Scott Kelly

For 27 years, the members of Neurosis have demonstrated what metal can be and what it can aspire to: transcendent, cathartic, graceful, innovative. Like the best films, Neurosis' albums are thoughtful and sometimes sublime escapes, navigating pain and salvation through Steve Von Till and Scott Kelly's words, as well as a dense atmosphere of distortion and noise. In the past decade, more deliberately paced and folkloric passages have made their way into Neurosis' sound, too.Honor Found in Decay is the 10th album from the band, which was once based in the Bay Area and is now scattered across the U.S. The new record finds inventive ways to sound heavy: Elements will be familiar to fans of the band's last album (2007's Given to the Rising), but here the scope is blown wide open. The effect is akin to grasping the enormousness of the endless prairie in Terrence Malick's Days of Heaven, and "At the Well" captures it perfectly

Once in a while, an album comes along to take your breath away. That is certainly the case with this boxed set, which contains no fewer than 25 CDs tracing the history of jazz piano from early 1899 to the end of 1958. Several years ago, the same record company issued a set ten CDs covering some of the same ground, but this expanded version is even more amazing.