Those dark days sure came around fast, huh? But while we mourn just how suddenly summer has disappeared, we can't feel too bad when the remaining months of 2025 look so stacked with tours and album releases. Which also means, more new music to discover!
Much as we do every month, we've hunted high and low to find some of the most exciting new bands around. This month we've got New York-via-Nepal grindcore brutes Chepang, Brighton doomgazers Slung, screamo revivalists Static Dress and metalcore mavericks Idle Heirs, all for your listening pleasure.
You can hear the latest releases from those bands in our big playlist below, or head further down to see what songs our writers picked as the stand-out choices for each band. Either way - happy listening, and we'll see you again in November!
Chepang
Rather than catching up with New-York-by-way-of-Nepal ‘immi-grindcore’ band Chepang at a sweat-dripping basement gig, Hammer chats to the band as they enjoy an out-of-state fishing trip – a sedate endeavour that speaks to the thoughtful mindset at the heart of their raging grindcore maelstrom.
“We started without intending to play grindcore,” laughs guitarist Kshitiz Moktan. “I didn’t really know what grindcore was, but the drummer knew how to blastbeat because he was playing black metal. He started blasting, I started playing fast, and we became grindcore.”
Having accidentally barged into the genre, Chepang nail the style while being unafraid to warp it. 2023’s Swatta was a dense, bewilderingly varied double album boasting guest musicians like Colin Marston (Krallice, Behold The Arctopus) and Dave Witte (Melt-Banana, Municipal Waste). New album Jhyappa, meanwhile, sees things pared back to the bone.
“Swatta took us a lot of time to write, and after we released it we were kind of burned,” admits Kshitiz. “This record is more straightforward. It’s more… acceptable.”
Putting aside the laughable notion that anything about Jhyappa’s blistering, dissonant noise might be ‘acceptable’ (bar, perhaps, the occasional Nepalese pop samples…), it’s noteworthy that their desire to deconstruct and rise anew sonically is reflected in the album’s philosophy.
“The whole record revolves around the idea of self-immolation,” says Kshitiz. “It’s about taking out all the negativity inside you and really being the true, authentic version of who you want to be.”
As we talk, Kshitiz mentions a sense of heightened cultural and spiritual awareness that he puts down to his Nepalese background, but also the impact of Covid and seeing corpses loaded into trucks a block or two from his home in Queens.
“We have a really dense population with a big immigrant community and we were the hardest-hit county in New York,” he says. “But it can actually help in a positive way when you think you’re going to die. You tend to do good things – you’re spiritually awakened." Alex Deller
Jhyappa is out now via Relapse.
Sounds Like: A wrecking ball of brutal, jagged, full-tilt grind that isn’t afraid to mix it up
For Fans Of: Nails, Discordance Axis, Nasum
Listen To: Gatichad
Slung
Slung shouldn't exist. What began as a solo songwriting venture by Brighton-based bassist/producer Vlad Matveikov – and a Rolodex of collaborators – accidentally unleashed one of the UK’s most emotionally resonant, genre-fluid new bands. Vocalist Katie Oldham was raw after the collapse of her previous doom-pop group Sit Down, and still stinging from a missed chance to join the live band of Slow Club’s Self-Esteem in her 20s, feeling her future was uncertain.
Encouraged by Vlad and aided by vocal sessions with Will Gardner (ex-Black Peaks), she stepped into the project unaware of how far things would go.
“I think Vlad is the core of everything,” she reflects. “We didn’t know it was going to become Slung, but we all wanted a taste of whatever this was.”
From the outset, Slung did things backwards: they had an album before they had a name, or even gigs under their belts. Pulled together out of necessity, the addition of Ravi Martin (drums) and Ali Johnson (guitar) cemented the line-up.
Chaotic, cathartic sessions followed, blending Vlad’s original demos with new ideas forged on the spot. A mess of ballads, doom and a shoegaze haze, Slung became a melting pot of extremes: chugging Mastodon riffs, reckless Fugazi energy, and Katie’s unabashed lyrics and belting vocals. For Katie, Slung represents both artistic liberation and personal healing, which bleeds through her dramatic lyrics. But she’s all for embracing every whim.
