Spanning three years but holding together as a single release

The ongoing Black Tar Prophecies sessions from Portland, Oregon, instrumental post-rockers Grails function like deep-space side ventures from their normal output. The first three prophecies came after the hypnotic, but monochromatic buzz of their second full-length album, 2004′s Redlight. The songs were culled from collaborations and rarities, and displayed the band working with elements of Krautrock, dub, ambient, psychedelia and classical.

The second batch, Black Tar Prophecies Vols. 4, 5 & 6, matches, and possibly exceeds, the potency of both the first Black Tar releases and their 2008 high-water mark LP Doomsdayer’s Holiday. The Vol. 4 tracks are from a 2010 EP, Vol. 5 from a split with Pharaoh Overlord and Vol. 6 is new and previously unreleased. Even though they span three years, the music holds together as if intended for a single release: From the wavering apocalyptic hum, ’80s videogame sound effects and bluesy electric guitar of “Wake Up Drill II,” the nightmarish samples and reverberating feedback of “New Drug II,” and the soft, steady beat, classical piano, strings and minor key bass melody of “A Mansion Has Many Rooms,” the collection has a fearlessly wide-ranging diversity that nonetheless folds into the anything-goes atmosphere Grails have cultivated through their career. Whether they are recalling early Pink Floyd, Can, Neu!, White Room-era KLF, Goblin, King Crimson and Guru Guru, or spaghetti westerns, Grails remain themselves, their only goals to enlighten themselves and their listeners.

A dichotomous work of art and a sonic primer for first-time parents

What they don’t tell you in books like What to Expect When You’re Expecting is that once babies are actually born, they cause monumental life shifts. While newborns provide a joyous new beginning for everyone in their circles, they also bring about symbolic and genuine endings. There’s the death of absolute freedom, a fundamental transformation of the relationship once shared with the infant’s mother and the realization that your selfish needs are suddenly far down on the list or priorities. On a deeper level, there’s the acceptance that you’ve continued the cycle of life and that hopefully after you die your memory will be kept alive by your offspring.

Jesu frontman Justin Broadrick (also the main man of recently reformed industrial sludge masters Godflesh) understands this dichotomy and has drawn from the sensations he experienced as a first-time parent to create the band’s fifth full-length album Everyday I Get Closer to the Light From Which I Came. “[It] deals with the existential drain that is early parenthood,” Broadrick stated. That explains the abundance of melancholy, soporific soundscapes that billow around the shimmers of life-affirming light. It’s those shimmers that makes parenting tolerable and Everyday so satisfying.

Not that listeners enthralled by the concise and conventional songs on 2011′s Ascension will be disappointed. The new album strikes a balance between the sprawling epics of old and the organic shoegazer rock of Jesu’s last couple of records. Motivated, perhaps, by a near-complete lack of sleep, Broadrick crafted, surreal, multi-layered songs that abound with ethereal sounds, yet hold together as concrete, multi-dimensional tracks. “Homesick” expresses the duality of being away from loved ones with a monochromatic drum machine beat, a droning down-tuned riff and a simple, celestial guitar line.

“Comforter” is more hypnotic, filled with backward sound effects, multihued guitars — some crushing, some feather light — that wash in and out of the mix, and barely audible vocals reminiscent of Chapterhouse. Keyboards and falsetto vocals nod to Sigur Ros as Broadrick mumbles, “Did you wish the sky would open and the rain would come and wash them all away?”

The longest composition, “The Great leveler,” is alternatively wearily reflective and densely oppressive, cinematic music for late nights without a cinema and only bottles (of liquor and milk) and a crying baby to keep your company. The 17-minute long number is the only one to feature a guest — string composer Nicola Manzan — who provides enough contrast between the hazy, delicate guitar figures and the slo-mo demolition riffage to keep listeners glued for the duration.

Everyday is a both a dichotomous work of art and a sonic primer for first-time parents; it’s a piece filled with friction, disorientation, wonderment, exhaustion and ultimately the sheer delight of creation.

A more aggressive and (gasp!) straightforward album

Fronted by former Neurosis visual coordinator Josh Graham (ex-Red Sparowes, Battle of Mice), A Storm of Light established itself with three full albums of doomy, cinematic post-metal colored with tribal drummer and sludgy, droning riffs. But there’s a new fire stoking the band’s latest release Nation to Flames. Instead of striving for transcendence through monochromatic homogeneity, A Storm of Light opt to create a more aggressive and (gasp!) straightforward album. The songs are more structured and compact, the riffs more rigid, and there’s a distinct industrial element to the distorted vocals and abundant samples. There’s also a new diversity to the tempos. “All the Shining Lies” trudges and tumbles like Godflesh; “Apostles of Hatred” and “Omen” are considerably faster and more torrential, bringing to mind High on Fire. And the largely muted main guitar part on “Disintegrate” is surprisingly reminiscent of Metallica’s “Whiplash.” Vocally, Graham summons Killing Joke’s Jaz Coleman throughout, expelling elongated, monotonal melodies that billow like smoke from a blaze. None of the 11 songs are over six minutes in length, which allows the band to flesh out musical ideas without beating them into the ground, then move on to different apocalyptic scenarios. There’s still enough atmosphere and dynamics to appeal to post-rock fans, but with Nation to Flames, A Storm of Light has taken a leap into the more traditional metal vortex, vying for a place alongside similarly-motivated acts like Mastodon and Baroness.

