Record Label: Blast Records

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In a career spanning 20 years, Irish noise trio Therapy? have seen their fortunes ebb and flow: from underground kudos, prolific single success, commercial and critical misfires, personnel changes and label strife; it’s fair to label them seasoned veterans at this stage. 2009′s ‘Crooked Timber’ saw the band regain confidence and composure, returning to the rhythmic roots of earlier albums whilst suggesting a forward momentum, and 13th album ‘ABCOL’ delivers on this promise. Lead single ‘Living In The Shadow..’ is vintage Therapy?: jarring riffs and propulsive, anxious percussion deliver a verbose chorus that shouldn’t work, but does. Highlights abound: instrumental ‘Marlow’ is a celebratory, danceable workout that pulls influences from Battles, marrying them to their signature sound, whilst ‘Get Your Dead Hand..’ is a sparse, effective progression on the atmospherics explored on the last album. Whilst it’s not a perfect album – ‘Stark Raving Sane’ feels familiar and is nothing they haven’t done before – after 20 years bands generally struggle to demonstrate a third of the energy demonstrated here. As the downbeat ‘Ecclesiasteces’ ends the album in a vaguely post-rock haze of smoke, there’s plenty to suggest that, instead of running out of steam, their best work may still be ahead of them.

Record Label: Tooth & Nail

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 Quebec’s Blessed By A Broken Heart are  the inevitable Frankenstein’s Monster created by alternative metal’s flirtations with the ’80s: each time the likes of Soundgarden, Therapy? or FFAF integrated metal cliches in their music with a nudge and a wink, it became more inevitable that someone eventually wouldn’t get the joke. Enter Blessed By A Broken Heart, representing a blurring of the boundaries to such an extent that it’s impossible to tell whether they want to be Atreyu or Europe – or both. ‘Shut Up And Rock’ sets out it’s stall unapologetically: screamo meets the Sunset Strip, whilst ‘Love Nightmare’ presents a mash-up of 36 Crazyfists and Def Leppard. Seriously. ‘I’ve Got You’ is an upbeat ballad swathed in keyboard washes straight from the Van Halen playbook. Predictably, guitar solos are front-and-centre, and usually too long to boot. It’s a ridiculous album, but not without a goofy charm if you’ve a predisposition for hair metal or tracks with names like ‘Rockin’ All Night’, or lyrics about folk who “wear their hearts on cut-off sleeves”. BBABH come across as genuine, and whilst it’s hard not to raise a smile whilst listening, it’ll be a very particular demographic that spins this more than once.

Record Label: Thrash Town / Pay For The Piano

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“Prepare for the worst!” scream Middlesborough thrashers Lifeless on ‘Judgement Day’, the opening track on their eponymous new album, and with that I smirked a little, as I already had. Upon seeing the circa 1985 album artwork depicting a mushroom cloud, I’d already done a mental duck-and-cover in preparation for a dodgy Megadeth pastiche. Egg on my face and that, as Lifeless are a celebratory – not to mention exhilarating – tribute to the most interesting aspect of thrash: the intersection where punk and hardcore infected metal to mutate into crossover. If this album has a denim jacket, it definitely has Slayer, DRI, Cro-Mags and Anthrax patches on it. The influence of these bands bleeds through each track, particularly the excellent ‘Wytches Tyt’ and the (maybe) piss-take falsetto wail that ushers in ‘Nuclear Bore’. Lifeless succeed where others fail by not thrashing for the sake of thrash though, and their riffs are hummable, and as groovy as they are frenetic. Lifeless offer music made for soundtracking a Youtube video of grisly skateboarding injuries, or indeed for a moshpit I long ago became too sensible to venture into, and it’s really quite good. You saw this coming: Lifeless are anything but.

Record Label: Epitaph

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Let’s get it out of the way early: Dangerous! probably aren’t. I doubt they’re serial killers, carriers of a zombie pathogen, caustic to the skin, nor do they randomly trip old people on the way out of the post office. I doubt they’re currently occupying Wall Street, St Paul’s Cathedral, or even two spaces with the one car in an Asda car park. Whilst they probably possess few qualities that make them an imminent threat to personal or global safety, they do possess a clutch of reasonable pop-punk tunes, and by Zod these Aussies ain’t afraid to go in a studio and record them so that people might buy them and maybe go to a gig as well, and that’s exactly what they’ve done here. If you’re in the market for  a The Hives-meets-My Chemical Romance-type band with energy and mildly catchy tunes, one of which is called ‘Chase The Girls’ and has a nice synth effect in the chorus, and which will probably be used in Hollyoaks for a scene of debauchery, then fill your boots. You know who’d like these guys? That Frankie Cocozza from X-Factor.

Record Label: Distiller

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Welsh emo-rock grandaddies FFAF augment their well-received last album ‘Welcome Home Armageddon’  with this 9-track companion piece, the chirpily-titled ‘See You All In Hell’, once again proving themselves to be one of the worthier exponents of the genre. Like many such releases, the EP is a compilation of new tracks, covers, remixes and live tracks, and suffers from little sense of cohesive flow as a result, but there’s plenty on board for fans. New song ‘High Castles’ showcases some chunkier riffs and a tad more aggression than one might expect, and while it’s an effective leap in the aggro stakes, they arguably don’t have the muscle to pull of a cover of Strife’s mighty ‘Will To Die’, which lacks the original’s sheer intensity. ‘Medicated’ gets some grimy bells and whistles care of LoveGadgetsHateGizmos, whilst ‘Old Hymns’ gets the standard heartfelt acoustic treatment. As it stands, for non-converts the EP will hardly be essential, but as a taster for an approaching album, it suggests there will be plenty seeing FFAF in Hell in the future.

