Acoustic Live is a small treasure for longtime Nils Lofgren fans. Capturing Lofgren alone in front of an appreciative audience, knocking out such favorites as "You," "No Mercy" and "Keith Don't Go," plus six new songs. Even with the new songs, there are no real revelations, only a selection of little gems that will certainly bring a smile to the face of any longtime Lofgren fan.© Thom Owens /TiVo

Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince are back in town and they are still the sexiest Rock’n’Roll duo on the planet! With Ash & Ice, The Kills are most certainly back to their familiar best, with fragmented guitar lines and vintage drum machines featuring front and centre. This fifth album was particularly special for Hince, who suffered from a terrible infection of the tendons in his hand and, as a result, had to learn to play the guitar all over again after no less than 6 different surgeries! It is a wonderful album on which the habitually dark universe of The Kills offers up some serious bright spots. ©MD/Qobuz

On Tyranny and Mutation, Blue Öyster Cult achieved the seemingly impossible: they brightened their sound and deepened their mystique. The band picked up their tempos considerably on this sophomore effort, and producers Sandy Pearlman and Murray Krugman added a lightning bolt of high-end sonics to their frequency range. Add to this the starling lyrical contributions of Pearlman, rock critic Richard Meltzer, and poet-cum-rocker Patti Smith (who was keyboardist Allen Lanier's girlfriend at the time), the split imagery of Side One's thematic, "The Red" and Side Two's "The Black," and the flip-to-wig-city, dark conspiracy of Gawlik's cover art, and an entire concept was not only born and executed, it was received. The Black side of Tyranny and Mutation is its reliance on speed, punched-up big guitars, and throbbing riffs such as in "The Red and the Black," "O.D'd on Life Itself," "Hot Rails to Hell," and "7 Screaming Diz-Busters," all of which showcased the biker boogie taken to a dizzyingly extreme boundary; one where everything flies by in a dark blur, and the articulations of that worldview are informed as much by atmosphere as idea. This is screaming, methamphetamine-fueled rock & roll that was all about attitude, mystery, and a sense of nihilistic humor that was deep in the cuff. Here was the crossroads: the middle of rock's Bermuda triangle where BÖC marked the black cross of the intersection between New York's other reigning kings of mystery theater and absurd excess: the Velvet Underground and Kiss -- two years before their first album -- and the " 'it's all F#$&%* so who gives a rat's ass" attitude that embodied the City's punk chic half-a-decade later. On the Red Side, beginning with the syncopated striations of "Baby Ice Dog," in which Allen Lanier's piano was as important as Buck Dharma's guitar throb, elements of ambiguity and bluesy swagger enter into the mix. Eric Bloom was the perfect frontman: he twirled the words around in his mouth before spitting them out with requisite piss-and-vinegar, and a sense of decadent dandy that underscored the music's elegance, as well as its power. He was at ease whether the topic was necromancy, S&M, apocalyptic warfare, or cultural dissolution. By the LP's end, on "Mistress of the Salmon Salt," Bloom was being covered over by a kind of aggressively architected psychedelia that kept the '60s at bay while embracing the more aggressive, tenser nature of the times. While BÖC's Secret Treaties is widely recognized as the Cult's classic album, one would do well to consider Tyranny and Mutation in the same light.© Thom Jurek /TiVo

Seasoned purveyors of arena rock for the socially disengaged, Holland's Within Temptation have been carrying the symphonic goth metal torch far longer than contemporaries like Epica, Leaves Eyes, and Evanescence. That experience shines through the manufactured gloom on Black Symphony, a live CD/DVD recorded at Rotterdam's Ahoy Arena with a 60-piece orchestra, 20-voice classical choir, circus performers, and enough pyrotechnics to knock the Moon out of orbit. Like any orchestral metal outfit worth its salt, the band kicks things off with an ELO-meets-The Lord of the Rings-inspired "Ouverture" that seamlessly runs into the group's 2005 hit, "Jillian (I'd Give My Heart)," before descending into a set that relies almost entirely on material from 2007's Heart of Everything. It's as big, ballsy, theatrical, and overly melodramatic as one would expect (Life of Agony's Keith Caputo reprises his studio role on the delightfully over the top "What Have You Done"), but it's executed perfectly, as evidenced by the 10,000 screaming fans who were lucky enough to sell the show out.© James Christopher Monger /TiVo

