If you like your music to be adventurous, sometimes challenging and very occasionally quite (over?)long, then 2025 has been a year you’ve probably enjoyed. The year has seen the release of many new studio albums, live releases and rereleased/remastered albums meeting the criteria many prog fans have about the music they love, from epic prog metal (Dream Theater) to the ambient and cerebral (Steven Wilson). New and established bands have put music out there on the market, and even though there’s no accepted definition of what constitutes a ‘prog’ piece of music—”music you can dance to inside your own head” is as good a definition as any—it’s accepted one fan’s adventurous music is another fan’s pretentious nonsense. Most prog fans will know it when they hear it.
There have been several releases from established artists which have enhanced their already glowing reputations. Jethro Tull released Curious Ruminant, their third new album in the past four years after almost two decades with no new releases. Neal Morse can always be relied upon to grace the year with at least one epic and, with Cosmic Cathedral, he released Deep Water, which included the 38-minute title track. Neal will be back in February 2026 with NMB‘s new release L.I.L.T. There were also exceptionally good new albums from IQ (Dominion), Pattern Seeking Animals (Friends For All Creatures), The Flower Kings (Love), Gazpacho (Magic 8-Ball) and from Karmakanik (Transmutation). Special mention should go to Spock’s Beard, who put out one of their strongest new releases for years with The Archaeoptimist, and also to Solstice, who increased their standing by releasing Clann and being voted ‘Band of the Year’ by readers of Prog Magazine last year. Where they go from here will be fascinating to see. Styx, with Circling From Above, showed they were capable of performing prog, which surprised many fans. But perhaps to no one’s surprise, album of the year on most prog sites was Steven Wilson‘s The Overview, with Wilson going cosmic and using space as a metaphor for isolation and loneliness.
2025 also saw the release of several sparkling live albums, as it’s usually onstage where prog bands can freely express their ideas and stretch out. Jon Anderson showed, even at 80 years young, he still has the voice. The album Perpetual Change, with Band Geeks, was a live set of classic Yes tunes, and they showed what Yes are missing now Anderson no longer fronts the band. Steve Hackett released The Lamb Stands Up at the Albert Hall, Dream Theater put out Quarantième: Live à Paris, Riverside came up with Live ID and Big Big Train released Are We Nearly There Yet. It was also good to see two classic seventies prog bands re-entering the fray. Gentle Giant rereleased a remastered version of their classic 1976 live album, Playing The Fool, and Camel rereleased 1975’s Moonmadness with bonus tracks.
One unexpected highlight of the year was when two well-established prog vocalists went into almost singer-songwriter confessional mode with the release of deeply personal albums. Jakko Jakszyk released Son Of Glenn, about the father he never knew until almost right at the very end of his life, and Nad Sylvan put out Monumentata, with the subject matter being his fractious relationship with his parents, especially his father.
Sadly, as is the case every year, the great concert hall in the sky welcomed more than its fair share of new entrants, which included a number of stellar names. Though they weren’t prog musicians, the passing of Ozzy Osbourne and Brian Wilson touched practically everybody. Whether you liked his music or not, everyone knew Ozzy, and there can be few people who don’t like the music of The Beach Boys, particularly their classic sixties hits. Brian Wilson’s music helped define California as a state of mind, and the summer of love may well have been different had it not been for how Wilson created California as an image.
The passing of John Lodge means Justin Hayward is now the sole remaining member of The Moody Blues‘ classic lineup. Both Terry Reid and Chris Dreja had connections to what became Led Zeppelin: Reid turned down Jimmy Page’s invitation and recommended Robert Plant instead, while Dreja—according to some accounts—declined Page’s invitation to join the band, and John Paul Jones became bassist. Sixties icon Marianne Faithfull also passed on, as did Badfinger‘s Joey Molland, Supertramp‘s Rick Davies, and Kiss‘ Ace Frehley. As the musicians of the sixties and seventies enter their twilight years, it seems every month brings more sad news as a familiar musician takes up membership of the celestial choir. To everybody mentioned here, and all the others who left us, thanks for the music.
But let’s not end on a downer. There were some great albums released in 2025, the prog scene is flourishing and there’s every reason to believe 2026 will see a continuation of this trend. For myself, my choices of great new albums of 2025 would include:
- Hawkwind – There Is No Space For Us
- Gleb Kolyadin – Mobula
- Jethro Tull – Curious Ruminant
- Solstice – Clann
- Cosmic Cathedral – Deep Water
- The Flower Kings – Love
- Nad Sylvan – Monumentata
- Lunatic Soul – The World Under Unsun
- Spock’s Beard – The Archaeoptimist
long, then 2025 has been..,){kind=link}