Their stadium-indie sound is more variegated on this follow-up, on which Mikel Jollett reflects on death and change. "We grow old all at once, and it comes like a punch in the gut," he notes on the galloping, U2-style title track, while the simple "The Graveyard Near The House" is a touching love song. In between are burly rockabilly depictions of Jollett's troubled family, stadium anthems of chugging sincerity, and less appealingly, a song about the bombing of that Afghan wedding party featuring some ghastly prog-rock keyboards. Overall, it treads an uncertain line between bombast and sensitivity.

Enjoy the best box release ever: The Cult Love (Omnibus Edition) 4xCD Boxset!
Some albums deserve an expanded reissue. Some don’t. The Cult’s second album, 1985’s Love, is largely a work of genius. Despite the heady heights of success scaled by The Cult during the arena rock years, their second album Love is by far their best. Originally released in 1985, there simply isn’t a bad song on here, and evergreen rock anthems such as Rain and the iconic, She Sells Sanctuary are probably their best known and best loved tracks. Re-mastered from the original studio analogue tapes, this four-disc box set is a feast for fans. Aside from the original album, there’s a disc of remixes and non-album B sides, a disc of previously unreleased early demos and a disc recorded live in 1985 on the Love tour. Add a 48-page book with unseen contact sheets from the album photo session and a mass of other material assembled by Astbury and Duffy and you have the ultimate version of one of the greatest British rock records of the 80s.

Taake , one of Norway’s leading black metal bands, will release a mini-CD on April 26 which will serve as a taster for the new full-length album, due in September. “Kveld” contains five tracks, four of which are classic Taake songs which have been especially recorded live in the studio with the band’s current live lineup, and a new track, “Nordbundet” , which will also feature on the upcoming fifth full-length CD, “Noregs Vaapen” .

Tunnel Blanket delivers the epic-in-scope soundscapes that followers of its makers’ previous recordings are accustomed to, but presents them in new lights – where once the sun shone down bright upon immediate tropes and traits, now their work is better suited to distant starlight, casting changeable shadows across vistas of inspired, ambitious amplification. This is not an album to pick through in search of bold hooks and instant melodies. It is an ever-shifting, always moving work, which seems to evolve before the listener – spidery guitar lines feeling their way forth like vines scrambling up trunks in time-lapse photography.

Swedish folk metal masters YGGDRASIL released their new album, "Irrbloss" (English translation: "Will-o-wisps") on April 25 via Grand Master Music. The long-awaited follow up to 2008's "Vedergällning" was recorded, mixed and mastered at Grand Master Audio in Sweden.

Another recording by the Nepomuk Fortepiano Quintet, who's previous recordings, received much praise from the specialist press.In this recording the ensemble focuses on the "Schubert setting" including the double bass, and on content that deserves further exploration.

Deviant Messiah hail from France and play a killer brand of blackened death metal that would appease fans of Arkhon Infaustus or Svart Crown. It's listed as an EP, but it's 10 songs with a duration of about 40 minutes. That typically makes for a full length in my book…

Bill Evans Trio - Sunday At The Village Vanguard (1961) {2001 Riverside Remaster 20bitK2}
EAC rip (secure mode) | FLAC+CUE+LOG -> 531 Mb | MP3 @320 -> 183 Mb
Full Artwork @ 300 dpi (png) -> 28 Mb
© 2001 Riverside / Fantasy | RCD-9376-2
Jazz / Hard Bop / Modal Music / Piano

Conventional wisdom, which in this case may be right, holds that Bill Evans' storied career peaked on June 25, 1961, a date that yielded two live records, Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby, the final two documents of Evans' first, and best, trio, with bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian. In the two years he'd been playing with Evans, LaFaro had opened up new possibilities for the jazz bass, playing with a harmonically oblique, melodically flexible style that was, at the time, unprecedented. Ten days after this record was made he died, just 25 years old.