A melancholy, beautiful album, even without the heaviness

Katatonia’s 10th full-length album, Dethroned & Uncrowned, is an acoustic reinterpretation of the band’s eclectic 2012 disc Dead End Kings. However, Dethroned isn’t merely an unplugged version of its predecessor. For each song, Katatonia have retained only the guide vocal and completely rewritten everything else, creating a melancholy, beautiful album that proves how poignant the band remains even without the heaviness that helped define the album.

Throughout songs like “The Parting” and “Dead Letters,” Katatonia make up for the dynamic contrasts by presenting a new range of sounds, including resonant strumming, delicately plucked guitar lines, mournful strings and evocative synth and piano arrangements. Many of these elements were present in some form on the original album, but here they become the main ingredients and bring the music more in line with Opeth and Pink Floyd, and less with My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost. Even the more delicate cuts from Dead End Kings, such as “Leech” and “Hypnone” receive makeovers that leave the originals sounding savage by comparison. Dethroned & Uncrowned probably won’t appeal to listeners who require heavy with their metal, but for those who value strong progressive songwriting and emotional expression over sheer volume may end up preferring these versions to the originals.

File under: Brooding, original doom metal with an atmospheric touch and a mesmeric vibe

For fans of: Neurosis, Sleep, ISIS, Pelican

From: Boston

Personae: Milosz Gassan (guitars, vocals), Jeff Hayward (guitar), Max Furst (bass), Billy Knockenhauer (drums)

Impacting with the same bleak emotional pounding as Neurosis, the lumbering drone of Sleep and the stylistic flair of groups like Isis and Pelican, Morne are outsiders who dwell far beyond the trendy circles of post-metal or the insular enclave of stoner metal. Polish-born front man Milosz Gassan relishes his role as a mercurial outcast. When he’s not working at a Boston theater building stage sets, he spends endless hours obsessing over every tone and nuance of his music, crafting songs that ebb and flow between airy, textural progressions and dense, crushing rhythms. Morne’s third full-length, Shadows, combines the earth-shakingly heavy with the delicate and vulnerable, revealing both their anger and hopelessness for the human condition and the desire to conjure strength in the face of that despair.

Jon Wiederhorn talked with Gassan about Boston, Behemoth and the uplifting power of depressing music.

On discovering metal in Poland:

I was born in Poland in Gdansk and grew up there until I moved to Boston 13 years ago to be with a girl who was coming to America. I was in my 20s then. We’re not together anymore, but I’m still here. Poland was okay, but I grew up during the communist era. It was hard to find good music and there were almost no concerts. Vader was from nearby and I saw them sometimes, but because I was in Poland I was mostly influenced by bands from Europe and England, like [crust-punk band] Amebix, Godflesh and Pink Floyd.

On the spiritual influence of Behemoth:

I never was so into black metal, but I can say that Behemoth was an important inspiration. They were from Gdansk as well and I saw their first show in front man [Adam] Nergal [Darski's] high school. They weren’t on a stage or anything. They played in the hallway outside the classrooms. There were three of them and it was silly, but I thought, “Well, if they can do this, so can I.” Of course, they got much better and it worked out for them. I love their early stuff. It was very simple. I don’t know about their later stuff.

On not fitting into the Boston music scene:

I started to play with some friends in 2004, but it was hard to find the right lineup. Everyone wanted to play fast, so it wasn’t ideal. We established ourselves in 2007 when we recorded our first demo. But Boston is a strange city for music. We try to play here only once or twice a year because I don’t feel that we fit in. People get distracted very easily.

On mosh pits and stage divers:

I like when people close their eyes and listen to the music instead of jumping around and crashing into each other. I don’t need the crowd to be moving. I’d rather they focus on what’s going on with the atmosphere in the room and how the music flows.

On the uplifting quality of depressing music:

The band’s name is the French way to spell “mourn,” so I guess it makes sense that we write depressing songs. But we are not suicidal and we don’t sit down and say, “OK, let’s make some really depressed stuff.” Maybe the last album Asylum was more sad. I was getting a divorce right while I was writing it. But Shadows was written from the relief of having that being behind me. If you really listen to the songs, and especially the lyrics, there’s always some sort of hope and a belief in moving forward and hoping for a better day.

On the power of minimalism:

Our previous albums seem complicated to me. There are a lot of strange keyboard parts and weird atmospheres. This time we wanted to make a record that sounded as close to our live performance as possible. We got rid of our keyboard player and eliminated the keyboards entirely. We wanted Shadows to be very simple and natural, even though the songs are all very long. It wasn’t intentional. We just stopped working on the songs when we feel like we finished expressing ourselves, and sometimes that took 10 or 12 minutes.

On why it took more than a year to write five songs:

We started to write riffs for Shadows at the end of 2011 and we finished in January, 2013. From the outset we said, “Let’s not rush anything.” Let’s take our time writing riffs and making sure every part works with everything else.” At the same time, we didn’t try to overthink anything. We let the songs mature and sit, and then we listened back and when we liked something we didn’t mess with it anymore.

On recording during the Boston marathon bombing manhunt:

We were in New Alliance Studio in Cambridge when the bomb exploded. We went to take a break and we suddenly noticed we were locked down. There was nobody on the streets, but there were cops everywhere hunting down one of the bombers. It seemed like a scene from a post-apocalyptic movie when we looked out of the window and saw only police and nothing else.

