Alcest – Shelter
I honestly think that there is no other band which has had as much of a game changing impact on the underground metal scene over the last decade quite like Alcest. Despite their beginnings as just another European folk metal band with lo-fi recordings and a traditionalist pride in all things medieval, Alcest’s greatest achievements can be found in their least “metal” moments. Read The Full Review on Sputnik Music

Indian – From All Purity
In “Directional”, faint, hostile harmonies crisscross with a storm of electronic viscera, sandwiched between the dual guitars that chase O’Toole’s lead and the rhythm section’s trouncing momentum. During “Rhetoric of No”, the drums trace O’Toole’s voice like a vigilante trailing a target, the rhythm emphasizing every shift the leader makes. It’s not complicated. It’s just nuanced, the condition that makes From All Purity more than a loud record with good riffs and belligerent intentions. Read the full review on Pitchfork

Vardan – The Woods is my Moribund
Italy’s Vardan is a very exciting one-man band. Vardan (Anwech, Leaden, Tomhet) put together his solo project in 1997, but released his first demo in 2004 entitled “Hidden in a Tomb.” After an expanded release in 2007 and a split album in 2010, Vardan has released 4 album since 2012, 3 of those in the same year. With 2014, comes Vardan’s latest dark, bleak “The Wood is My Coffin” out on January 21, 2014 via Moribund Records. Read the full review on Wicked Channel

Hail Spirit Noir – Oi Magoi
Opener Blood Guru is based around a bubbling riff in a fast 5/4 rhythm. Over this is layered… all sorts of things, including lots of synth and some sweaty percussion jamming. Personally, I sensed some similarities with the last Oranssi Pazuzu: the general idea being an insistent riff looped over and over, allowing the band to experiment with instrumental textures over the top. See also the closing title track, which brings back the Latin percussion, and even forces in some free jazz splutterings of fragmented electric guitar lead. Hence what really impresses on Oi Magoi, to my ears at least, is the diversity and richness of the sounds themselves. Read the full review on Metal Reviews

Sun o))) + Ulver – Terrestrials

As with Ulver’s Messe I.X – VI.X or Monoliths & Dimensions the devil’s what brought them here, but we find God in the details. The arrhythmic sluggish sprawl of those downtuned, feedbacking axes is still developing as a compositional tool, continuing to open up space for strings to scrape, brass to cry and keys to shower into. Those Sunn O))) long-hairs are finally following their bliss out the other side of the abyss they entered via that gaping tunnel on Monoliths & Dimensions’ cover, and the able hands and sly smiles of Ulver, Rygg and O’Sullivan greet them with signature erudite adaptability across Terrestrials’ note-perfect 35-minute brevity. Read the full review on The Quietus

Broken Bells – After the Disco

After the Disco, with the opener “Perfect World” effectively re-creating the sound of Factory Records circa 1981: the puttering sequencers and sleek-bleak synth lines recall OMD and early New Order, with Mercer doing a decent impression of Barney Sumner’s wan-but-knowing vocal style. Blessed with an infernally catchy hook, it’s the best thing they’ve done. Read the full review on The Independent

John Butler Trio – Flesh and Blood
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Nzp0XTWfjk
it should be no surprise that this album is richly textured, going from clean to feeding-back 12-string fingerstyle excursions, and then to Weissenborn–fueled exclamations (“Livin’ in the City” and “Devil Woman”), while the last quarter of the album moves to a mellower, more melodically haunting pace. It may be his best guitar record yet, and the specialness lies in that it isn’t only that. Read the full review on Premier Guitar

Warpaint – Warpaint
Despite their increased focus, Warpaint remain aloof. And therein lies their power. This is a deeply personal record, unequivocally sensual. ‘Disco//Very’ is their most fearless move yet, descending into an animalistic shambles with predatory lyrics (“Like cyanide, it’s poison/She’ll eat you alive”) and a prowling bassline. It’s the foreplay before the gently rousing ‘Go In’, which sounds like a seductive and Valium-injected take on ‘We Are Siamese’ by Peggy Lee. ‘CC’ continues the lustful pursuit, growing dizzier as the lyrics and chords make you beg for more. Read the full review on NME

Mogwai – Rave Tapes
On Mogwai’s eighth studio album, Rave Tapes, the self-described guitar army have finally dialed down their six-string sound, making for a more analog-driven LP. It’s a fitting title for a record that takes its name from the ecstasy-fueled counterculture and accompanying cassettes that dominated the British music scene in the early ’90s. Read full review on Exclaim

Hard Working Americans – Hard Working Americans
Hard Working Americans is a new quintet formed by singer-songwriter Todd Snider; it includes Dave Schools from the band Widespread Panic and Duane Trucks, whose family includes members of The Allman Brothers Band. On its self-titled debut album, the band covers 11 songs by well-known songwriters, and the result coheres as a statement of both solidarity and fun. Read the full review on NPR

Sharon Jones – Give The People What They Want
Most of the songs on Give the People What They Want clock in at a brisk three minutes, and album standout, “Now I See,” is no exception. The song is introduced with Memphis-style horns and a wickedly sly blues-based riff that slowly snakes along just long enough for Jones’ bruised lyrics to convert the track from lamentation to personal transformation. When Jones sings, “Now I see what you want to be / You Want to Take it All Away From Me,” her realization is buoyed by the band’s driving rhythm. She continues, “Once a friend, now an enemy,” in an act of declaration. Read the full review on Pretty Much Amazing

Bruce Springsteen – High Hopes
High Hopes is not going to shock anyone, but it is Springsteen’s most vital-sounding set since The Seeger Sessions. And it’s probably not a coincidence that it marks the biggest departure from his standard modus operandi since that record – it’s substantially free of regular producer Brendan O’Brian; with three covers, it’s even partially free of Bruce’s own songwriting; it introduces the (very) erstwhile Rage Against the Machine axeman Tom Morello as a collaborator to surprisingly strong effect (a bunch of the songs were recorded during a week off on last year’s Wrecking Ball tour, when Morello was standing in as lead E Street Band guitarist); and conversely it gains a populist, fan friendly edge by revisiting a clutch of Springsteen’s most beloved ‘recent’ songs. Read the full review on Drowned In Sound

Stephen Malkmus – Wig out at Jagbags
The title is quintessentially Stephen Malkmus — a conflation of two slang terms, one dating back to the hazed-out ’60s, the other a vulgar remnant of modernity — and, as it happens, Wig Out at Jagbags also sounds quintessentially Malkmusian. It’s elastic guitar rock constructed partially out of cannabis guitar jams and partially out of punk rock squalls, both sides distinguished by wry melodicism and dexterous wordplay, not to mention Malkmus’ lingering tendency to hide his accessible inclinations under sheets of six-strings. Read the full review on AllMusic