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Friends of The Bad Penny Share Their Top 10 Lists of 2025 Best Albums

Posted in Lists with tags Clipse, Curran Reynolds, Dave Clifford, Deafheaven, Heavy Halo, Justin Sinkovich, OvO, Pixel Grip, Primitive Man, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy on 12/15/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

The Bad Penny is rolling out its favorite albums of 2025 in five installments this year, with the first and second batches having already dropped. While the other three will plop down imminently, we’re smashing the self-indulgence and monotony by inviting some of our favorite industry folks to share their own top 10s with us and, by extension, you.

To warn off any complaints about corruption, misdealing or the coveted line in the sand between journalists and press folks, we laid down a strict ground rule: PR reps were not allowed to include any of their clients, past or present, on their lists.

We’re delighted by the picks that the participants received, as they run the genre gamut and include many albums of which The Bad Penny wasn’t even aware. Especially striking is that, among the combined 160 titles chosen by the … let’s dust off the old calculator here … 16 contributors, a tiny fraction appear on more than one list: Pixel Grip, Deafheaven, Clipse and Primitive Man. And each of those titles are only listed twice.

Thanks oodles to Tim Anderl of Sweet Cheetah PR, Caroline Borolla of Clarion Call Media, Brendan Bourke of The Syn, Dave Clifford of US/THEM Group, George Corona III of Terrorbird Media, Bruno Dorella and Stefania Pedretti of OvO, Brandon Gallagher of Trace Amount, Eddie Gobbo of Something Is Waiting, Austin Griswold of Secret Service Publicity, McKeever and Gosteffects of Heavy Halo, Curran Reynolds of Body Stuff (and The Chain), Michel Rowland of UTM Music Group, Justin Sinkovich of Solid Brass Records, Dan Volohov of Discipline PR, James Woodard of The Grasshopper Lies Heavy and Will Yarbrough of Season of Mist – not only for taking the time and care to craft such thoughtful top 10s and share them, but helping this website triple its UVs this year over last – and provide critical support to yours truly over the course of a 28-year career as a music journalist, rock critic and soon-to-be-lobotomized AI automaton.

Without further ado, here are the lists of the top 10 albums released in 2025 that some of The Bad Penny‘s favorite publicists and musicians graciously shared with us.

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On Tyranny: Grasshopper Lies Heavy Guitarist/Vocalist Preps for ‘Dealing With the Fallout of New American Fascism’ Till He Dies

Posted in Features, Interviews, On Tyranny, On Tyranny with tags authoritarianism, fascism, On Tyranny, The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, tyranny on 10/21/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

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“Just existing here in a red state is an act of resistance.”
-The Grasshopper Lies Heavy’s James Woodard

Of all the artists we’ve invited to participate (and who have accepted to be) in The Bad Penny‘s ongoing series On Tyranny, probably no other musician has been more clear, direct and uncompromising than James Woodard, guitarist/vocalist for post-metal/doom/sludge chaos agents The Grasshopper Lies Heavy. The band from San Antonio, Texas, is now in its 20th year but is showing no signs of crying uncle, as a listen of their upcoming record, HEAVY, both purports to be and actually is.

Just as with the album, which will arrive Nov. 14 on Learning Curve Records, our conversation with Woodard about Authoritarian America isn’t for the faint of heart. But you know what else isn’t, sadly? What is happening in the country so many of us claim to be proud of. So, as the right likes to say, put your big-boy pants on and read the unvarnished truth, straight from the mouth of a metal madman who makes total sense.

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