Link Wray was one of rock & roll's first bone fide guitar heroes, and his speaker-shredding buzzy chords were as distinctive a sound as anyone conjured up in rock's early years. So Link's old fans were thrown for a loop when, in 1971, the man made a comeback after several years along the margins with a self-titled album that set aside his big slabs of fretboard fuzz in favor of a loosely tight fusion of country, blues, and roughshod folk-rock. Recorded in a homemade three-track studio fashioned in an abandoned chicken coop on Wray's Maryland farm, Link Wray lacks the muscle of the man's legendary instrumental sides, with acoustic guitar, piano, and mandolin anchoring these sides as often as Link's electric, and there's a down-home mood here that lacks the switchblade intensity of Wray's most famous music. But the rough passion of "Rumble" and "Rawhide" certainly carries through here, albeit in a different form; the plaintive howl of Wray's vocals isn't always pretty, but it certainly communicates (Wray lost a lung to TB in 1953), the best songs speak eloquently of the hard facts of Wray's early life as a poor Shawnee child in the Deep South, and there's a humble back-porch stomp in this music that's heartfelt and immediate. (And Wray does serve up some primal hoodoo guitar on the closing cut, "Tail Dragger.") Link Wray didn't go over big with the man's old fans and failed to win him many new ones, but it's an honest and passionate piece of music that's a fascinating detour from the music that has largely defined his career, and has aged better than the vast majority of the country-rock product of the early '70s. Link Wray was later reissued as part of the collections Guitar Preacher: The Polydor Years and Wray's Three Track Shack.© Mark Deming /TiVo

Regularly cited as the archetypical Viking metal album, Bathory's Hammerheart remains an unqualified triumph for the pioneering Swedish act. Merging audacious lyrical ambitions with a sense of musical grandeur akin to the greatest epic works in metal history -- among which it is frequently numbered -- Hammerheart is a fully fleshed concept album, and a literate one at that. Chronicling with great detail and drama the Christian invasion of Scandinavia during medieval times, and his pagan ancestors' forceful conversion to the cross, Seth Quorthon became a standard-bearer for an entire generation of disenfranchised Norse-descended teens. In fact, Hammerheart's remarkably well-thought-out words and overall scope and vision engendered a deep-seated anti-Christian sentiment within the region's extreme metal scene, sentiments that were eventually brought to their most violent conclusion with the hate crimes perpetrated by members of the Norwegian black metal community in the early '90s. Turning to the music itself, the clean vocals which had made their first appearance on Bathory's previous outing, Blood Fire Death, become the norm throughout Hammerheart, further clarifying the resentful exposé of Quorthon's lyrics. Frankly, his singing voice still needed work, sounding a little out of tune here and there (see monstrous opener "Shores in Flames" and, more disturbingly, the brief "Song to Hall up High"), but this does little to detract from the astounding depth of musical diversity and inspiration contained here. Majestic overtures like "Valhalla," "Father to Son," "Home of Once Brave," and the career highlight "One Rode to Asa Bay" rarely fly with the hyper-speed of Bathory's thrashing past, but rather march inexorably out of your stereo speakers, their ghostly, layered vocal chorales bestowing each and every song with even greater pomp and ceremony. As if you hadn't already realized this, taken in its entirety, Hammerheart paved the roads upon which countless pilgrims would later travel -- bands like Mayhem and Emperor, who later possessed legends in their own. Their studious worship of Bathory's teachings are the ultimate proof. © Eduardo Rivadavia /TiVo

