This week’s best albums
– With Mr. Bungle member Danny Heifetz on drums—and guests from (the) Melvins, Big Business, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and Marriages—Australia’s Godswounds makes an acid-plunged mix of exuberant, mega-melodic rock and videogame scores.
– Featuring members of Soulfly, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Mastodon, and The Mars Volta, super-group Killer Be Killed makes melodic thrash that would’ve made Beavis and Butt-Head leap off the couch.
– Marriages singer/guitarist Emma Ruth Rundle offers her captivating guitar sounds and ghostly vocals on her debut solo album, in which she shadows folk with a darkness all her own.
– The tenth LP from groundbreaking synth trio Trans Am is a definitive statement from a band that clearly hasn’t exhausted its creative potential, or its enthusiasm to achieve it.
– Le Butcherettes’ sophomore album captures both Teri Gender Bender and Omar Rodriguez Lopez in a fairly restrained mode, lending it a beguiling quality.
– On his eighth studio album, Yann Tiersen pairs electronic cacophony, field recordings, and spoken-word passages with his more saccharine neo-classical material.
Honorable mentions
Archie Bronson Outfit: Wild Crush (Domino)
Castle: Under Siege (Prosthetic)
Kithkin: Rituals, Trances & Ecstasies for Humans in the Face of the Collapse (Pesanta Norfolk)
Mikael Jorgensen w/ Chris Girard & Greg O’Keeffe: The Cheetah (Butterscotch)
Tweak Bird: Any Ol’ Way (Let’s Pretend)