News

The November 2025 Chart

The top ten tracks for November 2025 from Wud Records have been published in a new compilation at SoundCloud.

Changes are underway at Wud Records…

Regarding the new chart, we shall elaborate further with regard to each platform where our music is represented.

Bandcamp Is Still the Best Platform for Artists

If you are not yet a member of Bandcamp, we strongly suggest you sign up, whether you are an indie label, a musician or a fan of music, or all three. Do it now! It’s free to join. Just click here. :)

For any independent artist or label wanting to sell music or merch, there is no better place on the web to do so. If you don’t believe us, check out any search engine to see what other artists have to say about what the best site is for independent artists and labels. Bandcamp are simply Numero Uno. Finito!

When you subscribe to a music streaming platform, you don’t actually *own* any of the music. You’re just renting a bit of bandwidth on their distribution service, and most of the rent revenue you are paying for it goes to big corporations rather than the artists you love. It’s a terrible business model, both for artists and fans alike.

Consider also this. There is always a danger that streaming services might remove music or artists from their platform (e.g. the recent dispute between Universal Music Group and TikTok), or the platform may even cease to exist altogether. Remember VitaminIC, MySpace, FriendsReunited?

To avoid having the soundtracks to your life erased, we strongly recommend buying physical media and downloads so you can listen to your favourite songs whenever you wish. You know it makes sense!

Whilst several music platforms offer music downloads, they all charge a lot more and take a much bigger percentage of that higher price then Bandcamp does.

This means that you pay more, the band receives less, and a big greedy corporation takes a big old chunk of the money you paid to support the artist all for itself, just because it can. It’s a lose-lose situation, unless you happen to be a big greedy corporation who can rip people off however the fancy takes them.

Buying music from Bandcamp will cost you less and support the artist more. About 80% to 85% of what you spend at Bandcamp goes directly to the artist or their label, and is paid daily.

So it’s always a good idea to download from Bandcamp whenever possible, as they are the best site for supporting artists. For us, one download of a €7 album is worth about 3300 snotify streams.

You can even pay more than the asking price for music on Bandcamp if you wish to add a little extra support for the artist. Again, this goes to the artists themselves, not some greedy anonymous megacorporation who only care for money, not the music you love.

There is also a rather fabulous Community feature at Bandcamp, and you can join ours by clicking here.

SoundCloud

Just as we were enjoying the best month we ever had on SoundCloud, our account was unexpectedly deleted by mistake. The account was subsequently restored, but was still badly damaged. It took until mid-October for it to be properly repaired.

In the meantime, there was not a single word from SoundCloud themselves regarding what they were doing to repair our account. This was the catalyst for a number of the changes that are happening.

We still do not fully trust the information we get from SoundCloud and its slowly improving Insights system. However, there has been enough improvement in data quality in the last couple of months for it to be useful again.

Shitify

We removed all of our music from spotify a few months ago. We highly recommend you do the same, if you have any there. We also highly recommend that you cancel your subscription, and move your playlists (and so on) to a more ethical streaming service. Every other streaming platform is more ethical than snotify.

We don’t say this lightly. Nor do we say so from a position of ignorance. There are many very good reasons to remove all your music from spotify and to cancel your sub. Do it now!

For more information, please refer to this news post: https://www.wudrecords.co.uk/news/wud-records-boycott-spotify/

Tidal, Coda, YouTube, Amazon, Deezer, Apple Music, etc.

We use data from our distributors Globex, Soundrop and CD Baby for information regarding streams on platforms such as Coda, Tidal, YouTube, Deezer and so on when reckoning the monthly charts.

Data from the streaming services filters through to us via our distributors, and we are not very trusting of it. At best we can get a general feel of what is going on across all of the streaming services this way. Because the data arrives several days, or even weeks, late, we only use it to extrapolate general trends.

HearThis, Audius, Audiomack

We have started organising our music at HearThis since the recent debacle with SoundCloud. Unfortunately, their stats are not terribly helpful and rather time-consuming to collate, although to be fair, they are improving.

The aforementioned debacle with SoundCloud was the catalyst for ourselves taking the decision to add our music to both Audius and Audiomack. Both platforms came highly recommended, although their stats, like at HearThis, are also not especially informative.

In Conclusion…

If somebody actually pays to download something, they must have liked it! Our artists and ourselves are always very grateful to our supporters in this respect. It genuinely helps keep the fires burning and the wheels turning.

When somebody reposts a track, that gives it the opportunity to be heard by a potential new fan. This is always a tremendous help for creative souls. It enables that track to be discovered and enjoyed by the community of the person doing the sharing, which can generate new fans.

A ‘like’ is nice, but reposts actually helps the artist reach a bigger audience. You create the chance for that to happen. Recommending a song costs you nothing at all and can be a massive help for an independent artist. Why not do it now? :)

How Did We Calculate The November 2025 Chart?

The algorithm we use gives greater weight to downloads and reposts, then comments and likes (active engagement), then plays (passive engagement). Different platforms perform differently and are given different weightings based on standard deviation calculations.

