If success means overpowering the senses with creepy, captivating dissonance, KEN Mode are clutching a real triumph.

Songs like “Heaven, Hell and Purgatory” will beat you down only to lift you up again, it’s a sonic ride worth taking.

As always, Fernow offers a challenge with his music. Those who accept it will be rewarded with an intensely vital listen.

While not necessarily remarkable, The Dead of the World is a reliable slab of unspeakable evil, and bodes well for Ascension’s bright future in a grim subgenre.

For the most part the album successfully rides the line between innovation and self-indulgence. In other words, if given a chance Desolation Sounds will challenge listeners as much as inspire circle pits.

It’s considerably more difficult to listen to than ‘Aesthetica’--the vocals often sound like a skipping CD--and largely forsakes that album’s triumphal feel for grating noise mash-ups (“Follow” and “Follow II”), angular electro jams (“Quetzalcoatl”) and synthetic horns (“Fanfare”).

Post-hardcore fans will certainly enjoy what is Falling in Reverse’s strongest record to date.

Five albums in to an unexpected late-career burst of greatness, grindcore pioneers Napalm Death have done it again with this awesomely titled album.

Raucous and honest, this album rocks with their trademark down-home stoner swagger.

Overall, though, most of these covers sound disappointingly similar to the originals.

Between the Stars is tight and melodic and unrelentingly hook-driven, poppy enough in places to recall Paramore or even (on the great new single “Set Me on Fire”) a more ferocious No Doub

The Tyranny of Will is all aces, too: From politically-charged rippers (“In Greed We Trust,” “Patriotic Shock”) to pants-pissing punk mischief (“Eyeball Gore,” “Your Kid’s an Asshole”), Iron Reagan have got you covered.

Despite Chamberlain’s strong pipes and pedigree, Broken Compass lacks the umph and innovation to be something truly exceptional.

The repetition of downtuned breakdowns will probably tire even deathcore superfans by album’s end. Solid–but this Witch could use a few new tricks.

For all their masks and uniforms, the emotions at the heart of Slipknot’s music have always been real and raw, and as they--and the audience that’s grown up with them--have no doubt discovered, the youthful angst that fired their early records has nothing on the grim realities of adulthood. From that deep well of pain, another great Slipknot record has emerged.

One of the Melvins’ most diverse and melodic, flirting with New Wave, glam metal, and psychobilly between epic guitar jams and gleefully twisted epics such as the closing “House of Gasoline.”

Back to Oblivion backs up the band’s 2012 reunion with a dozen melodically and dynamically diverse tracks.

If bong-rattling stoner doom is your cup of flayed meat, you won’t want to miss this demonic feast.

A prog-intensive album that often sounds closer to soggy Jethro Tull outtakes than anything in his band’s mighty back catalog.

While the new sound may alienate a few old fans, Reign of Terror is a solid album that should win over just as many new converts.

Real demonstrates that, even as the group’s chosen subgenre has lost the trendiness it possessed in the ’00s, metalcore can still sound fresh and exciting when done right.

These five tracks bridge the gap between pop punk and melodic hardcore in a way that’s so infectious that you’ll be too busy singing along to notice.

Thus rejuvenated and recharged, the Metal God and his cohorts have delivered their strongest record in over a decade.

As always, the Kurt Ballou production gives the album the depth and punch that it deserves, making this the band’s most dangerous declaration to date.

Guest appearances from Gojira’s Joe Duplantier and Subrosa violinists Sarah Pendleton and Kim Pack add extra nuance to an already dense masterpiece.

The result of all these change-ups is an album that is both aggressive and progressive, while still maintaining Linkin Park’s innate pop sensibility.

Wherever Tombs travel, they create evocative metallic nightmares most of their contemporaries only dream of crafting.

Across 17 tracks with titles like “Dark Brown Teeth,” “The Blithering Idiot,” and “Drunken Baby,” Osborne delivers concise down-tuned ditties full of booming vocal melodies and bizarro humor.