The transition between blasting drums and metal riffs on "Blot" from Automata I into "The Proverbial Bellow" is surprisingly smooth without feeling like there is any disconnect between records. Overall, splitting up the release made it much easier to digest a full Between the Buried and Me album, which is never an easy task.

The rockabilly melody and Southern Gothic themes reference an era of simplicity and provocation. The Devil Makes Three's lyrical analogies in Chains Are Broken are thought provoking emotional medicine.

This is thoroughly traumatizing noise horror, and even with Halloween still a month off, it's hard to imagine a more terrifying album to come this year.

The level of craft involved — songwriting, musicality, performative sense — belies his relative anonymity within the greater music continuum. You Will Not Die is both an affirmation and a promise.

What emerges through this permeable landscape is an ecosystem all its own.

The Denzel Curry x Kenny Beats team up is a master-class of hip hop — few artists in today's landscape have the talent and longevity to consistently deliver good music. Thankfully, Denzel Curry is one of those few.

With contributions from over 20 artists, including such musical giants as Tony Allen and Thabang Tabana, Keleketla! is a collaboration of rare magnitude. It is at once a celebration and a call to action.

The vibe is folk, rock, country and kind of homespun and laidback but, like early John Lennon records, there is sharpness to the starkness.

On their sophomore effort, Good Living Is Coming for You, Mondal and Schnug are again looking ahead, but this time around, the scenery feels more sinister and the ambient sense of dread is sharper. Thankfully though, the result is no less dynamic than its predecessor.

PRUDE's half-hour-ish run time packs plenty of punch, mixing old and new strengths well, exemplifying why Drug Church have so much staying power.

Perhaps it's the vulnerability at the core of THE BPM that really makes what Sudan Archives is doing still feel so fresh. Standing out in the club music scene, it sets a new standard for anyone interested in playing with sound while maintaining an accessible heartbeat.

While the earlier LP was harrowing in its soul-searching melancholia, Morning Phase is warm and soothing, its tone coming across as beautifully bittersweet rather than overtly depressing.

Capacity is both a logical successor to Masterpiece as well as a great leap forward for Big Thief. The chemistry that Lenker and her band have established on album number two is extraordinarily strong, but no matter how good they get, her songwriting seems as though it will forever be raw to the core.

Ambitious, experimental and brilliant, The Inheritors is a unique release that confirms James Holden's place not only as a DJ to watch, but also as a producer to pay close attention to.

Having only a few minor setbacks, The Talkies is an exciting new addition to Girl Band's discography with its refinement of their sonorous experimental punk style and its ability to stay intensely enthralling, avoiding repetition. Getting deeper and darker than ever before on The Talkies, it will be interesting to see what Girl Band do next.

Life is Good is a well-crafted entry from a seasoned veteran that displays his vitality and vintage flow 20-plus years into his career in a genre where many MCs don't age gracefully.

It's an album that never repeats itself, offering up a work that plays out more like a multi-chaptered book than some simple '80s homage that's jumped the shark.

The genre is wide, but Stapleton's Room is so narrow and old-fashioned that, despite its quality songwriting, it feels stifling at times.

They Want My Soul is a bold and swaggering declaration that Spoon have undoubtedly still got it--in spades.

Musically, it takes listeners through a dystopian dance-floor dream universe, with the shiny but comforting hand from its cover as our guide.

Everything Everything continue to push their creativity and abilities as a group on A Fever Dream, shifting and adapting their sound while retaining their knack for melody, challenging rhythms and standout lyricism.

Nothing is off the table, influences are blended and bounced off each other, and it's this tension between elements that makes this a very special record.

[Producer John Congleton's] keen ear helps make POWER Tudzin's most sonically complex album, with electric and acoustic guitars, keyboards, strings, crescendos of feedback and other sounds subtly layered just beneath her bright vocals.

Hecker's clever ability to shift and adapt is clearly on display with Konoyo. A dreamlike song cycle, the album is more than an extension of the grandeur of Love Streams. It's a refined, focused exploration of traditions both adhered to and transcended.

All Sadies albums feel like instalments in an ongoing saga of an incredible band who've been playing forever, and Northern Passages is no exception.

It's a logical continuation of 2007's slick Cassadaga (less so 2011's rock-inclined The People's Key) — but given the renaissance Oberst has enjoyed with his side-projects in recent years, it doesn't quite live up to Bright Eyes' lofty name.

Blissfucker is not quite as perfectly crafted as Darker Handcraft, trading control for the broken and the strange, but though the results are less even, the finest work on the record still finds Trap Them at their very best.

Spending time with this dreamscape of a collection--and it's definitely worth spending time with--unveils themes of masculinity and, especially, femininity, all the quiet dangers associated with womanhood, whether it's "Flash Company" or the complex dynamic between rapist and pregnant victim in "Bonnie May."