Blade

Morgul Blade's sophomore album delivers righteous headbanging anthems. Songs like the title track and "Beneath the Black Sails" lean into their love of Tolkien lore, with the arena rock attitude inspired by Dokken and the Scorpions. Other tracks like "Frostwyrm Calvary" attack with the ice cold speed of classic black metal. More ambitious yet are "Razor Sharp" and "Neither Cross Nor Crown," which speak to the band's working class attitude and disdain for zealotry. "Heavy Metal Wraiths" is an instant classic blackened epic heavy metal album.

Brian Blade has delivered a singer/songwriter album that is compelling, different in nature, introspective and deeply spiritual. Blade has grown in the spirit of Joni Mitchell with whom Blade toured and recorded. Her influence looms, especially on the opening title track, where his guitar sound alludes to Mitchell's own harmonies. The subject is religious in nature and his faith is personal and far from proselytizing.Mama Rosa may come as unexpected for some, but no surprise to his core fans.

After a pair of quintet offerings with Brad Mehldau and Ambrose Akinmusire, Austrian guitarist and composer Wolfgang Muthspiel returns to the trio format he established on ECM with 2014's Driftwood. Whereas the previous outings all featured bassist Larry Grenadier, it is Scott Colley who claims the bass chair here. All three members have worked with one another sufficiently to make Angular Blues sound relaxed, natural, and locked in. Blade and Muthspiel have been working together on-stage and in the studio for quite a while; in addition to Muthspiel's bands, the pair work together in the duo Friendly Travelers. The guitarist and Colley played together often in the '90s, and the bassist and drummer have worked together in the Steel House trio with pianist Edward Simon. The group cut this date in a Tokyo studio after a three-night, six-set run at the city's Cotton Club…