The Neimans

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  • 2025 AOTY #3, Thrice – “Horizons / West”

    Thrice is a band that means a lot to me personally. I started listening to them as a nascent teenager (13 I think), and they’ve been such a positive influence on my life ever since then. These four dudes – part of this 25-year-old band that can still boast it has all its original members – are some of the most humble yet most profound musicians I’ve ever come across. This album continues to show their brilliance. “Gnash” is probably their heaviest song since 2003’s The Artist in the Ambulance, “Vesper Light” is a soaring anthem about unity (much needed in the Year of Our Lord 2025), and “Albatross” might be Thrice’s catchiest song (and probably one of my favorite Thrice songs of all time).

    Lyrically, this is another certified Dustin Kensrue masterpiece, using the “Horizons / West” and sunset motif throughout the album. Just the way this dude paints a picture with his cautious optimism gets me every time. On “Distant Suns:” “Can you see? The arc will bend towards justice / Just as gravity is bending light towards all of us / The arc is long, so we carry on.” I LOVE that about Dustin, and I love the message of that song (and ultimately all his songs). “Vesper Light” is another favorite of mine, rebuking those who seek to divide (“They speak of sacred light for hours / Then wrap themselves in gloom / They preach the beauty of the flowers / Then curse them as they bloom”) and calling for unity when the light seems to be fading (“When the sun is gathered / Lift your sacred songs / Make the darkness scatter / Till we tread the dawn / Stand atop the barricade / Unbent and unafraid, and sing / Stand in solidarity with all humanity, and sing / Stand in golden vesper light / Under the western sky… and sing.” What an album, and what a band. Forever grateful for these dudes.

  • 2025 AOTY #4, Silverstein – “Antibloom” and “Pink Moon”

    A double album from emo/post-hardcore luminaries Silverstein, Antibloom / Pink Moon came out of nowhere for me. I’ve tried to get into Silverstein in the past, but it had never clicked with me. So when I started “Antibloom” in my drab cubicle way back in May, I was expecting a similar experience. Upon the first song, “Mercy Mercy” I literally had to stop the mundane cubicle task I was doing and take it in, and that happened several times until the album was over. That song has such a huge chorus, incredible flow, and crescendo to the final part. It sets off the pre-apocalyptic feel of the album, in the music and the lyrics: “You waged the war to take in the view / Now we raise a toast to the age of decay / And I will slip quietly into my grave.” “Confession” is one of the catchiest songs of the year, and it’s followed by “A Little Fight,” a song that sounds playful and catchy until you find that it’s a song about a tragic suicide. That juxtaposition is continued several times throughout this album, to great effect.

    “Skin & Bones” is my favorite of this album (and possibly of this year), a song about the death of Shane’s close friend. This one weirdly ends up being the most hopeful of these songs. Shane’s close friend was a huge LOTR fan, and this song weaves LOTR themes into its message as well (including paraphrasing some of Sam’s speech from The Two Towers). The bridge of this song (“And as I reread this tattered book / I won’t weep when I get to the end / I’ll turn to the first page and read it again / These are the passages that made us who we are”) is easily one of my favorite music moments of the year. “Cherry Coke” is a mournful closer to part one of the album, another one of my favorites.

    Part two, “Pink Moon” doesn’t hit as hard as “Antibloom,” but it’s still fantastic. “Drain the Blood” is one of my favorites, an off-kilter song condemning AI usage in the music industry. “Widowmaker” feels like a sister song to “Skin & Bones” from part one, with its themes of existentialism. “Dying Game” is another fantastic closer in the vein of “Cherry Coke.”

  • 2025 AOTY #5, Colony House – “77”

    Colony House is a band I’ve been a huge fan of since their first album “When I Was Younger” (one of my favorite shirts is from their 10-year anniversary tour of that album that says “I have loved Colony House since When I Was Younger”). That is still probably my favorite Colony House album, but it’s hard to beat that alt-rock masterpiece. This album is a great return-to-form to that alt-rock sound with Caleb Chapman’s wonderfully introspective lyricism and his brother Will’s sparse but incredibly tasteful drum parts.

    “Atomic” was easily my most-played song this year, and it’s my favorite of the album. It is unbelievably catchy and I found it stuck in my head so often throughout the year. In it, Caleb admits in his wonderfully honest way that he’s not been living his life like the miracle that it is: “It makes me wonder if I’m a good man if it takes something atomic to blow my heart to bits so I can feel again. It makes me wonder if I’ve got time to come alive.” With my two kids who are growing as fast as they are, I relate to this one so much. It’s easy to get in the flow and mundanity of everything and forget the absolute miracle they are, and the example they set of the wonder they experience every day.

