Utopia is the hip-hop blockbuster of 2023; a torrent of outrageous production that, in both sound and intent, mobilises superlatives. Travis Scott makes his comeback six years after Astroworld, the crowning achievement of a rise that seemed it would stop at nothing, before colliding with some serious problems with the law and his conscience. He sunk to a very low point, some felt nearing the end of his career. But here he is now, patching up his statute as the heavyweight of the 2010s with this fourth album, aided and abetted by such pundits of the genre as Mike Dean, WondaGurl, Jahaan Sweet and Kanye West (whose influence is obvious). It was a gamble, but one that paid off. Blended with rock and industrial influences, Utopia is first and foremost about big sound, the kind that hits you square in the chest. From Hyaena to the superb Modern Jam (produced by Guy-Man from Daft), from Lost Forever to the whopping single K-Pop, Travis Scott superbly restores his reputation, aided by an army of prestigious featuring artists (Beyoncé, The Weekend, James Blake, Drake, Yung Lean, Playboi Carti...) and his unbridled vocal imagination. © Brice Miclet/Qobuz

In 2015, David Byrne invited Anna Calvi to perform at the Meltdown Festival of which he is the artistic director. The Brit (Calvi) opted for an unusual arrangement – surrounded by a 12-piece choir – to revisit songs picked from her first two albums, Anna Calvi and One Breath. The recording of this unique show in London was published in 2017 on Record Store Day as a red double vinyl. Now, one year later, we have an official version in Hi-Res 24-Bit. With this unique vocal halo, Anna Calvi’s songs have found an epic, mystic and quite astonishing second wind. Let yourself be carried away by rock which is disconnected from its time and these songs consisting of dark and haunting poetry. Magnificent. © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

Three years and a pandemic between releases, Niall Horan turns the heartbreak around on his vibrant, matured The Show. His third full-length, the quick ten-track burst finds the former One Directioner in a period of positive growth, leaving his twenties behind and grounding himself in a more comfortable space where he can play with genres and have some fun. The mood is set on the irresistible opener "Heaven," a bright, life-affirming anthem that nods to the Beach Boys with the repeated "God only knows" and that group's trademark sunny vocal harmonies. Meanwhile, "Meltdown" and "Save My Life" amp up the energy with breezy choruses and '80s pop/rock vibrancy that's not too far off from his former bandmates Harry Styles' and Louis Tomlinson's contemporaneous output. Digging in deeper, he contemplates the passage of time and its effects on love on the tender "Never Grow Up" and dips into Tame Impala psych-groove on "If You Leave Me." Later, he slows things down with the acoustic guitar-and-harmonica "You Could Start a Cult," a sweet ode to a love that could sway the masses, and the piano-and-strings ballad "Science." The centerpiece title track is a sweeping showcase that builds atop swelling, orchestral drama, reaching a grand apex on the bridge, where Horan hits the most shiver-inducing vocal heights yet heard on one of his solo efforts. With each subsequent album, Horan just gets better and better. The Show is his most immediate and engaging set to date, endlessly listenable and full of heart and charm.© Neil Z. Yeung /TiVo

