Xe's slippery moves might not set Zs on a path to your average teen or idiot Howard Stern fan's iPod, but it is a deft and focused work, demanding its rightful place on college radio and the blogosphere.

Setting banjos and bonfires aside, the folk roots are now replaced by a rich baroque pop accompanying a dark ride inside Huebert's mind.

As a whole, Shackles' Gift is more obviously tuneful and considered than its predecessor and, as established, thematically watertight. The most interesting thing about it, though, is that it works outside of this context.

There's very little to be found within From The Very Depths to warrant repeat plays, and it's safe to say when the dusk mercifully settles on Venom (or on 2015, for that matter), this clumsy attempt at modern metal will not be remembered.

This is a bold confessional and one made all the stronger by music that's creative and daring without ever once straying into disco dad territory.

The album is distinguished, therefore, not only by impressive vocal athleticism but also by an astonishing extra-human tenderness.

The Body and Thou's collaboration, though at times coalescing into a perfect rumble (See: 'Lurking Free'), with its reverberations capable of rattling chest cavities (See: the pretentiously titled 'Beyond The Realms Of Dreams, That Fleeting Shade Under The Corpus Of Vanity'), lacks the desired cohesion from beginning to end to impart the feeling of a complete album.

Apex Predator - Easy Meat retains the hyperactive energy and deadly pacing of its recent predecessors, and as a result, it gives their fans a diverse and devastating listening experience during what is a quintessential, zeitgeist-destroying grindcore album.

Certainly, Pinkshinyultrablast have their sonic template firmly in place but it's difficult to shake the feeling that without a greater focus on melody and sharper songwriting there remains a very real danger of their efforts vanishing into the haze like so many decaying chords fed through a series of delay pedals.

The really great thing about this heavy, intense album, as punishing as it is beautiful in its resolve, is that it shakes to the core the philosophies that Björk laid out so methodically on Biophilia, but she still finds a dark difficult way back to hope and love.

The demos themselves, while manna for nerds like oneself, are for the most part hardly revelatory.... a singular album in both intent and execution, and the most satisfying expression of Dulli's dark, dark heart. The grunge era's answer to Millie Jackson's Caught Up, it remains a triumph, an album whose impact is no less powerfully felt 21 years on.

While the tightly managed polish and control perhaps doesn't grab the heart in the visceral way of older Sleater-Kinney, an emotional urgency remains on this album, albeit conveyed with greater sophistication.

Disappears are intent on creating rhythms and atmospheres that are endlessly claustrophobic, and Irreal proves to be an exercise that is as gruelling and exact on its audience as it is on the participants--an aural dystopia of shifting, unfathomable paradigms that seem to exist merely to paralyse, to captivate, to control--but the reward is hugely cathartic.

While it may not be the most musically adventurous or frightening albums you'll hear this year, when it comes to writing memorable, mature songs full of devilishly addictive hooks without trying to relive the past, The Pale Emperor breathes new life into Marilyn Manson's previously ailing music career.

The heartening, splendid news is that this first album, a self-titled, seven-track whirlwind, is full-on brilliant all the way through.

There's such a beautiful combination of elegance and exploration in this debut--Greenwood has created one of the best and most confident debuts in years, and you'd do well to bend your ears around it's intricate and delightfully planned out wonder.

LV are remarkably adroit tunesmiths, able to navigate the fine lines between minimalism and melodicism without ever descending into dry formalism or familiar clichés. Josh Idehen has a voice that is just as expressive and powerful.

Just 16 exceptional tracks full of glowing wordplay, instinctively catchy intonation, and effortless genre whisking.

We might have heard these tropes a thousand times before, but on Kykeon, Rhyton use them to make something richer and more nimble than the flabby freak-out-by-numbers psych that's currently clogging up rock's bandwidth.

Lament proves itself to be a remarkably effective listen because it is an utterly egoless record; a record that, in binding many stories from all sides, creates a feeling that is ultimately sans-patrie.

There's lots of good guitar playing, but no flashy riffs and absolutely nothing you'd call a solo. It gives Monuments its greatest strength: a self contained identity.

It is a huge pleasure and a relief that this comeback is so good, so strong.

It's a fun slab of obnoxious rock-gone-mad, and sometimes that's all you need of an evening.

Adrift is a simultaneously relaxing and arresting experience. It's headphone music that rewards encapsulated ears and enclosed eyes.

RZA does his fair share of huffing and puffing on A Better Tomorrow (see hooks to 'Hold The Heater' and 'Crushed Egos'), but the widescreen production lacks the intensity to motivate a jaded clan.

In more ways than one Hound is the kind of album one sees described as an artist’s masterpiece, but with an already extensive discography covering everything from blues to beats to his name, it’s quite likely Slim’s best is yet to come.

The album is sparse and its minimalism is round-edged the whole way through, yet the plethora of moods it induces--brooding to bittersweet--and its constantly meandering cadence are awe-inspiring.

Wyatt has sustained and continues to sustain himself with quality, idiosyncrasy, and integrity over so long a time, as these eight sides so amply demonstrate.