Taking black metal into new places

Wearing earplugs at extreme metal concerts is practically a must these days, but for Watain shows, it’s equally advisable to bring a surgical mask. The stench of Watain is nauseating, whether it’s emanating from the members themselves, who cover their bodies in animal blood and sometimes splash it into the crowd, or the fetid carcasses they use to construct an onstage altar. But the Swedish black metal band is a spectacle to behold. The horrific smell becomes part of the overall experience of death and decay, and the ugliness, evil and ferocity create a type of sensory overload that evokes elation as much as revulsion.

Watain haven’t yet figured out a way to express their malodorous aesthetic on record, but they keep finding new methods of shocking listeners. Before 2007, Watain were fairly straightforward, going for the jugular with ferocious passages at inhuman tempos, and only occasionally unclenching for an eerie instrumental. Then on 2010′s Lawless Darkness, the band strived to be more musically complex, adding unexpected rhythmic shifts into their assault and drawing influence from multifaceted melodic black metal bands including Dissection and Emperor, while still growling about ghastly abominations, occult rituals and the end of time (three of the songs include “death” in their titles).

Watain’s fifth and latest release, The Wild Hunt, is just as dark and sinister, or as the band puts it in “De Profundis,” it’s “the defiant chords of dissonance, to rape the symphony of God.” Yet the album is far more eclectic than Lawless Darkness, blending together a multitude of musical elements ranging from the blastbeat fury of “Outlaw” to the dark acoustic folk dirge “They Rode On,” which includes clean vocals by Erik Danielsen that resemble Nick Cave or Death in June. For black metal purists, it’s definitely a “what the fuck” moment, or rather eight minutes, 42 seconds of what the fuck. In short, it separates the lions from the sheep, dividing those interested in dark, morose art from those seeking cheap, predictable thrills.

Lyrically, The Wild Hunt cover familiar territory, but musically Watain take black metal to new places, mixing up rhythms, meters and styles with a playful sneer. “Black Flames March” features a spoken word passage delivered over an aggression-free, atmospheric guitar line, “The Child Must Die” injects a dose of spaghetti Western atmospherics and “Sleepless Evil” includes a cinematic keyboard interlude. Elsewhere, there are plenty of devil horn-inducing savagery and sky-lacerating solos, but the progressive elements are what make The Wild Hunt exceptional.

A terse torrent of fuzzed-out riffs, tumbling beats and full-throated roars

Following extensive tours with Mastodon and Kvelertak, Savannah hardcore sludge band Black Tusk have returned with the follow-up to their barreling 2011 album Set the Dial, the record that put them on the hipster-metal map. The Tend No Wounds EP is a terse torrent of fuzzed-out riffs, tumbling beats and vocals that rarely drop below a full-throated roar. Like High on Fire, Black Tusk’s songs are fast and melodic enough to pull themselves out of the muck of their guitar distortion, yet their swampy southern Savannah metal vibe remains (think early Mastodon and Kylesa). “Enemy of Reason” combines gallop with groove, “The Weak and the Wise” starts with baleful violin and a bass line redolent of “Sweet Dreams (are Made of This)” before blasting into doom-boogie slugfest. And the closer, “In Days of Woe,” ends the six-cut marathon with a riff as slippery as spilled blood and a minor key lick that’s part Slayer, part Sabbath.

While Tend No Wounds is a solid mix of quality bashers, it offers no real musical growth from Set the Dial. If it’s meant as a stopgap to give the band some cool new songs to play live before they release their fourth full-length, then fine. But if this is Black Tusk raging at their creative peak, the band could soon start losing fans seeking sonic development over sheer amp-rattling wattage.

Depression that's contagious and somehow cleaning and cathartic

The members of Dallas trio True Widow have called their music “stonergaze,” for the way they mix elements of stoner metal with shoegazer rock. It’s a somewhat misleading tag for the band’s third album Circumambulation. These are songs rooted to the earth, not created for the cosmos. The music is heavy and repetitive, yes, but it’s too bleak to be mind-altering. The whole album seems to have been composed out of weariness and danger, not bliss; the droning guitars, phlegmatic vocals and down-tempo beats echo with bad vibes. “Creeper” sounds like an angry Spacemen 3, “Numb Hand” is more like Jesus & Mary Chain and Dandy Warhols overdoing it at a Vicodin party.

Throughout Circumambulation, True Widow adhere to a simple, effective formula that revolves around D.H. Phillips’s downtuned, mildly distorted guitar lines, which twist or bend slightly at the end of a measure before returning to their designated course. Nicole Estill’s simple bass lines prevent the tunes from drifting, and drummer Timothy “Slim” Starks’s tight, spare playing on a loosely tuned kit keeps the music thumping with menace. Phillips and Estill split the lead vocals on the whole album, but True Widow are at their best on “HW_R” and “Lungr,” when they both sing, their sedated voices intertwining like poisonous vines. Circumambulation is hardly uplifting, but like Low or Red House Painters, their depression is contagious and in the end somehow cleansing and cathartic.

Arguably their most diverse release in a decade

There are heavier symphonic black metal bands, and there are more mathematical technical death metal bands, but a decade and a half into their career, and here is still only one Children of Bodom. The band’s eighth studio album, Halo of Blood, features the band’s trademark blend of blazing riffs, goosebump-raising minor-key melodies and guitar and keyboard solos that battle for dominance in the mix. Without the incessant toneless scream of frontman Alexi Laiho, Halo of Blood is arguably Children of Bodom’s most diverse release since 2003′s Hate Crew Deathroll: The title track is a fierce blend of rapid-paced Emperor-style black metal and chugging Peace Sells-era Megadeth; “Damaged Beyond Repair” tramples and lunges like prime-era Pantera; and “Transference” is a near-anthemic chant-along replete with Iron Maiden-ish guitars and Europe-style keyboards. Even at their fastest, Children of Bodom don’t approach the savagery of groups like Slayer or Integrity, but their combination of slick production and immaculate composition remains untouched, and for fans who value musical chops as much as abundant rage, Halo of Blood should keep their veins pumping with adrenaline.

