Today’s new albums for Friday, November 7th, 2025, are two releases that may come from genres known for their simplicity, but both completely throw all preconceived notions about said genres out the window with how innovative and forward thinking each of these artists have consistently been throughout their careers. Oneohtrix Point Never almost needs no introduction in the conversation of avant-garde experimental music, being a trailblazer for Warp Records and arguably taking Aphex Twin’s place as King of IDM over the past few years. On the flipside, Home Front has been making waves in Oi punk since they first stepped on the scene with their ambitiously insane incorporations of new-wave, post-punk, and arena rock elements to the normally barebones genre.
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OPN’s album is a return to form in a lot of ways, shoving every element of his artistic identity in your face and sticking a flag in the sand of his place in experimental electronic music. Being a much newer artist, Home Front, is conversely finding their identity more and more with each release and creating their own brand of destroying genre-limiting boundaries. Both of these albums are staples for each artist’s personality and sound, and are must-listens for anybody curious about either scene.
Oneohtrix Point Never: Tranquilizer (released November 21, 2025): Warp Records
Oneohtrix Point Never is indisputably one of the most groundbreaking and boundary-shattering artists of the 21st century, and probably in all of music history. Beyond being the essential founder of the vaperwave genre that dominated 2010’s aesthetics, he’s experimented with more genres than any electronic artist could even fathom. From his glitchy hyperpop masterpiece Garden Of Delete to the more psychedelic Tame Impala-esque albums Age Of and Magic, OPN represents more of a brand or personality than any specific type of music at this point. Tranquilizer is a return to form for OPN, diving deep into the haunting nostalgic ambient atmosphere that he built his career off of. While his unique aesthetic and personality has shined through every release in his career, this album is entirely built around the one-of-a-kind mythos he has created for himself.
Throughout all of the changes of his career, he has stayed true to his goal of making the most interesting music possible within the ambient landscape and incorporating his 90’s frutiger aero aesthetics influenced by early PC and Sega CD games from that period. The last couple releases have experimented so much that they barely resemble the title of ambient anymore and while his artistic ambition on the newer material does keep his discography exciting, his earlier works perfectly scratch the itch when you’re looking for interesting ambient music to fall asleep to, while also providing entertaining stimuli that can act as a soundtrack to working on creative projects. Even his more mellow material has always been versatile in this way.
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It might be an early conclusion to reach, but his newest album Tranquilizer is quite possibly his magnum opus; providing every diverse element you could imagine when you think of what an OPN album should sound like. Hell, this is probably going to take the place of my go-to default ambient album overall for the foreseeable future. It’s incredibly rare to see artists return to their roots after experimenting and branching out for so long, but OPN has always been full of surprises throughout his seasoned career.
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The first couple of tracks on Tranquilizer is par for the course in OPN’s ambient music, resembling his previous works like Replica or Russian Mind more than any of the recent rock-incorporating releases he’s put out. To the uninformed, this may sound like a criticism of the music being “boring” or “derivative” but it is anything but. With how successful his adventures into psychedelic rock and hyperpop have been with the critics, returning to the simpler more inaccessible roots of his experimental noise-y past is the most interesting and risky move he could have possibly made.
His signature brand of evoking haunting nostalgia in the listener is more present than ever. OPN has always created a world of feeling like you’re trapped in a Sega Dreamcast menu; where the game is glitching and unplayable in every way, but there’s something so creepy and mesmerizing about the technical error that you refuse to restart the system. The track “Measuring Ruins” really picks this energy up with its spacial atmosphere, as the synths feel completely disconnected from the universe you’re existing in. Even just on the surface, the song name “Measuring Ruins” sounds like a hidden level in an early Sonic The Hedgehog title, and the influence from Sega’s Ecco The Dolphin soundtrack that OPN has previously incorporated with his Chuck Person’s Eccojams pseudonym bleeds throughout the entire album.
While the straight-forward raw ambient sound that OPN throws at the listener for the beginning of the album is a refreshing return to form in our current day where ambient music is less common, the track “Modern Lust” really brings things in another direction with its incorporations of saxophone and jazz elements. These influences certainly came from his psychedelic albums like Age Of and Magic, which further emphasizes how I believe this is the quintessential OPN release as he really has incorporated everything possible from the music that he has created over the years.
The track “Cherry Blue” seems to come out of nowhere in the middle of the album, bringing a much more tranquil and euphoric atmosphere than some of the more dark and haunting ambient environments created earlier in the album. It’s absolutely beautiful, with OPN bringing everything peaceful about his art to the table on this one. While many associate OPN and other IDM artists from Warp Records as being glitchy or perhaps too hectic in their technical composure for mainstream tastes, the minimalist piano and use of synthesizers as more of a background tone than a focus-drawing instrument would be the perfect song to show a newcomer who is skeptical about how beautiful Oneohtrix Point Never can truly be.
While most of Tranquilizer is an exploration into different ambient soundscapes with overarching themes of surrealist nostalgia and haunting emptiness, the experience ends on the highest note possible, shooting the listener’s serotonin levels through the roof as the finale resembles the peak of an intense ketamine trip compared to the more comedown-appropriate tone of the rest of the album.
