It seems that only days have passed since Classic Rock‘s Best of 2025 issue was despatched to the printers, dripping with ink and wisdom, and yet here we are, halfway through the following year. And what an amazing six months it’s been.
Official music industry statistics teach us that roughly 2000 albums are released every week, which means that more than 50,000 albums have been released between the beginning of January and the last day of June. Crazy!
It’s probably fair to say that most of these albums will be rubbish, and we’re not going to pretend that we’ve listened to them all, but we have picked the 50 albums we’ve enjoyed hearing the most, and listed them below. We hope you enjoy them too.
Tori Amos – In Times Of Dragons
It’s now 34 years since Tori Amos’s breakthrough with her confessional classic Little Earthquakes, and it might have become easy to take such an established talent for granted. Yet In Times Of Dragons is startling in its power. A dark drama using metaphors and characters to champion the fight for freedom and democracy against the “dictator-believing lizard demons and their usurpation of America”, it’s like Margaret Atwood reimagined by Kate Bush. Except Bush hasn’t made a record this good for two decades.
All Them Witches – House Of Mirrors
Opener Red Rocking Chair – a reworking of a bluegrass standard made famous by Doc Watson – begins like Mark Langean at his most haunted, before pulling itself up to its full height via the doomiest of riffs, then retreats again, warped violin wrapping around gently pulsing guitar. Culling Line unfolds with a sense of enormous dread, drifting from an eerie vocal introduction that sounds like an import from 1920s Appalachia to the kind of solo David Gilmour might dream up if he were impersonating Carlos Santana.
Wisely, Alter Bridge haven’t messed with the Alter Bridge formula on their eighth album. Going down the self-titled route is, in most cases, a sign of confidence; that a band is unwaveringly sure that this is exactly representative of who they are right at this moment in their career; there’s no temptation to head down wild diversions or throw in weird experimentation just for the sake of it. Alter Bridge is Alter Bridge at their most Alter Bridge.
A Thousand Horses – White Flag Down
White Flag Down sounds like all the best rock’n’roll albums should: like the members have been shaken up by life a little. It’s part contemporary country rock stomp, part singer-songwriter notes couched in the traditional Nashville sound, and with nods to The Black Crowes, Tom Petty and more.
It was always going to be a long way back for Big Big Train after the shocking loss of their enigmatic singer David Longdon in 2021. They made a pretty good fist of things with new singer Alberto Bravin on 2024’s The Likes Of Us, and now Woodcut, the band’s sixteenth studio album, remarkable as that might seem, is a fully rounded, multi-faceted record and the sound of a band with newfound vigour and songwriting smarts.
The Black Crowes – A Pound Of Feathers
A Pound Of Feathers is not quite as immediate as Happiness Bastards, but repeated listens pay off. Its relationship to that record is similar to the way recently re-released Amorica sits alongside The Southern Harmony. The Crowes’ blessed resurrection keeps rolling.
Born from sessions instigated by drummer Patrick Carney as a respite for singer-guitarist Dan Auerbach while his father was terminally ill, Peaches! is as fuzzy and, ultimately, as sweet as the fruit it’s named after. Corralling guitarist Kenny Brown, bassist Eric Deaton and multi-instrumentalist Jimbo Mathus into Auerbach’s studio in Nashville, the sessions have produced an album that feels unencumbered by expectation, revelling in music that’s its own reward.
Jay Buchanan – Weapons Of Beauty
Staggering out of the Mojave Desert like a man who’s seen the light in the endless darkness, Jay Buchanan’s first solo album is a remarkable journey through soul music, country rock, southern gothic and gospel. He might still pose for a promo photo in front of a once-thriving gold mine while wearing a lobster-pink suit that would make Brandon Flowers blanche, but his new album Weapons Of Beauty is as captivating and contrary as the image of a man in a tailored suit standing alone in the deserted wilderness might suggest.
Butthole Surfers – After The Astronaut
This is the real shit, returning from deep storage – the first Butthole Surfers studio album release in 25 years. The weird shit. The deeply alarming, thrift-store sci-fi, chemically unbalanced shit. Shelved in 1998 by a major label hoping for another (surprise Butthole hit) Pepper, After The Astronaut finally emerges, sounding exactly like what Capitol probably feared most: Butthole Surfers disappearing even further into their own deranged universe.