Carving out the perfect middle ground between Slowdive and Marduk

There are few commonalities between the melancholy drone of shoegazing and the furious assault of black metal, which makes finding common ground tricky work. Even hybrid groups like France’s Alcest and China’s Dopamine tend to downplay aggression for atmospherics. But with their second full-length, Sunbather, San Francisco’s Deafheaven carve out the perfect middle ground between Slowdive and Marduk. Three of the songs clock in at nine minutes or more, giving the band plenty of space to ebb and flow between brutality and bliss. The opening track “Dream House” sets the pace with nearly 30 seconds of hazy guitar distortion before bursting into grinding guitars, effect-saturated hooks, thunderous blast beats and roaring demonic vocals. As schizophrenic as the blend sounds on paper, the album coheres beautifully because Deafheaven have discovered the point where delicate enervation and furious despair meet, and they’ve mapped it from every angle.

Parts of Sunbather, like the undistorted instrumental “Irresistible,” are reflective and textural, while the title track is more aggro, contrasting ringing guitar melodies with a swarming distortion and shifting between slow, tumbling drums and blastbeat tempos. “Please Reminder” melds three minutes of Skullflower-style chainsaw noise collage with another three minutes of soft, lazy strumming, while “Windows” combines apocalyptic spoken word with haunting ambient feedback. But it’s the longer tunes, including “Vertigo” and “Pecan Tree” where Deafheaven discard any sense of artsy pretension for mesmeric compositions filled with yearning, violence and beautiful sadness.

A frazzling showcase of technical speed-prog and near-industrial electrocution

As a live act, the musically volatile Dillinger Escape Plan are one of the last genuinely dangerous experimental metal bands going. Vocalist Greg Puciato’s forehead-slashing barbarism goes beyond shock rock straight into self-loathing and guitarist Ben Weinman’s onstage collisions with amps and gear often result in severe bodily harm.

But while The Dillinger Escape Plan’s live show is a subversive celebration of chaos in motion, their albums — especially from 2007′s Ire Works onward — are meticulous and almost scientific, inventive explorations of the way various musical styles can alternately mesh and practically demolish one another. The Dillinger Escape Plan’s fifth record, One of Us is the Killer, is a frazzling showcase of technical speed-prog, unrelenting post-hardcore barreling, near-industrial electrocution, swinging rock ‘n’ roll excursions and soulful pop forays. The basic techniques should be familiar to the band’s fans, but the group pushes the limits of its expansive sound further than ever.

Indeed, some will find the Dillinger Escape Plan’s sonic schizophrenia too difficult, but for those with patience and open ears, repeat listens yield hidden rewards — like the syncopated beats that weave expertly through the Faith No More-style euphony of the verses of the title track. The rest of the composition is another story, riddled with blasting, dissonant guitars and a labyrinthine midsection. “Understanding Decay,” meanwhile, starts with a drum-and-bass beat and a barbed, sonically reconfigured riff that barely resembles a guitar. Then it’s full-steam ahead into a psycho-prog passage that mingles with catchy melodic vocals. Even when they employ infectious sing-alongs, they do so with a pernicious smirk, secure in the knowledge that whatever wondrous designs they build — like the jazz-pop section to rival Antonio Jobim in “Paranoia Sheets — they’re soon knock down in yet another torrent of inventive chaos.

A little less bleak, but still as ugly as ever

Doom metal is a cathartic outlet for depression and loneliness and, yeah, it sounds pretty great under the influence of recreational pharmaceuticals, since the rhythms are generally slow and repetitive enough to separate the individual instruments and sink into the full, echoing effect of their sound. Howl’s 2010 full-length debut Full of Hell was an angry stoner’s paradise, a feast of trudging riffs, plodding beats, serpentine guitars and tumbling drums that appealed equally to fans of Black Sabbath and Mastodon.

Who knows if frontman Vincent Hausman stopped smoking weed or if he’s merely evolved as a songwriter and musician, but Howl’s second album Bloodlines is far more intricate and diverse. Some of that might be because the band hired a second guitarist, Josh Durocher-Jones, who adds counter-melodies and extra heft to Hausman’s leaden chugs (Since recording the album, Hausman has actually focused strictly on vocals and handed his guitar over to new member Jonathan Hall).

Clearly, vocals have become a priority to Hausman. On Bloodlines he expands his parameters, spewing various flavors of venom, including Lamb of God-style roars (“Attrition,” “Demonic”), shouty growls (“Your Hell Begins, “Of War”) and even moody melodic baritone crooning (“One Last Nail,” “Down So Long”).

The abundant musical flourishes are even more impressive. Howl can still stomp and drone, but they’ve added new tricks to their arsenal, including southern power-groove riffs, twin-guitar harmonies and unexpected shifts in rhythm; the tempos range from mid-paced (“Embrace Your Nerve”) to double-time (“Your Hell Begins”). Clearly, Howl worked exhaustively to overhaul their sound (captured expertly by producer Zeuss and they’ve done so without sounding like a completely different band than the one that recorded Full of Hell.

