It’s time to reflect on the year in music! This month, we’ll be highlighting Jam of Today’s favourite albums of 2025. Working our way up to the #1 album, which will be revealed on the 31st of December, we’ll go one by one past this year’s favourites. Today, our #20: ‘Antibloom / Pink Moon‘ by Silverstein.

As if it wasn’t hard enough yet to choose what albums to highlight during this month full of favourites, some bands decided to challenge me even more by not just releasing 1 but 2 albums within the same year. One of the acts doing such a heinous thing are Canadian emo veterans Silverstein, who eventually (thank god) glued together ‘Antibloom’ (released 21st of February) and ‘Pink Moon’ (released 12th of September). However, since both releases only contain 8 songs, we will be focusing on this compilation album which turned out to be one that’s strongly catered to the settled down emo kids of yesteryear.

I’m glad Silverstein decided to paste both albums together. For one, I would’ve certainly not wanted to highlight 2 different albums by 1 band this month. Also, this way, the Canadians may have secured themselves a spot in my endlist since I’m not sure the albums separately would’ve done as well as this one. February album ‘Antibloom’ makes up for the first half of the release which causes me to be naturally way more familiar with this part of the compilation already. Songs such as ‘Mercy Mercy’, ‘Don’t Let Me Get Too Low’, and the 2024-released ‘Skin & Bones’ have been amongst some of my most played songs this year. To put it in perspective, off of ‘Pink Moon’ we only find ‘Negative Space’ as a song that has received much airplay here at home. So, yeah. I was a bit skeptical at first. Would the second half of this compilation be as good as the first?

I soon realised the saving grace for Silverstein: both ‘Antibloom’ and ‘Pink Moon’ very much strengthen each other on this compilation. This merger has resulted in an album you would perhaps expect from All Time Low back in the day – which in itself is quite a pleasant feat since the latter has released yet another cheesy and forgettable album themselves this year. A couple of average tunes get alternated with some underrated and straight up good songs. Glue comes in the form of the unimpressive emo interlude ‘I Love You But I Have to Let You Go’, which does cause a must needed segue into what is a way more post-hardcore leaning second half. Songs such as the aforementioned ‘Negative Space’ and ‘Drain The Blood’ (featuring Jam of Today-artist Dayseeker) certainly give this compilation a great boost, though at this point the biggest highlights of the album already lie behind us. Silverstein’s 12th (and 13th?) balances on the edge of mediocrity but saves itself with some really strong tunes coming from both ends of the compilation.