Back in January 2025, I made it a mission to rediscover my love for discovering music.

When I was a teenager, I was obsessed with filling my iPod and finding different music. It didn’t necessarily have to be new, just new to me. Somewhere along the way, though, I got comfortable. Like I think happens to a lot of us, I stopped searching. I kept up with releases from my favorite bands, but even then, if one of them put out an album I wasn’t crazy about, I’d gradually stop getting excited for whatever came next.

Then I found Geordie Greep.

The first time I heard The New Sound, something flipped. I’d been making myself listen to at least one unfamiliar album every week, treating music discovery almost like an assignment. Suddenly, I didn’t have to make myself do it anymore. I was obsessed with finding music again.

That feeling lit a fire under me, and looking back, it’s probably a significant part of why Sixth Ring exists today.

Top Tracks — Holy, Holy; Motorbike

Released October 4, 2024

The New Sound is fresh, exciting, unpredictable, and completely its own thing. If you listened to black midi before this (I hadn’t at the time) you’ll immediately recognize elements of Greep’s style and sound. But his first solo album has its own personality that separates it from his previous band.

For me, it was easily the most impressive album I had heard in years, and it probably still holds the title of the most impressive album of the 2020s so far, though there are definitely some contenders.

Lyrically, things can get pretty strange when you start paying close attention. But the music and Greep’s vocal performance are so compelling that I’m willing to go wherever the album wants to take me.

Greep has talked about influences ranging from classical music and Frank Zappa to Brazilian jazz, and once you know that, you can hear all of it. The impressive part is that none of those influences make The New Sound feel derivative. Instead, he twists them together into something that feels almost like its own genre.

Listening to the whole album feels like being dropped into the middle of some deranged musical that refuses to let up. It’s theatrical, chaotic, funny, uncomfortable, beautiful, and completely over the top. Somehow, it can feel like it’s going in six directions at once while still functioning as one cohesive piece of work.

More importantly for me, it reminded me why I loved looking for music in the first place.

Rating — 6/6 Rings

By Lish