Avenged Sevenfold Avenged Sevenfold ½ ITUNES MYSPACE Another stop on the journey from asswipes to badasses A Godzilla-size pileup of whiplash metalcore and Sunset Strip swagger, Avenged Sevenfold’s 2005 major-label debut, City of Evil, won unexpected platinum status (aided by MTV’s embrace of the stripper-friendly video for “Bat Country”), despite sounding like a social experiment gone haywire. With this self-produced fourth album, the California band still straddles conflicting genres (singer M. Shadows even adds Toby Keith–style politics to the mix on “Critical Acclaim”). But with

tighter, mercifully shorter songs, like the Slayer-meets-Slash thrasher “Almost Easy,” they’re now defiling America’s youth with more substance than style. AARON BURGESS

Band of Horses Cease to Begin ITUNES MYSPACE Get down on your knees and pray in their dusty cathedral

Everything echoes in Band of Horses’ stable, bestowing a hazy gravity upon songs shaped from the simplest of ingredients: lazy snare snaps, gentle guitar, and Ben Bridwell’s towering tenor, which suggests both Wayne Coyne and Neil Young but imitates neither. The reverb

bath works on everything from Crazy Horse–like micro-epics (“Cigarettes, Wedding Bands”) to grittier rockers (the monumental opener, “Is There a Ghost”) to plainspoken joy bombs (“Ode to LRC,” which repeats the line “The world is such a wonderful place”). Every sound lingers, and each stretched-out moment is welcome. JOSH MODELL

Baroness Red Album ITUNES MYSPACE Virginia is for lovers…of complex twin-ax riff patterns

Math metal was invented in Richmond’s heavy punk scene, so it’s not too surprising that while these epic mathletes

joined up in Savannah, Georgia, the members originally hailed from Virginia. Gritty guitars harmonize like Destiny’s Child, and the intricate, huge-sounding songs can’t decide if they’d rather be in the gutter or reaching for the stars, so leader John Baizley howls about both. Like all good prog-inspired bands, they wedge in an acoustic interlude here and there just for kicks, but quickly return to riffs that knot up tightly without ever becoming Gordian. JOE GROSS

Supporter of the
blonde lesbian
community

Beirut The Flying Club Cup ½ ITUNES MYSPACE Music to drink absinthe and smoke European cigarettes to

Trading the DIY approach of his debut for an actual eight-piece band, the sophomore album from youthful, neo-Gypsy multi-instrumentalist Zach Condon has the makings of a hokey, pretentious mess. His melodramatic singing echoes the grand excesses of Rufus Wainwright, and the woozy thrift-shop brass recalls a shabby Balkan cabaret, with ukulele, glockenspiel, and other offbeat accompaniment filling in the spaces. What’s more, The Flying Club Cup is an unironic homage to France, intending to evoke a different city on each song. Amazingly, it adds up to great fun: Condon’s goofy sincerity is endearing (shades of David Byrne), and Beirut actually rock, in their extremely geeky way. JON YOUNG

Blanche Little Amber Bottles ½ ITUNES MYSPACE Friend of Jack and disciple of Johnny walks a fine line Blanche is a genetically purebred Detroit band: vinyl-happy Dumpster divers with a penchant for theatricality, an innate sense of decay, and a keen feel for country music’s gothic underbelly. On their second album—a haunted collection of plucked banjo and loping murder ballads—the prominent ghoul is Johnny Cash, from whom Dan John Miller cops his barrel-chested moan and a knack for making cruel songs seem funny. At his best, Miller follows ex-bandmate Jack White’s example by taking well-studied traditions and disrupting them. Other times, those traditions, however vividly evoked, come off feeling—well, a little blanched. BRET GLADSTONE

Doo Wah Diddy

Blue States First Steps Into… ½ ITUNES MYSPACE Half-formed cinematic mood-scapes float up, up, and away

Andy Dragazis’ fourth album as Blue States—the debut act on the Brit label now known for the Go! Team and the Pipettes (whom Dragazis produces)— spills over with crescendos of hazy, digital pop. That’s fine when he gets a little weird (the strings and electronics on “ Gaining Time” and the spaced-out “100’s and 1000’s”) or heavy (the Mogwai-ish “Writing Home”). But by offering so many dramatic peaks, Dragazis too often dulls the effect. JOSH MODELL

Is it still arrogance if you can back it up? Yes.

Kanye West Graduation ITUNES MYSPACE

According to the historical record, an English professor (Donda) and photojournalist (Ray) brought Kanye Omari West into this earthly cipher in Atlanta in 1977. But in actuality, the rapper/producer was born in the hip-hop ether in 1997 with the release of the orgiastic video for the No. ¹ hit “Mo Money Mo Problems.” The parents: the Notorious B.I.G., the larger-than-life, faux-Godfather martyr MC;

Puff Daddy, the sample-happy, middle-class mama’s-boy producer with preppy fashion envy, a rapping handicap, and “I’m rich, bitch” conceit; and Technicolor mythmaker Hype Williams, who also directed the recherché videos for the singles

The music is a rush of
designer adrenaline.
“Can’t Tell Me Nothing” and
“Stronger” from West’s No. 1-
selling landmark Graduation.

“Mo Money Mo Problems” coronated hip-hop as the world’s most potent pop product, and Graduation’s grandiose craftiness marks

the ten-year anniversary of that double-edged African American exploit ( 50 Cent’s gangsta cynicism was a mere sideshow). From the yacht-rockin’ capitalist sun splash of “Good Life” to the giddy techno priapism of “Stronger” to the soulful double-unconsciousness of “Can’t Tell Me Nothing” to the Steely Dan home-run trot of “Champion,” West’s third album is mesmerizing and alienating, like all the purest forms of pop culture. Its music is a rush of designer adrenaline, its personality insatiable self-justification. It’s the paradigm ya love to hate: Diddy with skills. CHARLES AARON

Black Dice Load Blown ITUNES MYSPACE This is what it sounds like when hipster doves cry

Ever since cresting with the expansive, almost grandiose noisescapes of 2002’s Beaches and Canyons, Brooklyn’s Black Dice have been downsizing, parting ways with their drummer and longtime label DFA. Now on sonic brethren Animal Collective’s imprint, the trio’s fourth album is both more dense and concise. “Scavenger,” “Drool,” and “Manoman” revel in tiny, almost inscrutable sounds—waterlogged cell-phone ringtones, radio static, insect mating calls, skipping CDs, and pygmy chants. The layered results are mesmeric, giving their introverted noise a new, laserlike intensity. ANDY BETA

Cassius 15 Again ITUNES MYSPACE French disco lifers get punkier and conscious—briefly

This duo generated sample-heavy house music that doubled as chic aural wallpaper on their 1999 debut, then upped their game, combining live instrumentation and guest vocalists on 2002’s disco-fierce Au Rêve. Here, Philippe Zdar handles most vocals, sneering through the propulsive dance-punk single “Toop Toop” but failing to sustain the drones that dominate this overlong disc’s second half. Pharrell Williams steals the show on “Eye Water,” a rockin’ ecological warning that furthers the French house/U.S. hip-hop trend. BARRY WALTERS

COUR TES Y ROC-A-FELLA