Best New Releases July 2025

 

Both summer and the unrelenting heat in the subtropical climate I live in are at their peak, making everything feel a bit slow and bogged down. Similarly, the new release train has slowed to a near trickle, which is to be expected at this time of year. While I don't have much in terms of quantity to share at the end of this July, I think it will make up for in quality. 

I found five new albums to submit to the Doom Charts this month, as well as two noteworthy honorable mentions: 

Honorable Mentions

(no particular order) 

The Bonnevilles - Age of Monsters 

On Age of Monsters, garage blues punk duo The Bonnevilles delivers a well-rounded album filled to overflowing with equal parts fuzzy, feel-good jams and moody, soulful tracks. 

Favorite Track: Age of Monsters 

 

Mosara - Rumour of a Funeral 

This distractible metalhead isn't typically a fan of the "depressive", droning varieties of doom, but in the case of Arizona-based atavistic doom metal quartet Mosara, I'll happily make an exception. 

The band's new album Rumour of a Funeral is undoubtedly their most intense work to date. While their hefty sound certainly does trudge through sprawling, bleak landscapes filled with murk and despair, the band utilizes a progressive framework, savage vocals, trippy distortion, and vapors of psychedelia to keep up the momentum and add dimension. 

Favorite Track: Rumour of a Funeral 

Best New Releases of July 2025

(exactly what I submitted to the Doom Charts, in descending order)

5.) Foot - The Hammer 

Foot is a four-piece band from Melbourne, Australia who've been skillfully crafting mesmeric stoner/desert grooves since about 2016. The quartet's latest release, The Hammer, truly brings the gavel down on some heavy concepts. It's the result of a 2-years-long creative process that rendered a gritty and unabashedly honest version of Foot's moody signature sound. While still brimming with the energy, robust riffs, and atmospheric reprieves the band is known for, each song has an air of confrontation, generating the notion of facing one's hardships in a candid and confident manner, an encounter that was perhaps a long time coming. In this way, The Hammer will not only hook the listener with its delightfully tempestuous grooves, but it has a powerful way of inspiring introspection, tenacity, and self-reliance. 

Favorite Track: Walking Into Walls All Week 

4.) Steinsopp - Goloka Sessions

For their fifth release Goloka Sessons, Norwegian stoner psych band Steinsopp makes no bones about the album being the result of "five humanoids with loud equipment get(ting) properly intoxicated in a cabin. Shenanigans ensue." While this album is inarguably jammy, it's incredibly listenable, offering a hypnotic blend of massively thick, scuzzy riffs, trippy lyrics, and otherworldly vibes that will mentally transport you to another realm. 

Favorite Track: Sunslug 

3.) Hebi Katana - Imperfection

Imperfection is the fourth full-length album and Ripple Music debut from Japanese samurai doom trio Hebi Katana. Lyrically, this highly anticipated release is inspired by "wabi sabi" and "enzo", significant concepts in Zen Buddhism. Tonally, Imperfection has a slightly crisper sound and a heightened emotional expression compared to the band's previous albums, marked by sharp contrasts in which placid interludes often give way to intense vocal and instrumental surges. While Imperfection is arguably Hebi Katana's most eloquent and sophisticated release to date, the band's trademark blend of doom and proto-hard rock are still very much in place, creating a listening experience as well-rounded as it is moving. 

Favorite Track: Yu gen

 

2.) Carbon Decoy - Crush the Sun  

On their sophomore album Crush the Sun, Carbon Decoy cranks up the intensity they harnessed on their debut up to eleven, delivering nine moody tracks that pulse with delicious chaos. True to form, Carbon Decoy utilizes the capriciousness of garage rock, a hazy acidic groove, and the crushing heft of stoner/doom in a raw and unfettered manner, creating mind-bending twists and turns amid powerfully relatable narratives. 

Favorite Track: Icarus

 

1.) Warchief - Toil &Trouble 

On their new album Toil & Trouble, Finnish experimental rock band Warchief creates a powerfully soul-stirring sound. The band's tone draws from stoner/doom, sludge, grunge, progressive, and alternative rock influences, used to create their expansive, flowing songs. However, each track has a light-as-air spirit that travels through powerful bursts of intensity and passion, communicated in a most authentic manner by vocals and instrumentals alike. While Toil & Trouble could easily be your go-to dreamy summer listen, it can also be immensely therapeutic. 

Favorite Track: Ghost Egg

That's it for July! I hope you enjoy these albums as much as I do! 

As always, don't forget to check out this month's Doom Chart where there are forty albums waiting for you to discover, and as always, be sure to show your favorite heavy underground artists some much-deserved love!  

Best New Releases of July 2025: Video Version