Crashing head-long through a wall of corroded metal and glass shards, Bring Me the Horizon redefines their heavy sound once again with the potent EP POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR. The first of a proposed series of shorter non-LP efforts, this set is a pure assault of physical, riotous aggression designed specifically for the existential dread and global turmoil of 2020. Recorded while the band was stuck in quarantine lockdown, the anxiety and uncertainty course through these nine tracks in a manner that both amplifies paranoia and comforts with cathartic release. On the thrashing opener "Dear Diary," frontman Oli Sykes screams, "God is a shithead/And we're his rejects," while Matt Nicholls' jackhammer drums pummel and Lee Malia's guitars tear through Jordan Fish's cacophony. The trap-sludge "Parasite Eve" is a cinematic epic, unveiling a neon dystopia where war and strife reign, while the stomping "Ludens" -- first heard on the Death Stranding video game soundtrack -- pleads for a new leader to help carry the world out of the darkness. "Teardrops" tackles addiction and hopelessness in one of the album's standout moments, channeling the hybrid sound of Linkin Park (later they pay additional homage to the genre-blurring outfit with "Itch for the Cure," a direct nod to the American sextet's "Cure for the Itch"). An inspired roster of guests elevate SURVIVAL HORROR even further. English upstart Yungblud joins the band for the electro-industrial collision "Obey," a deranged dose of nihilism that lambasts systemic corruption, while Japanese outfit Babymetal join the apocalypse party for the unhinged industrial tempest "Kingslayer," which pairs Su-Metal's innocent lullaby vocals with Sykes' guttural cries of "Get the f*ck up!/Wake the f*ck up!" The most impressive collaboration -- "One Day the Only Butterflies Left Will Be in Your Chest as You March Towards Your Death" -- arrives at the close of the album, as Evanescence's Amy Lee duets with Sykes on a mournful heartbreaker that leaves no hope in sight. Despite the graphic descriptions of death, it's a beautiful moment of respite after an unbroken stretch of turbulence and hostility. Longtime fans displeased with their late-era pop shift should be appeased with the increase in crushing breakdowns and more dirty vocals than on mainstream breakthroughs That's the Spirit and Amo. Indeed, SURVIVAL HORROR is one of the band's best distillations of their extremes, providing just enough brutality without sacrificing their evolving vision of how melodic and experimental a metal band can be.© Neil Z. Yeung /TiVo

Obsessed with carnality as he is, it was only a matter of time before Jason Mraz realized that it's better to sound sexy than to blather about it incessantly. This monumental moment arrives on his third album, We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things, easily his sleekest collection of sounds and his only album to contain a suggestion of seduction within its grooves. Actually, We Sing is Mraz's only album to actually groove, as he sets down his acoustic guitar for much of the album and rides along on smooth rhythms partially indebted to '80s blue-eyed soul by Hall & Oates and Steve Winwood -- in that sense, the album recalls John Mayer's Continuum -- but he relies more heavily on Thriller, mixing it up with some modern neo-soul that gives this a surprisingly soulful sound. Mraz can glide on these surfaces, leaning on the gentle art of insinuation instead of goosing his paramour, but old habits die hard: it's only a matter of time before he punctures the seduction by scatting sophomorically, slipping in juvenile come-ons ("You make my slacks tight"), or stuttering manic syncopations on "The Dynamo of Volition." Mraz is also prone to terminal cuteness, drafting in a kids chorus to close out the coda of "Coyotes" and mewling out phrases like "always a goody doer," and while these are often so close-miked and forthright they're hard to ignore, they're also just not as prevalent as they were on the icky Mr. A-Z. Also, they're cleverly camouflaged beneath that gossamer gloss, typified by the quite catchy "Butterfly," whose Quincy Jones-styled horns disguise his mildly queasy oral sex puns. Mraz's lyrics don't stand up to such close scrutiny -- something the McCartney-esque, perhaps autobiographical divorce ballad "Love for a Child" ("Was it my mom who put dad out on his ass/Or the other way around") makes plain -- but the nice thing about the soulful shimmer of We Sing is that it's so slick that it's easy to ignore the gibberish spilling out of Mraz's mouth and just enjoy the sunny, easy sound.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

After Wanted on Voyage, with it’s immensely successful singles Blame It On Me and Budapest, George Ezra has returned with Staying At Tamara’s. In line with his debut album, the young Brit, with the voice of a a man twenty years his elder, presents eleven playful and solar pop songs that will not fail to delight all his fans, and no doubt create new ones. After taking over the summer of 2014 with his beloved hits off his debut album, Get Away or Don't Matter Now will see to accompany the heat on that festival stage this summer.