“I’ve spent so long trying to reverse-engineer music for success. This time, we’ve just made what felt right,” she says. “Fuck waiting for the right time. Would you rather wait and risk it not ever happening, or put it out now?”
With their debut album, In Ways, out now and headline shows behind them, Slung are figuring themselves out in real time – and only getting stronger. Having survived dramas in their previous bands, they’re ready to go. “And we haven’t even said hello!” laughs Katie. Steven Loftin
In Ways is out now via Fat Dracula.
Sounds Like: A woozy rager soundtracked by bruising, jaw-clenching riffs with a belting hug from your best mate
For Fans Of: Mastodon, Queens Of The Stone Age, Chelsea Wolfe
Listen To: Matador
Static Dress
“If I can click on your parent’s name on Wikipedia, you’re really not DIY. Own who you are, 100% – don’t create a false narrative in order to gain respect points from people.”
Static Dress vocalist Olli Appleyard has a bone to pick with the metal scene. Tired of hearing the same, tired sounds, the Leeds-based band mash together everything from 2000s emo to Converge-style metalcore and singer-songwriter Ethel Cain.
“I look at the upper echelon of metalcore now and they have the same people going to the same producers, getting it mixed by the same people,” Olli laments. “Everyone considers it amazing, while I’m wondering how the fuck they can tell the difference!”
Formed in 2018, Static Dress started out playing in “garages and our parents’ bedrooms, stuff like that”. In 2022, they released their debut album, Rouge Carpet Disaster, signing with Roadrunner Records the following year. Since then, they’ve toured with the likes of Bring Me The Horizon and Creeper, and made their Download Festival debut in 2021.
But their success hasn’t stopped them taking shots at things that piss them off. Most recent single Face. compares a turbulent relationship to a car crash, while DTTO (‘Death To The Overground’) isn’t a rager against British transport but instead takes aim at the concept of homogenised music made for mainstream consumption.
“The overground is the mainstream representation of what guitar music is, this caricature of punk and rock music,” Olli explains. “DTTO is our kickback to the industry. I’m a massive lover of heavy music, it’s 80% of what I consume, and I can see a lot of it dying off in the next five years because of all these formulas that keep getting implemented. People don’t want to eat the same thing for breakfast for the rest of their lives." Naomi Sanders
Static Dress's new single Face. is out now. Static Dress tour the US from November 14 and support Paleface Swiss in the UK in January. For the full list of upcoming dates, visit their official website.
Sounds Like: Crying while jumping around a moshpit covered in spikes
For Fans Of: Holding Absence, Heriot, Split Chain
Listen To: Face.
Idle Heirs
Had plans gone as originally intended, no one would have ever heard Idle Heirs’ Life Is Violence. The album was just something that Sean Ingram, vocalist for mid-90s progressive metalcore/mathcore pioneers Coalesce, and producer/musician Josh Barber (Norma Jean) wanted to make after years of talking about working together. And it was just going to be for them. A “personal exercise” in creativity, says Sean.
“It was for us,” he says. “It wasn’t written with a thick skin in mind.”
Yet, it’s that bare vulnerability that makes Life Is Violence so dynamic, a burst of intensity with such emotional resonance. Idle Heirs’ debut album surges with elements of hardcore, metalcore and post-metal, but it’s never one note. It has peaks and valleys, moments of softness where Sean sings (“I was trying new vocal techniques I’ve never done before”), and moments of unrelenting heaviness.
“To me, Life Is Violence is very much a warning to the next generation,” Sean explains. “You have to fight, especially with everything that’s going on right now on a global scale politically and socially.”
But the album is not just a call to arms (‘Find the courage to get it won’ he sings on Lemonade Stands). It’s a reflection on oneself after letting down your guard and exposing who you are.
“It’s amazing what Sean had done lyrically with the album,” says Josh. “Kind of a eulogy, something to leave behind, like a legacy for his kids. That was just most in our hearts when we made this album. A lot of people feel marginalised and vulnerable. I feel like we’ve done what I should have done emotionally a long time ago, which is drop the defences and say, ‘This is what I am. This is who I am.’” Jason Brow
Life Is Violence is out now via Relapse.
Sounds Like: Confronting the shadows of your past, only to discover the hidden light of a new dawn
For Fans Of: Coalesce, Norma Jean, Deadguy
Listen To: Pillow Talk
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