All right. Hello, everyone. Great albums video, potentially the last one of the year because we are so close, even though it is the middle of October right now, but still so close to list week in December. 2026 is coming to a close very soon. So I figured, why not, one more time, before we see 2027, round up a bunch of albums that I have really been enjoying just so they don't slip through the cracks on you. Let's go ahead and do it, huh?

Starting with this new Alex Cameron album, Late to Set, one of the growers for me of this year, an album that when I first heard it wasn't super blown away. But when I came to listen to it more, not only did I enjoy Alex really kind of going hard once again with a lot of the quirky lyrics and the storytelling and the sort of frame that he kind of writes from, where he's kind of deep into a persona, doing that better than ever and really came to like kind of the minimal, weird, kind of synth-pop and rock aesthetics he was going for on this one. Definitely a step up from his last record in a lot of ways, even if it's more subtle than his first two albums. He also dropped recently a live record of Strokes covers, which I can't say I enjoyed or would recommend positively, but it is for sure, like, a spectacle. So if you are into Strokes covers, give that a try.

Also live, is this new Cameron Winter Live at Carnegie Hall album. And yeah, it's mostly live piano vocal iterations of songs from his Heavy Metal album with a few sort of like, ya know, vault tracks and maybe songs we'll hear versions of down the road in studio recording, whatever. But aside from the finish being a tad bit weaker than the start, it's an excellent record, amazing performance, total flow state. Cameron Winter showing, I think, his power as a vocalist, as well as he's often kind of categorized as somebody who has a very weird, froggy, kind of idiosyncratic voice. But there's some moments of incredible beauty to his singing and performances on this one, in my opinion, even if vocally, he's still not going to be everybody's cup of tea. But anybody who wants to hear Cameron's talent in the raw, I highly recommend this record. It's a really incredible showing. And I think in some ways an improvement on some of the tracks from his debut album. Not all, but at least some.

I'm also liking this Godflesh album, Decay, the legendary industrial rock and metal project is back with their second-to-last album. This is pretty much being dropped with the knowledge that Justin Broderick is going to be bringing Godflesh to a close very soon. The album to follow from this will be the end. But in the meantime, we have Decay. And what's interesting about this one is I feel like, aesthetically, this project breaks down so many barriers between those traditional Godflesh trademarks—the heavy, booming, crushing guitars, the sequenced drums—and sort of brings it together with some of the effects and some of the kind of melty instrumental mixes that we typically have heard from Justin's other projects that lean more in the direction of shoegaze music and doom and ambient and drone metal and so on and so forth. So it's really kind of bringing together- it's a culmination of a lot of different sounds and vibes. And I think the record is the better for it because it's certainly more daring and versatile than any of the other comeback Godflesh albums that have dropped in recent years.

So we also have this new Chat Pile record, Who Loves the Sun. Some of the band's heaviest, riffiest, and most hooky material yet, but also quite crushing and dismal, I would say, as well, with a really interesting outro track that has some beautiful acoustics to it. I think the band is sounding as versatile, or more versatile, than they ever have on this one. And I feel like they just continue to fine-tune their sound, get more impressive with each release. Yeah, I really don't know what else to say, when it comes to noise rock and sludge and doom, and even echoes of the nu-metal era through some of those, like, grinding kind of picked bass lines that have a big corn feel to them. A few bands out there in loud rock are doing it like Chat Pile, doing it as well as Chat Pile. And yeah, I'm loving the riffs, again, the grooves, the melodicism, and the lyrics as well. Chat Pile has done it once again.

We have this new one from Protomartyr over here, Hotel Usona, the band's most politically charged and conceptual album yet, with a lot of beautiful and haunting arrangements, horns, definitely their most spacey and ambitiously produced project to date. And as a result, I think it ends up being one of their best albums, point blank, period. So really enjoying this one as well.

