It's a surprising, thoroughly consistent return-to-form, and it makes Oddfellows the first contender for hard-rock album of the year.

Tightly coiled shredfests like "Cognitive Suicide" and "Devil's Creek" demonstrate how much they've grown up (without mellowing out) since their early-'90s skate-rat days.

The result: a crushing musical experience easily among the year's best extreme-metal records.

While the record packs the occasional wallop, it loses steam in quieter moments ("Saving Grace") that sacrifice depth and density for pop hooks, due in part to predictable song structures.

Although none of its 13 tracks hit as hard as the early '80s, "mash"-pit ragers that made them famous, they still sound vital on the Rasta-praising punk pummeler "Popcorn" and the 88-second frenzy "Yes I."

Aficionados will love picking out the differences between these early takes and the final album mixes.

What drives the music is the tightly synched interplay between drums and guitars, and that, particularly as sharpened by Wes Hauch's surgically precise lead work.

Frontman Scott Lucas tackles the polarized political scene in crunchy riff-rock jams full of Windy City references; in "Blue Line," a ride on public transit inspires thoughts on how "it's getting hard to realize a sense of self in other eyes." Heaviness (in both senses) abounds.

Nu-metal survivors Papa Roach's sixth full-length is an exhilarating return to form.

The Wilson sisters comes out swinging old-school style with a full-throttle title track that sets the tone for the bulk of their 14th studio album.

The band's fourth album sees them further stepping away from their Warped Tour roots to craft a disc that's teeming with emotion without falling on emo clichés.

Dark Roots offers shred-heavy political statements ("True American Hate"), hook-laden power-jags ("Native Blood"), and straight-up rippers ("Man Kills Mankind"), slipping only on slower material like the title track and quasi-ballad "Cold Embrace."

Murdered Love is best when all the anthemic stuff comes equipped with the sort of infectious grooves that the band's SoCal stomping ground is known for.

Guitarists Zack Hansen and Tony Pizzuti not only provide massive crunch and harmonized leads but further fatten the sound with backing vocals and programming, an arsenal that can swell the sonics to near-symphonic grandeur.

Royal Thunder display a soulful sonic acumen that's as dynamic as it is compelling.

They might be one drummer short of a full Melvins deck, but the resulting hand is almost entirely aces.

Fire From the Sky is suitably heavy, grim but not ridiculous, and its best songs will remind listeners of Metallica.

Apocalyptic Love is at heart a collection of lean, high-octane rock-and-roll tunes built to be blasted out of open-top sports cars or, more suitably, open-air stadiums.

Vocalist Travis Ryan fully comes out of his shell with his, ahem, "melodic" "singing" and the Jeff Walker–esque tone sounds great (see "Lifestalker"). Elsewhere, the band shred harder than ever but with lots of cool twists.

est in its execution and ambitious in its scope, The Thousandfold Epicentre is an otherworldly journey to spaces both familiar and alien.

The year has only just begun, but if there is one metal album to purchase in 2011 so far, this is it.

At once dense and cacophonous, bleak and thunderous, Rwake's latest aspires toward the sonic-cosmic apex personified by Neurosis--and comes mighty close.

Packed with epic melodies, searing solos, and medieval horror imagery, Forever Abomination totally rocks, aided by (finally for these guys!) a perfect production sound.

Unto the Locust isn't just a great album, it's an important statement that metal doesn't have to fall into trite categories or draw from pre-existing formulas to be accessible.

On this solid, moving album, Wolves Like Us keep that tradition alive.

Think of Five Serpent's Teeth as a taste of the past recaptured.

Crude, rude, filthy, and more infectious than a bad case of herpes--that sums up Balls Out, the new record from Hollywood's Steel Panther.

It swings and swaggers like no Megadeth album in recent memory. [Nov/Dec 2011, p.87]