Maybe that has something to do with their overall aesthetic. No matter how much they’ve strayed from their roots, Howl are still filled with animosity and contempt. Just check out the album art, which depicts a naked woman bleeding from her eyes, a spurting heart, a skeleton with a spear, a wolf and ravens, all of them swimming in an ocean of blood. “I will tear limb from limb/this is where your hell begins,” sings Hausman on “Your Hell Begins.” “Drink up the blood you maggot/spit on the open wound,” he rails in “The Mouth of Madness.” Howl’s music may sound a little less bleak and a bit more multifaceted than they did two year ago, but at the core they remain as ugly as ever.

Direct and tuneful, replacing raw, loose rhythms with more economical song structures

Over the past two years, Louisville, Kentucky’s Coliseum have completed their evolution from a storming, metallic hardcore powerhouse to a more musically refined post-punk band. The group’s fourth full-length, Sister Faith is direct and tuneful, replacing raw, loose rhythms with more economical song structures. The album was produced by J Robbins, which explains the Jawbox influence, but there are also strains of Fugazi and Quicksand present in the barbed hooks.

As much as the music seems driven by the members’ collective record collections, Ryan Patterson’s lyrics seem to stem from an inability and unwillingness to fit into the mainstream and the toll it has taken. “All my life, failure, All I see, failure/ All my dreams, failure,” he barks in “Last/Lost” before concluding, “See clearly from failure, live freely from failure.” And on “Fuzzbang,” he rails, “Gotta get away, wish we could close our eyes and dream it all away.” Patterson’s resigned discontent shines through Coliseum’s tunes, which steamroll without obliterating and cut without leaving scars regardless of tempo or intensity.

Well-honed songwriting, offbeat experimentation and freewheeling abandon

After breaking up their black metal band Ludicra in 2011, guitarist John Cobett and drummer Aesop Dekkar decided to make one more album together, so they recruited YOB vocalist Mike Scheidt and Hammers of Misfortune’s multi-instrumentalist Sigrid Sheie (on bass) and formed Vhöl, a band that combines well-honed songwriting with offbeat experimentation and freewheeling abandon. The band’s self-titled debut is rooted in black metal and hardcore, but it’s the injections of classic and prog-metal between bludgeoning rhythms and blastbeats that make the album exceptional. Picture old-school Darkthrone and Motorhead tangled in a burning mosh pit with Mastodon, Voivod and Rob Halford.

More than anything, it’s those Halford touches that make Vhöl stand out. Unlike the countless bands that interrupt extreme metal passages with melodic riffs and clean vocals, Vhöl layer soaring vibrato atop sepulchral growls and wherever the fuck they feel like it, and never to create sing-along choruses. The same holds true for Cobbett’s tuneful leads and fills, which provide euphony to even the most dissonant parts of a song. Throwing caution to the wind is Vhöl’s M.O., and it’s what they’re best at. On “Plastic Shaman” they weave an epic NWOBHM guitar melody, sustained chords and marching drums through a black crust rhythm and halfway through “Illuminate” the song takes a chiming, psychedelic left turn before transforming into a transition that can only be described as power metal to unlock the gates of Valhalla. Even stranger is whatever lurks in the middle of “Arising,” which resembles a nightmarish ho-down replete with shuffling drums and slide guitar. Although Vhöl was originally intended as a one-off, the members reportedly are already making plans for a follow-up. As long as they don’t lose their bold spontaneity and hunger to reinvent, it should mark yet another step in the continued growth of extreme metal.

Stretching their musical boundaries far beyond the metal underworld

As soon as Ghost swarmed out of the depths of Linköping, Sweden, in 2010 with their retro occult album Opus Eponymous, the metal community came running. Not only was the band’s underground blend of Mercyful Fate riffs and Blue Oyster Cult melodies instantly appealing, its evil shtick was too goofy to ignore. Fronted by Papa Emeritus II, a cryptic skull-faced vocalist in a pope costume, and backed by musicians who all went under the moniker “Nameless Ghoul,” Ghost were a Satanic Spinal Tap with crafty, infectious songs they clearly sold their souls for the ability to write unforgettable songs.

Vocal praise from Down’s Phil Anselmo, Metallica’s James Hetfield and Foo Fighters’ Dave Grohl followed and Ghost, despite their blatantly Satanic lyrics, were soon in the center of a bidding war. By the end of Walpurgis Night, they were picked up by Universal, who recruited Nick Raskulinecz (Alice In Chains, Deftones, Rush) to produce the band’s second album.

Ghost (who by then had to add “B.C.” to the end of their name to avoid confusion with another Ghost), have chosen this moment to stretch their musical boundaries far beyond the metal underworld. Despite its bleak atmosphere and epic structures, the album is ultimately more classic rock (think Blue Oyster Cult and Jethro Tull) and proggy pop (early Genesis and Marillion) than metal. There’s no question it’s far more accessible than Opus Eponymous, featuring only a few riffs that could really quality as headbanger-worthy. That said, there’s plenty here that’s thoughtful, provocative and heavy, and the way Ghost B.C. combine influences throughout Infestissumam is uncanny.

The album opens with the title track, which features a harmonized choral arrangement atop pounding drums, sustained organ chords and simple guitar lines that propel the song and suggest from the start that this is going to be an unusual offering. “Perverted are your wishes and dreams/ Tanning in Lucifer’s beams…Oh Satan devour us, hear our desperate call,” Papa Emeritus II sings in “Per Aspera Ad Inferi” in a voice equal parts Moody Blues’ Justin Hayward and Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson. As sinister as Ghost B.C.’s lyrics are, the vocals never rise to the level or rage or even sound particularly evil.

