‘In Defense of the Genre’: Best Punk & Emo Songs of January

In Defense of the Genre is a column on BrooklynVegan about punk, pop punk, emo, hardcore, post-hardcore, ska-punk, and more, including and often especially the bands and albums and subgenres that weren’t always taken so seriously.

January is a wrap and 2025 is already a good start for new music in and around the punk world. I’ve got 10 (but technically 13) new songs from last month that I recommend you check out below, but first some recent news: Bear vs Shark are back for a Terrorhawk tour that also features the reunited Snowing; Turnover are doing a Peripheral Vision tour with Citizen, Tigers Jaw, Balance & Composure, and others; HORSE the Band are back for a The Mechanical Hand tour; Japanese indie-pop punk vets Ging Nang Boyz are doing their first-ever US tour with the back-in-action Shinobu; Bayside are doing a career-spanning 25th anniversary tour that’s partially with The Smoking Popes, who are also doing their own Born To Quit tour; Comeback Kid are doing a Wake the Dead tour; screamo vets Frail are playing reunion shows; Brittany Howard’s hardcore band played their first show; Westside Gunn is working with a hardcore band; and last but not least, surviving Nirvana members did another rare reunion, their first in over a decade.

January album reviews we posted include L.S. Dunes, ASkySoBlack, Zeta, and DITZ.

Some new exclusive vinyl we recently launched includes the first vinyl reissue of Cap’n Jazz’s sole album since its original 1995 release (ice blue vinyl), the upcoming Coheed & Cambria album (clear/black/magenta), the expanded 25th anniversary edition of H2O’s Faster Than The World (2LP; opaque yellow & opaque green), the upcoming Killswitch Engage album (“engulfing moss”), the new Less Than Jake EP (electric blue glitter), and more.

Head below for my picks of the 10 best songs of January that fall somewhere under the punk umbrella, in no particular order.

Initiate – “Too Much”

My favorite parts of California hardcore band Initiate’s 2023 LP Cerebral Circus were the parts when they got a little more melodic and a little more post-hardcore, so I’m very excited to hear them going further than ever in that direction on new single “Too Much.” At three minutes and 41 seconds, it’s longer than any song on Cerebral Circus, and it finds Initiate injecting their pure, impassioned fury with an undercurrent of jangly acoustic guitars and post-rocky atmosphere. If you like stuff in the realm of Touché Amoré (whose 15th anniversary shows had Initiate opening), don’t sleep on “Too Much.” Initiate are one of the best newer bands doing it.

Weatherday – “Angel”

The best “Midwest emo” song of 2025 so far comes from a Swedish noise pop artist… or something like that. It’s not super easy to pin down Weatherday’s genre, but mononymous sole member Sputnik told Stereogum that actually their noisy 2019 debut LP Come In would’ve had “more Midwest emo tropes, a lot more twinkling and stuff like that” if they knew more about how to do that kind of thing at the time. Their upcoming sophomore LP for Topshelf Hornet Disaster is said to be a more overtly emo album, and those tropes definitely come through in a super effective way on lead single “Angel.” It’s a speaker-busting singalong with an undercurrent of mathy guitar licks and an addictively yelpy chorus that reminds me a little of Modern Baseball. And what takes it to the next level is that Weatherday do these tropes with a perspective that sounds totally unique to them. On top of being one of the catchiest emo songs I’ve heard in a minute, it also strikes a balance between fresh and familiar that you really don’t always come by.

Florida Man – “El Rey”

Charleston post-hardcore band Florida Man quieted down after the release of their 2019 album Tropical Depression (and the pandemic), but now they’re back and reinvigorated on new single “El Rey,” their first new song in nearly six years. It takes the sludgy post-hardcore/noise rock of a band like The Jesus Lizard, injects it with a Latin groove, and finds the band sounding as fired up as ever.

Fucked Up – “Disabuse”

Fucked Up have been insanely prolific lately, having released three albums in less than two years, but it’s been a while since we’ve heard them bust out the kind of no-frills, high-speed hardcore that they do on “Disabuse.” It sounds like the kind of thing they would’ve done over 20 years ago when they were putting out now-classic songs like “Baiting the Public” and “Police,” and it finds them pulling off this kind of thing with just as much rage as they had back then. It’s kinda like what Kendrick Lamar did on last year’s GNX; the work of an artist getting back to their gritty, primal roots after years of genre-busting statements.

