Time for my usual monthly roundup.

Playlists:
Spotify

A full review of this is "in the works", and will follow later this week. In the meantime, here's the opening track (and one of the standouts) from the album – considerably re-worked, as I recall, from it's original version released about a year ago, this version has much more of a punch and sounds like a quantum leap from earlier Coreline material. Even more amazing is that Chris has somehow got away with using a junior school choir for the vocals…

A full review of this album will appear later this week on Connexion Bizarre, but in the meantime, here is the pick of the album – this remix of Back To The Grave, which basically turns the track into a new Skinny Puppy classic – complete with hulking beats and savage guitar samples. But if only SP could still write stuff like this. The whole album is great, by the way.

The first new track to break cover from the long-awaited new album, this certainly bears the mark of it's producer (Tom G. Warrior from Celtic Frost). It sounds somewhat different from the last (astounding) album, but then a step forward is welcome as far as I'm concerned – keeping a more raw sound doesn't mean that the band can't evolve. Either way, this really is an album that could well be one of the essential extreme-metal albums of the year.

I'm seem to recall, now I've heard this, that Little Boots was one of the "great white hopes" of the music industry for 2009. Well, for the first time in a while, here's one I'll agree with. I've heard this track on MTV2 a few times in the past week now, and I'm struggling to get the damned song out of my head, which as far as I'm concerned is probably a good thing – if nothing else, it's made an impression on me. Anyway, the track itself is a marvellously catchy electro-pop song with a chorus that explodes like a glitter cannon.

Somewhere the other end of the electro spectrum are this LA foursome, who somehow manage on this track to merge industrial rhythms and shoegazing vocals and guitars. Fuck knows what the lyrics are about, the few that can be worked out, but no matter – this is awesome stuff that sounds utterly unique. Some feat in these times.

Been meaning to pick this up for ages, finally got it from eMusic this past week. Later track The Offering takes things in a different direction, but this pounding electro-industrial track is still great, with sparse electronics layered on top of a muscular rhythmic core.

I got the promo for this some time ago, and then picked up the album at last at Whitby (having missed them live, again) – and it's really impressive. The production, I think, is the thing that's really made the difference, although some of the more electronic tracks – like this one – are the real stars of the album, taking the band into darker, near synthpop realms. This track is the highlight of the entire album, though, and it wouldn't be a stretching the imagination much to be suggesting that we should be hearing this on mainstream radio.

There's something about the manic energy and crazy electronics of this that I just love. The beats bounce around like they are on springs, it's heading towards breakcore at points, and this is simply going to slay dancefloors. As nuts as the title suggests, although I still reckon the single version at least is a little too short…

Strange title from a strange band that have always stood out to me as being rather different from their labelmates on Ant-Zen. Not least their complex rhythms that are often nowhere near rhythmic noise, much as on this track, where it's beats ebb and flow wonderfully with a real driving power, and the hissed, snarling lyrics – something this lot use a lot – add something more than a bit unexpected.

The final track this month is a look to the past, following a conversation with Matt over the weekend that has got me listening to this again. Probably my favourite Neurosis track, this epic, slow-burning track would probably work quite well as an acoustic lament, but in this form is rears out of the murk as it builds to the climactic finish like some mythical monster. The album version is near ten minutes of doomy perfection – the video I have linked to here is rather shorter.