Notable Releases of the Week (1/23)

2026 continues to get off to an exciting start musically, and this week gave us the first Arctic Monkeys song in four years plus album announcements from Courtney Barnett, James Blake, Snail Mail, and a handful of others. We talked about all that and more on today’s episode of BV Weekly, on which we also talked about last week’s A$AP Rocky album, Pitchfork’s new user reviews, and more.

As for this week’s new albums, I highlight five below and Bill talks about more in Indie Basement, including Speedy Wunderground-signed UK punks Hot Face, UK indie rock band Langkamer, UK electronic musician Craven Faults, and dub/reggae veteran Dennis Bovell. On top of those, this week’s honorable mentions include Megadeth’s final album, The Format’s first album in 20 years, Earth & Black Noi$e’s sorta-remix album, Rocky & The Sweden, Ari Lennox, Mika, Poppy, Mx Lonely, Searows, PVA , Jo Passed, Immaterialize, New Miserable Experience (Rivers of Nihil, Rosetta, etc), Goldfinger, Van Morrison, Julian Lage, Tom Hamilton, Crystal Lake, Becca Hannah, Cam Kahin, The Paper Kites, Peekaboo, Reggie, Sammy Brue, Shintaro Sakamoto, Ski Team, YĪN YĪN, Victoryland, Ailbhe Reddy, Katie Tupper, Agnes, Greg Weeks, Erik Hall, Vanishment, JB Dunckel, Ella Red, XG, Louis Tomlinson, the Cat Power EP, the Pelican B-sides EP, the Maria Somerville remix EP, the Draag EP, the Hudson Westbrook EP, the Perfect Person EP, The Damned’s covers album, the Gesaffelstein live album, Dari Bay’s expanded reissue of Longest Day of the Year, Rotting Christ’s re-recorded edition of AEALO, the Alan Vega reissues, and the lost David Forman album.

Read on for my picks, and listen to the new episode of BV Weekly for more of this week’s new music and music news. What’s your favorite release of the week?

IDK – E.T.D.S. (self-released)
With help from Pusha T, Black Thought, RZA, Madlib, Goldie, the late MF DOOM and DMX, and more, IDK embraces ’90s/2000s mixtape culture and reflects on America’s broken criminal justice system.

Maryland rapper IDK has a reputation for expansive, ambitious albums, but he’s calling his new project E.T.D.S. (which stands for “Even The Devil Smiles”) a mixtape, and he says it was inspired by “the immediacy of 90s and 2000s mixtape culture.” “Immediacy” is a good word to describe E.T.D.S. in general, and in some ways this project hits even harder than his grander works. The ’90s / 2000s era feels like a sonic reference point here too. Pusha T of Clipse and Black Thought of The Roots bless this tape with the kinds of hard-hitting verses that they could’ve released back then. Posthumous clips of DMX and MF DOOM are worked in, and there are contributions from boom bap-era architects like RZA, No I.D., and Madlib, along with boom bap revivalist Conductor Williams and some nostalgia-inducing production from Kaytranada on the Black Thought and Pusha T collabs. Another side of the ’90s comes through on “Stigma,” a collab with drum & bass OG Goldie. E.T.D.S. isn’t beholden to revivalism though; IDK’s got a handful of modern twists in there, including an appearance on “Clover” from rising duo Joey Valence & Brae.

And even though IDK’s calling E.T.D.S. a “mixtape,” he could’ve called it a concept album. It comes out right around the same time that IDK would’ve completed the 15-year prison sentence he was given at the age of 17 had he served the entire thing–he only had to serve three years–and he says the project “confronts the reality [of incarceration] head-on, blending sharp lyricism with raw storytelling about, betrayal, spiritual conflict, and the moments that shaped me. Real phone calls with Deangelo Sneed, a high ranking Blood who saw my potential and kept me focused, serve as checkpoints throughout the project. It leans heavy on rap with touches of melody — gritty, honest, and fully transparent.”

Roc Marciano – 656 (Pimpire/Marci Enterprises)
The boom bap revival leader is in a world of his own on this haunted, self-produced album.

There’s really nobody doing it like Roc Marciano. Even though he helped kickstart the entire boom bap revival that’s thrived for the past decade or so, his music still sounds like it’s in a world of its own, especially when he’s the only one involved. And after recently releasing a handful of albums produced by other people (like DJ Premier and The Alchemist) and producing albums for other rappers (like Knowledge the Pirate and Errol Holden), Roc Marciano returns with the entirely-self-produced 656. He never sounds more haunting than over his own devilish production, with instrumentals that could fit in horror flicks and samples so vintage you can still hear the dust on the vinyl. Roc Marci’s delivery sounds just as noir-ish as his beats, and his voice is (almost) the only one you hear, besides two songs with the aforementioned Errol Holden. It’s a transportive listen for its entire 32 minutes, without a single distraction or an ounce of filler.

