Aerosmith Rockin' The Joint (2005) [japanese Edition]

A year after the 2004 live DVD You Gotta Move, Aerosmith unleashes another live release with Rockin' the Joint. This 11-track album was recorded live on January 11, 2002 at the Las Vegas Hard Rock Hotel & Casino as the quintet was pushing their 2001 album Just Push Play…

Dave Mustaine revived Megadeth in the mid-2000s, remastering and reissuing his band's entire Capitol catalog and hitting the concert circuit in earnest. Greatest Hits is part of that revival. It's the second Megadeth best-of, replacing the one from five years prior, Capitol Punishment. Greatest Hits is an improvement, loaded with 17 selections, three more than its predecessor. There's also some fancy packaging and a hyperbolic "Love Live Megadeth" tribute written by Penelope Spheeris, the colorful director of The Decline of Western Civilization, Pt. 2: The Metal Years. It all adds up to a nice package, or more precisely, a sampler of Megadeth, from the band's pioneering thrash metal years to its later growing pains, with an unfortunate de-emphasis on the band's beginnings…

When Ultra was declared the best Depeche Mode album since Violator, those who said so must have forgotten about Songs of Faith and Devotion. When Exciter was declared the best Depeche Mode album since Violator, those who said so must have also forgotten about Songs of Faith and Devotion, in addition to having found a roundabout way of saying that it was merely better than Ultra. There's no doubt this time: Playing the Angel is both the band's best album since Violator and, more significantly, an album that is near Violator in stature. The biggest clue dropped by the band prior to its release was a quote from Dave Gahan, who said that being in Depeche Mode is better than it has been in 15 years. Some quick math reveals that Gahan was hinting at the Violator era, a time when the band's creativity and popularity peaked synchronously…

The Italian Symphonic Metal band NOCTURNA will release a new album entitled 'Daughters Of The Night' on January 21, 2022 via SCARLET Records

Into the Unknown is the fifth album by Mercyful Fate, released by Metal Blade Records in 1996. Into the Unknown is the most commercially successful Mercyful Fate album to date.

Formed in 1967 by former Motions guitarist Robbie van Leeuwen, the Dutch quartet Shocking Blue originally had a lineup of VanLeeuwen on guitar, lead vocalist Fred DeWilde, bass player Klaasje Van der Wal, and drummer Cornelius Van der Beek, and the initial configuration of the band had a minor homeland hit with “Lucy Brown Is Back in Town” a year later in 1968. Things really got moving, though, when DeWilde was replaced by sultry singer Mariska Veres, whose sexy presence and solid singing brought the band a second Netherlands hit, “Send Me a Postcard,” and then a huge international smash with “Venus” in 1970 after the group had signed to Jerry Ross' Colossus Records imprint.

Finally Woken, Jem's full-length debut, fleshes out the It All Starts Here EP with six additional tracks. It features the addicting title track, the same one that blew away KCRW and Nic Harcourt and got her signed to ATO, and it really is quite brilliant. With a dizzy main loop and loping percussion that undulates slyly beneath Jem's dusky vocal detachment, it sounds like what would happen if Beth Orton started bouncing ideas off of Super Furry Animals' hard drive. The song's formula essentially repeats throughout Finally Woken – Jem's simplistically alluring vocals stringing along subtle electronic percussion, ear-catching samples, and melodic loops built from traditional instruments. However, perhaps because this debut sort of snuck up on her, it seems stylistically scattershot. Jem and collaborator Yoad Nevo have a jones for switching things up. They elongate and reduce their elements wildly, to varying degrees of success.

Scabdates' accompanying photography is a frenetic blur of instruments and sweaty hair. Singers stand on amplifiers, and keyboardists stare intently at the veins popping in their hands; drummers reach over snares to tweak guitar strings, and saxophones appear out of the ether. It's an accurate portrayal of the Mars Volta's collagist sound, their subtitled and bullet-pointed avant metal that increasingly seems like the soundtrack to a film only Omar Rodriguez-Lopez can see. Still, even at their most insular (some would say self-indulgent), the Mars Volta seethe with intensity. Scab Dates proves this. Most of the more wandering elements of De-Loused and Frances the Mute disappear for this live document, replaced by hails of screaming organ, increased thump to the rhythm section, and Cedric Bixler-Zavala showing off the insane volatility in his voice…

With the presence of brutal riffs and keyboards, Finland's Children of Bodom sounds at times like Fear Factory fronted by a hardcore screamer, especially on their 2005 release, Are You Dead Yet? The group's fifth studio album (which was co-produced by Children of Bodom and Mikko Karmila, the chap who produced their previous outing, 2003's Hate Crew Deathroll) shows the quintet plowing full steam ahead, as the venom continues to bubble to the surface throughout. But the group also has an unmistakable prog metal edge to boot, as the tricky interplay between guitarist Alexi Wildchild Laiho (who also doubles as vocalist) and keyboardist Janne Warmen on "Punch Me I Bleed" certainly brings to mind Dream Theater…

David Sylvian's Blemish album was the first release to appear on his own newly formed independent label Samadhisound in 2003. Written as a break from a project he was working on with Steve Jansen, Blemish is a suite of eight compositions based on studio recordings of live improvisational sessions utilizing Sylvian's voice as the focal point, minimal electronic brush-strokes and, on three songs, the prominently showcased free-jazz guitar work of Derek Bailey. Samadhisound returns to this fertile ground for its fifth release with The Good Son vs The Only Daughter: The Blemish Remixes, a collection of often radical re-workings by eight artists of seven of those original, stark compositions, all personally commissioned by Sylvian himself.