Last month I mostly listened to... the what now?

(this post is migrated and was originally published at Substack)

Shrike's Listens is about mostly musical musings, or “Last month I mostly listened to...” lists (if you’re confused, don’t worry, this is all explained later in this post).

But! Before that I’ll begin by posting few links to wrap up my last year in music.

First, Top 25 + 1 Albums of the Year 2025 playlist*, of which my Top 10 was:

1. Havukruunu - Tavastland
2. Les Dunes - From Etne to the Edge of Space
3. Zombie Eater - Faces
4. Old Year - No Dissent
5. Icarus Burns - Icarus Burns
6. Netherlands - Vapors
7. Grin - Acid Gods
8. Hell - Submersus
9. Pelican - Flickering Resonance
10. Slomatics - Atomicult

The playlist has a single song off each album, links to Qobuz, Tidal, Deezer, Spotify and finally Soundiiz, which you can use to transfer the playlist to other platforms.

Second, this is my now finished In 2025 I've mostly been listening to... playlist, my Top 10 most listened artists of each month, one track off each artist, so 120 tracks.
Final addition was december’s additions, which were:

1. Homegrown
2. Palm Desert
3. Skogskult
4. Hum
5. Hexjakt
6. Non
7. Sowa
8. Bygone
9. Gurm
10. Black Pig Meat

By playtime (h:mm:ss):
Fucked Up
Palm Desert
Skogskult
Non
Yurt
Teleost
Black Pig Meat

Track obsession: Old Year - Death Frequency
Bubbling under: Fuzz, Nílim, Yurt, Teleost, Elder, G.B.H, Sun Empress
Total artists in rotation: 175

Relevant albums:
Homegrown - Homegrown (2025)
Palm Desert - Rays of the Gold and Grays (2025)
Skogskult - Skogskult (2025)
Hum - Three (2025)
Hexjakt - Blessing of the Damned (2025)
Non - Vipassana (2025)
SOWA - Gdansk Macabre (2025)
Bygone - Bygone (2025)
Gurm - Gurm (2025)
Black Pig Meat - Symbiotic Dream (2025)
Nílim - Uncoiling (2025)
Yurt - VI: Rippling Mirrors of the Other (2025)
Teleost - Atavism (2025)
Old Year - No Dissent (2025)
Elder - Reflections of a Floating World (2017)
Fucked Up - Year Of The Goat (2025)

Third, some background:
I’ve been regularly posting all kind of playlists, toplists and recommendations for a long time and other types of music related stuffs even further back, some even in the deep dark 90’s. They’re always been metal oriented, or heavy music in general if you will, which has been my passion from mid 80’s onward when I was in my early teens.

The stuff I post here is mostly a continuation of my “Last month I mostly listened to” style lists, which was something I started posting to Facebook with new list at the beginning of every month. Before 2015 it was quite random and my posts had no persistent format. I’ve since moved off of Meta platforms as much as possible and posting of said lists has been a bit all over the place, Mastodon feels best but also very limiting due to the short format nature of the platform (my chosen instance, does thousands of characters, but still).
I’ve not blogged in 10-15 years, but been thinking of getting back to that as well, but this remains to be seen and I’ll stick to Substack for now. My old blog (I used NucleusCMS for it) was another place I did some music related writing in the early noughts, along with few forums (RIP Imperiumi.net) and mailing lists (RIP Stonerrock Mailing List) which were even earlier.

Few personal bits:
I’m the vocalist for death metal band Abhorrence, avid MusicBrainz editor, a Doom Charts collaborator, Meteli editor and whole lot of other things.
You can also find me on Mastodon.

And finally, December 2025 Doom Charts are out!