Wud Records: December 2025 top ten published at SoundCloud

The December 2025 Chart

The top ten tracks for December 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 December 2025 Chart?

The algorithm we use gives greater weight to downloads, then comments and reposts 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 December 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 December 2025 Top Ten?

The latest top ten features six different acts. There are four songs from The Bastard Sons of Dennis, including BSoD + D², four from Dark Company, including two from & co, and one each by the Band of Georges and Rough Terrain. Three of the songs are new entries, three are re-entries, two are climbers and two are fallers.

The Bastard Sons of Dennis

Congratulations to The Bastard Sons of Dennis, for topping our final chart of 2025, and for having three other entries in the top ten. The number one song this month is Then Came the Last Days of May, and it is its first time to reach number one. Its previous highest position was number two, which was in April 2024.

Then Came the Last Days of May is a beautiful song, which tells a true story of how three university friends of Blue Öyster Cult’s guitarist, Donald ‘Buck Dharma’ Roeser, were brutally murdered in a drug deal that went horribly and tragically wrong. The version by our dynamic duo adds a twist to the versions heard on Blue Öyster Cult’s eponymous studio album and the live On Your Feet Or On Your Knees album from 1975.

Derek would sing “Now and then a duck” instead of “truck”, which caused fans of the duo to bring toy ducks with them along to live performances. Chuck’s solo is largely based on the live On Your Feet Or On Your Knees version, and his little whistle at the end (which didn’t always come out quite right in a live show) came from the character Tom Good in the uk tv sitcom The Good Life.

A re-entry at number nine this month from the Cosy Lube Turtle album by The Bastard Sons of Dennis is The Subhuman. This is another wonderful Blue Öyster Cult song. It was originally released on the 1974 Secret Treaties album and there is a sublime live version on On Your Feet Or On Your Knees. The Bastard Sons of Dennis drew inpiration from both versions.

The Subhuman is seven minutes long and filled with beautifully crafted definitive guitar melodies. Live performances would be very similar, despite the length and the apparent jamminess of the piece. This is another song where Chuck tunes his low string to a drop-D.

BSoD + D²

The new release by The Bastard Sons of Dennis with Dave Danielli, Cruelty to Blues, has provided the newest chart with two splendid songs, both climbing from their positions last month. Cruelty to Blues was only released in October and has already gone very well.

Up from number five to number four 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 climber 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.

Dark Company

Dark Company enjoyed another excellent month and claimed two spots on the newest chart. Both belong to the SNAFU CD of their forthcoming triple-CD album A for Acronym.

Down from number one to number two 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.

Falling from number three to number six is the second Dark Company song to hit the chart. It 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 also features some splendid synth work from Josh. The lyric was penned by Pete in the summer of 2010.

& co

The strangely named outfit known as & co make remixes in a trance, EDM or dub stylee from Dark Company songs. There are several such mixes that were released as bonus tracks on their Signmaker album, as well as a whole album of & co music called Drifting Stars. This album features remixes of songs from the Dark Company albums Rage in Heaven, Alien Heat and Ghost of the Art.

A new entry for & co at number eight is Killer (Digital RMX). This remix took place when Dark Company started trying to digitise their songs, from the analogue band that was Dark Company’s first incarnation to the digital, sequencer-driven three-piece that Dark Company’s second incarnation became.

When Killer was converted to a digital song that could be run on the new machinery, it was largely completed, at least up as far as the instrumental outro. It is therefore possible to sing along to this remix, and the arrangement remains the same as the analogue version of Killer on the Signmaker album. The & co remix was released some time after the original album release, as a bonus track.

Number 10 is also a re-entry for & co, and the first time this track has charted since October 2017. The original song, Medicines, is still Dark Company‘s most well-known track and appears on their Rage in Heaven album.

The remix version of Medicines by & co, on the Drifting Stars album, takes two or three elements of the original sequencer track and uses them to make a whole new track. The challenge with the Drifting Stars album is to find the parts of each tune that come from the original songs, on the Rage in Heaven, Alien Heat, and Ghost of the Art albums.

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 different extra information given on the two separate pages, as the words come from the keyboards of two separate writers. We recommend you check out both.

Too Many Times is a new entry at number three, and is a song that George has a strong dislike for. He wrote it on 2nd May 1983 and his Dad rather liked the guitar melody. George said that he was surprised at how long the song was, at 10:37.

Rough Terrain

Sometimes when a song is a new entry on our charts, it surprises us. In the case of the fabulous Frog by Rough Terrain from their Howell Road Demo and Exit Stage Deaf compilation, it was a surprise that this song has never charted before. We’re fairly certain that if we ran a monthly Top Twenty instead of a Top Ten, Frog would have charted many times. However, we are unable to verify that without undertaking a considerable confufulation, with is probably – ultimately – not especially worthwhile.

Frog is an instrumental that Rough Terrain performed at probably every single one of their many live shows. It was composed by George and Pok in the early 1980s, with significant contributions from both Mark Drower (“Mmmm, thanks.”) and Marc Greatorex (the frog noises). George came up with the chords and Pok wrote the lead part. Frog was earlier performed by Now and Fooog Dinboffin and the Release, and has a fun backstory.

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

Listening Options

If you would like to go to SoundCloud to hear the top ten songs from Wud Records in December 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 December 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.