Seasoned purveyors of arena rock for the socially disengaged, Holland's Within Temptation have been carrying the symphonic goth metal torch far longer than contemporaries like Epica, Leaves Eyes, and Evanescence. That experience shines through the manufactured gloom on Black Symphony, a live CD/DVD recorded at Rotterdam's Ahoy Arena with a 60-piece orchestra, 20-voice classical choir, circus performers, and enough pyrotechnics to knock the Moon out of orbit. Like any orchestral metal outfit worth its salt, the band kicks things off with an ELO-meets-The Lord of the Rings-inspired "Ouverture" that seamlessly runs into the group's 2005 hit, "Jillian (I'd Give My Heart)," before descending into a set that relies almost entirely on material from 2007's Heart of Everything. It's as big, ballsy, theatrical, and overly melodramatic as one would expect (Life of Agony's Keith Caputo reprises his studio role on the delightfully over the top "What Have You Done"), but it's executed perfectly, as evidenced by the 10,000 screaming fans who were lucky enough to sell the show out.© James Christopher Monger /TiVo

Emerson, Lake & Palmer's In the Hot Seat is an album, not unlike their 1978 album Love Beach, which was made for the wrong reasons, at a bad time, and probably shouldn't have been made at all. Speculation is that ELP was contractually obligated to record the third of a three-album deal at a time when Carl Palmer had required minor surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome and Keith Emerson had required major surgery for performance-induced damage to his right arm. Clearly, the band's head was not in the game and it shows. To call this a horrible album would be a bit unfair, many could only dream of playing like ELP on their bad days, but it does suffer from a lack of direction, heart, and perhaps most noticeably, a lack of production. Most of ELP's great albums were produced by Greg Lake but, for whatever reasons, this one was not. Producer Keith Olsen does not seem to have a feel for the ELP sound and the album lacks that big ELP sound. A track such as "Hand of Truth" might have worked with bigger production but it is halted by its own smallness. There are brief glimpses of the band's brilliance, and the track "Daddy," recorded about the disappearance of a young girl in upstate New York, will rip the heart out of any parent, but this album falls short on so many levels that not even the talents of three phenomenal musicians can save it.© Marc Loren /TiVo

Upon its U.K. release in summer 2003, Permission to Land, the debut album from spandex-clad retro metalheads the Darkness, was a surprise success, hitting the British charts at number two (behind only Beyoncé's Dangerously in Love). After hearing Permission to Land, it's easier to understand why the British public went crazy for it, and for the Darkness. The album is more or less straightforward pop/rock with some '80s metal window-dressing, and the Darkness themselves live up to traditional notions of what a rock band should be: louche, decadent, and harboring a don't-bore-us-get-to-the-chorus mentality. While the band is far from ironic in its homages to Kiss, Judas Priest, and Queen, the Darkness certainly are campy (and with a list of influences like that, they'd almost have to be), with a uniquely British sensibility, personified by singer Justin Hawkins. A one-man campaign to bring back the unitard as fashionable rock gear, Hawkins sings about sex, drugs, and Satan with the voice of a castrato, backed by arena-sized riffs and rhythms. The Darkness would be an utter failure if the band didn't write good songs, but miracle of miracles, they do. The first two-thirds of Permission to Land is nearly flawless, an eerily realistic simulation of '80s metal and '70s glam that manages to sound familiar but not rehashed. "Black Shuck" revels in pseudomystic gobbledygook like "Flames licked round the sacred spire"; on the great single "Get Your Hands off My Woman," Hawkins sings "woooomaaan" higher than most women probably could. "Growing on Me" (which includes the great lyric "I want to banish you from whence you came") and "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" are tightly crafted songs that would sound good in almost any style, while "Givin' Up" is one of the jauntiest songs about heroin ever written. Even the prerequisite power ballad, "Love Is Only a Feeling," stays on the fun side of cheesy, adrift on clouds of strummed guitars and gooey backing harmonies. The album has such a strong beginning and middle that it's not entirely surprising that Permission to Land runs out of steam near the end, although "Stuck in a Rut" is a crazed enough rocker -- complete with demonic laughter -- to nearly rival the album's earlier songs. Softer songs like "Friday Night" and "Holding My Own" make the collection unusually ballad-heavy; if anything, the Darkness could stand to rock a little harder. Even though Permission to Land isn't quite as metal as its singles suggested it might be, the album is surprisingly good, especially considering how bad the band's '80s metal revival could have been. It's hard to say whether or not the Darkness will take off in the States the way they did in their homeland; Hawkins' over-the-top vocals aside, the band may be hurt by the fact that most metal and hard rock popular in the U.S. is more concerned with brooding and angst than with having fun. But having fun is what Permission to Land is all about, even if it's just a guilty pleasure.© Heather Phares /TiVo

