Mayhem

Legacy’s The Classic Albums Collection 1974-1983 should provide endless hours of arena/prog/AOR-pop bliss for fans of Kansas, as it features ten of the band’s career-defining albums, including an expanded edition of the live album Two for the Show. Each studio album (Kansas, Song for America, Masque, Leftoverture, Point of Know Return, Monolith, Audio Visions, Vinyl Confessions, and Drastic Measures) has been remastered and peppered with bonus cuts, and all of the original album artwork has been lovingly reproduced. Best of all, the box set is priced to move. Kansas is an American rock band that became popular in the 1970s initially on album-oriented rock charts and later with hit singles such as "Carry On Wayward Son" and "Dust in the Wind". The band has produced nine gold albums, three multi-platinum albums (Leftoverture 6x, Point of Know Return 4x, The Best of Kansas 4x), one other platinum studio album (Monolith), one platinum live double album (Two for the Show), and a million-selling single, "Dust in the Wind".

Imagine a metallic and mechanical journey through extremely complex and brutal metal stuffed with insane spacey guitar solos and neck breaking sharp riffs. Meshuggah's third studio release, "Chaosphere" from 1998, is just like that. An extremely technical prog-metal mayhem of an album, clocking in at 46-minutes; there are no silent parts here, only pure metal throughout, so If you are used to other prog metal bands like Dream Theater and Symphony X, well, then you'll be blowed away with this album's ability to nearly crack your brain. This is Meshuggah's most extreme release yet, guitars, bass, drums and vocals crashes into each other with amazing speed and NO emotion or melody, creating this extremely intense and brutal monster. The best thing is that the result is so original too! No bands before or after have ever created something like this before! That makes this album so interesting.

Kansas' third album, Masque, is a lyrically dark effort courtesy of guitarist/keyboardist Kerry Livgren's brooding songwriting. Musically, Masque foreshadows the tight melodies and instrumental interplay on the next two albums, Leftoverture and Point of Know Return, which together serve as the peak of Kansas' vision. The band deserves more respect than it gets for incorporating British hard rock and progressive rock to become the only U.S. progressive rock band of note during the genre's 1970s heyday…

BURNING BRITAIN is the first-ever box set to properly tell the story of the early Eighties independent Punk scene – nicknamed UK82 – when the music went underground and thrived outside of the major label framework. With 114 tracks, this longform 4-CD box set follows previous, acclaimed compilations from Cherry Red dedicated to Post-Punk (To The Outside Of Everything), Goth (Silhouettes And Shadows), Mod Revival (Millions Like Us), etc.

Chappie was bound to be something a little special since it is composer Hans Zimmer’s first all-electronic score in 25 years. He also had a little help with this, with additional music by Steve Mazzaro and Andrew Kawczynski. But how did it turn out? Chappie, being a film about a robot that can feel and think like a child can, is quite an interesting movie for anyone to score. It has to have somewhat of a child element, while still remaining robotic and ready for action and intensity.
The first track, “It’s a Dangerous City”, seems like it would fit perfectly, given the OST’s nature, into an action sequence of a new Tron film…

The recording of "Cell-0" followed a four-year break between albums that gave the band — Eicca Toppinen, Perttu Kivilaakso, Paavo Lötjönen and Mikko Sirén, all of whom are classically-trained musicians — a fresh perspective and affected the way they approached the new music. The album sees them return to their roots and is the quartet's first instrumental album in 17 years, finding APOCALYPTICA challenging themselves to discover new flavours and colors in their respective instruments.