Black sabbath

Follow-up to James Lavelle's 1999 trip hop folly Psyence Fiction, again with starry guests

Third album from NYC-based trio

Now That's Not What I Call Goth

Convincingly brutal return to form for San Francisco metal pioneers

First two albums from late-'60s Frisco proto-grungesters notorious for being "loudest band on the planet"

Titanic ambient metal, featuring a declamatory Julian Cope

Kathleen Edwards was one of the highlights of this year's South By Southwest Festival in Austin. Surely, I thought, she couldn't sound as good on a dull Wednesday night in a dingy London basement. But she could and she did. The buzz created by her debut, Failer, attracted some top London record company bosses to her first ever UK date. Among those were alt. country specialists Loose—although if they have designs on her, they must have been dismayed by the competition, which included Warner's chief, John Reed. And he surely could not have failed to be impressed.

Grunge kings' best-of is sanitised yet magnificent. Includes previously unreleased track

Nearly 50 years on, their first complete boxset

Strikingly unique indie sprechgesang from the London quartet on their sophomore album