Long-awaited 2008 album from the mighty METALLICA follows up the critically panned ST. ANGER in an excellent, critic-silencing manner. Sure, they're never going to recapture their "Master of Puppets" or "And Justice For All" glory days, but when a band has been around for 20+ years, you've gotta' look to the future, not the past. "Death Magnetic" is a good, riff-heavy (the shortest song is over six minutes), metal/hard rock album. There's thrash elements, but again, these guys aren't going to top the speed of "Battery" or "Blackened" in 2008. What they will do is pummel you into submission with solid hook after solid hook. RICK RUBIN has proved his worth to the music industry once again by getting a great performance out of a band that could have very easily phoned it in. RECOMMENDED!!!

The duo of DARSHAN JESRANI and MORGAN GEIST return as METRO AREA, to inflict dancefloors, hi-energy soulful-experimentations in the field of electro house. With organic orchestrations, and pumping beats, "5" shows why this band is such hot-shit in the underground club scene. A: Nerves B: Proton Candy

While DOOM could easily take the rest of his life off, and rest on the laurels of his MADVILLAIN achievements, herba/fooda/workaholic MF DOOM dropped his Rhymesayers debut, and second album under his first alias. Chock full of great Metalface production, save for tracks produced by COUNT BASS D, MADLIB and MOLEMEN "MM..Food" once again proves just how DOOM is destroying and rebuilding rap one rhyme at a time. Oh yeah, the Rhymes? Like we need to tell you that dude is still killing it...APPROVED!! This 2007 reissue of the out-of-print original adds a DVD with live footage and behind the scenes GET THIS NOW

Quarterstick Records debut for the excellent MI AMI, a group that features two members of BLACK EYES. MI AMI is similar to BLACK EYES in many ways with pulsing almost tribal rhythms & completely out of control screaming vocals. The rhythms remind us a lot of THE LIARS but there's similarities to stuff like POP GROUP, ESSENTIAL LOGIC & DNA as well. We're looking forward to the next album from these guys very much.