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.

AFI fans will no doubt miss the guitar muscle, but adventurous listeners will appreciate the retro-synth theatrics.

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.

Meandering and dirge-like, the eight songs here live up to the band's moniker, weaving slow and snaky through the album's 42 minutes and what we can only presume is a veritable wall of amplification. Tune in and nod out.

Sometimes, Blood's industrial metal is the kind that got overdone a decade ago. Still, it's a mostly good set-and a cool comeback for Seinfeld.

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.

While this will probably please Bleeding Through's fans, sticking with the path most traveled doesn't result in a particularly memorable record.

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.

The new songs sound similar to those on the the band's last full length release, The Powerless Rise.... The remixes, meanwhile, aren't exactly noteworthy.

While not terribly mindblowing, this EP is a quick and entertaining listen.

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]

Too many songs build and build and never explode, and though Keenan has never sounded growlier, Parole never really breaks loose.

The result certainly stays true to Hank3's legacy of audacity, especially in "Mad Cow," which drones on for 10 minutes. But actually listening to the thing? Pretty torturous.

Rather than play into expectations and write 12 15-minute songs about H.P. Lovecraft or the Dead Sea Scrolls, Atlanta's finest created a more-than-decent metal record.