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After establishing their sparse, dramatic sound with two albums and a handful of singles, Felt exploded into brilliance on their third album, 1984's The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories. Working with producer John Leckie for the first time, the band made a purposeful leap into the world of hi-fi recording: the arrangements are full and layered, Lawrence's vocals pop with confidence and vigor, and Felt have a limber swing to them that they'd never exhibited before. As usual, the record was split between Maurice Deebank's intricate instrumentals and Lawrence's songs, but for the first time Deebank's guitar explorations and Lawrence's tightly wound inner journeys sound like the work of two different visionaries instead of a united front. To that end, the instrumentals are limited to only three this time. Lawrence's songs are too good to be shunted aside; almost every track here could be considered one of his best. The hooks are undeniable, the melodies are crystalline, Lawrence's vocals have jumped about five steps ahead of where they were and his words have taken on deeper meanings and feelings, and Deebank's guitarwork is perfectly integrated into the jangling whole. Felt hinted at being able to make music as immediate and catchy as "Spanish House" and "Sunlight Bathed the Golden Glow"; they came close to recording songs as achingly pretty as "Vasco da Gama" and "Crystal Ball"; but this is where it all comes together and they deliver their first masterpiece. Songs like "Dismantled King Is Off the Throne" and "Roman Litter" rank with the best poppy post-punk of the early '80s; they have all the emotional power of the Smiths, all the guitar overload of the Church, all the drama of Echo & the Bunnymen, and more than enough elevated songcraft and laser-sharp vision to make them sound totally unique. The Strange Idols Pattern and Other Short Stories may not have the cachet or reputation of albums by the "big-name" bands of the era, but it has the songs and that's what counts the most. This is Lawrence and Felt at their absolute classic best, not to be overlooked or missed for any reason.© Tim Sendra /TiVo

While many have tried, few bands have merged metalcore with electronic influences quite like Bring Me the Horizon, who complete their transition from faceless deathcore band to something altogether more interesting with their fourth album, Sempiternal. Produced by Terry Date, the same producer who worked on the Deftones' 2000 art metal masterpiece, White Pony, the album finds the band almost reinventing its style, diving headfirst into the kinds of atmospheric flourishes that were only hinted at on There Is a Hell, Believe Me I've Seen It, There Is a Heaven, Let's Keep It a Secret. What makes Bring Me the Horizon's evolution so interesting isn't so much the change in their sound, but how they got there. Rather than adding and subtracting elements wholesale, it feels as though the band has been tinkering little by little, adjusting the ratios to achieve just the right balance of ambience and aggression. Where other bands might have synths slapped on top of their sound, here they feel like they're part of the foundation of the songs, creating a soundscape for the rest of the elements to drift through instead of around. Though fans of the band's earlier works might see this kind of change as an unwelcome invader, they certainly can't say it's one they didn't see coming. Bring Me the Horizon have been working slowly but surely to refine their sound for years now, and with Sempiternal, it feels like their patience and hard work are finally beginning to pay dividends.© Gregory Heaney /TiVo

When Norwegian black metal legends Darkthrone released their masterful fourth album Transilvanian Hunger in 1994, they were locked in tightly to a world of unadulterated evil which had long blurred the line between fantasy and reality. The album was met with a storm of press controversy for its flirtation with vaguely Nazi sentiments. In addition to that, some of the songs' lyrics were written by Varg Vikernes who would be imprisoned for the murder of Mayhem guitarist Øystein "Euronymous" Aarseth, and for burning several churches by the time the record saw release. On top of the external factors surrounding it, the record sounded like pure evil. By this point in their journey, Darkthrone's music was defining Norwegian black metal, and along with a few other bands, shaping a sound so sinister and horrifying it would resonate as a template for years to come. The blistering drums and nearly ambient guitar onslaught of Transilvanian Hunger don't seem like they could come from anywhere in an evolution, but just a handful of years prior, Darkthrone was getting their sea legs and practicing thrashy death metal in the suburbs of Oslo. Between 1988 and 1989, the band would record four extremely lo-fi demos of their early progress; Land of Frost, A New Dimension, Thulcandra, and Cromlech. Sempiternal Past: The Darkthrone Demos collects all four demos in a remastered form, and tells the story of a much different band than the church-burning, corpse paint-donning black metal mavens who would soon surface. The immediately noticeable factors in the earliest demos are the incredibly raw recording, still-getting-there musicianship, and bizarre processed vocals. These Land of Frost tracks are almost too psychedelic to be considered metal, though subsequent tracks take on a more refined approach. Instrumental workouts like the nine-minute "Snowfall" from the New Dimension sessions bring to mind later instrumental recordings that would be released on the Goatlord compilation, a suggestion that the band was gradually heading further away from their death metal roots into darker territory. There has been some criticism in the metal community over Sempiternal Past being yet another repackaging of Darkthrone demos that have already seen re-release in several different forms over the years. While 2008 saw all of the material released in a somewhat less mastered form on The Frostland Tapes and preceding that, the Preparing for War collection included many but not all of these demo tracks, Sempiternal Past boasts some rare tracks the band recorded for Oslo TV in 1989, along with a restored version of the lost song "God of Disturbance & Friction." All of this is for completists alone, especially anyone already familiar with the previous demo collections. This most recent package is the cleanest presentation to date, and very much evidence of the band growing toward their pinnacle. Anyone not yet familiar with said pinnacle, however, might want to start at the heart of the storm and work backwards to the beginning.© Fred Thomas /TiVo

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