We use general tendencies and trends that have occured over the last calender month, as well as specifics where they are available. The data has been amalgamated together from all of the different platforms to make the new Top Ten. Archive tracks and bonus tracks are ignored, as is anything from people who clearly didn’t listen to the music.

Only you, the listener, can influence our next chart. So if there is a song you particularly like, keep playing it! Leave a comment, repost it, share it to your social media feeds! Download it from our Bandcamp! Add it to a playlist! It absolutely can make a difference.

Thanks For All Your Help!

Massive thanks go out to everybody who helped to support all of us during November 2025 by listening to, commenting on and reposting our bands’ tracks on SoundCloud, Bandcamp and elsewhere.

All the wonderful fans of our bands who supported us with downloads from Bandcamp are especially appreciated. Just one download of a €7 album is worth about 3300 snotify streams. By buying a download, you genuinely help us keep the fires burning, and collectively we thank you for that most graciously. May you be blessed by the gods of rock n roll! :)

We would also like to say a special thank you to all the splendid people on Twitter and BlueSky who have been enjoying and reposting our tracks to their followers. All the support and positive feedback has been incredibly heartwarming for us all. It makes our endeavours here feel worthwhile.

Thank you very much to everyone who bought items from our merch store. Anyone who shares a photo of themselves with their Wud item on social media will receive an extra goody from ourselves once we have seen it and shared the photo on to our community as well.

If you buy something cool from the Flicker merch store, or the Dark Company merch store, we shall also send you an extra goody if you show us a photo of yourself (or friend, or environment) on social media with the item you purchased.

Last and by no means least, we would like to say thank you very much to all of the splendid people who have been buying us coffees at BuyMeACoffee. It’s very kind of you to help us out. All of these things absolutely contribute to ourselves being able to keep going, and spend more time making beautiful music for you to enjoy. It is truly appreciated very much indeed.

Who’s In The November 2025 Top Ten?

The latest top ten features four different acts. There are four songs from Dark Company, four from BSoD + D², and one each by the Band of Georges and Mark Drower and the Everyones. Six of the songs are new entries, two are re-entries and two are fallers.

Dark Company

Congratulations to Dark Company! They enjoyed another excellent month and claimed the top four spots of the newest chart. All four songs are new releases, and belong to the SNAFU CD of their forthcoming triple-CD album A for Acronym.

Straight in at number one is Committed by Dark Company, from their growing SNAFU CD. All of these songs are work-in-progress, although many of them are not too shabby and give a decent idea of where the songs are going.

Committed is a lyric that Pete wrote in December 2010 and describes his extreme sense of alienation from everything that he felt ‘normal’ people did. He was always very thankful that he’d forged his own path and never had any interest in conforming to what society expected of him. He really was the most unqiue of characters.

The music for Committed is unusual as well. The original guitar part was abandoned, although the original bass part still stands. The bass plays the main riff always in the ascension, even though to do so seems counter-intuitive. The guitars play single notes in harmony with the bass to make the triads that form the chords of the song, which is in the key of B minor.

A new entry at number two is another song by Dark Company from their A for Acronym album. This one is called Helping Hands, and is a solid slab of classic rock or britpop in the key of E major.

Whilst recording his bass part, the normally quicksilver-fingered thudmeister Maxx laughed with puzzlement upon discovering that his part was rather harder to play than it sounds. Dark Company have a couple oof future plans for the ending of Helping Hands, which are reassuringly goosebump-inducing.

Helping Hands undergoes a rather unusual key change in the third verse, which happened completely by accident when Pete couldn’t quite remember where the melody went. The result turned out to be splendid, and the band went with it and kept it.

The third new entry this month is at number three. This is also the third Dark Company song to hit the chart and is called Conspiracy. It starts with Sven’s thundersome drums accompanied by industrial grade heavy guitars in the key of E, then moves up to A for the verses. There is no chorus.

Conspiracy is one of Dark Company‘s heavier songs and features some splendid synth work from Josh. The lyric was penned by Pete in the summer of 2010.

Another new entry at number four is Project Terminated, the last of the latest batch of the newest Dark Company songs. Pete wrote the lyric for Project Terminated in January 2011. The guitar was composed on an instrument in standard tuning that had been lowered by a full tone, and with a drop-D – effectively, a drop-C.

Project Terminated describes the various ingenius ways humanity has discovered for sawing off the branch of the tree upon which is stands, thereby rushing with a certain amount of inevitability towards its own doom. It may seem a dark subject, but it is done with plenty of dark humour, and perhaps an alternative future may yet exist for us all.

BSoD + D²

The new release by The Bastard Sons of Dennis with Dave Danielli, Cruelty to Blues, has provided the newest chart with four splendid songs, including two new entries.

Cruelty to Blues was only released last month and has already gone very well. Further news regarding the album will appear in the coming days.

Down from number one to number five is the first song this month from BSoD + D². Seven Screaming Diz-Busters is a highly esoteric and extraordinary piece of progressive rock composition, beautifully interpreted by The Bastard Sons of Dennis with Dave Danielli on bass. It is a song for which The Bastard Sons of Dennis were well known.

