This is one of those genre puzzles that are rewarding to anyone with an adventurous appetite, even if your bright eyes’ve never gazed anywhere but ahead.

black midi aim to dazzle and perform, and with Schlagenheim, their mammoth ideations never cease to thrill, the product of a boundless creative spirit and unwavering techni

In bringing to light these stillborn-again pleasures, The Caretaker reveals himself to be nothing less than formidably eponymous.

Rather Ripped comes off as a collection of good-and-great songs, but it just isn't up there with their best.

True Love Will Cast Out All Evil is a rare example of a man finding peace on record, of a long journey being rewarded with a slight glimpse of salvation.

From most bands, half of a great record would be an incredible accomplishment, but we’ve heard so much better from them.

The songs seemed to absorb the vista, their embers sustained underneath the settling dusk.

It is big, but without feeling grandiose. While Everything Ecstatic was bursting at the seams, bright and flashing with cacophony, Hebden doesn't try to dazzle us with any sudden moves this time around. And the album is a joy.

Brothers is the least stuffy record The Black Keys has put out, and it's by far their strongest.

Post-Nothing is convincing in its candor to the point of exhaustion.

Chelsea Wolfe’s songs don’t often sound like they’re supposed to, and therefore they always sound exactly like Chelsea Wolfe.

There may be less surprises over its 45 minutes than over the course of earlier efforts, but Rutili’s hand for slanted folk songs that possess their own select personality is as strong as ever, and for this reason, we have at least one thing whose reality is equal to its unreal paradigm.

Kaito could be the best band in the world, but Band Red isn't the best album in the world. What it is, though, is a record that shows just how good this band can be when they get it right, even if that isn't all the time.

The fact that Venice takes a few missteps before getting into full strut inevitably takes its toll on the overall body of work.

With Christs, Redeemers, they ignite a range of complex reactions designed to inspire and to petrify, the consequences of which reveal a wholly unsettling listen.

Le Kov is not as cold as Y Dydd Olaf (which was based on a decades-old Welsh sci fi novel)--it’s less machinic and more organic, less 80s and more 70s. As such, it wavers a little, particularly in its second half, where the feel is a little too warmly indistinct, too hazy.

Although there is no absence of noise on this record, what is quieter about it gives space to hear what was always there: a fully embodied voice that, through pain as through love, ceaselessly gives only herself, an angel whose message becomes indistinguishable in grace from the messenger.

If sometimes the grandeur threatens to overwhelm, the album’s subtle gradations just as often leave me struggling to explain why exactly they make me shiver, pause, cry, or, at their most elusive, disappear.

By forging a path from hardcore punk through sludge and doom metal and influencing many others along the way, Neurosis have worn their influences on their sleeves, yet have still managed to evolve by sounding more intensely like themselves.

Nevertheless, this unsettled eclecticism notwithstanding, Fading Frontier does in fact sport some of Deerhunter’s most conventional and poppy material.

How to Dress Well has most often been described as a distorted take on R&B, and I suppose that's most accurate, too. Love Remains substantiates the hearsay with slow, soulful requiems that begin to feel like lovingly sculpted effigies of some of the genre's more immortal catalysts.

Musically, the album’s apparent incompleteness--the always dissolving lack of coherence, the mosaic of multiple voices, the chance and chaos by which the songs were arranged--abides by the peripheral pull of curiosity. ... Curiosity perforates the veil and returns, yet remains ephemeral.

Although Slime Season 2 bears a resemblance to its slimy predecessor, in that both have a jumbled track sequence and silly cover art, it does hold the notable distinction of possessing some much-needed confidence.

Together, Stetson and Neufeld have succeeded in not only melding their respective sounds, but also refining them.

Dessner, as studio ringleader, misperceives Van Etten's power as simply a matter of mounting force and so tries to buttress her performance (her personality) with all the layering clichés and atmospheric tricks in his indie rock playbook.

Blank Face is one of the strongest, most consistently enjoyable in years, even if its glossy and misanthropic merits falls just shy of GOAT status.

On his masterful third album, Actress perfects a thrilling sonic aletheia that simultaneously reveals and conceals, opens and closes, remembers and experiences anew, giving some insight into the truth of post-rave electronic music as it has developed over the past 20 years, into both frame and artwork, stage and actress.

Guitarist Cassie Ramone and bassist Katy Goodman haven’t tweaked much of their fast-paced and fuzz-caked formula this time around, but they’ve certainly refined the hell out of it. Never has the band sounded so imposing in a studio setting, reining their once-uncontainable feedback into a beefy wall of sound.