Lucinda Williams – World’s Gone Wrong (Highway 20/Thirty Tigers)
The alt-country veteran mourns the state of the world on her somber, bluesy new album.

Everybody knows the world’s gone wrong, and Lucinda Williams is no exception. Right from the jump, the alt-country veteran dives into the somber melancholy of knowing things could be so much better, all set to a style of music that was built for this theme: the blues. It’s not so much the angry protest music of her 2020 album Good Souls Better Angels and more so a sullen sadness. “There’s a heaviness to these days,” Lucinda sings on second song “Something’s Gotta Give,” with her grizzled rasp tugging right at the heartstrings. “A burden on a shoulder… I think we’ve lost our way.” Good Souls Better Angels‘ anti-Trump song “Man Without a Soul” gets a followup on World’s Gone Wrong with “How Much Did You Get For Your Soul?,” a song that trades the finger-pointing ire of the original with a helpless plea. The album has one cover song that suits the theme perfectly, Bob Marley’s “So Much Trouble in the World,” with powerhouse guest vocals from another protest music icon, Mavis Staples. And just as Bob Marley encouraged on a different song, Lucinda won’t give up the fight. Towards the end of the album, she demands resistance on the fiery, Stonesy “Freedom Speaks,” and she ends the album with a Norah Jones-assisted ballad that makes the case to keep pushing right in its title: “We’ve Come Too Far to Turn Around.”

Backengrillen – Backengrillen (Svart)
Refused’s three core members team up with veteran saxophonist Mats Gustafsson for some heavy, abrasive punk-jazz.

27 years after naming their most beloved album after a pioneering jazz album, the three core members of Refused have formed a jazz band of their own, Backengrillen, with veteran saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, who’s played with The Thing, The Ex, Sonic Youth, Jim O’Rourke, Four Tet, Colin Stetson, and many others over the years. And it should come as no surprise that a Refused-related jazz group is not your average jazz group. Referring to themselves as “anti-fascist, anti-racist, free form Death Jazz,” their self-titled debut album finds them churning out heavy punk-jazz in the vein of John Zorn and The Stooges’ Fun House, and doing it in a way they can call their own. It’s as much of a sludgy, abrasive rock album as it is freeform jazz, and the inclusion of Dennis Lyxzén’s vocals–which are as skronky as Mats Gustafsson’s sax–is a nice touch that helps make the record feel almost like something that Refused could’ve released themselves.

Colossal Rains – Feral Sorrow (Memory Music)
Blacklisted members dive head-first into sludge metal with the debut album from Colossal Rains.

The great, boundary-pushing Philly hardcore band Blacklisted reunited for select live shows in 2023, and while they haven’t released a new album in over a decade, members have been very busy lately releasing new music with other projects. Last year, vocalist George Hirsch and other Blacklisted members released Better Living Through Static Vision, the debut album by their Motörhead/Discharge-influenced crust punk/D-beat band Staticlone, and now George, guitarist Dave Walling (Blacklisted/Staticlone), bassist Jon-Michael Nean (Blacklisted, ex-Staticlone), and drummer Tyler Mullen (Scarab, ex-Year of the Knife) have gone sludge metal with the debut album from their band Colossal Rains. There’s been flashes of this kind of thing in both Blacklisted and Staticlone, but Feral Sorrow finds them diving head-first into Mastodon, Baroness, Neurosis type stuff and not surprisingly sounding like naturals. Dave busts out one tasty riff after the next, and George’s raspy roar sounds right at home in this slower-paced context. Helping the album sound sharp is production from longtime Blacklisted collaborator Will Yip, who also released the album on his label Memory Music.

Crush Your Soul – Ice Water (Streets of Hate)
Mindforce vocalist Jay Petagine offers up thrashy hardcore (and a little bit of sinister boom bap) on the debut LP by Crush Your Soul.

Jay Petagine has one of the most recognizable shouts in all of hardcore at the moment, and though he’s best known for fronting Mindforce, he’s been in a handful of bands over the years and he’s currently in a few others, including Pillars of Ivory, Out For Justice, and Crush Your Soul. Crush Your Soul, which also features members of Scarab, Simulakra, Gridiron, and other bands, put out EPs in 2024 and 2025 and this week they released their debut album Ice Water. Similar to Mindforce, Ice Water finds Jay putting his shout up against beefy, thrashy, metallic riffage, and this album also ends with a straight-up rap song, “Freezing Cold Weather” with Estee Nack, a song that reminds you East Coast hip hop is just as gritty and sinister as East Coast hardcore. Other guests show up too, including members of US hardcore bands and Missing Link on “Cento Vite” and members of Italian hardcore bands Silver and Blvd of Death on “Shadow Without the Dark.”

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Read Indie Basement for more new album reviews, including Hot Face, Langkamer, Craven Faults, and Dennis Bovell.

Looking for more recent releases? Browse the Notable Releases and Indie Basement archives.

Looking for a podcast to listen to? Check out the latest episodes of our weekly music news podcast BV Weekly and the BV interviews podcast.

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