The collection has the potential to appeal a number of different audiences--Converge die-hards, Motörhead speedfreaks, Southern Lord hardcore kids--but partially on account of its stuffiness, falls short of those marks.

While it's no Manifest Decimation, Retrash is still one of the year's most notable mutations of thrash, and Oozing Wound show a lot of promise to get even weirder.

Craggy and hard as hell, you'll wish Chance of Rain forged a few more such moments [like the title track], but its consistent, nagging ability to knock you off balance is worth wrestling with.

Fever Hunting is a record of intense, personal reckoning, but one that doesn’t waste your time with concerns that are anything less than universal.

It is hard to parse all that's disparate here, and in searching for its most personal form, Son Lux unwittingly dipped into the uncanny valley of digital music trying to become human--something a little too perfect to believe.

LC! have never sounded so muscular or crafted melodies as instantly memorable.

Night Time, My Time isn’t the reactionarily somber anti-pop drag it could have been--instead, it’s a smart Kelly Kapowski hair-whip and loud bubblegum-crack of a record that lends itself to compulsive listening.

They've given us something in the present tense that, these days, feels depressingly unfashionable: An Event--an album that dares to be great, and remarkably succeeds.

He doesn't really offer sharp, pointed lyricism, but he does give the album a haze of depression capped by a few moments of catharsis.

Dabke lives or dies by its ability to make people move, and although Souleyman is no-frills, and borderline gruff compared to other dabke performers, there’s something in his stentorian singing that’s irresistible.

As a single-disc shot, Soul Music is a truly unique and enriching experience: a collection of old sounds from one of dance music's enduring mainstays, re-assembled in a way that sounds fresher than ever.

Kwes’s gentle songwriting sensibilities are unable to keep up with his exploratory beat making and the result is too often a mismatch that ends up leaving the listner at a loss.

The tracks here suggest that along with trap rap, Chicago house, electropop, and the dozen or so styles that get vigorously nodded at over the span of 10 songs, he’s also starting to get a grip on the rules of composing the kind of stuff the Hot 100’s made from.

Much of this album, like most of her recorded work, resembles a well-organized room decked out in tasteful furniture, with every part slotted neatly in place.

Red Fang certainly sounds good on Whales and Leeches, with the production of the Decemberists multi-instrumentalist Chris Funk again giving their instruments ample breadth and weight. But they do not match that surface with substance.

You might find it too retro, or just not hip enough, but there is zero second-guessing on Avery's part: never does he glance over his shoulder with a nod to UK bass culture or a capitulate to a straight house track.

Even at six tracks, it’s stunning how much life (and death) Wareham spreads over these tracks, and makes these tiny whispers of songs feel like the biggest secret anyone’s ever told you.

Cut 4 Me is an ambitiously catchy record as well as being an aesthetically ambitious one.

Wish Hotel might be ephemeral but it's ultimately pleasing, a cloud of scented smoke floating from your speakers to score an overcast day.

No Poison No Paradise, his latest, features some of the ugliest-sounding, and therefore best and most fully-realized, music of his career.

When Weiss manages to get outside himself, Intersections uses emo as a step towards something more resonant.

The majority of the record is a classic ride-or-die Motörhead proposition, punctuated with just the right amount of breathing room.

The shadows its shape casts may not always create flattering silhouettes, but there's both comfort and anticipation to be found in knowing that Silver's constantly tweaking the lighting.

While Cosentino is anxious to figure out who she’s become, Fade Away points to how strong she’s been all along.

That's the trouble with Sunlight on the Moon; things are just fine, but 12 albums in, just fine's not quite fine enough.

The Steinhardt who made Generic Treasure comes off as a guy far too stuck in his own head to get himself into yours.

Sometimes, Pelican suffers from being too weighed down by its roots. That said, when Pelican rages--in a way they never have before--they prove they still have plenty of life left.

These songs have more muscle than the typical McCombs song, with “Wheel” chugging like V-12 pistons, and “Satan” smoldering with sticky saxophone smears. This befits their subject matter as well as the vibe of the album, on which McCombs plays with genre more explicitly than usual.