Beyond Anthrax

Seal the Deal & Let's Boogie may be the album that finally makes Volbeat rock & roll superstars in the U.S – they are everywhere else. That said, the follow-up to 2013's brilliant Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady Ladies may seem, at least for longtime fans, a surprising choice for a breakthrough. Ex-Anthrax guitarist Rob Caggiano joined the band after producing and playing on the 2013 date, and he cements his position here. He co-produced this with vocalist Michael Poulson and Jacob Hansen. His original riffs and mad shredding have made the band's sound – already unique – iconic. While the record's title – as wonderfully strange and catchy as its predecessors – signifies a hard-partying set, there is something else afoot here.

So the 90s managed to smack Flotsam and Jetsam across the face just like any other thrashing 80s hopeful. Slight changes in style were to be expected, and Cuatro, their second album for MCA put them in collaboration with Neil Kernon, a pretty big time producer and studio engineer who had worked with huge names like Judas Priest and Dokken…

Wedding the experimental free-folk of "New Weird America" to the more conventionally song-focused SF freak-folk movement, Six Organs of Admittance mastermind Ben Chasny comes into his own on this, his first-ever studio-recorded LP. Richly textured and three-dimensional, School of the Flower straddles the line between moody ambient madness and vintage sunlit psych-folk.