Melechesh
Emissaries
Available Now
Who better to bring heavy metal than a band from Israel? If there's one place in the world that inspires feelings of apocalypse, it's got to be there. Melechesh, on its second album, transfers all the scary thoughts you've ever had into one of the most creative hard-core metal albums I've heard in years. Incorporating Middle-Eastern melodies and instruments into songs that could still melt faces at a house show, Emissaries is the most complex album I've heard that still holds up its credibility among the mainstream crowd. Equally comfortable playing at a frantic, grind-metal pace and at more coherent speeds, the intensity of the music never wanes, and it defies the notoriously intricate web of metal subgenres. Metal, this album proves, can be just as musical as any other music and has as much room for growth and experimentation as anything, if not more. Haunting, adrenaline-infused and homicidally angry, Melechesh does exactly what a metal band is supposed to, and more - and they're not sellouts, either.
If you like this music, you might also enjoy:
Suffocation - Suffocation
Between Two Worlds - I
A Greater Darkness - Red Harvest
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RZA
Afro Samurai The Soundtrack
Available Now
RZA already proved he can make a badass soundtrack with the films "Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai," "Kill Bill: Vol. 1" and the anime "Samurai Champloo," the best soundtrack to any cartoon ever. He's back with better guests and more experience under his belt in his latest soundtrack, this time for the Spike TV series "Afro Samurai." As an album, this plays far less like a soundtrack than the aforementioned indie-instrumental affairs, but it still goes heavy on instrumental tracks and clips from the show. It's a surprisingly quiet album, going for stripped down, atmospheric instrumentation over heavy bass lines to bump at a party. But where Wu-Tang was "nothin' to (expletive) with," RZA isn't as untouchable. Guests like Talib Kweli, Q-Tip and Free Murder can't change the aftertaste of mediocrity or erase the forgettable R&B tracks. Maybe if RZA focused his energy on a studio album, he'd give us more memorable tracks. Time will tell where the RZA's interests lie: Is he his own artist, or is he just the coolest guy in Hollywood writing soundtracks?
If you like this music, you might also enjoy:
Resident Patient - Inspectah Deck
Renaissance Child - Hell Razah
The Great Migration - Bronze Nazareth
Explosions in the Sky
All of a Sudden I Miss
Everyone
Available Now
This budding indie/emo-instrumental sensation gives about an hour of songs that fade in, go nowhere, then fade out. The band's work on the film "Friday Night Lights" makes sense after hearing this album: It's less an album and more a quiet, emotional soundtrack to a sappy movie about teenagers. If you're a very, very sad person for whom melodies, rhythms and creativity are too conformist, then this might be the band for you. In terms of layering sounds, bands like the Mars Volta, the Flaming Lips and the Postal Service have been
creating the most intricate walls of noise heard in the past decade. Explosions in the Sky, on the other hand, are too enamored of their own clichÇ, sappy, repetitive chord patterns to ever sound like they're really trying. Yes, this band has talent, and it can create some pretty sounds and nuanced crescendos. But anybody can make a song sound, like, so deep just by adding a little quiet piano in the background.
If you like this music, you might also enjoy:
Mr. Beast - Mogwai
Song of the Silent Land - Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Horses in the Sky - Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra
