With Martin Bisi at the knobs, I figured on a more spacey and eclectic sound from the Donut. Instead, "Nadine" rips with more intensity than I've heard from this crew in some time. An amazingly blistering track.

And while the other two tracks are closer to Donut standard fare, they too eventually degenerate into masses of caterwauling instruments and flame-out vocals. Sure, this path is familiar to AD fans. But the sheer intensity and aggressiveness on this single really surprised me.

If next year's album can come even close, I'll be more than satisfied.

As usual, Friedman tries very hard to make you forget he also has a gig with Megadeth. The arrangements are lush. Well, actually more like LUSH.

I wish more of the orchestration was with real instruments than keyboards, but I also understand limited budgets. And Brian BecVar manages to almost make me believe there is a symphony orchestra sitting behind Friedman.

Yes, the songs are much more in a classical (yet highly anthemic) vein than the usual rip-and-shred, but once again Friedman acquits himself well. The playing is quite expressive, leaving no doubt that he can really do almost anything on a guitar.

Howe seems to have paid a lot more attention than usual to the other instruments he plays. This effort on the backing tracks lends to a more cohesive sound. Unfortunately, the songs are still mired in the many traps of instrumental guitar work.

For starters, while the drumming (and drum machine?) sounds crisper, the rhythms don't vary much from song to song. Howe is stuck in the common jazz-funk shuffle that folks like Steve Morse have made so popular.

And while at times Howe is playing with verve and feeling, many of the lead lines seem more calculated to impress than move. Sure, How is one of the greatest axemen around. But he still needs to work on his songwriting and feeling. A comparison may be farfetched, but B.B. King says more with one note than Howe can in an entire riff of arpeggios. Howe needs to make his guitar sing, not just speak.

What I really loved about Onward to Golgotha was the amazing production. It was the first application of Wall-of-sound theory to death metal I'd heard. The music seemed to seep through the air and penetrate every pore of my being. Needless to say, I was impressed.

Here, Incantation have incorporated some new ideas to their music (leanings toward both doom and traditional grind drop by for a spot of tea), but for the most part this is straightforward old school death metal. And the production team managed to intensify the sound even further.

Blasting through a thin (yet surprisingly strong) layer of distortion, the music sounds like it has been run through a network of baffles that both smudges and intensifies the music.

I'm still not the biggest fan of their music, per se. But the end result is another stunner. Incantation continues its slouch towards the apocalypse.

More NYC metal-core, the kind of stuff I love to hate. EXCEPT-I can't. Insult II Injury manages to escape a lot of the lyrical silliness of its contemporaries and merely delivers lean and tasty grooves.

Great music, great playing. And Bobby Gustafson helps out in the booth and really keeps the sound cranked.

The one caveat-this is still NYC metal-core. Insult II Injury may be near the top of that heap, but this album does not completely transcend the genre. I'm afraid there aren't enough improvements to make your average fan really differentiate between this and, say, Biohazard or Pro-Pain (Gary Meskil helps out on one track, even). I can tell you Insult II Injury is much better than Biohazard, but it still wallows in the same trough.

But don't let that little bit dissuade you from playing this one to death. Guilty pleasures are often the most savored.

If you apply Jesus Lizard-style guitar licks and hardcore-style vocals to the regular death metal package of distortion and viciousness, you might find Meshuggah.

All very tasty, as well. Five tunes to the EP, and none of them suck. That's pretty rare, indeed. I hope next year's full-length is somewhere close to this in quality.

In general, the music should appeal as much to more mainstream hard rock fans (especially the amazing "Ritual"), as well as traditional death metal adherents. Plenty of brutality to go around.

With the right positioning, Meshuggah could become a real monster. Just wait for the album.

Merging basic industrial and techno rhythms with a much more commercial sensibility, MISS seems to by trying to garner mainstream attention even while staying somewhat faithful to the more creative side of the industry.

But when you'd expect the vocals to be cloying and overpowering, the mix provides just the opposite. Lara Vecchiarello's voice unusually floats just beneath the surface. It's a little disturbing at first, but after a while it begins to grow on you.

In the end, though, I think the goal is Top 40 acceptance. In that case, MISS should work a little more on focus and drop some of the underground pretensions. As it stands, this is far too commercial for the more alternative college stations, and yet too "out there" for the dwindling number of contemporary hits stations.

Or an orchestral death take on the Gospel. Jesus is born: "The uterine contractions are a source of pain/ The agonising passage through cervix dilating". Jesus is betrayed by Judas: "The traitor's kiss of love/ Was active malignity". Jesus arises: "There were strips of cloth/ Garments of death/ But no bodily remains".

As it turns out, every lyric is a paraphrase of a particular Bible verse (duly noted in the liners). Of course, the real nut is the music.

Paramaecium do a nice take on the current death/doom trend. The music is heavy, alternately grinding and melodic. While the songs last up to 17 minutes, nothing gets boring.

While not quite in the My Dying Bride or Anathema league, Paramaecium has talent and can put together great tunes. An enjoyable disc from beginning to end.

With more of a grungy take on the doom sound, Pyogenesis takes each song to an anthemic extreme. While that is a hallmark of this sort of music, instead of finding some points of beauty or emotion, the boys undercut the power of the music with ragged playing and high levels of distortion at times. And then the kitchen sink finds itself in the mix, and you wonder just exactly where things will head next.

I'm not sure the band has an answer for that. Each song is very different from the other three, and so it is hard to tell precisely where Pyogenesis wants to be. I'm a big proponent of diversity and creativity, though, and I have to applaud the effort. The result? Well, that's a mixed bag. Perhaps next year's full-length will provide a more conclusive answer.

If Queen were a hardcore band...

Quest of the Moon Breed heaves a big chunk of dramatics, samples and mood shifts into "Mares of Night", the a-side. It comes off as more silly than horrific, but fun nonetheless. The music chugs along nicely, and the story is amusing.

The flip is more of the same, except that everything is different. New story, new themes, much better production (for some strange reason).

I like to recommend the unusual, and this certainly qualifies. Quest of the Moon Breed are a little too strange for mass consumption, but the connoisseur will appreciate the vintage.

Wandering around the mainstream hard rock universe in search of his sound, Scott Stine delivers a solid, but undistinguished album.

Segments of songs emulate heroes (you can hear echoes of Satriani, Vai, Tony MacAlpine and many more), and then Stine sort of melds the divergent ideas together into single tunes.

Which is a good idea. Stine plays well, and you can hear him coming through his guitar often enough. It's just that he apparently hasn't quite decided what to say.

Much like his other gig with Crimeny. That band has talent and can put together decent songs. I just want to hear them (and Stine solo) venture beyond the ordinary. Blow me away. I dare ya.

About a year ago, the Tree EP garnered quite a bit of interest. This full-length has already gotten more notice, and deservedly so.

While keeping fairly close to the obvious Boston hard-core roots, Tree manages to branch out and keeps things interesting. And while many bands with somewhat similar styles have been going the clean production route, Tree keeps things nice and fuzzy. A real distortion power trip to go along with in-your-face attitude.

Keep plowing through; there's bound to be something that will please. "My Brain" is a real surprise: imagine Sam Black Church playing a Masters of Reality tune. Quite cool.

I thought the boys might wear out their welcome with the burners at the start, but Tree proves its mettle with a wide array of sounds. Most impressive.