Indulging for the first time in Cockney Rebel's debut album -- and one uses the word "indulging" deliberately, for like so much else that's this delicious, you cannot help but feel faintly sinful when it's over -- is like waking up from a really weird dream, and discovering that reality is weirder still. A handful of Human Menagerie's songs are slight, even forced, and certainly indicative of the group's inexperience. But others -- the labyrinthine "Sebastian," the loquacious "Death Trip" in particular -- possess confidence, arrogance, and a doomed, decadent madness which astounds. Subject to ruthless dissection, Steve Harley's lyrics were essentially nonsense, a stream of disconnected images whose most gallant achievement is that they usually rhyme. But what could have been perceived as a weakness -- or, more generously, an emotionally overwrought attempt to blend Byron with Burroughs -- is actually their strength. Few of the songs are about anything in particular. But with Roy Thomas Baker's sub-orchestral production driving strings and things to unimaginable heights, and Cockney Rebel's own unique instrumentation -- no lead guitar, but a killer violin -- pursuing its own twisted journey, those images gel more solidly than the best constructed story. The Human Menagerie is a dark cabaret -- the darkest. Though Harley has furiously decried the band's historical inclusion in the glam rock pack, there's no separating the nocturnal theatrics of "Muriel the Actor," "Mirror Freak," or "What Ruthy Said" from at least the fringes of the movement. The difference is, other artists simply sung about absinthe and Sweet Ipomoea. Harley actually knew what they were. Unquestionably, he drew from many of the same literary, artistic, and celluloid sources as both David Bowie and Bryan Ferry, the only performers who could reasonably claim to have preempted his vision. But he went far beyond them, through the Berlin of Isherwood to the reality of the Weimar; past the Fritz Lang movies which everyone's seen, to the unpublished screenplays which no one has read. And though Harley might not have been the first cultural genius of his age, he was the first who wasn't content to simply zap the prevailing zeitgeist. He wanted to suck out its soul. And he very nearly succeeded. © Dave Thompson /TiVo

Gigi's Recovery is the second album from Irish post-punk band the Murder Capital following the release of their debut, 2019's When I Have Fears. The record sees the band's sound evolve, as they push back against the darkness and grief which characterized their debut, and explore a broader range of emotions.© Liam Martin /TiVo

The Jonas Brothers didn't go into hibernation immediately after the 2009 release of Lines, Vines and Trying Times, but they did slowly slip into a hiatus that lasted the better part of a decade. The trio may not have been working together, but they never seemed absent, not when Kevin appeared in a reality TV show, while Nick toiled away at a solo career and Joe took a brief journey through dance clubs before settling down with Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner. Combined, it was enough activity to make their splashy 2019 return to action feel not quite like the comeback it was intended. And, make no mistake, Happiness Begins was designed to push the Jonas Brothers back into the big time, arriving with the support of a documentary called Chasing Happiness that chronicled their ascendency, plateau, and recharge -- all part of a campaign that helped the spry "Sucker" become the trio's first number one single prior to the album's release. "Sucker" feels bright and colorful, yet its tempered disco bounce doesn't quite feel contemporary. Elsewhere on Happiness Begins, some modern sounds are threaded into the mix -- deep, elastic bass anchors even sweet pop songs, and there's a digital glassiness to the arrangements -- but the entire vibe of Happiness Begins feels proudly out of step with 2019. The Jonas Brothers have no time for the kind of depressive party music that fuels so much of the late nights of the late 2010s; they still pledge allegiance to good times and sweetly sad tunes meant to comfort and console. Such openheartedness and melodicism does mean Happiness Begins feels immediate in way so many big pop albums of the twilight of the 2010s do not, but individual tracks are crafted to slide onto as many cross-genre play lists as possible: the strummy pop of "Cool" winds up bouncing to a big beat, "Only Human" grooves to a spruced-up reggae rhythm, and "I Believe" is a sleek bit of retro-'80s nostalgia that works as well in the day as the night. This eclecticism can glide by unnoticed, since the Jonas Brothers -- with the assistance of executive producer Ryan Tedder -- polished Happiness Begins so it's so slick it gleams, but the understated savvy is another reason why the album is so appealing: the album offers old-fashioned pop values in a form that feels distinctly fresh and modern.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