Also liking this new Standing on the Corner album, Standing on the Corner 'II', just basically an assembly of some of the freakiest, most lo-fi, weird genre-bending jams you've ever heard in your life. There's elements of this that flirt with rock and pop and hip-hop music and funk and jazz. It's really a wild array of sounds and vibes coming together, clashing together violently in the roughest and most fun way possible. It just has an impossibly weird energy that honestly, I find endlessly charming. So there you go.

We also have this live Swans album, Newly Sentient Being, basically putting a cap on the Big Sound era with the recording of the final live performance from the tour that basically put an end to the Big Sound Swans era. And of course, it sounds big, and it is engineered and recorded really well, I would say, for a live album, which the band has dropped a lot of live albums from the Big Sound era over the past 15 years, this is the best recorded and engineered of all of them and sounds nearly as good as one of their studio recordings. In fact, I would say the quality of this record in some ways rivals that of their past two proper studio albums in terms of like the panoramic size and depth and scope of the sonics of the band at this stage, while there were a lot of great album highlights from this era that I have praised endlessly on this YouTube channel, I think this record sort of goes to show that even though Swans' writing, in my opinion, may not have continued to be as interesting as maybe it was toward the start with records like The Seer and To Be Kind, the band arguably got more interesting and more dynamic and more riveting as a live unit. So kind of hearing this material presented in this state and hearing the ways in which they were able to kind of like expand a lot of these ideas and pull off these grandiose progressions in the live setting and do it as well as they did just kind of stands as a testament to what made Swans interesting during this time period. So shout out to Newly Sentient Being.

A couple more, we have the new Tinashe record, Popstar, which is such a chaotic, all over the place pop experience that brings in so many different flavors of dance music and pop and R&B and some hip hop flavors as well here and there, with all the tracks kind of chaotically flowing into each other very quickly, creating a very holistic experience. It's her best album ever. I mean, what else is there to say? She finally did it, and she's doing it in a way to where she's actually, like, convincing a lot of the naysayers and skeptics and doubters that have kind of dogged her for years, as when she did originally have kind of like a big major label deal, she wasn't quite as commercially successful as her contemporaries. But after sticking with it for years and being on a totally independent track now at this point, lo and behold, she has miraculously a pretty successful album on her hands and because it's an independent effort, she is now seeing the full spoils of this record, and it's her most fun and creative and versatile album yet. And it just kind of goes to show that the power of Tinashe was always in just letting her do whatever the hell she wanted to do, I guess, if you want to say that.

Alright, we have a couple more short projects over here that I want to quickly shout out.

First off is this new EP from Deafheaven. It's essentially two massive cuts as well as a short kind of interlude in the middle, the first of which I wouldn't say goes fully symphonic black metal, but the keyboards- the airy, atmospheric keyboards play a huge role in bringing sort of like a different layer, a very sort of like epic and harmonious melodic layer to the driving drums and the blast beats and the walls of guitar. Incredible vocal performance as well, with an awesome riff breakdown toward the end. It's a great and edge-of-your-seat progression the opener goes through. And then the closing track is really where they pull out all the stops because this track is not only as thrilling as the opener, but it ends in this heavy, noisy, discordant wall of super ugly, hideous, harrowing riffs. It's just such a crushing ending to the whole thing and probably was one of the most epic finishes of any Deafheaven album ever. So highly recommend this EP, even if it's just kind of, like, two big new tracks; I mean, the material here is as good as anything from their last full-length album. So really awesome of the band to kind of check in with some quality new material.

We also have this new Nekra EP, new-ish Nekra EP over here. These guys are a hardcore outfit, I believe out of the UK, but they do a lot of lyrics en Español, and it's just a lot of throttling, heavy, blistering hardcore with chunky guitars, awesome lead vocals, great riffs and grooves, some incredible energy on the handful of tracks on this one. And I think you guys, if you are into hardcore, will be impressed with the energy this band is bringing out of the gate. So shout out to them.

And that is going to be that for the great album segment, guys.

Anthony Fantano, great albums forever.