Originally this song was released by Blue Öyster Cult on their 1973 Tyranny and Mutation album. It was big crowd favourite at a live performances by The Bastard Sons of Dennis and you can enjoy watching a video of them playing it live by clicking here.

Then Came the Last Days of May is a new entry for BSoD + D². Blue Öyster Cult perform this song in the key of E minor, and our tremendous trio have transposed it to A minor for their cover version.

Then Came the Last Days of May tells the tragic story of three young men who were killed in a drug deal that went wrong. It is a very wistful and beautiful song, and The Bastard Sons of Dennis with Dave Danielli base their version more on the live On Your Feet Or On Your Knees version than the original studio version on Blue Öyster Cult’s 1972 eponymous album.

Falling five places from number three to number eight is a song which is also from the new Cruelty to Blues album by BSoD + D². Astronomy is a profoundly beautiful and haunting creation. It was composed by the Bouchard brothers, Joe and Albert, and Sandy Pearlman. It is the final track of Blue Öyster Cult’s 1974 Secret Treaties album, and an absolute masterpiece of progressive rock composition.

The version of Astronomy by The Bastard Sons of Dennis with Dave Danielli is more ‘produced’ than live performances. They would often end a show with Astronomy, introducing it as a song that was famously covered by Metallica. “We wrote it, of course; ahem, cough…” Chuck would quip.

The second new entry for The Bastard Sons of Dennis with Dave Danielli is at number nine. It is a cover of Blue Öyster Cult‘s fabulous song The Subhuman, from the 1974 Secret Treaties album. This cover version leans heavily on the breathtaking awesome live version found on Blue Öyster Cult‘s 1975 live album, On Your Feet Or On Your Knees.

Despite its length and with plenty of lead guitar breaks, those guitar parts were learned and composed, and were performed almost exactly the same every time The Bastard Sons of Dennis gave The Subhuman a live outing. There is a video of them playing it here… and here. The video is in two parts due to a member of the audience having an accident with the camera person.

Band of Georges

A few months ago, we absolutely could not have anticipated the level of dominance over the charts the Band of Georges has had recently. Why? We were not even expecting to release any of these songs at the start of March!

The Wud Records website was launched in 2008, replacing the old Wud site which simply disappeared soon afterwards. Ever since before the Wud Records website went live, various people tried to persuade George to allow his old Tascam 244 portastudio demos to be released. He always refused, point blank. There was no arguing with him. It was just: “No.” And that was that.

And then, suddenly, he seems to have had a change of heart. He allowed a few of us to listen to his demos, which we thought were surprisingly good. Certainly a lot better than we had anticipated, given everything he had said about awful they were. Whatever it was that happened, we are delighted that it did. Because now, we have been allowed to release all of the volumes of his early songs in their demo form.

We have done very little work to these recordings. They were just lifted from their master cassettes and digitised in our studios, and normalised to 0dB. That was it. Everything sounds just as it was. The cassettes, nearly 40 years old, have stood the test of time very well.

There are no pages for the Band of Georges at Explicit Music at this time, although some may appear following further negotiations. Each released song from the Band of Georges has a comment or a memory from George on its album’s page here at the Wud Records website. Some of that information, along with other facts regarding each song, appears at its page on SoundCloud. There is likely to be extra information given on the two separate pages, so we recommend you check out both.

Losing Your Grip is an odd and perhaps under-rated song, especially so when it was contemporary. There is a glorious chorus and three verses, each being about a different person and their gradual descents via entropy into insanity. The sections between the verses are in 3/8, or are atemporal dissolutions into strangeness and noise, with all the knobs on the Electric Mistress turned up to full.

Losing Your Grip was performed by Wud. Ken did a fine job of singing the vocal parts. You can enjoy the Wud version of Losing Your Grip at the HearThis website by clicking here.

Mark Drower and the Everyones

It has been a very good month for Mark Drower and the Everyones, with a song from their seminal Blaze Tape recording landing at number ten.

Treasure by Mark Drower and the Everyones has a redoubtable history and was often jammed and made into other songs entirely, songs which never saw the light of day beyond the rooms they were jammed in.

Treasure is a fabulous song that Mark created. Its wonderful lyrics were often quoted, and those obscure chords in drop-D tuning that Mark taught us never appeared in any chord dictionary. The drop-D tuning is still known as Drower Tuning by many of the wider Wud posse.

Treasure features the seminal lead guitarings of a teenage Pok the Bard. Lisa Williams, who played the part of Treasure during the play, reads the talkover at the beginning.

* None of our other acts made it onto the November 2025 chart. *

Listening Options

If you would like to go to SoundCloud to hear the top ten songs from Wud Records in November 2025, as played, liked, commented upon and reposted by listeners, please click here.

If you prefer to listen right here at the Wud Records website, you will find that it is the new default music player. You will find it on all non band-specific pages at the site, including our Links collection and homepage.