Much of the album sounds both exotic and demented: Calliope keyboards yield to church organ runsm and classic rock riffs melt into pure pop confection. On “Jigolo Har Meggido” the band blends retro harpsichords, glam beats and proggy rhythms with euphoric, jaunty melodies that sound like The Sweet by way of Strawberry Alarm Clock.

But their most alarming and brilliant moment comes in “Ghuleh/Zombie Queen,” a seemingly sincere eight-minute-30-second long love song to the undead. Following a plangent piano intro, the song evolves with a pop melody reminiscent of Air Supply, then zig-zags into a quirky hook redolent of the B-52′s. Before it’s over, the song has ricocheted from Gabriel-era Genesis pomposity to Dick Dale surf guitar twang to Deep Purple euphoria. Wilder still are the lyrics: “Up From the Stinking Dirt/ She rises ghastly pale/ Shapeshifting soon, but now she’s rigid, stiff and stale.” As absurd as Ghost BC can get, their hooks are thoroughly hypnotic and by the end of the song we’ll be damned if you’re not chanting “Zombie Queen, Zombie Queen/ Black, white guides you, Guleh, Guleh!”

Ghost B.C.’s blatantly Satanic content is likely far too extreme for commercial radio and the crowd usually drawn to such content may be dismayed by the band’s departure from their metal roots. But for those who value strong, unique songs regardless of genre or lyrical content, Infestissumam is more illuminating that 100 burning Bibles.

Raw musical gristle, asymmetrical acrobatics and unexpected sonic flourishes

Over the past decade, Winnipeg, Canada’s KEN Mode — who took their name from Henry Rollins’s acronym for Kill Everyone Now (as detailed in his book Get in the Van) — have evolved from a bracing hardcore metal band into something more experimental and complex. The band’s fifth album, Entrench, is their most inventive yet, matching raw musical gristle and asymmetrical acrobatics with unexpected sonic flourishes, from the scribbling violins of the opening cut “Counter Culture Complex” to the undistorted arpeggios and pensive piano of the closer “Monomyth.”

Throughout, frontman and guitarist Jesse Matthewson alternates between propulsive power chord volleys, scribbly post-hardcore configurations and terse melodic licks and the band responds with correspondingly varied tempos, from the barreling “Your Heartwarming Story Makes Me Sick” to the militant, mid-paced “The Terror Pulse.”

Most of the vocals are harsh and abrasive, but Matthewson throws a striking change-up into album highlight “Romeo Must Never Know,” which builds and dips in intensity over seven-plus minutes of minor-key melodies that are equal parts Fugazi and Sonic Youth. For KEN Mode the heaviest music is only limited by imagination.

Proving they're capable of more than the next great doom band

The 2011 debut full-length from New York’s Batillus, Furnace was crushing, oppressive, bleak and morose, one of the top dark horse doom metal albums of the year. Not content to remain within those parameters, the band has undergone a facelift for its new album Concrete Sustain. In addition to an abundance of trudging, mid-paced riffs played on densely distorted guitar and bass, Batillus have built a framework of counterpoint rhythms that provide tension and contrast: Grinding, whirring industrial samples abound, as do textural washes of feedback that border on the post-rock nihilism of Neurosis.

The opening track, “Concrete,” with its monochromatic beat and spare, gut-shaking riffs resembles a more animated Godflesh, while the more complex “Thorns,” driven by ominous, reverberant guitars and melodic vocal chants, sounds like a heavily-sedated Mastodon. Concrete Sustain‘s knock-out punch is Batillus’s ability to retain a head-bobbing groove regardless of the tempo or the atmosphere of the songs. “Rust,” which moves from being down-tuned and menacing to a drifting mid-section full of heavy breathing and dissonant chords, is held together by a subtle but omnipresent pulse that keeps the listener glued. Credit percussionist Geoff Summers, who’s equally adept at maintaining minimal beats with glistening ride cymbal taps and syncopated bass drumming as he is at stuttering snare strikes and rolling drum fills.

While Concrete Sustain might have benefited from a couple of uptempo songs (such as Furnace‘s pace-shifting “Uncreator”) Batillus have effectively proven that they’re capable of way more than the next great doom band.

Unified by the band's penchant for sinister, cinematic sounds

After 25 years together, many metal bands settle into a comfort zone and stick with a sound they’ve developed over the decades. Not Athens, Greece’s Rotting Christ, who continue to discover new approaches to sonic blasphemy. The band’s 11th full-length, Kata Ton Daimona Eaytoy (which translates to the Aleister Crowley motto “Do what thou wilt”), takes its title seriously, not just from a lyrical perspective but also from a creative standpoint. Rotting Christ have come a long way since their formation as a traditional black metal band. Grinding guitars and blast beats are no longer the cornerstones of their sound, they’re just some of the elements used to convey Rotting Christ’s messages of individuality. “In Yumen Xibalba” features chanted vocals and a twin guitar lead reminiscent of Iron Maiden, while “Grandis Spiritus Diavolos” dabbles in the gothic and theatrical. “Kata Ton Demona Eaftou” blends black metal ferocity with elements of folk, Pagan and power metal and “Cine Lubeste Si Lasa” opens with frenetic classical piano runs and spiritual female operatic vocals before bursting into a trudging tribal paen.

