This week’s best albums
– With its fifth LP, post-metal trio Russian Circles achieves such a relentlessly expansive and, at the same time, tight sound that it’s sure to become a genre touchstone.
– Sepultura’s 13th studio album marks three more milestones, most notably reuniting the band with producer Ross Robinson, the man behind the boards for its classic album Roots.
– The latest from Big Business is equal parts humor, warm hooks, and intensely delivered stoner gloom.
– Composer / producer / singer Son Lux casts a light of his own on the modern soundscape.
– An “eight-man beast” featuring Napalm Death’s Shane Embury, Jon Poole of The Cardiacs, Merzbow, and The Fall’s Mark E. Smith, the aptly named Mutation breaks new ground in extreme music and, most importantly, makes it listenable.
– Yamantaka // Sonic Titan takes on the mystic qualities of both Eastern operatic and Western metallic styles, as Ruby Kato Attwood belts out disaffected and saccharine arias to form a psyched-out whirlwind.
Honorable mentions
3:33: Bicameral Brain double album (Parallel Thought)
3:33: The Bicameral Vein remix album of Cannibal Ox (Parallel Thought)
Arcade Fire: Reflektor (Merge)
Autechre: A Message From Autechre (Warp)
Bottomless Pit: Shade Perennial (Comedy Minus One)
Corrections House: Last City Zero (Neurot)
East of the Wall: Reaction Artifacts (Translation Loss)
Ihsahn: Das Seelenbrechen (Candlelight)
Brad Laner: Nearest Suns (Hometapes)
Sara Savery: The Diver (Dead People’s Choice)
Skeletonwitch: Serpents Unleashed (Prosthetic)
This Will Destroy You: Live in Reykjavik, Iceland (Magic Bullet)