Having watched him throw away the prime years of his career on smack and prison, Steve Earle fans were reassured by the singer's 1995 comeback, Train A Comin', where he reclaimed the past in exquisite acoustic arrangements. They were further encouraged by the 1996 follow up, I Feel Alright, which staked out the present with rock & roll defiance. Their patient faith was rewarded with El Corazon, an album that no longer looks back at those lost years but looks forward to the rest of Earle's career. Combining the sheer beauty of Train A Comin' with the bristling energy of I Feel Alright, El Corazon ploughs new ground with Earle's most explicitly political song yet, his furthest leap into another character's voice, a hard-core bluegrass number with the Del McCoury Band, and a hard-core grunge rocker with the Supersuckers. Earle turns the Fairfield Four into the Jordanaires behind his Elvis vocal on "Telephone Road", and he imitates Townes Van Zandt's austere minimalism even as he sings an elegy to his late mentor on "Fort Worth Blues". All in all, these dozen tunes are the best songwriting Earle has produced since his 1986 breakthrough, Guitar Town, and he sings them with the take-it-or-leave-it authority of someone who has nothing left to prove. On the album's first and best song, "Christmas in Washington", he offers a mournful prayer to Woody Guthrie to come back and rescue us from an era of wishy-washy Democrats and ruthless Republicans; Earle sings it as if his prayer had been answered and the Okie troubadour's ghost had found a home in his belly. -Geoffrey Himes.

The biggest difference between a kick-ass studio album and a kick-ass live album? Intensity. And All That Could Have Been, recorded on Nine Inch Nails' 2000 "Fragility 2. 0" US tour, provides that trait in abundance. It helps that Trent Reznor has a band, instead of just a battery of keyboards, to help him work through 16 tracks of the raging yet surprisingly listenable musical vitriol that made him a star. The live musicians, who allow him some freedom to play with tempo, help kick "Closer" up a notch and lend some atmospheric weight to a slow version of "The Frail". The band rips into older material with gusto; Reznor sounds just as pissed off performing "Head Like a Hole" as he did in 1989. The CD closes with "Hurt", which might seem like an odd choice, but somehow, after everything that's come before, it's like the denouement of a tragedy. While a CD can only capture a piece of NIN's onstage energy, their first live album is an intense, sometimes overwhelming recording, further vindication of NIN's continuing popularity and influence. -Genevieve Williams.

Machine Head's Supercharger is, at its best, a monumental success. Since their searing debut Burn My Eyes, Machine Head have continuously exhibited that sadly rare quality-musical ambition. Not for them the post-Bush bleatings of Creed or the dumb bulldozing of Limp Bizkit. Machine Head attempt to create ever more varied and meaningful rock soundscapes. Take "Trephination" for example: as Robb Flynn pants his desperate tale of childhood abuse and a consequent self-hatred that can only be cured by a drill to the skull, the guitars buzz like medical instruments before reaching an awful sawing crescendo. It could so easily be clumsy and silly, but the execution is tasteful and effective. Elsewhere, there's the semi-humorous "American High", where a scratcher duels with the lead guitar, and "Nausea" where a horribly distorted guitar engages in a series of deeply unsettling descents-as with "Trephination", the music cleverly and admirably mirrors the lyrics. Elsewhere, there are extraordinary individual performances. During "White Knuckle Blackout", Flynn passes from a Dani Filth shriek through Layne Staley melodics to a furious rap, backed by a mighty guitar and what sounds like the buzz of a printer. During the maudlin "All in Your Head", the guitars rise from staccato riffing to a magnificent, near-orchestral sweep. [+]

Virtual XI was Iron Maiden's second album with singer Blaze Bayley and was a marked improvement on his 1995 debut, The X Factor. Bringing with him some of the earthiness and street-wisdom of his former outfit, Wolfsbane, Bayley now injected the sound with an invigorating punkiness missing since the departure of original vocalist Paul DiAnno. Yet, sharing his predecessor Bruce Dickinson's grandiloquence and sense of high romance, he also managed (with the likes of "The Angel And The Gambler" and "The Clansman") to continue the band's famous tradition of narrative lyrics. Noticeable also, in "Como Estais Amigos", was their purposeful chumminess with their fans. Musically, the progression was slighter, Iron Maiden still dealing in their well-known, complex and idiosyncratic riffology. But improved technology had made them harder, sharper, allowing them to enter their third decade with a reputation for uncompromising power that few rock bands enjoy in their first. -Dominic Wills.