The power of Carpenter’s best soundtrack work, the title themes to Halloween and Assault on Precinct 13, comes from their relentless, single-minded drive. But when this approach is stretched to full, eight minute tracks as it is on Lost Themes, it can wear thin. This being said, there’s still some fun to be had on Lost Themes.

One thing that’s allowed Napalm Death to keep punching through mirrors is that as its sound has sharpened, the band’s ability to capture high-resolution chaos has sharpened, too.

On Your Own Love Again is something else again, at least a personal landmark and maybe a classic. Simple, straightforward, but more than it seems, this is one of the best albums of 2015 so far and marks the emergence of a very distinctive songwriting talent.

Sleater-Kinney is back in all its spiky, brainy, let-a-bunch-of-ideas-fight-it-out glory.

This is not a welcoming album, but it’s as gripping and immersive as a good film about dystopia.

The rehearsal takes are probably the real draw (aside from the customary production corrections and sonic scrub all reissues get) for those already tuned to the album’s contrary wavelength, and they do not disappoint.

Though much of the album is aggressive in its tempos, the mood continues to circle around to the pensive, moving from catharsis to solemnity and back again. Or, to put it another way, it’s a map of a mind that doesn’t feel self-indulgent.

It’s wonderful stuff, a model of restraint and subtlety that also has visceral pleasures.

It’s somewhere between 2011’s Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill and, say, Peter Jefferies’s Last Great Challenge For a Dull World; there are discernible melodies here, but above them is an overwhelming sense of loss, and the musical chops to channel it.

This latest recording is assured and full of intent, seamlessly integrating acoustic guitar blues with a rushing undercurrent of electronic noise, backdropping stark self-revelation with sleek synthesizer arrangements.

It certainly makes for a more expansive work, but loses some of the immediacy that defined Stott’s music as recently as on Drop the Vowels.

As the album advances, you get the sense that Clark is finally accomplishing what he claims to have been doing all along: making a techno record.

Despite the generalization that they “sound more like themselves” than ever, it’s worth noting that this isn’t a watered-down performance--all parties involved perform with the conviction necessary to sell an increasingly rarified brand of big-room rock.

The songs are more cohesive now and Walker’s focus has narrowed, honed to a sharper edge on shorter time and the steel of SunnO)))’s contributions, but some of the posts, beams and plumbing still show through its exterior. Those little gaps in the facade help Soused sound more approachable.

Not quite folk songs or noise experiments or vocal soundscapes or really anything you can pin down by category, they are nonetheless very beautiful and as quietly striking as any music you’ll hear this year.

As with many works that get tagged as major breaks from an artist’s established work, truthfully much of Too Bright still feels very much like the work of the Perfume Genius, and anyone looking for more of what they got from past albums will be very satisfied.

It’s heavy in concept but sprightly and reverential in its execution, its hallucinatory breadth reminiscent of the outre jazz of Sun Ra and the wily funk of Parliament, of mid-’70s Miles Davis and Herbie Hancock.

He navigates through colorized thickets of tone on the long songs with the knowing confidence of a veteran wilderness guide.

Iceage cleans up its sound, slows down the tempos and adds instruments like strings and piano on this third full length, but none of this takes the rawness out.

A delicate, quietly ruminative collection of songs that she herself arranged and recorded on computer. It sounds, one supposes, exactly as Bunyan intended.

Guitar solos are fiery but brief and tethered to the main melodic ideas. Everything has been brightened, amplified and streamlined for immediate appreciation.

The emotions channeled here are wrenching, but they’re also honest, and this album’s victories feel earned.

This album is louder, catchier and more memorable [than King Tuff]. It doesn’t break rules or upend conventions, but it fills its songs with more oomph and pressure than ever.

Purling Hiss’s rough but accessible rock, made with craftsmanship and taste, does a difficult thing. It pleases old indie-heads just as easily as it can draw in the new kids.

The results are truly thrilling, mechanized dance for a post-industrial age.

In A Dream ain’t no slouch, but is better piece-by-piece than a continuous flow.

Carnival is far more subdued than Shanghai, simmering with supernatural menace, but never quite breaking into frenzy.

These two groups disappear into each other as naturally as vapor disappears into the air, and the general atmosphere favors an industrial interpretation rather than a drone or doom-metal one.