Death metal you could play for your mom. Well, if your mom happened to be a big Iron Maiden fan or something, anyway.

I've been waiting for this disc since the day I heard their last. No disappointment, either (despite my silly lead). Amorphis continue the trend set by other Scandinavian bands like Tiamat, merging lush keyboards and classic metal riffs with death and doom metal. Making it all very accessible and yet still credible.

No one's going to be yelling sell-out here. The Amorphis folk have talent, and even if things are a bit more mellow and pleasant than the average death metal album, that doesn't mean they suck. In fact, Tales is positively great.

Just simply hypnotic. Amorphis weaves the spell and I am rapt. I feel like digging up the Tiamat albums, maybe an Iced Earth or two and just blasting my brain out with great sound.

A final side note: This is the first death metal album I've ever heard with a Manchester beat in one of the songs. To show how good these guys are, it works. 'nuff sed.

I don't know why they bother with these middling EPs. Cash, I suppose.

Oh, the two new studio tracks are passable for Benediction, but neither are particularly great (well, "The Grotesque" is pretty good, actually). Anyway, the three live tracks sound like they were recorded underwater, with everything sloshing into each other. I like the studio versions much better, thank you.

With any luck, we'll see a positively stunning full-length in six months or so. That should make up for this little bit of silliness.

Cranking horns, heavy guitars, and then out of that chaos a mellowness pervades. And that's just the a side, "We Must Go On". Yeah, you could take it as some sort of cheesy anthem and be right, but there is something interesting.

The flip is called "Chunkwagon", and as you might expect, it's much more random and crazy. The horns and guitars go wild, vaguely reminiscent of an Infectious Grooves tune (yikes). But instead of cheese, this is the real thing. The production is not the best, but that also keeps this from being completely overbearing.

You have to hear it to understand what I say. Not innovative, necessarily, but certainly worth a few spins.

While it seems most any British guitarist of importance in the last twenty years can claim to have passed through either Hawkwind or King Crimson, Robert Calvert does deserve the appellation "ex-Hawkwind".

And this 1984 recording is an industrial extension of what Hawkwind has been doing for the past twenty-plus years.

Certainly not listener-friendly, FREQ relates a picture of Great Britain in the early eighties, from the miners strike to the IRA to Margaret Thatcher's stodgy ass. And don't forget the music. The U.K. was sending us the new wave at the time. While very sterile and electronic, FREQ is still a perfect counterpart to the pop revolution of the time. You see, this record has soul.

He cared, about the environment, about labor, about the poor schmucks who have to go in and clean up after the Irish bombers.

Toss in 1980's single "Lord of the Hornets" (with fellow Hawkwind veteran Lemmy helping out), and you have a rather nice package.

From seminal punk band to, well, some kind of strange hardcore industrial act, I suppose. When thing really get cranking and the speed seems ready to fly off the handle, Conflict sounds a lot like Bloodstar. A lot.

But that happens only occasionally. Most of the time the band is content to crank out above-average hardcore musings. Nothing great, nothing that approaches the early records (that always seems to be true), but Conclusion still manages to spew out a fine stream of anarchist energy. Certainly a load of fun.

Rising from the fertile Toronto techno scene, Digital Poodle crams a lot of small things into its musical creations.

Not terribly surprising, as DP has been known as one of the top Canadian electronic exports for some time. The songs do not sound alike, with each one taking on a distinct personality.

Division! is a great hodgepodge of sounds. The most amazing thing is that with such diversity you can still hear an underlying universal DP theme.

Of course, one member of Digital Poodle is Pupka Frey, who recently issued an amazing record under the moniker Din. In the studio there are two other members, and live the number swells to five. In fact, this is a band and not just a studio project. That makes it easier to love.

Great heavy industrial output. Golgotha plows through most of the heaviest metal genres, with pounding beats as the guide. The production is a little muddy, but that also seems to be somewhat the sound the band is going for.

If Golgotha can recreate this sound live, there is no reason the band isn't signed.

Yes, another Ginn and friends album. The industrial-influenced instrumentals here sound a lot like the ones on last year's The Criminal Mind, but there are fewer songs on the disc.

Does that mean the Ginn-man is slowing down? A million albums a year gets a little tiring? Well, the thing is, he and his bands have yet to put out a real piece of shit. I like this record. It makes cool noise and keeps things flowing along at a nice pace. And while the solo stuff and the Gone stuff do keep their own identities easily straight, sometimes it get difficult for me to find real differences between songs on the same album.

Not as much a problem here, though. This one seems a little better thought out than the last Gone disc, and like I said, you just want it to keep on playing. That's always a good sign.

Nothing terribly groovy or loving about these vibes; this stuff is heavy, sometimes bombastic, sometimes hardcore, sometimes almost industrial. The production is somewhat substandard and muffled, but honestly that doesn't seem to hurt things.

This is fuzzy cranking music. The notes say the band is looking for a saxophone player. That would make things real interesting.

One way to spice up an average blues record is to get a fine harpist to blow his brains out. Little John Chrisley handles the harmonica very nicely, but then the other musicians weren't out to make an average blues record.

These musicians also know how to back off and let the music tell a story. The playing is immaculate and yet intimate. Michael Lee Firkens gets a great sound out of his guitar, one that complements Chrisley's playing perfectly.

Jimmy O'Shea (bass) and Ray Luzier (drums) round out the package, and they make sure everything stays nice and tight in a total band sound. It has that crispy live feel, and the songs are ordered in sort of a set list.

This is a primer on how to make a blues rock album, period. Very fine work, indeed.