The November 2025 chart has its very own dedicated page among the charts pages of this website. You can listen to the new compilation on its page by clicking here.

Each of the previous charts also has its own page in the charts section of this website. If you would like to see all our old charts, or for any previous month you are especially interested in, all of them can be accessed easily by clicking here.

WudSongs at HearThis has finally been updated. All of the songs, photos and song information there is now complete.

WudSongs is a definitive collection of Wud’s songs, as they were, in the later part of the summer of 1985. We tended to feel that this was the collection of songs which defined them.

Wud showed a great deal of potential, which was sadly never properly fulfilled. The album WudSongs at HearThis demonstrates how they were becoming an exceptional and tight unit.

Wud, the band, dissolved shortly after these recordings. The members of Wud reformed as Laughing Sun, without Ken’s disruptive influence.

As far as we can tell, Ken was never in another band. Shortly after Wud disbanded Ken became a born-again christian and eventually disappeared altogether.

Recently, we started a lengthy project – rescanning and reworking all of the photos the are uploaded to the websites, and the many others that are not.

When the original Wud website was new, tiny files and dialup was the way to go. Now that things have developed and moved on somewhat, we can use much bigger files of much higher quality for such things.

Each track from WudSongs at HearThis has its own photo from back in the day, rescanned and enhanced. We tried where possible to use the most relevant photos.

The songs themselves have been arranged into a different order to how they were recorded. This is mostly for reasons of aesthetics. The songs take up a little more than one and a half 90-minute cassettes and were recorded over the course of five separate sessions.

There are more recordings of Wud in our cassette vault. We shall bring them out into the public in due course. Fans of Wud should be sure to bookmark or favourite our News service, join our Bandcamp Community, and follow us on BlueSky and X (formerly Twitter) to be sure of seeing further Wud-related releases.

To enjoy the WudSongs album here at the Wud Records website, please click here.

To listen to WudSongs at HearThis instead, please click here.

The Dark Company SNAFU album has been updated. A for Acronym CD 1: SNAFU by Dark Company has grown by a few songs this month. Did you see? Well, it’s true!

Last month, October 2025, we focused on The Bastard Sons of Dennis, and their brand new release Cruelty to Blues.

The month before, September 2025, we released some more songs by Pok the Bard.

Before that, we were releasing all of the Band of Georges material.

This month we’ve added new Dark Company songs to the public domain. Altogether there are now ten SNAFU songs that have been released. The first eight songs on the A for Acronym CD 1: SNAFU album by Dark Company are still under wraps. We shall release the remaining eight songs soon.

Would you like access to a secret link where the remaining SNAFU songs are, as well as the songs from the VSF and FUBAR CDs?

We will email you the link after you have downloaded a Dark Company album from Bandcamp, or ordered some merch from Dark Company’s third party merch store on Redbubble.

You can visit the Wud Records Bandcamp by clicking here, and Dark Company’s fabulous merch store by clicking here.

All of the Dark Company SNAFU album is work in progress, even the cover art. We shall attempt to finish the album in due course, when there is time.

The lyrics and song information for the entire 18-song album is already published at Explicit Music. You can check out each song by clicking here.

The new songs we have released are Conspiracy, Project Terminated, Committed, and Helping Hands.

We love all of these songs and hope you will as well. All four are rock songs of different petrologies. The SNAFU CD is, after all, a rock album.

The A for Acronym album is a triple-CD album. SNAFU is an album of rock songs, VSF an album of reggae songs, and FUBAR is an album of songs that don’t fit particularly comfortably in either of the other two categories. As the whole project is work in progress, some song locations are liable to change.

Next month we shall be attempting to release some Flicker material, depending on how things go.

To listen to the new songs and the whole A for Acronym CD 1: SNAFU album by Dark Company, here at the awesome Wud Records website, as it stands right now, please click here.

To enjoy the album over at SoundCloud instead, please click here.

The unfinished Concept Album demos for The Concept Album have been compiled and released as a new collection of songs. You will find it in the Band of Georges pages at the Wud Records website, and at SoundCloud.

The Concept Album never had an actual name, just its working title. It was first conceived by George in early 1983.

A lot of the music was composed fairly quickly in the spring of that year, and the songs soon fell into an order. The lyrics, however, were not so rapidly forthcoming.

In the summer of 1983, George and his girlfriend spent a week in a caravan in some woods at the edge of Dartmoor. They planned to write the lyrics and work on the storyline of The Concept Album.

In the end, the pair of them managed to write a whole song called They Painted Their Bodies. They did indeed organise the story a little, but most of the week was spent doing other things that teenagers enjoy doing in caravans far away from parents and responsibilities.

All the same, they felt it was progress and returned to the same caravan for another week later in the summer. This time, no more songs were completed, although they certainly had a tremendous amount of fun.

By and by, The Concept Album fell a little by the wayside. It was not revived until a couple of years later, around the end of 1985 and the beginning of 1986.

By this time, George had a new girlfriend, and she also helped out with the lyrics. During a burst of creativity, several songs were completed and the storyline was adjusted. And then, The Concept Album returned to the back burner for a time.

