Emperor of Sand succeeds in terms of the musicianship and its creative songwriting and concept. Overall, though, this is just less memorable for me compared to a lot of their other material. Still a solid project and Mastodon has yet to release a bad album.

Souls at Zero is Neurosis' third album overall, but marks the first incarnation of their now-iconic progressive, sludgy and experimental sound. Strongest tracks are Takeahnase and A Chronology For Survival.

The most essential Neurosis album

Kaliyuga has a good overarching concept and a variety of ideas, but the end result is a rather inconsistent album. For every solid cut like Dystopia there's another lackluster track like Hellbringer and Crossroads that is not only unrelated to the environmental theme of the album but sounds forced and out of place. In Hearts Wake has some decent albums in their back catalog but I can't recommend this one.

Ambitious, passionate and purposeful, Northlane's experiment with industrial metal stays true to their dynamic progressive metalcore sound and tells Marcus' story of making it through difficult circumstances.

Loathe is a band to watch as Kadeem France and the boys deliver fantastic Deftones-influenced hardcore/djent with plenty of atmosphere. Their sound veers from ethereal alternative metal on "Two-Way Mirror" to relentless black metal on "Heavy Is the Head That Falls With the Weight of a Thousand Thoughts", and somewhere in between those extremes. From start to finish, this album maintains a dark undercurrent full of peaks and valleys, just like a well-written horror film.