    “What’s It Gonna Take” is another great one, grieving the state of American politics: “Another gun in the hallway / Another school on the TV / Another war on religion / Put your money where your mouth is, for everybody’s sake / Before we blow the whole world up, what’s it gonna take?” Caleb describes a near-death experience and references a vision he had after the death of his younger sister in the wonderful outro to “Telephone Pole:” “Days turn to years and weave a tapestry / Stretched to the heavens and as far as I can see / All the shapes and colors blurred and undefined / Until I step away and watch them come to life.” Ugh, it’s so good.

    The rest of these tracks are amazing too: “OK OK OK OK” and “Ready to Go” recall the fun, lighthearted tracks from their “Only the Lonely” era, while the final two tracks “Highwire” and “77” are more what I come to Colony House for, but it’s all good.

  • 2025 AOTY #6, Dying Wish – “Flesh Stays Together”

    Dying Wish is quickly becoming one of my favorite heavy bands. Seeing them play Furnace Fest in 2024 kind of made me pay attention to them more – it was such a tight, energetic performance, and probably one of my favorite sets that year. So I was definitely paying attention when they released this album this year, and I was not disappointed.

    Backed by Will Putney’s amazing production (a genius in my mind, this dude almost never makes a bad sounding album), this album sounds so immense and so… natural. In a time where the “Bad Omens-core” is the popular sound in heavy music, I really appreciate Will Putney’s naturalistic, minimalist approach to recording and producing albums.

    The songs here are incredible too. Opener “I Don’t Belong Anywhere” is an explosion of a song, and it’s followed by probably my favorite of the album, “A Curse Upon Iron,” with its clever dynamics and really affecting anti-war message: “Cast the blame on your guiltless neighbor / Every finger pointed is a bullet / Another forgotten casualty / The curse of iron branded on our souls… faith in gold has cursed us all.” “Heaven Departs” is another favorite of mine, mourning humanity’s dwindling chances of salvation. This one has an absolutely amazing chorus and buildup to a really haunting outro. I could gush about all 10 of these songs, as they all have something really great to offer.

    It’s another dark, difficult album, which maybe keeps it from being higher on my list. It’s similar in theme to The Acacia Strain’s album this year, but doesn’t go as far as that album does.

  • 2025 AOTY #7, The Acacia Strain – “You Are Safe from God Here”

    The Acacia Strain has been a band I respect but don’t love. This album, though, makes it to my #7 spot. It’s about a dystopian future where “humanity tries to escape an omnipresent being run amok.” It’s a cool story, but I wouldn’t recommend it to the “uninitiated” due to its misanthropic views and general miserableness. It’s a tough work to sift through, as there’s almost no optimism offered here. MOURNING STAR begins with “Stand in the ashes of a thousand dead souls / And ask the ghosts if life was of consequence.” Elsewhere, “God and the Devil are one and the same / All the demons are here and we’ve given them names.” I think my favorite is WORLD GONE COLD, where the protagonist mourns the loss of a loved one: “Heaven only feels so far because of this weight on my chest / This feels worse than dying / I watched you die…”

    It’s a tough album, because although it is a concept album about a dystopian future, it’s obviously meant to parallel our actual world. All the grief, pain, greed, and misery in the world, it’s kind of a miracle we don’t collapse under our own weight. I think the thesis of the album is that if God allows such things to happen, he must be held responsible for it as well. Probably the line that hit the hardest was on ACOLYTE OF THE ONE: “The earth is a worm-eaten corpse – we love it just because it exists.” And I think that just sums up this whole album. While I don’t come to the same conclusions about God or humanity, I do empathize with it.

    Musically, it’s just as dour. Low-tuned guitars, fuzzy bass, immense drums. I love the way this thing is mixed, and I think Matt Guglielmo is becoming one of my favorite heavy drummers (he will appear again on this list later).

    An album that’s not for everyone, and it’s not even an album I expect to listen to that many more times. But it affected me so much that I included it here.

  • 2025 AOTY #8, Spiritbox – “Tsunami Sea”

    I’ve enjoyed Spiritbox since their breakout 2022 album “Eternal Blue,” but they’ve never quite reached “top 10” status for me, until this album. Some of these songs were some of my most-played of the year, namely “Ride the Wave,” “Deep End,” and “Black Rainbow.” I love the ocean motif used throughout. A lot of the songs are intended to invoke what it was like for Courtney growing up on Vancouver Island (kind of a remote haven largely disconnected from the world). The music similarly invokes kind of an eerie, watery vibe. I love when music and lyrics work in tandem to put the listener in a specific time and place. It’s almost a concept album, though I don’t know if I’d fully classify it as that.

