Lincoln Eddy 
RZA & Howard Drossin: The Man with the Iron Fists film score (Soul Temple, 10/22/12)
You’d be forgiven for thinking that the score for The Man with the Iron Fists doesn’t differ greatly from the soundtrack, opening as it does with an extended, reworked sample from Wu-Tang Clan’s “Shame on a Nigga.” With that one chopped-and-screwed moment, though, what we’re really seeing is a hip-hop sensibility being applied to a score that well compliments its accompanying soundtrack.
How to Destroy Angels: An Omen EP (Columbia, 11/13/12)
Four people sit in a cabin on the seashore, with light coming in through one window and hastily nailed boards over the other apertures. A greenish glow, the only hint of electricity, comes from an instrument that has an opaque purpose. Everyone seems to be waiting for something.
“Ice Age,” the new video from How to Destroy Angels’ An Omen EP, directed by John Hillcoat (The Proposition, The Road, Lawless), is a bleak affair. Minimalist at first, both in scope and music,the song soon makes it clear that time is running out.
From its modest roots as a basement mail-order operation to its status as one of the premier independent metal labels, Relapse Records has carved a niche as purveyor of distortion-heavy talent. In addition to a few ALARM favorites from Pig Destroyer, Liberteer, and Primate, this year saw noteworthy releases from Dying Fetus, Baroness, Horseback, Locrian, Serpentine Path, and many others.
In 2011, DJ Shadow released the excellent The Less You Know, The Better, a return to form after five years of silence on the original-music front. He followed that up with Reconstructed, a “best-of” album, soon to be available in a limited-edition box set. Since then, he’s been touring extensively, bringing his wildly eclectic sound to cities the world over. His unique style of genre-mixing production is diverse and awfully difficult to reproduce.
Beastwars: Tower of Skulls seven-inch (Destroy, 11/17/12)
An eclipse is creeping closer. You see a desolate landscape, lonely monoliths in the middle of the desert, and a vague sense of foreboding. Either all that fake Mayan stuff about 2012 was right, or it’s a new video from Beastwars.