At the dawn of the '90s, Judas Priest were in sad shape: out of touch, seemingly creatively bankrupt, coming off the two worst albums of their career, and left for dead by many observers. Trying to right the ship, Priest jettisoned longtime producer Tom Allom and his tinny '80s sound, as well as the serviceable groove drumming of Dave Holland, and brought in veteran metal producer Chris Tsangarides and onetime Racer X skinsman Scott Travis. Most importantly, though, Priest stopped trying to be a stadium act in the midst of hair metal's heyday. All those changes come into sharp focus as soon as the title cut of Painkiller starts -- Travis' thunderous (and crisp-sounding) percussive maelstrom lights an immediate fire under the bandmembers' asses; Glenn Tipton and K.K. Downing tear through a crushing, diabolical riff; and Rob Halford starts shrieking like a wicked witch, giving perhaps the most malevolent-sounding performance of his career. It's a startling statement of musical purpose that arrived seemingly out of nowhere, heralding a comeback that rivals George Foreman's. Once the leanest, meanest, darkest metal band on the planet, Priest were clearly giving up on the mainstream and instead embracing the thrash and speed metal underground they'd helped spawn. Not only do they come to terms with it here, they teach those whippersnappers a thing or two, marrying furious instrumental pyrotechnics to an unerring sense of songcraft. Spurred on by Travis' jazz-trained double bass assault, Painkiller never once lets up, slowing down only for the elegant menace of the prog-tinged "A Touch of Evil," and without an unmemorable tune in the bunch. That constant, balls-out intensity is a big reason why metal's younger generation has come to consider Painkiller perhaps the ultimate speed metal album. Older Priest fans will likely complain that the lyrics are silly, and they won't be wrong -- for all its fury, the title track is about the winged knight riding the monster motorcycle depicted on the front cover. However, there's a convincing argument to be made that this brand of comic book fantasy holds up better over time (and is more fun) than most would care to admit (and it can't be any sillier than, for example, members of Morbid Angel worshipping H.P. Lovecraft's fictional Ancient Ones as actual demonic entities). Thus, Painkiller's influence reaches further than many longtime fans might expect: traditionalist power metal bands wanting a harder edge adopted a good chunk of Painkiller's approach, yet its blend of chops and aggression also caught the ears of the emerging extreme metal movement, even inspiring a cover version of the title track on Death's final album, The Sound of Perseverance. In the end, Painkiller secured Judas Priest's legacy with the next generation of metal fans; it's the point where their contributions make the most sense to modern ears more attuned to metal extremes (and more affectionate towards lyrical clichés). It isn't the most important of the Priest classics, but it is the fastest, the meanest, and, well, the most f***ing metal album they ever released. Simultaneously a stunning revitalization and the last great album they would ever make, thanks to Halford's imminent departure.© Steve Huey /TiVo

Scoring the End of the World is the sixth album from American metal outfit Motionless in White and follows their 2019 release Disguise. Produced by Drew Fulk and Justin DeBlieck, the album sees the group dealing with corruption, climate change, and political upheaval through a blast of expansive metal.© Rich Wilson /TiVo

Scoring the End of the World is the sixth album from American metal outfit Motionless in White and follows their 2019 release Disguise. Produced by Drew Fulk and Justin DeBlieck, the album sees the group dealing with corruption, climate change, and political upheaval through a blast of expansive metal.© Rich Wilson /TiVo

Darren Aronofsky's second film Requiem for a Dream features a score from his Pi collaborator, former Pop Will Eat Itself vocalist/guitarist Clint Mansell. This time, Mansell blends his usual electronic/industrial leanings with brooding, evocative performances from the Kronos Quartet. As with Pi, Mansell's compositions play a large part in Requiem for a Dream, which is an adaptation of Hubert Selby's 1978 novel about the harrowing lives of four drug addicts. Impressively, Mansell's score manages to be appropriately dark and disturbing, as well as compulsively listenable.© Heather Phares /TiVo

After the tepid reaction to the subdued, over-produced Secret Samadhi, Live took some time off to rethink their direction. For their fourth full-length studio album The Distance to Here, the band called on producer Jerry Harrison to recapture the raw energy and emotion that fueled Mental Jewelry and Throwing Copper. A self-conscious response to Secret Samadhi with plenty of guitar riffs, thunderous tempos and a mystical aura, The Distance to Here emerges from their last album's swirling, numbing stupor and regains some of Throwing Copper's aggressive intensity. But Live doesn't just meld their last two albums for this release; it's a livelier, lighter collection. Though the group is slowly evolving their sound -- Ed Kowalczyk's vulnerable-turned-angry vocals have become freer, more confident and more expressive, while Chad Taylor's background vocals add needed depth and harmony - they're retracing their steps before making any major changes. Live made its name by combining brutally honest, searching lyrics with equally intense and emotive music, but the fine line between genuine soul-searching and heavy-handed preaching is in the eye of the beholder. With The Distance, this line sways on individual songs: "Feel the Quiet River Rage," "Sparkle," "Meltdown," "Sun," and the title track -- reflect Live's evolution, but the lumbering "Face and Ghost (The Children's Song)" and the gushy "Dance With Me," aim too high for their own good. This doesn't make for a failed or bad album, just an uneven one. Overall, Live continues to plunge into dramatic, emotional, and spiritual realms, but the band needs to be more adventurous musically to complement its ongoing spiritual journey.© Gina Boldman /TiVo