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The last track “Waterfalls” could not be more appropriately named with its jazzy vaporwave sound engulfing the listener, feeling as if you’ve been transported to a fictional rainforest that also somehow has technologically complex neon signs surrounding you. “Waterfalls” starts off peaceful and tranquil with its synths, feeling like you are bravely looking down a dangerously steep waterfall from above; but it completely takes a turn halfway through becoming more and more technically glitchy. The chaos feels as if you’ve actually taken the dive off of this otherworldly waterfall waiting for the painful crash that awaits you at the bottom. The crash never comes however, as the album ends abruptly leaving the listener craving more of this adrenaline. OPN is the king of creating dreamlike landscapes, and the jarringly rapid ending to this album feels as if you’ve been abruptly woken from the craziest dream you’ve ever experienced.
Home Front: Watch It Die (released November 14, 2025): La Vida Es Un Mus Discos
Don’t miss Home Front live!
11/22 – Hollywood Palladium
11/22 – Knuckleheads Hollywood
11/23 – Hollywood Palladium
Home Front is a band that I’ve been seeing frequently in passing for the past couple years, but never quite understood what genre or scene they were a part of with how diverse their fanbase is. I couldn’t tell if they were an Oi group, a straight-forward hardcore project, a gothic post-punk band, or a “Pitchfork Punk” band for hipsters like Idles or Shame. It makes sense why I was so confused by their presence, as they impressively manage to appeal to all of these demographics effortlessly without trying to pander to any of them. If you even remotely like punk rock, hardcore, alternative, goth, new-wave, industrial, or even anthemic Springsteen-core; Home Front has you covered on all fronts. While they’ve never been afraid to blend different scenes together in their previous releases, this album instantly shows you everything that the band is about; they wear their influences on their sleeves heavily, but everything about Watch It Die is completely fresh and innovative, sounding like nothing you have ever heard before once all of their pieces are fit together.
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Watch It Die starts with the instantly anthemic self-titled track that sets the tone for all of the different emotions and sounds you’re going to hear throughout. Home Front is from Alberta, Canada but you would never guess considering how authentically British the sing-along nature of the song is (especially in its chorus). Even more surprising is the random incorporation of the bright synthesizer riff halfway through the song that could almost fit on a song from The Aquabats with how cheery and in-your-face it is. Everything about Home Front is in-your-face to the fullest degree; the close-minded might find this unabashed character to be corny, but in reality it’s as authentic as you could possibly get from an artist in 2025.
Home Front
One of the most impressive aspects of Home Front’s new wave and post-punk tracks on the album like “Kiss The Sky” and “Dancing With Anxiety” is how perfectly they emulate the music of 1980’s dance clubs. Again, this might sound like I’m calling them derivative but it could not be meant as more of a compliment. Many other punk-adjacent groups like Cold Cave evoke this same nightclub environment in their sound, but most lean a bit too hard into the “goth” aesthetics in order to appeal to younger audiences obsessed with cultivating that image.
Home Front doesn’t need to lean into any specific trends here, fully embracing the tongue-in-cheek “arena rockstar” elements of the new-wave era and making these influences feel as authentic as possible. They probably wouldn’t be able to pull this bold persona off without their roots in barroom sing-a-long Oi culture, but they are certainly exploring every avenue possible with the unique blend of aesthetics they’ve cultivated for themselves.
Stepping away from the 80’s new-wave and post-punk elements of their sound, the Oi tracks on the album also bleed authenticity with their working-class lyrics and anthemic choruses that demand the audience to rush the front of the stage in order to scream along. The track “For The Children (Fuck Em All)” sounds like it could have been a B-side on Dropkick Murphys’ debut album Do Or Die with how aggressive its chants are. Even listening to the song alone makes you feel like you’re in the middle of a massive, sweaty circle-pit for a legacy punk band. For the youth and the non-poser geezers, Home Front has likely already reached that status upon this album’s release.
Watch It Die does an absolutely superb job of wrapping the perfect bow on everything the album has to offer in diversity of sound and socio-political messaging . The final act kicks off with “Young Offender”, an authentically raw and mean anthem for the Rude Boy listeners. Feeling like a spiritual successor to “Bloodstains” by Agent Orange, the song acts as a new anthem for the borderline-homeless antisocial punks that are often forgotten about in modern scenes.
It’s so rare to hear lyrics for the legitimate lower-class troublemaker punks of today like:
“A life of crime,
We’re doing time.
These schools feel just like jail.
They pretend to teach,
We pretend to learn.
The system’s set for us to fail”
These themes of hopeless abandon in a future set for failure continue even further into the final track of the album, albeit returning to the more arena-filling new-wave sound from the aggressive Oi punk. The shift in sound does not take away from the rebellious nature of resistance, however, as “Empire” sets the bold and nearly impossible goal of creating a sense of cathartic release surrounding the socio-political anxieties that consume the youth at every turn in daily life.
The Empire is indeed falling into the sea, and Home Front challenges us to romanticize this moment in history, rather than dwell on the existential doom that everyone seems to be so caught up in. Both Oneohtrix Point Never and Home Front dare us to embrace this dystopian future that we seem to be living in. Even if things feel lonely and hopeless in the current state of the world, you will never truly be alone as long as we have pioneering albums like these to make us think differently about our surroundings. OPN and Home Front have just released two of the most interesting albums of this year, but they’re also two of the most important albums in how accurately they reflect the emotional state of the current generation. With art as inspiring as this, it’s hard to imagine we will be in these dystopian end times for much longer.
Words by Danny Ryan
Photos by: Abraham Preciado