    Several of these songs (the ones already mentioned) are some of my favorites of the year, but there are a couple that are kind of skippable to me (the title track and “Keep Sweet”). That’s what brings this one down to #8 for me. Otherwise, this is a fantastic album that I listened to all year, due to it releasing way back in March.

  • 2025 AOTY #9, Demon Hunter – “There Was a Light Here”

    I have a mixed history with Demon Hunter. They were one of my “gateway” bands that got me into heavier music, way back in 2007 after Storm the Gates of Hell came out. I remember going to their website and playing the song samples they had from that album over and over, and it just blew my mind. My mom didn’t like it at all, but I’m forever grateful for her eventually letting me get that CD at the Christian bookstore. That album literally changed my life and my music trajectory from then on (it’s still one of my favorite DH albums).

    However, at around the time of the True Defiance album (“I Am a Stone” from that album became by far their most popular song, which will become important later), I began to notice a trend both lyrically and musically I didn’t like. It started to become less vulnerable and more finger-pointy. I think Ryan Clark’s lyrics have always had a tinge of the latter, but it became their main thing after that. Music made for “Don’t tread on me” dude-bros at the gym. Which is fine if that’s your thing, but I started to realize that wasn’t for me. So I looked elsewhere for a while for my heavy Christian bands (in the process discovering some of my favorite bands of all time: Norma Jean, The Chariot, The Devil Wears Prada, etc.).

    Along comes this album, “There Was a Light Here,” kind of shirking everything they’ve been about since “I Am a Stone” blew up on streaming. This album is vulnerable, honest, questioning, and doubting at times – all the things I thought had been missing from their output for the past 15 years. Written in the wake of his mother’s death, these songs have an aching vulnerability that hit me really hard. On the somber title track, Ryan Clark admits, “I am no longer a stone / I can’t walk into the shadows alone / Take my soul to where the waters atone / Bring me home.”

    The theme of this album – “There Was a Light Here” – is such a beautiful way to think about and grieve the passing of a loved one. Again on the title track: “You may never find the place you’re looking for / You may never see her face again this side of Heaven’s door / But when the night is at its darkest, in the quiet of your heart, you will know: / There was a light here.” Another favorite of mine is “Overwhelming Closure,” in which Ryan admits, “I spent a lifetime praying… I can’t believe what I don’t know.” And then on “Sorrow Light the Way:” “I just watched my mother die, so forgive me if I haven’t the want for this weight / I’ve been suffering in silence, waiting for the calming break of day.” There are so many other good lines throughout this album.

    There are some minor musical quibbles that keep this from being higher. I don’t need to hear a chorus six or seven times in one song – a lot of these songs would hit harder if they didn’t beat you over the head with the chorus (this has been an issue for them again since True Defiance). I’ve also fallen out of love with guitar solos, and thankfully there are fewer here, but they still occasionally act as the climax of a song, where in my opinion a bridge or riffing section would have worked better.

    Also, I am fully aware this is now just “dad metal” (DH has been for a while) but I’m into it, at least in this form. I hope they continue on this trajectory.

  • 2025 AOTY #10, Wolves at the Gate – “Wasteland”

    It’s crazy to think now, but you could probably now classify Wolves at the Gate as one of those legendary “legacy” Solid State Records bands. I remember when their first album came out in 2012 and being absolutely crushed by their song “Man of Sorrows.” I’ve always listened to each of their new releases since then, but none other than their previous album “Eulogies” have really stuck for me. But I think this one hits even harder than that one did.

    “Wasteland” is a concept album about a person trying to escape a literal wasteland. It’s used as a cool allegory throughout to compare to our own figurative wastelands. It’s cool, and it hits really hard. The album ends with probably my two favorite songs of the record, “Memento Mori” (this riff and the chorus got stuck in my head multiple times throughout this year) and “Unrest,” where the protagonist realizes “There is a stone in my heart breaking all my bones” and asks “How can I live like hell and ask for heaven to come?” It’s a powerful realization after the protagonist’s journey throughout the album. The album ends with a shadowy whisper pleading the protagonist to “Come out of the wasteland, into the borderland.” It’s great stuff, and I’ve come back to this album multiple times throughout the year.

    The one thing that almost demoted this album from my top 10 is the mix. It’s so squished and compressed that you almost can’t make out any of the instrumentation or background production. I despise heavy albums that are mixed like this (and it’s unfortunately becoming the trend). I probably would have ranked this one higher if the mix wasn’t so unpleasant.