The next outbreak of creativity came in the early part of 1987, when George managed to write a few more of the songs. A few extra songs had been added to the album’s original running order. Everything was organised into a brown folder. It still exists… somewhere. We didn’t find it yet!

The songs that exist, and have been recorded as 4-track demos, have all been put into this new compilation of The Concept Album. The songs that are there play in the correct order.

However, there are several songs that are not present. Three have been written and not recorded – The Ceremony (working title), Round in a Circle (a whole actual song), and The Return (possible actual title, or possible working title). There is also the issue that a small number of the songs have never been written.

In case there should ever be another outburst of creativity regarding The Concept Album, we shall let you know in our News service, our Bandcamp Community, and on BlueSky and X (formerly Twitter). We would suggest that you don’t hold your breath!

Will The Concept Album ever be finished? We cannot say. But for whatever it is worth, we made the compilation. You can hear it right now, as it stands.

To listen to unfinished concept album demos for The Concept Album at its own page here at the Wud Records website, please click here.

To listen at SoundCloud instead, please click here.

The Now songs have been compiled into a special playlist at SoundCloud, and added to a new Now page at our website.

This compilation of Now’s songs features a number of songs from the Band of Georges demos, and a few from Pok‘s Anthology album. None of the songs on this new compilation are actual recordings of the band Now.

Back in the day, George was a far more prolific songwriter than Simon, so the Now set features far more of George’s songs. Simon also became highly prolific, but it happened after Now had come to an end.

All of the songs in this compilation were included in the repertoire of Now’s second incarnation. This lineup of the band consisted of Simon (guitar, voice), George (guitar, voice) and Grape (drums).

The second incarnation evolved out of the first incarnation of Now, which was Mark Drower on acoustic guitar and voice, Jon Kneebone on drums, and Simon and George both on guitar.

With all the Band of Georges songs released, we are finally able to make such compilations for our legacy bands. These older bands may not necessarily have versions of all of their songs recorded.

Making these compilations will allow new fans to discover the music. It also allows old fans to hear the songs the bands would have performed back in the day once again, and perhaps to remember them, as well as hear these particular versions, as imagined by the composers, if arguably performed and recorded somewhat ham-fistedly.

Now only actually performed one proper show with electric guitars and amplification. That was at Sidbury Colleseum (aka village hall) in February 1983. They did’t manage to complete their set before deciding that discretion was the better part of valor and abandoning the stage to drink cider and let the DJ take over.

All the same, we arranged these songs into some sort of a set order that Now might have played, had they managed to perform a bit better and more often. We hope you enjoy the ride!

There are a few more songs that are not represented in the compilation. We hope to be able to locate these and process them in our machines so that they can be uploaded someday.

We are planning to publish more compilations of the sets of other legacy bands who are not terribly well represented here. Further such announcements will be made via our News service, and on BlueSky and X (formerly Twitter).

They may even be published at our Bandcamp Community! We cordially invite you to click here and join it.

To listen to this new compilation of Now songs at SoundCloud, please click here.

If you would rather listen via the Now pages right here at the Wud Records website, please click here instead.

The October 2025 Chart

The top ten tracks for October 2025 from Wud Records have been published in a new compilation at SoundCloud.

Changes are underway at Wud Records…

Regarding the new chart, we shall elaborate further with regard to each platform where our music is represented.

Bandcamp Is Still the Best Platform for Artists

If you are not yet a member of Bandcamp, we strongly suggest you sign up, whether you are an indie label, a musician or a fan of music, or all three. Do it now! It’s free to join. Just click here. :)

For any independent artist or label wanting to sell music or merch, there is no better place on the web to do so. If you don’t believe us, check out any search engine to see what other artists have to say about what the best site is for independent artists and labels. Bandcamp are simply Numero Uno. Finito!

When you subscribe to a music streaming platform, you don’t actually *own* any of the music. You’re just renting a bit of bandwidth on their distribution service, and most of the rent revenue you are paying for it goes to big corporations rather than the artists you love. It’s a terrible business model, both for artists and fans alike.

Consider also this. There is always a danger that streaming services might remove music or artists from their platform (e.g. the recent dispute between Universal Music Group and TikTok), or the platform may even cease to exist altogether. Remember VitaminIC, MySpace, FriendsReunited?

To avoid having the soundtracks to your life erased, we strongly recommend buying physical media and downloads so you can listen to your favourite songs whenever you wish. You know it makes sense!

Whilst several music platforms offer music downloads, they all charge a lot more and take a much bigger percentage of that higher price then Bandcamp does.

This means that you pay more, the band receives less, and a big greedy corporation takes a big old chunk of the money you paid to support the artist all for itself, just because it can. It’s a lose-lose situation, unless you happen to be a big greedy corporation who can rip people off however the fancy takes them.

Buying music from Bandcamp will cost you less and support the artist more. About 80% to 85% of what you spend at Bandcamp goes directly to the artist or their label, and is paid daily.