At 67 Corabi has lost none of the vocal power that first turned heads with The Scream in 1991, and on New Day it’s showcased in a musical setting that fits like a glove, drawing on his formative late-60s/early-70s influences without aping them. Corabi puts in an impassioned, versatile performance, tackling upbeat blues rock (That Memory), gospel-style ballads (Faith, Hope And Love), and psychedelic poprock (New Day)
Every bit as stunning as Fearless, Apocalypse pushes the band’s creative envelope even further, the self-production lessons learned from the Ritual albums inspiring new heights of pomp and passion. With a bit of extra help from previous Rush collaborators producers Nick Raskulinecz and David Bottrill, side one’s Foot Soldiers Of The Syndicate, Blackstar and The Revenants 1 are particular highlights, although in truth it all sounds incredible.
It’s not even an exaggeration to say the Pioneers are America’s last great rock’n’roll band. They just are. Songs like Nazi Teeth and Seeing Red accurately depict the rage and terror of being a thinking American in 2026 amid domestic terrorism, creeping fascism and economic collapse. Sorry, but well-meaning zillionaires like Bruce Springsteen just ain’t cutting it out here on the brink.
Legends Never Die is a mini-rock opera oozing with a shameless Muse-pomposity; there’s a strutting, Jack White blues stomp to The King; Fall Together is beamed in from a parallel universe where Freddie Mercury had the chance to make a James Bond theme, all synthetic strings and high drama. The cockiness reaches new heights on The Juice, riding in on a Whole Lotta Love-inspired riff and laying out its arena-rock stall, while Supernaturalize is a glam-soul stomper
Goliath is the kind of ferocious assault that many of their old contemporaries can only dream of making. The diamond-hard riffs off 3111 and the 100mph Beyond The Event Horizon could slice steel, Rob Dukes snarls and slobbers like a starving Rottweiler on 2 Minute Hate, and these old lags turn in a couple of new tricks via the southern-fried thrash of Promise You and the keyboard washes of the tar-coated slo-mo title track.
Foo Fighters – Your Favorite Toy
Your Favorite Toy is a ferocious reaffirmation of the Foos’ initial post-grunge power that will overjoy diehard fans, and it hits the ground racing. Opener Caught In The Echo is an instant Foos classic, with its slashing, staccato new-wave grunge riffs, glowering middle eight and stratospheric climax, Grohl bawling ‘Decide, decide, decide, decide, do I, do I, do I, do I?’ as the song sets out for the sun.
Peter Frampton – Carry The Light
Carry The Light, his first album of new songs in 16 years, lands as the latest part of his Timelord-like regeneration. Leading the way is Buried Treasure, with ex-Heartbreaker Benmont Tench on keyboards, in a salute to Tom Petty, one of the fellow ‘good guys’ of the music biz. Tinderbox is a powerful anti-war warning about the shape of things to come, as is Lions At The Gate, a fiery, expletive-free rallying cry with the help of Rage Against The Machine/Audioslave guitarist Tom Morello.
Gluecifer – Same Drug New High
The band claim there’s some real-world nuance to the lyrics, but as far as I can tell they’re still about either knowin’ the score or cuttin’ dirty deals. There’s also the twin-guitar majesty of Poon and Raldo Useless, and the absolutely concrete-cracking thunder issued by Danny Young’s drums. And that Malibu still sounds like the smartest, funniest guy in the maximum state prison. But what you really need to know is that this is the greatest rock’n’roll resurrection since the time Sky Saxon bought a cape and started playing acid-rock. This record will make every other record in 2026 look like dimwitted hippie bullshit.
Bright Spirit is the third record in a trilogy which began with 2019’s The Universe Also Collapses, and promises dreams, love, cosmic rays and “a flash of clarity inside the swirl”. All those juicy goodies are present across around 40 minutes of controlled noodling and sweet guitar swathes. There are nods to Gong’s Steve Hillage era, and the palette draws on George Harrison’s most hippie-dippy moments and even a whis
Although dated in places, Released brilliantly evokes Gramm’s golden past as one of the rock’s finest singers. There are superb guitar solos – from Vivian Campbell and the late Jeff Golub – but the highlights are all by Gramm. Most songs, including Long Hard Look, frame old vocals with fresh backing, but on four he’s singing in a deeper vocal register, which suggests contemporary performances – from a voice that has matured but not failed
Bad Bones, described in the press handout as “fearless, personal and uncompromising”, certainly reveals a new maturity for the 38-year-old. Who’s The Winner, for example, is a sprightly slice of hard pop, punctuated by one of Grönwall’s screams. A million miles away from so-called hair-metal, these tracks are on the whole agreeable, rock-friendly and sometimes gritty, befitting a man comfortable in his own skin.