Obsessed with carnality as he is, it was only a matter of time before Jason Mraz realized that it's better to sound sexy than to blather about it incessantly. This monumental moment arrives on his third album, We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things, easily his sleekest collection of sounds and his only album to contain a suggestion of seduction within its grooves. Actually, We Sing is Mraz's only album to actually groove, as he sets down his acoustic guitar for much of the album and rides along on smooth rhythms partially indebted to '80s blue-eyed soul by Hall & Oates and Steve Winwood -- in that sense, the album recalls John Mayer's Continuum -- but he relies more heavily on Thriller, mixing it up with some modern neo-soul that gives this a surprisingly soulful sound. Mraz can glide on these surfaces, leaning on the gentle art of insinuation instead of goosing his paramour, but old habits die hard: it's only a matter of time before he punctures the seduction by scatting sophomorically, slipping in juvenile come-ons ("You make my slacks tight"), or stuttering manic syncopations on "The Dynamo of Volition." Mraz is also prone to terminal cuteness, drafting in a kids chorus to close out the coda of "Coyotes" and mewling out phrases like "always a goody doer," and while these are often so close-miked and forthright they're hard to ignore, they're also just not as prevalent as they were on the icky Mr. A-Z. Also, they're cleverly camouflaged beneath that gossamer gloss, typified by the quite catchy "Butterfly," whose Quincy Jones-styled horns disguise his mildly queasy oral sex puns. Mraz's lyrics don't stand up to such close scrutiny -- something the McCartney-esque, perhaps autobiographical divorce ballad "Love for a Child" ("Was it my mom who put dad out on his ass/Or the other way around") makes plain -- but the nice thing about the soulful shimmer of We Sing is that it's so slick that it's easy to ignore the gibberish spilling out of Mraz's mouth and just enjoy the sunny, easy sound.© Stephen Thomas Erlewine /TiVo

The Human League's second album, Travelogue, was their first to be released in the U.S. (Not that you would have noticed at the time, given the limited distribution; the album subsequently was picked up for reissue by Virgin/Atlantic in 1988.) It was also the last to feature the nearly original lineup of Martyn Ware, Ian Marsh, Philip Oakey, and Adrian Wright. Already, the band's synthesizer textures and Oakey's mannered voice were starting to lean in a pop direction, but much of this album retained the austere tone of earlier synthesizer groups such as Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream. The conflicting musical directions led to a split in the band after this album, with Ware and Marsh forming Heaven 17 and Oakey and Wright reorganizing a new version of the Human League. Ironically, both ventures were more pop-oriented than before.© William Ruhlmann /TiVo

This collection includes Snap!'s biggest hit, "The Power," as well as "Oops Up" (a remake/takeoff of the Gap Band's nonsensical funk riff "Oops Upside Your Head"). The choppy rhythms of "Cult of Snap" and "Believe the Hype" didn't receive much airplay in the States. Rapper Turbo B. has energy but his enunciation leaves a lot to be desired, and the thick British accent doesn't help. Penny Ford's telling vocal and the story line of "Mary Had a Baby" make it the most accessible cut on the CD.© Andrew Hamilton /TiVo

Whether he was writing in imitation of Beethoven, Schubert, Wagner, and Brahms, Dvorák always winds up sounding like himself. In the String Quartet in C major, with its enormous structures and rigorous developments, Dvorák is at his most Beethovenian. Inevitably, however, the turn of the melodies, the progress of the harmonies, and the motion of the rhythms is pure Dvorák. But in the string quartet settings of his song cycle Cypresses, Dvorák is most himself, a warm-hearted melodist with touching harmonies and stirring rhythms. In these performances by the Prazak Quartet, Dvorák is always at his best because he is always himself. The Prazak Quartet plays with a clear but sweet tone, a supple but strong ensemble, and a sense of having lived with the music all its life. The interpretations are relaxed and natural, but deeply committed and completely compelling. In the Quartet in C major, the ensemble grants the music its due as form in motion, but makes every melody sing and every rhythm dance. In the Cypresses, the Prazak Quartet welcomes the music with the ardor of lovers and it makes every melody sigh and every rhythm embrace. Praga's super audio sound is immediate and intimate. © TiVo

Only Human is the debut album from 2015's Britain's Got Talent finalist Calum Scott. The release sees him delivering a selection of contemporary, soulful pop numbers including the singles "You Are the Reason" and "Dancing on My Own."© Rich Wilson /TiVo