So it’s always a good idea to download from Bandcamp whenever possible, as they are the best site for supporting artists. For us, one download of a €7 album is worth about 3300 snotify streams.

You can even pay more than the asking price for music on Bandcamp if you wish to add a little extra support for the artist. Again, this goes to the artists themselves, not some greedy anonymous megacorporation who only care for money, not the music you love.

There is also a rather fabulous Community feature at Bandcamp, and you can join ours by clicking here.

SoundCloud

The entropy magnet, which we thought had been left back in the uk, returned with a vengeance in July. Just as we were enjoying the best month we ever had on SoundCloud, our account was unexpectedly deleted by mistake. The account was subsequently restored, but was still badly damaged. It took until mid-October for it to be properly repaired.

In the meantime, there was not a single word from SoundCloud themselves regarding what they were doing to repair our account. This was the catalyst for a number of the changes that are happening.

We still do not fully trust the information we get from SoundCloud and its slowly improving Insights system. However, there has been enough improvement in data quality in the last couple of months for it to be useful again.

Shitify

We have removed all of our music from spotify. We highly recommend you do the same, if you have any there. We also highly recommend that you cancel your subscription, and move your playlists (and so on) to a more ethical streaming service. Every other streaming platform is more ethical than snotify.

We don’t say this lightly. Nor do we say so from a position of ignorance. There are many very good reasons to remove all your music from spotify and to cancel your sub. Do it now!

For more information, please refer to this news post: https://www.wudrecords.co.uk/news/wud-records-boycott-spotify/

Tidal, YouTube, Amazon, Deezer, Apple Music, etc.

We are now using data from our distributors for streams on platforms such as YouTube, Deezer, Tidal and so on when reckoning the monthly charts. Unfortunately the data arrives several days, or even weeks, late, so we only use it to extrapolate general trends.

The data for these services filters through to us via our distributors, although we are not very trusting of it. At best we can get a general feel of what is going on across all of the streaming services this way.

HearThis, Audius, Audiomack

We have started organising our music at HearThis since the recent debacle with SoundCloud. Unfortunately, their stats are not terribly helpful and rather time-consuming to collate.

The aforementioned debacle with SoundCloud was the catalyst for ourselves taking the decision to add our music to both Audius and Audiomack. Both platforms came highly recommended, although their stats, like at HearThis, are also not especially informative.

In Conclusion…

The algorithm we use gives greater weight to downloads and reposts, then likes and comments (active engagement), then plays (passive engagement).

If somebody actually pays to download something, they must have liked it! Our artists and ourselves are always very grateful to our supporters in this respect. It genuinely helps keep the fires burning and the wheels turning.

When somebody reposts a track, that gives it the opportunity to be heard by a potential new fan. This is always a tremendous help for creative souls. It enables that track to be discovered and enjoyed by the community of the person doing the sharing, which can generate new fans.

A ‘like’ is nice, but reposts actually helps the artist reach a bigger audience. You create the chance for that to happen. Recommending a song costs you nothing at all and can be a massive help for an independent artist. Why not do it now? :)

How Did We Calculate The October 2025 Chart?

The latest system is based upon the general tendencies and trends that have occured over the last calender month, as well as specifics where they are available. These have been amalgamated together from all of the different platforms to make the new Top Ten. Archive tracks and bonus tracks are ignored, as is anything from people who clearly didn’t listen to the music.

Only you, the listener, can influence our November 2025 chart. So if there is a song you particularly like, keep playing it! Leave a comment, repost it, share it to your social media feeds! Download it from our Bandcamp! Add it to a playlist! It absolutely can make a difference.

Thanks For All Your Help!

Massive thanks go out to everybody who helped to support all of us during October 2025 by listening to, commenting on and reposting our bands’ tracks on SoundCloud, Bandcamp and elsewhere.

All the wonderful fans of our bands who supported us with downloads from Bandcamp are especially appreciated. Just one download of a €7 album is worth about 3300 snotify streams. By buying a download, you genuinely help us keep the fires burning, and collectively we thank you for that most graciously. May you be blessed by the gods of rock n roll! :)

We would also like to say a special thank you to all the splendid people on Twitter and BlueSky who have been enjoying and reposting our tracks to their followers. All the support and positive feedback has been incredibly heartwarming for us all. It makes our endeavours here feel worthwhile.

Thank you very much to everyone who bought items from our merch store. Anyone who shares a photo of themselves with their Wud item on social media will receive an extra goody from ourselves once we have seen it and shared the photo on to our community as well.

If you buy something cool from the Flicker merch store, or the Dark Company merch store, we shall also send you an extra goody if you show us a photo of yourself (or friend, or environment) on social media with the item you purchased.

Last and by no means least, we would like to say thank you very much to all of the splendid people who have been buying us coffees at BuyMeACoffee. It’s very kind of you to help us out. All of these things absolutely contribute to ourselves being able to keep going, and spend more time making beautiful music for you to enjoy. It is truly appreciated very much indeed.

Who’s In The October 2025 Top Ten?

