Metal

'Running Through with the Sadness' provides delicious, heady music.

Enjoy 53 live performances from four Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies from 2014 to 2017 (the 29th to 32nd) in this highly recommended (3.5 stars out of 4) Blu-ray version packed with 674 minutes of great material.

One of metal’s premiere guitarists, Demir Demirkan, just released a new lyric video for 'Freedom.'

Here’s the skinny on War Gods of the Deep: they play heavy metal; they’re based in Chicago; and they are beau coup mysterious.

'Robots, Rockets & Rampage' is taut, powerful metal, full of tone of sepulchral gravity and superior harmonic concatenations. It exudes raw, palpable, prodigious energy and monumental rhythmic punch. War Gods of the Deep knows how to turn up the heat.

'War in Heaven' is a heavy-duty album, especially for fans of metal. Original melodies, pulsing with energy and vibrating rhythms, are anything but derivative. Henry Metal’s voice retains a presumptuous vitality that works well, and his talent on the axe is superb – great shredding and ascendant riffs.

The tones of dark gravity on 'Greetings From Mars' completely bypass the normal auditory apparatus. You listen but you also experience the music on a primal and visceral level, like a punch in the solar plexus. This is pure, dominant noise rock, consuming, taut with foreboding, and engaging.

'Awakening' delivers wildly muscular music with subtle, effective elegance rarely associated with metal. The result is contagious, textured melodies and weighty rhythmic components buffed to a sophisticated polish. In short, 'Awakening' is skillfully wrought music.

Veterans such as Neil Young, Ryan Adams, blues great Joe Bonamassa, Bjork, The War On Drugs, St. Vincent, The National, Spoon, and Living Colour made stellar releases. Favorite new artist: Jay Som.

'Reflections of a Floating World' shifts from Isis-esque sludge to headbang-worthy, arena-ready guitar solos reminiscent of Rainbow—often within the same song. But for all of its chameleonic transmutation, it never sounds unfocused.