Harlan & Alondra feels like an older album in the same way that Buddy gives the impression of rappers from the past, but when you add in modern day energy, the album becomes very special.

Varied in style, but with a unified vision, Family Portrait is a big success for Ross From Friends, a very personal and authentic piece of work.

The Switch, in its entirety, is full of beautiful resonances.

In some ways, it feels like a more subdued, mostly instrumental version of Mess, one where they cycle through moods and shift textures but rarely heighten them beyond their initial parameters. Still: setting mood has always been one of Liars' strengths, even if 1/1 feels more like a curio than an essential part of the canon.

Her songwriting and lyrics are truthfully captivating and fascinatingly realistic.

Devouring Radiant Light is like the James Bond of metal albums--it's mature and well-composed, yet lethal enough to be badass. It is an aggressive middle finger to anyone who doubted that Skeletonwitch could make it with another frontman.

Free of filler and definitely worth repeating, Hive Mind is the Internet we know and love, but tighter and more refined.

It's a leap of faith fans of Forma's recent work should definitely take, and anyone with an interest in classically minded live electronic ensemble work should follow on through as well.

There is less attention paid, it seems, not to the writing, which is often clever and quite sharp, but to the performing of the writing against the virtuosity of the instrumental performances. The balance puts the album unnecessarily on edge. All that said, this is one of the better examples of what post- or progressive bluegrass can do.

There is a timelessness to this record that's as connected to the electric jazz pioneers of the '70s as it is to today's best fusion players.

She experiments with more melodic sounds, but has kept her roots too, such as her heavy flows and funky productions that are perfect for the club.

Like Funkadelic's 2014 comeback First Ya Gotta Shake the Gate, Medicaid Fraud Dogg is a sprawling listen, and a few tracks, like the tedious "On Fire" could have been trimmed.

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.

I'll Tell You What will keep listeners on their toes, as the album is both immersed in footwork but also pushes against its boundaries, frequently dropping the signature drum machines, working with droning synth, crossing vocal samples, and generally taking left turns just when you think you've got a hold on a track.

We can't help but hope that after eight years, he may have tried something a little more off the beaten path. That being said, fans will surely enjoy more Torske in their lives, and Byen is Bjørn Torske at his most idyllic.

The 18-song offering is a cohesive masterpiece.

The Pool feels a tad disconnected to qualify as one of the year's major releases. There's a kind of connective tissue missing; the groove is there, but it lacks flow.

Where Longstreth once isolated each of his artistic tendencies, he now seems more willing to let them occupy the same space, rubbing up against one another to create something altogether unique and truly joyous.

Here From Where We Are is an album born of the desire to make genuine music, and the end result is a moving, blissful album that shows just how far Pariah has come in the past six years.

On Power, Lotic shows that there are no boundaries and no blueprint to their craft, both musically and conceptually.

While Northern Chaos Gods unmistakably sounds just like Immortal, one can't help but wonder how amazing of an album it could have been had Abbath been involved to complete the phenomenal trio that Immortal once were.

The fact that the album kinda sounds like so many things, very few of them usually adjacent to the genre, sits at the crux of the album's aspiration. Ordinary Corrupt Human Love is a critical reminder to card-carrying loyalists and new inductees alike of their own agency; that it's potentially revelatory, not sacrilegious, for the spectrum of black metal to include things outside of its purview.

With the release of their 16th album, All That Reckoning, the Toronto group craft something simple, passionate and visceral.

Not an album you'd crank up at a summer patio party, but a quietly compelling work.

There is a sprawling synthesis in the groove-tinted, riff-centric jams that will have you waiting to see these guys live.

Such concerns about the pitfalls of contemporary life are well-worn and Uniform Distortion largely retreads these coordinates. The excitement of this music, nonetheless, is its undeniable kinetic energy, as James laughs through his lyrics and bounds over his riffs.

Fans of Wolfmother and Pallbearer might see this as the second coming of Sabbath, if they liked more At the Gates. But those who are looking for a bit more fuzz won't find it. Melodies, not distortion, drive this album.

Themes for Television works as the perfect translational piece between Windswept and the much lighter, more traditionally ambient followup Digital Rain, despite actually arriving in the wake of the latter.