Creepy Opener

England's the Cooper Temple Clause were an instant success with music fans and undeniably claimed the unofficial title of British Music Magazine's "Darlings of 2002," earning popularity and respect in equal measures throughout the year. On See This Through and Leave, no less than five singles are collated together with equally impressive album tracks to provide one of the most accomplished debut efforts of any British rock band since Mansun or Muse.

The glittering technological future we were all promised has turned into a dystopian nightmare. If music must reflect the times, the hour has plainly come to reject the mainstream status quo and get down to the roots and rhythms of life’s elemental heaviness. And that’s where Beastmaker come in. Purveyors of some of the most ecstatically thunderous and raw doom metal to emerge in decades, this three-man riffing machine from Fresno, California, are manifestly the real deal. Their sound is instantly recognisable and yet thrillingly otherworldly, like all your favourite riffs fed through some perverse malevolent prism and reborn in fresh, overdriven grotesquery.

Canadian duo Megan James and Corin Roddick released their debut album ‘Shrines’ eight years ago, and their cohesive vision was striking from the start. Melding uneasy, fidgety beats with creepy imagery, it was an eerie, skittering creation composed back-and-forth over email. Lyrically, it depicted dissected bodies (‘Fineshrine’) and fairytale-ish evil grandmothers drilling little holes into eyelids. Purity Ring in six words: macabre imagery enveloped in hypnotic electronica.

For many, many years, On the Beach was Neil Young's great lost album. The LP didn't generate a lot of heat when it came out in 1974, and Young didn't release it on CD until 2003.