork might suggest blazing leads and flying solos in the vein of Death Side, Judgement, or Warhead, but Kürøishi throw in plenty of curveballs. There’s fist-pumping modern crust à la Tragedy in the mix, but also nods to the extremity of mid-’90s Swedish and Norwegian metal. It’s funny, the band’s name translates to “black death” in Japanese, so maybe it’s an inside joke with death and black metal, or maybe it just sounds cool? Anyway, Egocide of the Warmad is the band’s fourth LP, and they’ve clearly perfected their attack: thundering drums, searing vocals, and guitars that swap between heroic leads and infectious riffs. Total ripper.

Following their excellent 2023 No Experts LP, Does Not Compute sees Illiterates sticking to what they do best: frenetic, energetic hardcore packed with passion and primate fury. The vocals still sound like a hairy ape Ray Cappo, and while the Revelation Records circa 1988 influences are obvious, this isn’t some predictable youth crew clone. Illiterates clearly love their Negative Approach and Poison Idea riffs too, and the result hits harder because of it. The lyrics yell about real social issues and have something worth saying, even though the band proudly calls themselves the “dumbest band in hardcore.” I wrote a listicle of my favorite ’80s hardcore revival bands earlier this year, and while Illiterates weren’t on it then, I’d definitely put them there now.

I not only love the ethics and attitude behind the French—pardon, Breton—label Symphony of Destruction Records, but I also genuinely enjoy every release they’ve ever put out. Lille’s Gutter released Glitch on the Day of Europe, and oh boy, this screenprinted cover and risographed booklet make it a DIY masterpiece.

I usually prefer French bands singing in French, but Gutter sing in English, and they make every lyric count. Across ten tracks, they build a dystopian world where social exclusion, technological domination, environmental collapse, and psychic exhaustion aren’t separate issues but the same system wearing different masks. Frequently used words and phrases include software, deletion, malware, disposable materials, customer service, programming, content, and reset; all framing modern life as a broken machine that treats humans like faulty products instead of free-will agents.

It’s tightly played, mean hardcore with anger that’s precise, not theatrical. Here to remind you that “functioning” doesn’t equal living.

Jodie Faster is another band from Lille; see what I did there, after reviewing two bands from Mie, Japan above? I swear it’s pure coincidence. Anyway, Jodie Faster are a long-standing fastcore band with the best guitar sound and some of the best fastcore live shows I’ve ever seen. Saint Lundi delivers 19 tracks of pure speed-driven joy and catchiness, wrapped in brilliant artwork from Baretto. Standouts include “Bedtime for Diplomacy,” which comes with a great video, and “No God No Master No Algorithm,” which lyrically nods toward Gutter above.

The title refers to an old working class tradition in Western Europe, dating back to medieval times, when workers would take Mondays off without notice; gathering in taverns to drink, talk politics, self-organize, and sometimes kick off spontaneous revolts. It was a joyful and subversive reclaiming of time from both bosses and the church, before industrial discipline crushed it. In Jodie Faster’s hands, that tradition translates to modern forms of refusal. Songs like “Saint Lundi,” “Work Eat Sleep,” and “This Pit” reject imposed rhythms of productivity and insist on stolen time for thought, rage, pleasure, and collective life.

Recurring jabs at police violence, bureaucracy, nationalism, and enforced obedience make clear why Saint Lundi was suppressed in the first place: unregulated time breeds solidarity, and solidarity threatens power. Here the principle holds true: life doesn’t begin after labor and freedom can’t be regulated by cops and bosses. The music’s way too fast to read David Graeber (RIP) while it’s playing, but I’d still recommend trying.

I was tempted to add a third French band to this list, and surprisingly it’s the first one here to actually sing in French. The Toulouse trio started around 2013 as Birdie Steptoe before changing their name to Ire in 2018, and over the years they’ve built strong ties with the South American scene, releasing a split with Chilean screamo band Esconder Micara and taking part in a benefit compilation against police repression during the 2019 Chilean uprising. The band’s drummer is none other than Christophe Mora, known from Finger Print, Jasemine, and Undone, and also the person behind Stonehenge Records.