The latest top ten features six different acts. There are five songs from BSoD + D², and one each for Pok the Bard, Dark Company, the Band of Georges, Mark Drower and the Everyones, and Alien Heat. Six of the songs are new entries, two are re-entries and two are fallers.

BSoD + D²

Congratulations to The Bastard Sons of Dennis with Dave Danielli! Their new release, Cruelty to Blues, was instantly popular and dominated the newest chart. Tracks from this new album occupy five of the top six places. All five are clearly new releases.

The Cruelty to Blues album has also started appearing on all of the big streaming platforms, but not spotify. Cruelty to Blues was delayed slightly at the streaming platforms because we needed to submit new artwork. Further news regarding this will be appearing in the coming days.

Straight into our charts at number one is a new entry for BSoD + D². Seven Screaming Diz-Busters is a highly esoteric and extraordinary piece of progressive rock composition, beautifully interpreted by The Bastard Sons of Dennis with Dave Danielli on bass. It is a song for which The Bastard Sons of Dennis were well known.

Originally this song was released by Blue Öyster Cult on their 1973 Tyranny and Mutation album. It was big crowd favourite at a live performances by The Bastard Sons of Dennis and you can enjoy watching a video of them playing it live by clicking here.

A new entry at number two is the next song from the Cruelty to Blues album. This is the opening track, Dominance and Submission. Originally released by Blue Öyster Cult on their 1974 Secret Treaties album, The Bastard Sons of Dennis would indulge in various acts of tomfoolery during a live performance of this song. Derek would introduce the band and thank the venue and sound engineer. He would also encourage the crowd to join in with the cries of “Dominance!”, “Submission!”.

In the long pauses before “It will be time!”, Derek and Chuck would spin their guitars upside down. Stuck on the back of Chuck’s guitar was a large sign that read “Throw panties now!”, and on the back of Derek’s was a similar sign that read “If no panties, bras!” Very few undergarments were ever actually tossed onto the stage, apart from on one occasion when somebody had brought a big bag full of old knickers and distributed them to the audience. Both the stage and the band were hooptiously drangled in assorted random panties.

The new number three song is also from the Cruelty to Blues album by BSoD + D². Astronomy is a profoundly beautiful and haunting creation. It was composed by the Bouchard brothers, Joe and Albert, and Sandy Pearlman. It is the final track of Blue Öyster Cult’s 1974 Secret Treaties album, and an absolute masterpiece of progressive rock composition.

The version of Astronomy by The Bastard Sons of Dennis with Dave Danielli is more ‘produced’ than live performances. They would often end a show with Astronomy, introducing it as a song that was famously covered by Metallica. “We wrote it, of course; ahem, cough…” Chuck would quip.

The next new entry for The Bastard Sons of Dennis with Dave Danielli is at number five. It is a cover of Blue Öyster Cult‘s Wings Wetted Down, from the 1973 Tyranny and Mutation album.

Wings Wetted Down is a masterfully crafted piece of songwriting, with its clever key changes and all its vocal and instrumental melodic hooks. It is considered a deep cut among BÖC fans. The version performed by The Bastard Sons of Dennis is largely true to the original, with the addition of a riff section that Derek solos over.

The final song to enter this month’s chart from BSoD + D² is a new entry at number six. This is the penultimate song from the Cruelty to Blues album by The Bastard Sons of Dennis with Dave Danielli. She’s as Beautiful as a Foot is another Blue Öyster Cult cover, which originates from the Long Island quintet’s 1972 eponymous album, Blue Öyster Cult. The original version is highly psychedelic.

When covered by The Bastard Sons of Dennis, Chuck tunes his guitar to DADGAD. The twinkly noises at the beginning are created using an old computer fan and its assorted janglesome danglesome appendages. She’s as Beautiful as a Foot was often performed first in a set of Bastard Sons of Dennis songs, due largely to the tuning.

Pok the Bard

We have started to release Pok‘s Anthology album’s tracks to SoundCloud (as mentioned in this News post) and doing so has made a big impact. Pok the Bard had a good month with one song in our new chart.

Down three from last month‘s number one is the newest release from Pok, called She’s Beautiful. This is an absolute delight of a song, which Pok composed when he was just a teenager. It was performed by Laughing Sun before being recorded and added to Pok‘s Anthology album. The version on Laughing Sun‘s Cander recording was the template Pok used for the newest version.

She’s Beautiful is indeed a beautiful song, as well as being highly historic. Pok plays all of the lead guitar apart from an eight-bar section where Fedax plays a short solo, based upon his Cander solo in 1985. Fedax would have played the Ice Maiden, but she needed a little attention. As Marsha had new strings, and was a close relative of the Ice Maiden, Fedax played his parts using Pok‘s guitar.

Dark Company

It was another good month for Dark Company, whose demo song Medicine Man re-entered our chart at number seven. It is the first time that Medicine Man, the opening track from Dark Company‘s Old Hands album, has charted since June 2019. Before then it charted several times, including a high of number three back in July 2016.

