Staff Picks: Best Albums of October 2025

Each month, our writers and editors highlight some of their favorite new music from the past four weeks for Consequence‘s Staff Picks column. Check out the selections for the best albums of October 2025 below.

In a truly bizarre turn of events, 2025 is almost over? Okay, maybe that’s not that bizarre, but the year has flown by. October turned out to be yet another stacked month of new releases, with standout offerings from Florence + the Machine, Militarie Gun, Chat Pile & Hayden Pedigo, Sudan Archives, Monaleo, our latest CoSigns Rocket, and many more. Plus, exciting returns from newcomers After, Just Mustard, Upchuck, and others.

Listed in alphabetical order, here are our favorite albums of October 2025.

After — EP2

On their second EP, Los Angeles duo After reprise their nostalgic, 2000s-indebted sound while expanding the mood board a bit. They go full Paramore-meets-Evanescence on the scorching “Baroque,” nod to Owl City on the concluding “Close Your Eyes,” and scale up their sound to sweeping heights on “Outbound.” But it’s the excellent new track “The Field” that really shows what After are capable of; the late ’90s production touches a la Massive Attack and Moby are gorgeous companions to Justine Dorsey’s crystalline vocals, prioritizing the comfort and serenity associated with childhood memories. Do you remember being a kid, hearing a lovely song on the radio, and staring wistfully out the car window on a long drive? Perhaps in the rain? After are making their own version of that, and they’ve captured this energy in a way that’s both uncannily faithful to the past and totally irresistible now. — Paolo Ragusa

Stream EP2 on Apple Music or Amazon Music 

Agriculture — The Spiritual Sound

As if fans of left-field, genre-blending black metal didn’t already have it good enough with Deafheaven’s excellent Lonely People with Power from earlier this year, here comes The Spiritual Sound, the latest from Los Angeles outfit Agriculture. Throughout its 10 epic tracks, which swing between pummeling, triumphant, and even softly melodic, the band present poetic, deeply human musings, earning their self-described tag of ‘ecstatic black metal.’ It doesn’t shy away from the pain, hurt, and suffering of the world — how could you, especially with blast beats and bloodcurdling shrieks — but the end result is always intoxicatingly life-affirming. — Jonah Krueger

Stream The Spiritual Sound on Apple Music or Amazon Music | Buy on Vinyl/CD

Chat Pile and Hayden Pedigo — In the Earth Again

In some ways, Chat Pile’s sludgy noise rock and Hayden Pedigo’s tender, acoustic fingerpicking seem worlds apart. In other ways, though, the two are closer to each other than a passerby (or either of the respective fanbases) might realize. On In the Earth Again, their full-length collaboration, Chat Pile and Hayden Pedigo burrow themselves in the soil of that common ground, mining it for a set of moody, vulnerable, affecting compositions. That might mean supplementing Chat Pile’s chromatic riffage and intensity with Pedigo’s masterful guitar work (like on “Never Say Die!” or “The Matador”) or injecting Pedigo’s contemplative, atmospheric playing with Chat Pile’s feedback-laden tones and apocalyptic feel (as heard on cuts like “Demon Time” or “Radioactive Dreams”). Either way, the end result is a shockingly seamless meeting of the two acts, and one that feels greater than the sum of its parts. — J. Krueger

Stream In the Earth Again on Apple Music or Amazon Music | Buy on Vinyl/CD