Fleuves Asséchés came out as a beautiful single-sided LP and is easily Ire’s most exciting work to date. The band continue the die-hard DIY and politicized tradition of the scene, offering plenty of emotional shifts and variance throughout the record. The second track, “De Guerre Lasse,” especially brings Chaviré to mind, and if I didn’t know better the whole album could easily be mistaken for a new Chaviré release. The lyrics are written primarily in French, with the exception of the closing track “Nossas Derrotas,” sung in Portuguese. Thematically, Fleuves Asséchés is a self-critical reflection on contemporary militant exhaustion, written from inside struggle rather than from a position of moral superiority. References to the aftermath of the Gilets Jaunes, the judicial repression that followed, and the rightward drift of institutional politics frame a landscape where action feels both necessary and increasingly ineffective.

Songs like “Au Bord de l’Inertie” and “Encrer Dans Le Réel” reject empty radical aesthetics and semantic battles (aka identity politics) in favor of militant direct action, while the record also dwells on burnout, fear, and the need to rethink strategy amid capitalist atomization and eroding solidarities. Fleuves Asséchés insists on persistence, on will, and on breaking with inherited myths of struggle to open new breaches. We may be living through exhaustion and political drought, where the rivers of revolt appear to have run dry, but Ire are less interested in mourning them than in understanding why, and what it would take to make them flow again.

London’s tethered made a strong impression on me with their 2023 demo, even if they seemed to fly under the radar for many people, and their vinyl debut feels like a genuine step forward in both sound and lyrical direction. I still want to spend more time with this record and properly absorb it on vinyl, but a few things stand out immediately. The production is noticeably stronger than the demo and I really appreciate that tethered went with ten entirely new songs instead of recycling earlier material, giving the record a focused narrative arc. There’s also less “revolution summer” worship this time and bolder Ebullition-style intensity, with what feels like a Sarah Kirsch–driven influence shaping both the pacing and emotional weight of the record.

The lyrics are longer than your average hardcore punk record and among the best I’ve seen this year, constructing a tightly enclosed emotional world defined by pressure, fear, and endurance, where everyday life feels unstable and quietly hostile. Much of the writing revolves around sensory perception (sounds in the house, footsteps, barking dogs, ticking clocks, etc.), as if danger is always close but rarely visible. Confinement is another key theme, with homes, suburbs, and workplaces portrayed as oppressive rather than safe spaces, and the idea of “affording a box” framing social security as something conditional and earned through constant stress.

Even with more time needed to fully sink in, this LP already feels like one of the strongest emo-hardcore records I’ve heard in years.

Sklitakling is an all-women band from Norway that’s been playing for over a decade now. They play hardcore punk by definition, but swerve hard away from the genre’s clichés, combining it with fast, scuzzy garage punk riffing and darker undercurrents that bring to mind bands like Thee Headcoatees, Wipers, Regulations, and No Hope for the Kids.

Sklitakling’s new album Normal Drift is a focused and furious broadside against the violence hardwired into daily life under capitalism. Still recorded live with Robert Jønnum at Underschön Studio (who also contributes synths on two tracks), the record sounds as intense and angry as ever. Shouted in Bergen dialect, these twelve tracks reveal the hypocrisy of bureaucratic chokeholds, lifeless routines and the kind of systemic failure that manifests itself at work, at the border, and in your own conditioned mind. “Kem Bestemmer?” and the title track weaponize office routine and time-clock logic, while “Fåkk Deg” goes for the throats of war profiteers and political parasites. The closer “Grab ’em” (by the pussy) drags Trump-era misogyny and macho-fascism into the spotlight.

Normal Drift is Sklitakling’s most powerful release to date. That’s garage-punk-fueled hardcore that stares into the machinery of a misogynist, exclusionary, class-divided society and shoves a crowbar in its gears.