One of the most successful rappers and entertainers of his generation, Travis Scott changes gears on fourth studio album UTOPIA. The psychedelic trap sound that brought Scott chart domination on his 2018 album, Astroworld, gets smoothed out into new forms of tense, atmospheric rap with big-screen production aided by a guest list made up of some of the biggest names in music. Scott is in full-on Kanye mode throughout UTOPIA. The pulsing percussion and thick bass of "Circus Maximus" feel like a direct callback to My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, the burning synths of "Modern Jam" or shattered, distorted beats of songs like "Sirens" reference Yeezus, and other subtle nods to various moments of West's influence are peppered throughout. West himself lends production to parts of the album and is just one of many on UTOPIA's staggering list of world-famous contributors. Drake adds a seething verse to "Meltdown," Beyonce sings over the majority of doomy house-influenced track "Delresto (Echoes)," The Weeknd and 21 Savage are both on multiple tracks, and there are also appearances by Bad Bunny, SZA, Young Thug, Kid Cudi, Bon Iver's Justin Vernon, Dave Chappelle, and many others. UTOPIA feels like a concerted effort on Scott's part to both expand his artistic range and turn in a timeless statement similar to the Kanye albums he's clearly inspired by. While the album might ultimately not be as fully realized as it would need to be to rank among history's best, Scott's fearless exploration of new sounds and styles is what keeps UTOPIA interesting. There are experiments with ambience, risky beat switches, theatrical and hook-free pop, and orchestration that Scott has never attempted before. The multi-platinum guest features might set the album up for global conquest, but the most exciting moments come when it sounds like Scott is discovering a new way to push his craft forward.© TiVo Staff /TiVo

"The abundance of wind and percussion instruments make the Quartet sound wonderfully different, but familiar all at the same time. It is cool jazz, dreamy classical and cerebral post-rock all at once." © TiVo

It wasn't death but life that brought Mother Love Bone to the attention of the world in the end. Andrew Wood's premature passing was a personal tragedy to all who knew him and to the band's hometown fanbase, but the group had barely made a mark beyond the Shine EP, and Apple was less a debut album than a memorial. But when Seattle's music took over the commercial stratosphere, with Gossard and Ament steering Pearl Jam to undreamed-of heights, it was inevitable that a re-release would occur -- something further confirmed when "Crown of Thorns" became one of the many radio hits from the soundtrack to Singles. For all the after-the-fact money-making thanks to Polygram, about the only thing that makes it a rip-off to the earlier fans is the inclusion of one unreleased track -- "Lady Godiva Blues," which sounds more than a little like one of the Cult's neo-boogie efforts circa Electric. Wood certainly has Ian Astbury's gift of gab and vocal projection, though it's likely Rick Rubin would have recorded the guitars a lot more forcefully; either way, it's not essential for those who have everything else already. For newcomers, though, this collection is all that is needed, compiling as it does the full contents of both Shine and Apple into one package. The second disc only contains the Shine take of "Capricorn Sister" and "Lady Godiva Blues" itself; given the presence of numerous demos on bootlegs, including a version of Argent's "Hold Your Head Up," it seems a lot more could have been added. It's a fairly minor quibble, though, given all the fine music, whether it's the stomp of "Holy Roller" and "Half Ass Monkey Boy" or the fragile beauty of "Stargazer" and "Crown of Thorns." Ament's amusing but heartfelt liner notes, complete lyrics, and a slew of pictures of Mother Love Bone memorabilia help round out the release.© Ned Raggett /TiVo

Displaying a sometimes Rush-like refined prog groove and plenty of his traditional science-and-literature lyrical themes, Bruce Dickinson deserves high marks for Skunkworks, the ex-Iron Maiden vocalist's fourth solo effort. This 1996 release signals Dickinson's tentative shift toward music generally in tune with (but still somewhat restrained when compared to) his seminal work with Maiden. The occasionally over-serious, high-concept imagery is about what fans would expect, but the open, less metallic accompaniment (that still rocks by any standard) has a non-chronological familiarity. Joining the singer on Skunkworks are musicians Alex Dickson (guitars), Alex Elena (drums), and Chris Dale (bass). Highlight tracks include "Solar Confinement," which while lyrically murky, has a great chorus, and the Soundgarden-esque "I Will Not Accept the Truth." "Headswitch" is also a treat, with its updated Deep Purple groove. This track also features some of Dickson's best work. A year after Skunkworks, Dickinson joined up with former Maiden guitarist Adrian Smith and made a more defined return to classic form. Most agree that the Smith period is the singer's finest, but Skunkworks has some merit of its own, foreshadowing what would become a highly approved stylistic shift.© Vincent Jeffries /TiVo