Hiss Golden Messenger – I’m People
Hiss Golden Messenger, singer-songwriter MC Taylor’s vehicle, have been delivering fine records since 2009 – see the excellent JJ Cale boogie of Southern Grammar from 2014’s Lateness Of Dancers for just one very groovy example – and thankfully I’m People is no different. Recorded in Woodstock, it has that enclave’s feel about it: a warm and friendly invitation in for a plate of food or a glass of something restorative. Yes, as he sings on Seneca, ‘time is a mother, baby’, but any time in this company is well spent.
Marillion‘s Steve Hogarth has never been a typical prog frontman, often eschewing the flamboyant grandeur of his contemporaries in favour of emotive vocal storytelling. SPQR, recorded live in Rome in 2024, shows that even in his seventh decade, this remains his modus operandi.
Brian James – Kicks and Diabolick Licks
Eleven months after his passing and half a century since New Rose, the Damned single that alarmed even confirmed metalheads with its ferocity, the loveable Londoner posthumously employs yet more dangerous guitar to win friends and influence people.
Jim Jones All Stars – Cat Fight
This record could change your life, if it needs changing. It’s gospel for people who only go to church for funerals. It’s a defiant burst of joy for a world in flames. I seriously don’t understand why this isn’t the most popular shit ever. People wonder where all the good times have gone. Well, they’re right fucking here, Jack. Swoon to the sermons of the High Priest Of Saturday Night and maybe things’d look a little rosier on Monday morning.
The Karma Effect – Cruel Intentions
South London quintet The Karma Effect are gleefully, unashamedly, fantastically brassy. Led with frontman Henry Gottelier’s old-school arena rock howl, their ‘modern vintage’ sound flounces like Aerosmith at their most ostentatious on Bad Manners – sexually charged and full of light-trousered swagger – while Ride Or Die struts in on a wave of AC/DC worship, served with a big fat dollop of blues swagger and gloriously soulful backing vocals that merges it seamlessly into Black Crowes territory.
Kreator – Krushers Of The World
From the first frenzied flurry of Seven Serpents, Kreator maintain a platonic ideal of what thrash should be: ferocious and frantic, yes, but also anthemic without diluting their sound. Just about every track offers at least one claws-aloft war cry (‘Snakes in human form!’, ‘Start the fire!’) to excite that inner teenager who just wants to bang their head and clatter around like a human pinball.
The Lemon Twigs – Look For Your Mind!
Everything here would qualify for another mighty seven-inch, and the records that the band surely do listen to themselves are all evident. Hearing the harmonies and jangle of the title track is akin to discovering a lost Byrds master tape; 2 Or 3 has you checking the credits for the name Brian Wilson, while the ballad Mean To Me must be the result of a tune-writing séance with the late Beach Boy; Nothin’ But You has the words ‘Big’ and ‘Star’ written all over it.
Les Big Byrd – Ruin Everything
Modern-day contemporaries of the Brian Jonestown Massacre’s Anton Newcombe and former Spacemen 3 lynchpin Pete Kember, Swedish psych quartet Les Big Byrd don’t so much show progression as consolidation on this, their fifth album. And that’s no bad thing, as theirs has been a high-wire act that’s seen them balancing accessible sweet pop melodicism with fuzzed-out wig-outs.
Massive Wagons – Live At The Great Hall
“Rock and roll has come back!” screams Barry Mills. “Make some fuckin’ noise!” And off we go into the Quo tribute-cumroad anthem Back To The Stack. Elsewhere, Mills conducts the audience ‘choir’ in style on House Of Noise and The Good Die Young, and despite his Lancastrian tones making him sound unnervingly like popular TV funnyman Lee Mack when addressing the audience, he’s the perfect master of ceremonies for this rousing celebration.
