If ever I wanted music to encapsulate raw pain and anguish in such agonising detail and with such empathy, then this has to be it. Arrowhead is familiar Prurient/Dominick Fernow territory of emotions stripped bare and the ugly underside of the human condition, all delineated through his use of tortured circuits and fried electronics.

Utilizing recordings made over the last decade to make their debut album, the Welsh trio cannot be called hasty. They can, however, be called a treat to the ears. Oscillating wildly between spacey pop and documentary, they have assembled an album that is not only a collection of wonderful songs but also give a bystander’s perspective on the strange creature that is Europe.

Both in- and outside Volcano the Bear, Daniel Padden has made some stunning music and his One Ensemble are the golden children in my eyes. Their jubilant and rapturous music is some of the most thrilling music currently available on a compact disc. Yet with this solo album, Padden takes the same spirit of his ensemble but strips it down to the bare essential (himself). With an occasional guest player, Padden has crafted an idiosyncratic, unassuming and fascinating album complete with hummable melodies and confounding noises.

Nurse With Wound's contributing pianist (Sylvie and Babs, Spiral Insana, A Sucked Orange, and a number of compilation and odd tracks) gave up recording as Sema by the late 1980s and continued on through the '90s under different guises and aliases to suit quite a different style of music he pursued. This is the first release in nearly 20 years under his own name and finds a return to the quiet and introspective simplicity that fans of the quiet piano era will easily adore.

Almost 23 years after his death, Robbie Basho's cosmic approach to steel-string guitar is the stuff of legend. On this 1980 live recording, Basho's exciting and perplexing playing is sometimes punctuated by his delightfully unfashionable and extraordinarily full-throttle singing.

The latest from Zagreb's instrumental rockers Seven That Spells is a marked improvement over their previous collaboration with Acid Mother Kawabata Makoto. While that album certainly wasn't bad, its main fault was that it sounded too much like any other Makoto project. Here, however, their energy and prowess are on full display.

On the surface, the second album from Poni Hoax seems to have it all: brooding synthesizers, punchy drums, a dispassionate yet forceful singer, and an icy attitude. While it contains several good songs and some decent hooks, it's not enough to override the album's overbearing mood or its sections of needless repetition.

Don't trust photographs because they're nowhere near as powerful as genuine memories. That may as well be Fleet Foxes motto for their debut record on Sub Pop. At least there's one band that believes their music should be more than the guitars, drums, and voices that compose it.

Created from the minds of four Germans who seem to have a penchant for wrapping themselves from head to foot in bandages, Monokrom manages to produce a monstrous and gargantuan ‘industrial’ sonic juggernaut intent on flattening everything in sight. One Fine Day in the Pyramid is the latest testament from this noisy lot, full of clanks, scrapings, scratchings, and full-on mechanical mayhem.

One of those albums that fits Load’s usual style, this is a disc of punk-damaged goofy thrash that obviously doesn’t take itself too seriously, and even through the cacophony some element of melody does rear its head through the muck.

In his second release to date this year, Justin Broadrick has created something completely different from his previous two splits (with Eluvium and Envy), and two tracks that stand out as different in his entire discography.  On the other half, Battle of Mice provide their own brand of emo-influenced post metal that simply doesn't seem to go well with the Jesu material (or vice versa).

United Jnana presents a tasteful and well-executed digipak CD reissue of vintage Nurse With Wound material that hasn't been available in unaltered form since its original release on L.A.Y.L.A.H. Antirecords back in 1983.

The seemingly endless Nurse With Wound reissue program continues unabated with this digitally remastered version of Homotopy To Marie, presented by United Jnana in a digipak with partially restored artwork and, oddly, the same augmented tracklist as the 1992 World Serpent CD version.

This inaugural release for the Chicago-based FSS label is some of the ripest and juiciest experimental black metal to be released this year. Wrnlrd raises a staff of high frequency fuzz graininess, and aims its assault sorcery at all who might attempt to lay claim to the throne of progressive dark music.

After years of brandishing sharp, abrasive electronic rhythms in tandem with Godflesh's Justin Broadrick as Techno Animal, Curse Of The Golden Vampire, and Ice, Kevin Martin rebooted this dormant one-off pseudonym as a logical outlet for his outstanding outsider dancehall productions, dripping with distortion and hot like fire.  Stripped of the industrialized beats and roared deejay screeds of Pressure, his latest album under the moniker is, on the surface, perhaps in name only.

Given that the drone/doom supergroup Khanate has officially dissolved, there are a slew of similar artists aching to seize that slow, tar covered crown of grimy sludge metal, and Trees do a pretty good job of imitating the aforementioned artists.  The problem is, does the world really need more of a style that shamelessly goes nowhere?

As a collaboration between Telescopes founder/consistent member Stephen Lawrie and Vibracathedral Orchestra's Bridget Hayden, it bares little direct resemblance to the former's past work in rock oriented shoegaze and the latter's drone soundscapes.  Instead it is a chaotic noise infused work that could shred the speakers with the best of them.  Closer inspection, however, reveals that at the core, both artists show their pedigree, and that's what sets this apart from other similar records.

Methadrone is New Jersey-based Craig Pillard, and Sterility is his third album recorded under that name.  Sterility brings us eight exquisite examples of the grungy and oppressive bass-heavy dronescapes, augmented by acoustic guitar and vocal elements, that Pillard has made the trademark of Methadrone. Never has doom and darkess been encapsulated so appealingly.

For their second release, FSS has resurrected a 1987 album by this Dutch trio. This was actually their second album, with their debut LP, Hartgore, oozing into the light of day in 1986. The trio, made up of drummer Danny Arnold, guitarist Pieter De Sury, and bassist Marij Hel, further perfected their mean, muscular, and down’n’dirty sound only a year on from that on this second platter. Now, 21 years later, it gets a welcome re-release in the form of a digital download as well as a limited edition vinyl LP.

Here's a self-released EP from a duo delivering on the promise of their self-titled debut. The title track, which could teach Milan Kundera a trick or two about how to deal with philosophical questions in a populist style, has made my musical year.