When Pete and George were composing Medicine Man, Pete wasn’t all that keen on the last section of lyrics. George made something of a feature out of it and suddenly Pete liked it again.

The lyrics are full of dark, strange. mystical imagery and there is a single bar of tortured, screaming guitar, which drives the listener wild with anticipation.

This version of Medicine Man is only a demo. We hope to get around to finishing it someday, along with the rest of Dark Company‘s Old Hands album.

Band of Georges

A few months ago, we absolutely could not have anticipated the level of dominance over the charts the Band of Georges has had recently. Why? We were not even expecting to release any of these songs at the start of March!

The Wud Records website was launched in 2008, replacing the old Wud site which simply disappeared soon afterwards. Ever since before the Wud Records website went live, various people tried to persuade George to allow his old Tascam 244 portastudio demos to be released. He always refused, point blank. There was no arguing with him. It was just: “No.” And that was that.

And then, suddenly, he seems to have had a change of heart. He allowed a few of us to listen to his demos, which we thought were surprisingly good. Certainly a lot better than we had anticipated, given everything he had said about awful they were. Whatever it was that happened, we are delighted that it did. Because now, we have been allowed to release all of the volumes of his early songs in their demo form.

We have done very little work to these recordings. They were just lifted from their master cassettes and digitised in our studios, and normalised to 0dB. That was it. Everything sounds just as it was. The cassettes, nearly 40 years old, have stood the test of time very well. The newest chart features one song from Volume VI Side A.

There are no pages for the Band of Georges at Explicit Music at this time, although some may appear following further negotiations. Each released song from the Band of Georges has a comment or a memory from George on its album’s page here at the Wud Records website. Some of that information, along with other facts regarding each song, appears at its page on SoundCloud. There is likely to be extra information given on the two separate pages, so we recommend you check out both.

It’s Just a Game is a re-entry this month, having been added to a popular playlist featuring a lot of very mainstream artists. The song was inspired by a friend and the mysteries sounding her past and how she had ended up in exeter. Some of the esoteric chords for It’s Just a Game were recycled into another much-loved song George wrote called Lullaby.

Mark Drower and the Everyones

It has been a very good month for Mark Drower and the Everyones, with a song from their seminal Blaze Tape recording landing at number nine.

I Know I Know You by Mark Drower and the Everyones was helped to its re-entry last month by becoming the global number ten in the acoustic category at HearThis.

I Know I Know You was composed by Mark Drower for the King’s School Ottery St Mary Project Week of 1982. As such, I Know I Know You is one of the oldest recordings in the Wud Records pantheon of fantastic songs.

This version of I Know I Know You is a beautiful song with a lot of history. It features a teenage Pok on lead guitar. It was performed live during the performance of the play Everyone by Frederick Franck, as well as by other bands that came later, such as Wud.

The song came in Act One of the play, directly after the scene where Everyone talks with his Friends.

The drop-D tuning Mark often used on his acoustic is still known as Drower Tuning by many of the wider Wud posse.

Alien Heat

Alien Heat return to our monthly charts with a very strong performance from their live Essential album during October 2025, which resulted in a surprise new entry at number ten. What was most surprising about this new entry was that it is indeed new! We could not believe it had never charted before and searched all our records – and amazingly, this song has never made it into the top ten before.

Badass Boogie is a very wonderful and eccentric piece of heavy funk and hard rock with several distinct sections. It is the oldest surviving song that Pete and George collaborated on, two years before Dark Company were formed.

George says he remembers sitting alone with a nylon string acoustic, playing his guitar part for Badass Boogie, and how it didn’t seem to make a lot of musical sense when isolated. He found this both puzzling and fascinating at the time. Badass Boogie was the forerunner of many more amazing songs that would be created.

This live version of Badass Boogie is full of energy and power and features a blistering shred solo on the guitar to accompany Marc’s bass pyrotechnics. Badass Boogie was always an under-rated song, and this particular bootleg recording captured a memorable three minutes of mayhem.

* None of our other acts made it onto the October 2025 chart. *

Honourable mentions should be made to the songs that didn’t quite make the chart this month. They are:

* Freight Train/Pains by Pok the Bard, which was tremendously popular at SoundCloud and just missed out to Alien Heat by a couple of points.
* Redeemed by BSoD + D², which was the sixth most popular track from the brand new Cruelty to Blues release.
* The Mirror by Mark Drower and the Everyones, which was our most popular song at HearThis over the last month.
* Abnormal by Alien Heat, which was the next most popular song from their live Essential album.

Listening Options

If you would like to go to SoundCloud to hear the top ten songs from Wud Records in October 2025, as played, liked, commented upon and reposted by listeners, please click here.

If you prefer to listen right here at the Wud Records website, you will find that it is the new default music player. You will find it on all non band-specific pages at the site, including our Links collection and homepage.

The October 2025 chart has its very own dedicated page among the charts pages of this website. You can listen to the new compilation on its page by clicking here.

Each of the previous charts also has its own page in the charts section of this website. If you would like to see all our old charts, or for any previous month you are especially interested in, all of them can be accessed easily by clicking here.