Aren’t We Amphibians / awakebutstillinbed / California Cousins / Your Arms Are My Cocoon – fourwaysplit

Technically this is four songs, but I couldn’t pick just one track to highlight from the new Aren’t We Amphibians / awakebutstillinbed / California Cousins / Your Arms Are My Cocoon split, which already feels like an emo/screamo split for the ages. Aren’t We Amphibians kick things off with the kind of noodly Midwest emo that never goes out of style on “Country Mac,” then awakebutstillinbed go full screamo and deliver one of their harshest songs yet on “Sovereign.” California Cousins fall somewhere in the middle of those two with “I Cannot Be Alone,” which is all screamo chaos before transitioning into a more melodic, atmospheric coda. And Your Arms Are My Cocoon wrap things up with “Junebug,” a 47-second song that captures their unique bedroom-pop-meets-screamo formula just as effectively as their recent LP Death of a Rabbit. There are elements of all four songs that have been present in emo/screamo since the ’90s, but all four bands put their own spin on things, and this strength-in-numbers split serves as a crucial snapshot of a new generation with something to say.

fourwaysplit by Aren’t We Amphibians

Church Tongue – “Bury Me (One Thousand Times)”

Since even before guitarist Nicko Calderon joined Knocked Loose in 2020, he’s played in the Midwest metalcore band Church Tongue, who put out records on Delayed Gratification and Blood & Ink Records before recently signing to Pure Noise, the same label that Knocked Loose call home. Their upcoming You’ll Know It Was Me EP for Pure Noise features three very cool guests (Deafheaven’s George Clarke, Initiate’s Crystal Pak, and Twitching Tongues/God’s Hate’s Colin Young), but before we heard any of the songs with guests, we got lead single “Bury Me (One Thousand Times).” On it, Church Tongue deliver a dose of crisp, tuneful, kickass metalcore that stands tall on its own, regardless of any of Church Tongue’s ties to other well-known bands. The thick, bleak guitar tones and dashes of mathcore riffage scratch an itch similar to last year’s Knocked Loose album, with commanding, memorable screams from vocalist Mike Sugars that cut through the crowded metalcore scene like a hot knife.

Poison The Well – “Trembling Level”

There really aren’t many bands with a body of work like Poison The Well. After helping pioneer melodic metalcore as we know it on their 1999 debut LP The Opposite of December… A Season of Separation–an album that still influences new bands all the time–they went in a handful of experimental, genre-blurring directions on later records before calling it quits in 2010. They gradually began returning to the stage in 2015, and then were forced back into hibernation by the pandemic, and now they’re finally gearing up to release their first album in over 15 years. Most details are still TBA, but we did finally get a new Poison The Well song, and it sounds like a culmination of almost everything they’ve ever done, from their aggressive metalcore side to their more melodic post-hardcore side to the more out-there stuff. It’s a great single to come back with because it suggests the possibilities for this new album’s direction are endless.

fallfityfeet – “Running from the Sky”

Speaking of newer metalcore bands who take influence from Poison The Well, there’s no denying that fallfityfeet are one of them. They haven’t released an album since their great 2021 debut LP Twisted World Perspective, but they kicked the year off with new single “Running from the Sky” and promised that more music is coming, so hopefully we’ll get another substantial project from them again soon. And if they’ve got more where “Running from the Sky” came from, consider me very excited. The song packs mathcore chaos, a howling clean-sung hook, a sludgy breakdown, and a heroic guitar solo into less than two minutes, and fallfiftyfeet do it all with so much intensity that you don’t even get a second to stop and think about how much of a whiplash it is.

Mikau – “Spiraling Decay”

I guess it was a very metalcore January for me ’cause here’s another one. Not that Mikau are a typical metalcore band or anything–far from it. They unabashedly tag their upcoming album Agartha “mallcore” on Bandcamp, and their new single “Spiraling Decay” has everything from dramatic metalcore to sparkling synths to excessive auto-tune to a chorus that you could accurately call “whiny,” and somehow I never cringe once. They’ve got an almost Tarantino-esque ability to find the artistic value in maligned tropes, and the airtight “Spiraling Decay” proves they’re only getting better at it.

Agartha by Mikau

Saetia – “Tendrils”

This one came out right at the beginning of the new year so I reviewed it in the December edition of In Defense of the Genre, but just in case you missed the first Saetia song in 26 years, here’s a reminder. Recorded with new guitarist Tom Schlatter, who’s been in about 100 Saetia-inspired screamo bands, “Tendrils” has one thing Saetia never had (good recording quality) and otherwise it pretty much sounds exactly like they did back in the day. Coming at a time in which Saetia’s influence is more widespread than ever and their old music still sounds timeless, “Tendrils” leaves as big an impact as it would have at any point in the last quarter-century.

Saetia have two more new songs coming out on their upcoming EP, which is up for pre-order on vinyl now.

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In an effort to cover as many bands as possible, I try to just do one single per album cycle in these monthly roundups, so catch up on previous months’ lists for even more:

* Best Songs of December

* Best Songs of November

* Best Songs of October

* Best Songs of September

For even more new songs, listen below or subscribe to our playlist of punk/emo/hardcore/etc songs of 2025.

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