Status Quo's debut album featured none of the band's better-known boogie rock of the mid-'70s. Picturesque... is a psychedelic effort that tries to imitate the sound bands like the Bee Gees or the Beatles were doing at the moment. With this record, Status Quo surprisingly had its first (and last) hit in America, the single "Pictures of Matchstick Men," which peaked at number 12 (it reached number seven on the British charts). Other highlights from the album are the second single, "Ice in the Sun," and the Bee Gees cover "Spicks and Specks." Even if this is not the most representative album from Status Quo, it is a good psychedelic pop exercise that sometimes includes very imaginative guitar phrases ("Ice in the Sun"), and some brilliantly unusual sounds (the epic "Paradise Flat").© Robert Aniento /TiVo

Freddie Gibbs' long-promised Warner Records debut, $oul $old $eparately, followed two of the biggest albums of his career, Bandana (with Madlib) and the Grammy-nominated Alfredo (with the Alchemist). Both of those releases, as well as his first with Madlib, 2014's Piñata, all reached the Top 40 of the Billboard 200, and were almost immediately hailed as classics, adding to a discography already stacked with efforts that are highly regarded by hardcore rap fans. $oul $old $eparately reflects on the path to success, framing the album with interludes about a glamorous casino and tales of luxurious excess, yet most of the lyrics focus on the bleakest aspects of the struggle, from drug abuse to the loss of friends, family, and partners. The frequent presence of a pink, Energizer Bunny-like rabbit mascot in the album's artwork and lyrics somewhat candy-coats the seriousness of the subject matter, as Gibbs uses humor and extravagance to draw the listener into his often cold and unforgiving perspective. He is joined by a long list of guest rappers, singers, and producers, with the Alchemist and Madlib returning for one song each (the Madlib-helmed "CIA," which suggests that the agency is responsible for crack, Instagram, and AIDS, is a clear highlight). Kaytranada's trippily intricate beat matches Gibbs' jagged flow on "Zipper Bagz," and the emcee drives through the stunning "Space Rabbit" without getting swept away by the track's lush, ethereal pianos. James Blake's detached croon hovers over "Dark Hearted" like a distant fog, emphasizing the spine-chilling qualities of Gibbs' lyrics. The Musiq Soulchild-assisted "Grandma's Stove" is just as haunting, particularly during the outro, when Gibbs' mother leaves him a message, yet she's constantly interrupted due to a horrendously faulty connection. Grander in scope than Gibbs' rightly praised single-producer efforts, $oul $old $eparately is nearly as consistent, as the project is driven by his unyielding focus.© Paul Simpson /TiVo

The Wombats are the best early-'90s Brit-pop band you've never heard. At least that's the overriding vibe on their fourth studio album, 2018's Beautiful People Will Ruin Your Life. Produced by Mark Crew (Bastille, Rationale) and Catherine Marks (the Killers, Wolf Alice), the album features much of what has endeared the Liverpool trio to fans; especially vocalist/guitarist Matthew Murphy's literate, tongue-in-cheek self-awareness, which remains firmly intact. "You could give an aspirin the headache of its life," he croons on the opening "Cheetah Tongue." Musically, the band is in crisp from, delving into a swirling batch of post-punk-tinged anthems, many punctuated by Murphy's wiry guitars, drummer Dan Haggis' kinetic rhythms, and bassist Tord Øverland-Knudsen's driving, club-ready bass grooves. On the best of these tracks, the Wombats excel, delivering psychedelia-infused jams that are equal parts White Album-era Beatles and Modern Life Is Rubbish-era Blur. That "Dip You in Honey" sounds like XTC doing a mash-up of the Beatles' "Tomorrow Never Knows" and Roxette's "The Look" feels utterly, divinely intentional. Elsewhere, "Cheetah Tongue" borrows from U2's Achtung Baby, much in the same way U2 borrowed from their Madchester contemporaries back in the '90s. Similarly, tracks like "Lemon to a Knife Fight" and "Black Flamingo" have a punky, off-kilter, new wave vibe that brings the Pixies to mind.© Matt Collar /TiVo