A natural evolution from the band’s last two releases, 2007′s Theogonia and 2010′s Aealo, Kata Ton Daimona Eaytoy should be a welcome addition to the collections of those that have enjoyed listening to the band develop over the past half-decade. Even casual fans should rejoice to the range of sounds on the album, from the thunderous blast beats, bestial vocals and rapid-fire guitar licks of “Gligames,” to the Arabic crooning in “Ahura Mazda-Anra Mainuu.” Whether Rotting Christ are exploring world music, gothic, black metal or (gasp!) melodic metal, Kata Ton Daimona Eaytoy is unified by the band’s penchant for sinister, cinematic sounds, leaving no question which path Rotting Christ are invariably driven towards. As the mighty Slayer once proclaimed, evil has no boundaries.

Both totally familiar and unlike anything Trent Reznor has ever done

Welcome oblivion, the first full-length album with Trent Reznor’s new band How to Destroy Angels, is both totally familiar and unlike anything Reznor has ever done. It’s dark, brooding and filled with angst, but the anger that drives Nine Inch Nails is mostly absent, replaced with a sense of urgent desperation, as if Reznor knows time is passing and he wants to explore new, challenging sonic avenues, much like his idol David Bowie.

At the end of “And the Sky Begins to Scream,” Reznor whispers, “I wanna tear it down to the ground and build another one.” The song follows this aspiration; it starts with a shower of fuzzy keyboard notes that flicker in and out as if emanating from a short-circuiting soundboard, before evolving into an alien soundscape of layered noises, and mid-paced beats and ethereal pop vocals by Reznor’s wife Mariqueen Maandig.

In part, How to Destroy Angels is the natural hybrid of Nine Inch Nails and the spacious, inventive film scores Reznor wrote with Atticus Ross for David Fincher. Ross is also a member of How to Destroy Angels, and he and Reznor continue to work with unsettling noises, ambient tones and dynamic arrangements. Yes, Reznor’s industrial arsenal is ever-present, but most of the songs are built around a haunting, almost meditative combination of syncopated electronic beats and deep keyboard bass lines. Comparisons can be made to Tricky’s 1996 album Pre-Millennium Tension and many of the ambient structures resemble Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts I-IV. But writing off Welcome oblivion as an amalgam of Reznor’s past work sells the project short.

The track with the most commercial potential, “How Long,” weaves a Peter Gabriel-esque chorus through a mélange of clattering beats and skewed melodic keyboard lines, while “Ice Age” balances picked, muted and transmuted acoustic guitar with Maandig’s soft, soothing vocals. While there are undercurrents of feedback throughout, the song maintains its twisted folk roots until five minutes in, when waves of digital noise — some of which sounds like an underground bagpipe — starts to infect the beauty of the melody. In “Too Late, All Gone” Maandig and Reznor sing together, “The more we change, everything stays the same.” Maybe it’s a personal revelation that regardless of how far he strays sonically, he remains the same brooding artist that wrote 1989′s groundbreaking Pretty Hate Machine. If he’s not happy with that for some reason, at least it wasn’t for a lack of trying.

Pushing the boundaries of what they're capable of

For the follow-up to 2011′s quirky but compelling Conditions of my Parole, Maynard James Keenan (Tool, A Perfect Circle) and his revolving door of band mates have assembled a seven-song EP featuring two new tunes and two covers, with remixes of all but Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” which opens the release in grand style. The song is faithful to the original and brilliantly executed, from the multi-part vocal harmony to the melancholy piano. Those expecting Keenan to burst into parody mode will be sorely disappointed; even the “Skaramoosh, Skaramoosh, will you do the fandango” section is rendered with the utmost reverence, and the solos channel both the tone and talent of Brian May.

The rest of Donkey Punch is more experimental, but no less serious. “Breathe” begins like a Joy Division pop song, but quickly branches off into a haunted, sedated miasma of trip-hop and electronica urging us to “surrender to the hunger/ don’t forget to breathe.” The remix of the song, by Drumcell, removes some of the bounce from the tune, but keeps it spiraling forward until it climaxes in a supernova of harrowing screams. Unlike Puscifer’s sillier output, Donkey Punch seems like a concerted effort to demonstrate that the group is as gifted, sincere and intoxicating as Tool, A Perfect Circle or Keenan’s Caduceus brand wine. The only tongue-in-cheek moment on Donkey Punch is a cover of metal band Accept’s 1983 anthem “Balls to the Wall,” which converts the forceful, testosterone-pumped original into a vulnerable, ethereal number that replaces manly chants of “God bless you!” and “Hey!” into wispy tendrils of female vocals. The vocal-free “Silent Servant El Guapo” mix of “Balls” is satire in name only, sounding like Nine Inch Nails grappling with The Orb. With Donkey Punch the Night, Keenan continues to push boundaries of what Puscifer are capable of — which at this point includes just about anything.

Heavy, harrowing and fiercely metallic

Like Xasthur and Leviathan, The Botanist is a one-man outfit that relies heavily on atmosphere, blast beats and demonic vocals. But that’s where the adherence to black metal formula ends: The Botanist combines multifaceted beats with distorted hammer dulcimers that imbue his music with harrowing, unearthly intensity and shatters all preconceptions in the process. His fourth album, IV Mandragora, is his heaviest and most musically developed. Where past releases tended toward the kitschy and clangy, IV Mandragora finds a way to make his dulcimer strings sound otherworldly. The vocals still resemble those of whiskey-drinking frog, the closest comparison being Inquisition’s Dagon, but the music is more fiercely metallic than ever. “To Amass an Army (Mandragora III)” is ominous and nightmarish, relying on layered minor-key passages and tumbling drums to express existential despair. “Mandrake Legion (Mandragora IV)” is faster and more surreal, overlapping repetitive chimes with battering double-bass beats.