Record Label: Independent

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Shrewesbury troupe Kill The Weekend throw their musical hat in with the lighter side of emo rock, and therefore elicited the usual resigned ‘harumph’ from myself as I prepared for yet another You Me At Six-inspired coaster to be added to my sizeable collection. There’s a serious glut in the market for emo-tinged pop nowadays, and whilst it seems to be as hard as ever to have a good idea, it seems to have gotten just as hard to have an idea in the first place. Kill The Weekend initially do little to dispel this – I’ll go on record as saying their new opus only got a repeat spin because of my own affinity for Taking Back Sunday, who they owe more than a passing resemblance to – but doing so suggests that they’re not the worst of their ilk. Vocalist Jamie Deeks acquits himself well, and there’s a genuine heart apparent on ‘Strength In Innocence’ that makes it difficult not to catch their drift. Whether they have the legs to be front-runners is debatable, but as it stands, I did not hate this record.

Record Label: Independent

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Sometimes an album can be so bereft of peaks and troughs that it leaves me in a fugue state afterwards, and I believe it is for this very reason that some bands detail their adventures in recording said album in their press bio. So here I am wondering do I present to you the haze of trials and tribulations that beset Stonesthrow on all sides whilst recording this, their magnum opus: the broken equipment; the stolen masters; the canning of months of work; the re-recording of the album in 4 days – or do I give you the skinny? Whilst Stonesthrow’s exposition might reaffirm their commitment to be The Biggest And Most Epic Band Ever, it’s accompanied by a workmanlike album which I have no doubt would be reproducible by any local band capable of filling a pub back-room with their mates. ‘Tear It Down’ is the first weedy, plodding rocker – an uninspired tune with half a chorus delivered by Derek Murray’s nasal vocals – and it’s pretty much the first of twelve. Something about this album suggests a former covers band branching out with their own material, and therefore I’d suggest there are probably some more worthy applications of your time elsewhere.

Record Label: Future Noise Music

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‘Ghoulish’ is a radio-friendly offering from the former X-Ray Spex vocalist who, after tragically losing her battle with cancer earlier this year, never made it to see her final album ‘Generation Indigo’ released. As it stands, the single is a neat representation of an artist adopting newer influences: aided by renowned producer Youth, she delivers an effective slice of slightly kitsch dream-pop which, whilst superficially about a protagonist looking past the make-up of a standard Goth who is “probably quite a nice guy”, is actually detailing her reaction to the death of Michael Jackson. It’s a mature viewpoint from a mature performer, and whilst sonically it resembles the likes of Garbage more than the heady days of ‘Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” it proves that her death marks the passing of a thoughtful artist with a knack for good-natured bubblegum pop: and as such, it’s very hard not to like this record.

Record Label: Mazepa

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Despite a moniker and CD packaging more suited to a post-clubbing chill-out music compilation, Italy’s Sunday Recovery play downbeat, angsty rock with nods to prog on new album ‘Coma’, and in doing so fall into the most common trap of bands trying to ape the likes of A Perfect Circle and Soundgarden: namely, thinking that every track has to be a mid-paced dirge in order to sound deep or important. Whilst the desired effect might be to make the listener stop and appreciate not only the aching beauty in each drawn-out note, but to reflect on how said aching beauty parallels their own lives and how deep these musicians must be to strike such a pensive chord, this isn’t the case at all: instead, our Hapless Listener is lumbered with 45 minutes of well-worn alt-metal cliches and far too many songs built upon a portentously-picked minor chord. The band play entirely in this comfort zone throughout, sounding lazy rather than artistic: token rocker ‘Porn Star’s complete failure to launch serves only to typify a lack of spirit and unearned self-importance that pervades a very, very aptly-named album that’s a complete chore to sit through more than once.

Record Label: Smalltown America

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Belfast quartet LaFaro have turned up to your party completely unannounced and uninvited; they’re in a bit of a state and will wreck the place and insult your friends. New album ‘Easy Meat’ sees LaFaro partly jettison the Jesus Lizard comparisons that they once drew in favour of ignorant riffs and blast beats from the Fucked Up playbook. ‘Sucking Diesel’ is a dirty glam stomp, its lyrical sleaze infused with joyously crass Northern Irish humour . The fantastically-named ‘Wingers And Chips’ is equally as scuzzy, boasting a guitar sound as filthy as a used nappy floating up a river towards a group of canoeists.  ’Have A Word With Yourself’ slows the pace from breakneck, and sounds like the LostProphets sniffing lighter fuel. LaFaro possess much the same lyrical cheek associated with Therapy? –  quiz show host Roy Walker’s “It’s good but it’s not the one” catchphrase sounds strangely epic shoehorned into single ‘Meat Wagon’. For an album so eager to sneer, ‘Easy Meat’ is dripping with a specific local charm, and whilst this might not be recognised in a wider market as it is in their local venues, LaFaro have got their chops together enough to produce a completely fun album.