SOUND BITES

After a debut album with The Rattlesnakes that saw Frank Carter channel some of the fiery rage that he expressed during his formative years with Gallows, its follow-up sees a slight return to the more measured, less incendiary music that he explored after leaving Gallows and forming Pure Love. That's not to say that we're in for Pure Love II here, as arrangements here aren't as blatantly geared toward airplay; instead, they retain some of the bite of previous record Blossom while placing more focus on the songcraft than the aesthetic. There are layers and flow here as well as personal chaos; the difference here is that it's controlled chaos. There will be some detractors in the "longtime fan" camp who will lament the loss of edge, but Modern Ruin is not a soft record; its A-side houses most of the obvious single choices, while the B-side packs a bit more of a wallop, especially on the album's title track (which should alone dispel the notion that Fran...

In the world of heavy music, bands aren't usually encouraged to stretch the parameters of their core sound; whichever subgenre you come in on is the one you're expected to stay on. So for Code Orange, with their background in punk and hardcore, Forever is a risky project; at its foundation, it's very much a hardcore record, but there are flourishes of outside influence to be heard as well. Industrial, mathcore, nu-metal, and even dashes of shoegaze and melodic alt-rock are added as spice. Still, the common thread is the bloody sinew of bone-crushing guitars and pummeling drums. It's what keeps Forever consistent, and helps any deviations from the script at least seem not so deviant in the context of all the chaos. This is also a record that keeps a tentative distance from clichés of the genre and, though there are certainly a fair share of prototypical breakdowns, the songs as a whole are approached with as much a sense of discovery as one of reverence. At the end...

If it feels like AFI are hardened veterans at this point, it's because that's absolutely true; it's easy to forget that Sing the Sorrow , their 2003 breakthrough, was actually their sixth record (this one marks album #10). It's also easy to forget that the band encountered some pretty fierce backlash to Sing the Sorrow from fairweather fans bemoaning the shift from more standard punk fare that occurred over the course of those first five records. That fickle criticism follows them to this day, and at this point it feels like silly, petty shit talk. Consider The Blood Album , the culmination of over two decades of maturation and an album that has echoes of all of AFI's past lives while continuing to offer new ideas. Even fans of their emo/goth commercial zenith may be surprised at the growth here, especially if they hadn't been paying attention during AFI's last couple of album cycles. Often lumped in with all of those eyeliner-and-razors emo upstarts th...

The good news: The Flaming Lips' fourteenth album is more listenable than the two that came before it (2009's Embryonic and 2013's The Terror ). The bad news: interesting sonic ideas aside, Oczy Mlody 's weirdness veers more toward annoying than endearing. There are occasional flashbacks to their peak period, but the majority of the songs here are haphazard slabs of cold, electronic head-scratchers. Likewise, whereas Wayne Coyne's lyrics used to offer some human connection and even affirmation sprinkled in, this record's half-baked concept (people take a drug that lets them sleep for three months, proceed to see things) limits the lyric sheet to meaningless, trite, stream-of-consciousness acidspeak (sample: "there should be unicorns / the ones with the purple eyes / not the green eyes"). A critic's score for Oczy Mlody may be proportional to the level of chemical dependency the critic has; in which case, it would score a zero from this lame-o ...

Following an introductory EP last summer, the debut LP from supergroup Gone Is Gone (Mastodon's Troy Sanders, At the Drive-In's Tony Hajjar and QOTSA/A Perfect Circle guitarist Troy van Leeuwen) expands the palette of that short sampler, incorporating spacier vibes, darker grooves and trickier rhythms. The album does drag on through certain stretches though, getting a bit bogged down tempo-wise, and I can't help but think a few tracks could have been swapped out for the previous EP's highlights (there isn't anything, for example, as primal and invigorating as Violescent ). Still, the quality of the players involved ensures that Echolocation is no mere tossed off collection of tunes; and, while it's perhaps not as energetic or vibrant as it could have been, it does pack its fair share of winners. If atmosphere gets you off, there's plenty here and, as a means by which to tide fans of all four parent bands over (all four of which, barring delays, should be...

As per tradition, Halestorm has released an EP of covers to satiate fans waiting for them to get a new album recorded and on the shelves. This third collection of covers more or less follows the same pattern as the two that came before; one glam metal track, one female pop artist from the late '80s/early '90s, one classic rock fist pumper, one modern pop hit, one grunge hit and one metal standard. With little deviation from the original source material (aside from Sophie B. Hawkins' Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover and Twenty One Pilots' Heathens , which turn out more muscular by default), Halestorm's covers EPs can only be truly judged on the song selection and execution. Most of the tracks are serviceable, although a couple are so close to the original that their usefulness is tempered ( Fell On Black Days , for example, is performed well, but shouldn't replace the Soundgarden version as anyone's go-to). Still of the Night would have been more satisfying...

With two decades of hard earned experience banked up, it only makes sense that Dropkick Murphys would slow down and mellow out a bit. Admittedly, their ninth album isn't as raucous as past affairs, and more or less continues the middle-age settling process that began in earnest on Signed and Sealed in Blood , their 2013 album. Don't get me wrong, this thing won't put you to sleep, and much of their classic attitude and velocity are intact (especially on Rebels with a Cause and I Had a Hat ); it's just that it's overall a more measured, thoughtful record, with more mid-tempo fare and more nods to classic rock than fans may be used to. The good news is, the adjustment suits them well; when the songs hit that sweet spot, like on the nostalgic Sandlot and the life-lesson status report via sports anthem  Paying My Way , they make their standard bar rock singalong fare sound like pure rock radio bliss (you know, if rock radio was cooler than it is now). All told, it...