The lyrics of the anonymous Botanist are even stranger than his music. IV Mandragora is a concept album about a scientist (the Botanist) who cultivates an army of mandrakes to wage war against mankind. Throughout, The Botanist seems several seeds short of a full garden: A textbook misanthrope, he dwells in his private sanctuary, The Verdant Realm, in the land of Veltheimia and talks to his plants about the day when greenery will again conquer the earth. In keeping with the dark green theme, five of the songs are named after actual flowers, giving The Botanist extra credibility for those who thrall to the work of Carl Linnaeus and Norman Borlaugh. For open-minded black metal fans, IV Mandragora isn’t just different, it’s just about essentially, expressing old themes in an entirely new way.

Grindcore vets display the hunger and vitality of youngsters with energy and anger to burn

It’s amazing how much expression and emotion certain grindcore bands can pack in the timespan of a couple television commercials. Take Blockheads, a French quartet whose fifth full-length, The World is Dead, compresses 25 songs into a mere 40 minutes. Though they’re not as well known as many of their younger peers, Blockheads have been together since 1989 and have pursued a single-minded path to demolition that rivals the careers of peers such as Napalm Death, Nasum and Blood Duster.

On The World is Dead, Blockheads’ first album in six years, the band displays the hunger and vitality of youngsters with energy and anger to burn. From the commanding blastbeat salvos of the album opener “Already Slaves,” Blockheads attack with the volume of a jet fighter and the velocity of a NASCAR engine, yet extremism isn’t the ony way they make an impact. Each track makes it way through well-structured intros and outros and even mid-paced midsections that squeeze diversity between the ceaseless pummeling. The anomaly is the album closer “Trail of the Dead,” a trudging seven-minute doom metal song that reveal unseen dimensions beneath the otherwise relentless barrage.

A savage, bleak and beautiful collection of songs

For their third album, Swiss nihilists Zatokrev have assimilated the collective aggression and atmospherics of the past two decades of psychedelic doom and post-rock to create a savage, bleak and beautiful collection of songs that casts no light and revels in the resultant gloom.

The six years that have passed since Zatokrev’s Bury the Ashes have served them well, enabling them to focus on and analyze their songs in order to create a cinematic ebb and flow that captivates as it enervates. The Bat, the Wheel and a Long Road to Nowhere is a study of slow-motion demolition that draws from the sprawling vistas of Melvins and Neurosis, the blunt, forceful riffage of Sleep and Electric Wizard and the throat shredding vocals of early Mastodon.

Only three of the nine songs are under six minutes in length, and unlike Pelican and Opeth, Zatokrev don’t rely on multiple rhythms shifts and prog metal progressions to keep their music moving. Instead, they gradually alter the volume and intensity of their songs, insert an abundance of meandering guitar leads and embellish their creations with ear-perking elements, including vocal chants (“Goddam Lights”) slide guitar (“9″), harrowing feedback drones (“Medium”) and even blast beats (“Feel the Fire pt 2″). Zatokrev’s third album may be a long, depressing road to nowhere but the ride is strangely satisfying.

It's only dance music for those who relish rolling in broken glass

One of the most forward-thinking, restless and prolific figures in metal, Justin K. Broadrick has been on the cusp of grindcore (Napalm Death), industrial noise (Final) and industrial metal (Godflesh) for 30 years. Not content to settle with metal, he has also explored ambient electronica (Techno Animal), post-rock (Jesu) and off-kilter beats and raps (Curse of the Golden Vampire, The Blood of Heroes). Judging by his career arc, he seems to have started out as a hardcore noise junkie before mellowing out and delving into hazier, less violent soundscapes.

Lately, however, Broadrick, seems to yearn for a return to his roots. He reformed Godflesh in 2010, and earlier this year he released the debut instrumental album by JK Flesh, Posthuman, which bludgeoned like Godflesh and burned like machine-shop sparks. Now, for the last ever release on Hydra Head Records, Broadrick has teamed with dissonant electronic artist Prurient for the 30-plus minute split EP Worship is the Cleansing of the Imagination.

Broadrick’s three acoustic tracks are the most abrasive and corrosive songs he has issued in years – reminiscent, at times, of Godflesh minus the swarming guitars. “Fear of Fear” combines sluggish, crushing drum machine with booming, overdriven bass and vocals so severely manipulated they sound like that agonized roar of angry poltergeists. Around the midway point, the tempo quickens into a short-lived dubstep break, but Skrillex this is not. It’s only dance music for those who relish rolling in broken glass.

“Deceiver” is even more bass-heavy, backed by a skittering beat that swoops in and out and a bed of haunting electronics. Finally, there’s the “Obedient Automaton,” which integrates computerized helicopters, straightforward electronic drums, bowel-shaking samples and more screaming keys. If these songs are any indication, Godflesh will have a menacing digital makeover when it resurfaces with new material and/or JK Flesh will lead Broadrick into places most electronic metal artists fear to tread.

Prurient, also, isn’t frightened by the unknown, and while its music is less structured that that of JK Flesh, it’s even more masochistic. The brainchild of noise-music veteran Ian Dominick Fernow, Prurient creates apocalyptic walls of volume layered with squalling distortion, pulsing rhythms and punishing electronic embellishments. The highlight here is “I Understand You,” which contrasts the sound of a sadistic dentist drilling teeth with a subdued echoing keyboard melody that rings like elevator music for the damned.