Coming across like a William Faulkner story scored by Steve Earle, McBryde can stomp and holler – the tough, brilliantly lyrical Arkansas Mud, the charged Water In The River – or be humbled and rueful. Her lyrics read like crisp fiction or pages of an old diary, the brittle Bottle Tells Me So recounting the long road she took to sobriety, Lines In The Carpet caught up in the minutiae of hairline cracks appearing in the façade of a failing marriage. Like the rest of this album, it’s fearless and vulnerable all at once.
Paul McCartney – The Boys of Dungeon Lane
It hardly needs saying, but let’s say it anyway: Paul McCartney owes nobody anything. It’s difficult to name anyone else, alive or dead, who has contributed more to collective human happiness. With that in mind, you can’t help rooting for him, willing him on to produce a late-period masterpiece because you know he has it in him. While The Boys Of Dungeon Lane certainly has its moments, it is not quite that record, although We Two finds McCartney’s immortal melodic gifts come into focus for that dreamed-of-you-chorus.
Knowingly self-titled to hammer home the definitive nature of the milestone, Megadeth showcases the strength and power of the band’s current line-up, with Dave accompanied by the unfuckwithable skills of drummer Dirk Verbeuren, bassist James LoMenzo and latest recruit Teemu Mäntysaari, best known for his mind-blowing virtuosity as a member of Wintersun. Megadeth are bowing out with another great album, and one that skilfully captures their leader’s blazing inner fire, just as it is extinguished by his own, masterful hand. What a way to go.
The Molotovs – Wasted On Youth
For ones so young – singer-guitarist Matt Molotov is 17, his bass-playing sister Issey Carts 19 – London’s The Molotovs certainly know (and love) their new-wave stuff. Their rep as frontrunners of a new mod revival is justified – Molotov’s pinched and snarling delivery smacks of teenage Paul Weller, albeit in a world when he’d got into hard rock Americana (Come On Now) or The Futureheads (More More More) rather than Parisian café soul.
Monroe is enjoying such a vibrantly purple patch at the moment; it’s difficult to imagine him faltering. He’s got the right band alongside him – guitarist Steve Conte is brilliant throughout, while old friend/bandmate Sami Yaffa is an ever-reliable anchor on bass – and while the musical formula hasn’t changed (What do you expect from Monroe? Polka? Happy house?) his mastery of the form is such that it’s difficult to feel anything but joy while listening to Outerstellar. It’s wonderful.
Mother Vulture – Cartoon Violence
Squeezing music alongside day jobs, Mother Vulture have quietly become one of the UK’s live bands to beat. Making like the mad little brothers of Queens Of The Stone Age, they deliver flaming cocktails of fat blues grooves, desert-y sensibilities and hard rock. Somehow it all comes together, giving them an edge matched by few of their riff-hungry contemporaries
Motorpsycho – The Gaia II Space Corps
Absurdly prolific and endlessly inventive, Motorpsycho will not be stopped. The follow-up to last year’s unfeasibly epic self-titled album, The Gaia II Space Corps reveals another subtle shift in the Norwegians’ focus: a purposeful lean into the proto-metal and hallucinatory fuzz-rock that has underscored so much of their catalogue.
Rather than simply remix or remaster their 1996 debut album for a 30th anniversary reissue, Placebo‘s Brian Molko and Stefan Olsdal opted to return to the source material with a fresh perspective and rework every song on the record. The results on this “director’s cut” are stunning. as an exercise in reimagining Placebo’s art for a new age, Re:Created is a triumph. If this were a brand new album, it’d be the best alt. rock record of the year.
Familiarly disturbing and cinematic in scope (you’ll have heard them all over Yellowstone), the real secret weapon for Puscifer is vocalist Carina Round, whose ethereal voice acts as a balm to the creeping Keenan vocal. This time around it’s less epic overload and more bare-bones, twitching drum machines and sparse, discordant guitars. Bad Wolf, pure goth brooding, is particularly unsettling, while The Quiet Parts’ electronic crescendo could have marched right out of the 80s.
Saint Agnes – Your God Fearing Days Are About To Begin
Kitty A. Austen is a torn and tormented soul, one minute surrendered to the metaphorical fangs of her inner anguish on the hauntingly elegant The Beast, the next roaring her self-worth on savage, revved-up bite-backs like Everything You Denied and the Nine Inch Nails-referencing Get Them Out. By rights, their chart-bothering days are about to begin.
