BeckGuero2005 Interscope Records (www.beck.com)

For better or worse, Beck has reached that prestigious point in his career where he no longer needs to be compared to other artists. This is because no one who does anything even remotely approaching the sonic scope of Beck’s catalog can match his seemingly effortless skill at “droppin’ lobotomy beats/ Evaporated meats/ On hi-tech streets”. But Beck’s most predictable quality is his unpredictability, which makes this new album a bit unexpected. Guero feels a bit like 1998’s Mutations – not so much a shit-hot new album, as much as a little somein’ somein’ for the fans to chew on until a proper album is released that sounds nothing like the Beck albums that have come before it. Instead, this album sounds, suspiciously, a bit like most of what Beck has already released, which can only really be seen as a let down when compared to the mostly unsurpassable standards he set for himself throughout the 90s.

High on FireBlessed Black WingsRelapse Records (www.relapse.com)

If it were legal to drink beer while riding your motorcycle down highway 66, through the Mojave Desert, I would do it while listening to Blessed Black Wings. That is assuming that there was someway of projecting the music, because wearing headphones while on a motorcycle would make you look like an ass. High on Fire’s nine thick slabs of metal are an impenetrable wall of resin-saturated guitars riffs and tidal wave hi-hat crashes that bury the listener under a sound that’s about as compromising as a brick to the face. Sometimes charging, other times prodding, either way High on Fire always have their amps turned all the way up to kickass. Birthed from the ashes of early 90’s doom titans Sleep, lead guitarist and singer Matt Pike doesn’t stray to far away from the doom heavy formula but still manage to move his current music vehicle more towards a sound that resembles Black Sabbath doing Motorhead covers.

El PusHoodlum Rock: Vol. 12005 Virgin Records(www.elpus.com)

Ok, I know you’ve heard a million times someone tell you how their little brother’s band is “totally slammin'” and how they should be the “next big thing.” Well face it, just ‘cuz he can play the intro to “Enter Sandman” doesn’t mean any one wants see him dry hump his de-tuned 7 string Ibanez. Now with that said, up-and-coming Georgia rockers, El Pus, are totally slammin’ and should totally be the next big thing. El Pus has the current amphetamine power-punk crunch down so well, that they often come across like a hip-hop emo band. Probably the reason this works so well is that El Pus doesn’t seem terribly interested in retaining some sort of hardcore street cred and instead jump head-first into the deep end of the class-clown rap-rock world normally populated by snot nosed suburban white kids. El Pus are rappers first and rockers second and this is a good thing. It serves to elevate their radio ready dope-rock sound so that it works more as a cut-and-paste collage of influences.

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High on Fire