Technically as advanced as any industrial/dance/pop outfit I've heard. Of course, Rob Jackson's voice doesn't really fit in the heavier songs. Imagine Geddy Lee singing for Chemlab. And the songs, as pretty as they are, just don't have coherent construction, much the same problem as UDS.

Not bad, just not terribly good.

This disc positively crackles with aggressive energy. Mixing styles from all sides of the loud music universe, Machine Head comes down heavy with a vengeance.

The band is still young and learning. I can't identify a real sound or even tell exactly where the music is going at all times. And that's a good thing (in case you were curious). No need to be complacent.

There is room for improvement: the playing is sometimes sloppy, and at times the boys copy their influences a little too closely for my comfort. But this disc is jammed with potential. I just get a good vibe listening to it. Machine Head should have a great future, as long as the members continue to grow.

They toured with Sugar, Bob Mould was in the booth on this one. Guess how it sounds.

Great, of course. Magnapop has a great sense of understated, um, pop, and Mould makes sure to punch those guitars right out the roof. Jangle-pop becomes DAMNED LOUD JANGLE POP.

The amazing thing is that there is any sense of dynamics conveyed at all. Yeah, there is a lot in your face, but occasionally things back off and you enjoy a peaceful moment. Then your ass gets kicked again.

What really sets Magnapop off from the other thousand college pop acts from Georgia is the songwriting. Every tune is highly crafted, with all the lines intended to create one coherent, catchy whole. Everything right on target. Magnapop is wondrous.

The title is an irony, and a truth. Manning lost his sight in a barroom brawl 16 years ago. But it doesn't take sight to find poetic vision.

Manning's voice is sonorous and expressive. He at once provides you with his vision, and yet this is also an aggressive act against our own concepts of reality. In total contrast to the Vranich album, Manning makes you look outside, not inside.

He makes you see the world in its all-too-imperfect state. But instead of simply speaking in indignities, Manning also proposes, if not solutions, then at least ways of surviving this nasty plane.

Yes, you can read poetry. But the only way to understand what the poet really intended is to listen. To hear the poet relate his vision.

There's this wanky bass sound that I always hate. And the songs tend toward the anthemic, which I also take as an evil sign. Well, the singer can't seem to decide if he wants to be Eddie Vedder or Chris Cornell and the songs are kinda pretentious. Recipe for disaster.

Which is why I cannot begin to fathom why Pauls God appeals to me. Maybe it's because the songs usually pull back right before cranking into full anthem form, or that the bass gets lost some of the time. The lyrics are still sorta silly, but after a couple of listens they become endearing.

This is the second greatest hits package, as Smashed Hits took care of the (real) early years.

Those unfamiliar with RLYL will compare the band to such contemporaries as Depeche Mode or Sisters of Mercy. But the Lorries can legitimately claim first right to the Goth-pop sound.

This collection gets it pretty much right. Mostly singles, a couple b-sides and some nice album tracks. If you heard the recent reissue of Blasting Off (a 1991 release) and thought it rather bland, dig into this set and you'll find the answer. It is a shame that entropy seems to affect musicians and artists just as surely as it does machinery. But you can always keep hold of the finest brilliance.

No, of course this is a re-issue. Some bands apparently become legendary just by sheer persistence, because St. Vitus doesn't really have a load of talent.

A load of something though. The production here is reminiscent of the first Sabbath albums (and who would really want that now?), and the songs seem to be some sort of attempt to make a wimpy doom sound.

I simply struggle to find anything worthwhile in what these folk do. If you can explain to me why St. Vitus is even worth the time of day, please do. I'm very curious.

There are no drums or guitars or anything other than electronic equipment going on. And yet Spahn Ranch is rougher and tougher than most bands who flail their hair along with their axes.

Mixing elements of heavy industrial, goth and just plain meanness, Spahn Ranch creates a picture of the world that is sparse and unyielding. A departure somewhat from their recent full-length, this release sees them really descend into an electronic hell.

Technically stunning, there is a vibe here that cannot be ignored. It may be painful to experience, but you cannot turn away.

Highly accessible industrial dance grooves. Sure, the subject matter is still alienation and pain, but the beat and bass keep inviting you onto the floor.

This is about as good a mix of techno, house and industrial sounds as I've heard in a while. After some time you just start to flow with the music and refuse to consider the implications.

Like are these guys trying to bring me down or just complain about their own crappy lives? Should I care? Or should I just lose myself in their creation.

Easy answer there. T*H*D's fine execution makes the questions moot.

To his credit, Travers sounds just like he has for years, and he wrote all the songs here.

What I've always liked about the blues is the potential for real highs and lows. The production has cranked his guitar and vocals so high there isn't much fluctuating room.

That and Travers didn't exactly write a load of good songs. It's not that they suck, but most are mundane. It could be the production that limits the emotion, but I don't hear any real potential that way to begin with.

Last I knew, the blues was about breathing new life into cliches, not bringing new cliches to light.

The voice is completely nondescript. Vranich could be anyone, anything that speaks to you through an odd wind.

His thoughts seem to affect me the same way. I'll be listening to him speak, paying attention to the words, and then the idea wafts into my head. Sorta like those 3-D stereo images. You're looking at all these dots, and then when you defocus enough, you see the real picture.

It doesn't even matter if you find the same thing others do. It's what you find that's important. And after a while, Vranich's voice becomes almost hypnotic, daring you to find the soul inside his words.

Some folks find plain spoken word albums dull and interesting. Some people just don't listen.

Engines of Aggression
Inhuman Nature advance cassette
(Priority)

For starters, this isn't a demo. Improvement already. The potential shown earlier is somewhat realized. Nice heavy, funky industrial grooves.