Tool

With almost 13 years and four months between releases – an interminable wait for their devoted legion of fans – enigmatic alt-metal band Tool finally returned at the end of summer 2019 with their long-awaited fifth album, Fear Inoculum. Clocking in at 80 minutes with just seven official tracks, this is less a straightforward rock record and more a mind-bending journey, borrowing a classical approach that trades traditional constructs heard on early radio staples like "Stinkfist" and "Sober" for something akin to movements within a symphony…

Keeping the spirit of '90s rock alive, Chevelle pummel with The North Corridor, their heaviest, darkest, and most aggressive effort in over a decade…

The debut full-length release for the supergroup that includes David ‘The Doctor’ Dreyer, Mastodon's Brent Hinds, director Jimmy Hayward, Dethklok's Pete Griffin, Tool's Danny Carey and Chris DiGiovanni is a concept album about the Seagulll God King…

From the 1970s until his death in 1999, Lester Bowie was the preeminent trumpeter of the jazz avant-garde – one of the few trumpet players of his generation to adopt the techniques of free jazz successfully and completely. Indeed, Bowie was the most successful in translating the expressive demands of the music – so well suited to the tonally pliant saxophone – to the more difficult-to-manipulate brass instrument. Like a saxophonist such as David Murray or Eric Dolphy, Bowie invested his sound with a variety of timbral effects; his work had a more vocal quality when compared with that of most contemporary trumpeters…

Trumpeter Malik leads his quartet through an extended composition in a half-dozen sections, exhibiting superb timing, a sense of drama, and impeccable taste in his associates. Plenty of solo space crops up during the suite and Sabir Mateen makes the absolute most of it on his various horns. It is nice to hear the bandleader soloing at length, picking up support from drummer Cody Moffett that is sometimes over-busy, although good-naturedly so…

Here is a second volume in Splasc(h)'s '60s jazz reissue series – the first being Mario Schiano's Original Sins featuring material from 1967-1970. The presentation on Ecstatic is somewhat misleading, as Gruppo Romano Free Jazz is really just Schiano with many of the ensemble players from the first volume: namely Giancarlo Schiaffini on trombone, ocarina, and baritone flugelhorn; Schiano on alto and soprano saxophone; Marcello Melis on bass and toy guitar; and Franco Pecori on drums…