Asylum Road closed their 2025 with a very uncompromising single, ‘Mask of Oblivion’. The track’s mix of metalcore and hardcore with a pinch of death metal darkness left nothing to chance in terms of overall heaviness.
Since the release of their first full length release ‘Floating Above Everything Else’ in 2023, Keeley Moss and her eponymously named band have felt like a massively important part of the indie underground. That record’s heavy nods to a shoegaze and dreampop past ensured listeners who spent the 1990s as wide-eyed twenty somethings found an immediate connection with the KEELEY sound, while the lyrical content – heavily influenced by the narrative surrounding the murder of young traveller Inga Maria Hauser – gave some great tunes a cerebral edge. 2024’s ‘Beautiful Mysterious’ repeated the formula, but certainly didn’t sound like a band treading water. If anything, the album sounded a little more confident; richer, even, and it was clear there was certainly more of a story to be told regarding the Hauser case.
This week’s visit to the Singles Bar is big on variety. We’ve got retro rock, some very 90s inspired dream pop gold, a great track from an up and coming Irish singer songwriter, a superb acoustic track and more besides. With very little fitting a “household name” at the time of release, this is testament to how much great new music there is being released at the beginning of 2026. As always, we hope you find something new to enjoy!
*
On their 2019 LP, ‘Ode To Oblivion’, Oreyeon delivered a set of songs driven by absolutely crushing riffs. Blending the stoner/fuzz of classic Kyuss into a doomier musical landscape, the record’s best songs were unrelentingly heavy, and yet a world of vocal filters and other tricks sometimes gave their sound a deep psych edge which kept things interesting. Over the next few years, Oreyeon would become an important fixture within the Italian doom and sludge scenes. By the time they recorded ‘Equations For The Useless’ in 2022, a much bigger recording budget gave them a slightly clearer sound, but without making their material especially more accessible. If anything, it cemented the band’s reputation as one of Europe’s finest underground metal bands.
Marking the end of a three year silence, singer songwriter Caïman released the wonderful ‘Dreams Are A Way To See Dead People Again’ in June 2025. The low key track blended indie, pop and dream pop elements in a way that helped to bring out the best in a light, melodic vocal, making it easy to hear why some had dubbed the performer “the French Marika Hackman”. It was an absolutely fantastic return.