Pull Like A Dog is The Scratch’s third album, and it finds them perfecting their unique blend of Celtic folk and intense and intricate metal. The result is a thrill, kicking in with uncontainable adrenaline via a series of fast and fiddly riffs, while skilfully stirring the emotions with the warm, traditional music of their ancestors.
The Sheepdogs – Keep Out Of The Storm
As befits a band whose personal Spotify playlists are an impossibly good introduction to deep-dive classic rock and beyond, Keep Out Of The Storm sounds like it was made by men of taste. Bookended by the Skynyrdesque Nobody But You and the similarly southern Out All Night, it’s most sublime on what used to be called ‘Side 2’, where the band slow down and stretch out. Breezy is nudged along gently by Albatross-style guitar, The Owl drifts into Pink Floyd territory, and instrumental The Yellow Line grooves like the Allman Brothers.
The Florida four-piece have always been handy with radio-ready tunes, but tracks such as Burning Down The Disco and the heart-racing Dance Kid Dance pile on the big hooks and holleralong choruses. Ei8ht’s greatest strength is its intent – it possesses a drive and confidence that’s all too rare in guitar music these days, with a touch of prime U2 in its stadium-sized ambition if not its sound.
You Got This, full of uplifting positivity anthems designed to be roared aloud by large festival crowds, continues the Welsh reggae-rock trio’s emphatic embrace of melodic, widescreen, pop-metal dynamics. It was produced by California-based Grammy winner Jay Ruston, whose eclectic portfolio includes working with Diana Ross, Anthrax, Steel Panther and Meat Loaf. But despite this extra glossy sheen, Skindred have not diluted their emotional range or their muscular punch.
Starbenders – The Beast Goes On
Starbenders released Tokyo, the first track from their fourth album, in the summer of 2024, and seven more emerged in the following months. Given the band’s uncanny knack for arena-bound choruses, the result is an album that sounds like a greatest-hits collection before it’s even out of the gate.
The Trace Outlives blends thudding alt.metal with intuitive electronic trimmings; and Dani Filth brings a dash of demonic menace to another classy duet, I Don’t Care. Turunen sounds angelic and formidable throughout, and the bruised, neoclassical sweep of Tango (featuring Apocalyptica) and the fiery Blaze Forever are among her finest songs to date
Tedeschi Trucks Band – Future Soul
Following 2022’s lunar-themed quadruple album set I Am The Moon, Tedeschi Trucks Band are more concise this time round, but the aspirations are the same: transcendence, beauty, musical communion, all achieved via a 12-piece band whose size only amplifies the restraint with which the music is performed. This album floats.
Years studying orchestral composition has paid off. Townsend’s lush arrangements shimmer on Orion, and are as dark as his heaviest work on Prepare For War. Beyond the orchestra, ultra-compressed guitar chugs remain crucial, and his voice, which reaches incredible highs on Stained Hearts, is at its best since Empath. It isn’t perfect, but as a singular suite it’s difficult to find a more complete work in the HevyDevy catalogue. Who knows what, if anything, he’ll do next, but it won’t top the sheer enormity of The Moth.
When Rivers Meet – Rhythm Rust & Static
On Rhythm Rust & Static When Rivers Meet have perfected the art of creating a clear space between the various elements before suddenly pulling them all together in one cacophonous howl. They can do this whether the track is low and brooding like The Tide Is Turning, heavy and echoing like I’m Ready For You, hard-rocking like Fault Line, or abstract and haunting like Horizon.
Neil Young & The Chrome Hearts – As Time Explodes
Recorded at various shows across last year’s European/ North American tour, including Glastonbury and Hyde Park, As Time Explodes is a typically rough-edged, in-the-moment volley of energy. The Chrome Hearts buckle up for the ride, and there are songs drawn from Young’s entire career, so it’s fun to hear trusty venerables like Harvest Moon or After The Goldrush in a fresh context, nuzzling between recent tracks like Silver Eagle.
A renaissance man for the modern age, if said renaissance man was covered in gore and gutting a virgin, Rob Zombie has cut quite a swathe through the cultural hinterland as the blood and mud-caked outsider. Who else could lay claim to platinum rock star status as a band leader and solo star as well as once helming the number-one film in the US? Dismiss his bloody theatrics at your peril, Zombie is the real deal, either behind the camera or as the emcee of his ghoulish musical troupe.