In their previous seven years' existence Sepultura had steadily established themselves as Brazil's premier metal outfit, but it wasn't until 1991's breakthrough album Arise that they truly captured the hearts and minds of the international rock mainstream. Subsequently re-released with the addition of four bonus tracks-including the band's monumental annihilation of Motorhead's "Orgasmatron"-Arise highlights Sepultura's irrefutable stylistic kinship to Metallica. The harmonic interplay between Max Cavalera's rock-solid rhythm work and Andreas Kisser's lead lines-on occasions the six stringed equivalent of a fully-throttled dentist's drill-is devastating. Max's tortured vocal, meanwhile, absolutely refuses to take prisoners while brother Igor's rhythmic battery is sheer, unfettered aggression. Moments of restraint, as on the quite astonishing "Altered State", merely accentuate the band's trademark brutality. Even with historical perspective, Arise retains its original ignominious appeal; an essential purchase. -Ian Fortnam.

On the surface, the Goo Goo Dolls' Gutterflower is a seamless continuation of 1998's Dizzy Up the Girl, with sinewy guitars; muscular, anthemic choruses; and Johnny Rzeznik's perfectly articulated rasping vocals. But on closer listening, the Goos' eighth album is made of much sterner stuff. Those quixotic, yearning lyrics of yore have taken on a darker cast, no doubt due to Rzeznik's divorce. As a result, Gutterflower almost has the feel of a concept album about love gone wrong, with Rzeznik providing anxious commentary rife with images of dislocation and agitation. The listener is given barometric readings of the singer's bruised psyche as he attempts to put himself back together again. Luckily, Rzeznik is a clever and facile lyricist with a knack for elevating garden-variety neurosis into a rather compelling soap opera, sketching edgy characters that would feel right at home in David Lynch's world. "Swallow all your bitter pills, that's what makes you beautiful," he advises in "Big Machine", while in "Sympathy" Rzeznik appears to be apologising to his former wife for his past transgressions, only to lash out with an elegant deftness, chastising her for "all these thoughts you stole from me". While he may have a face like an angel, Rzeznik unleashes a cunning and a fascinating brutish force not seen before, making this a much more interesting album than previous offerings. -Jaan Uhelszki.

It's the easy way out to dwell on a group's supposed "maturation", but considering the members of Silverchair were 14 when they released their debut album and are a whopping 20 years old with this outing, it's entirely appropriate, not to mention accurate. From a band of any age, though, Neon Ballroom is a stunner of an album. And it's also leaps and bounds beyond the Australian trio's two previous efforts, good if derivative grunge/classic-rock fare interpreted by impressionable young musicians. From the epic, dramatic opening cut, "Emotion Sickness", to "Ana's Song (Open Fire)", Neon Ballroom is a 12-song collection rife with emotions laid bare and songs fully realised with lush strings and piano (courtesy of David Helfgott, the inspiration for the movie Shine. ) Silverchair singer/songwriter Daniel Johns outdoes himself with the sonic diversity and fragility of his tunes, especially the ethereal, delicate ballads, with the powerful "Dearest Helpless" smacking of Kurt Cobain at his most beautifully tormented. From the gentle "Miss You Love" to the punky-aggro "Spawn Again" to the flat-out speedy rocker "Satin Sheets", Silverchair have created a haunting, edgy, seductive soundtrack to a young life deeply felt. -Katherine Turman.

Fans of Karl Jenkins' Adiemus albums or of Enya's mix of voice and synth sounds will find much to admire in this recording. On Libera, a boys-voice choir achieves ambient ethereal effects by judicious close-microphone work and liberal use of distant-sounding reverb programmes. The music is all by the choir's director, Robert Prizeman, whose church-music background has served him well-the close-harmonisations are rather graceful and are ably performed by the boys, even in the high ranges in which they are often required to float. The only two pieces not by Prizeman are arrangements of the famous canons by Pachelbel and Tallis, which he cunningly works into two of the tracks. The vocal writing is supported by a modestly trippy synth background and a light beat. The words are taken from traditional devotional texts (Beata Lux, Dies Irae, Agnus Dei, and so on) but the overall effect is less religious than chilled. -Warwick Thompson.

Isolationist, misanthropic and cantankerous, New Wave survivors, the Stranglers were never a band known for ostentatious displays of affection, at least not to music journalists. However, 1981's conceptual La Folie (roughly translated as "madness") has become known in band circles as the Stranglers' "love" album. Typically, these were no ordinary chansons d'amour. Songs of faith, familial strife, devotion and dependency-spanning religion, celebrity obsession, lust, death and drugs-the nearest the album got to being superficially palatable was on the gorgeous, harpsichord-strewn "Golden Brown" (ex-drug offence jail bird Hugh Cornwell's paeon to the seduction of heroin) and the chilled-out title track, six sultry minutes of JJ Burnel reciting-entirely in French-the true story of a Paris-based student who murdered and ate his girlfriend. The Raven aside, La Folie found the Stranglers at their most instrumentally dextrous and melodically inventive; Burnel's nomadic bass lines, the discordant Four Freshmen harmonies on "It Only Takes Two To Tango", Cornwell's barb at the commercialised martyrdom of deceased pop stars on the waspish "Everybody Loves You When You're Dead" ("the fans will love you when your alive but the wreaths are laid by the rest instead"). There are some great should-have-been singles too, such as "Non Stop Nun" ("enlisted Sister, knows her mister, never two-times with the rest of the clan") with its cheesy organ licks, and the perky, Page 3 ogling synth pop of "Pin Up". Even the bonus tracks are excellent-"Strange Little Girl" (a Top 10 hit and a song covered by Tori Amos) and its even better picnic-jazz B-side, the Hot Club De Paris pastiche "Cruel Garden". La Folie is easily the most underrated album from Britain's most underrated band. -Kevin Maidment.