Paramore – Brand New Eyes

The sugary sweetness of Paramore’s punk-infused pop/rock will easily rot your teeth if you let it, but at the end of the day, isn’t it worth it?  It’s only your teeth we’re talking about here.  You can always get new ones.  This time around, the Franklin, Tennessee quintet have upped the ante with tighter songwriting, boundless energy, and slightly more mature arrangements, a little more Jimmy Eat World and a little less New Found Glory.  One of the major highlights is front woman Hayley Williams, who at the ripe old age of 20, is really coming into her own as a vocalist.  The album is full of her trademark soaring melodies and amped-up choruses, but she is also learning to balance the bouncy hooks with a more restrained approach on the occasional ballad as well.  Brand New Eyes doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, but it certainly gives Paramore fans more of what they want: a collection of catchy rock songs that may or may not warrant a trip to the dentist.  It’s like sonic candy corn.

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Muse – The Resistance

Muse is a band that knows their drama.  Whether they are channeling mid-90s Radiohead (“Unnatural Selection”), late-80s Depeche Mode (“Uprising”), or even mid-70s Queen (“United States of Eurasia”), they pack a theatrical punch into every song on their fifth album, The Resistance.  Pounding drums and synthesizer flourishes support lead singer Matt Bellamy’s grandiose vibrato, which is as melodramatic as ever throughout.  The album is truly an exercise in genre-mashing, the band embracing their collective attention deficit disorder with gusto.  The grand finale is the epic “Exogenesis Symphony,” which integrates a full orchestra with the standard rock band lineup to create a 12-minute, three-movement masterpiece.  Flowing seamlessly from tremolo string arrangements to ambient electronica to piano sonatas to bombastic prog rock, back and forth and everywhere in between, the final three tracks define the music I have been waiting for Muse to make for years.  I can only hope they continue to mine the depths of such experimentation in the future.

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Strung Out – Agents of the Underground

15 years since the release of their first album, California skate-punks Strung Out are still going strong.  The technical metal elements that were first prominently featured on 2000′s Element of Sonic Defiance continue to define the band’s sound, distancing them from most of their label mates on Fat Wreck Chords.  There are plenty of moments of fierce metallic aggression, such as the feral screaming on the title track, which sounds like lead singer Jason Cruz‘s lungs are being turned inside out.  Still, it’s when the band shows their melodic side, even throwing in some (gasp) major-key choruses, that they really shine.  Halfway through the disc, “Ghetto Healer” is a perfect blend of old and new, with dive-bomb guitar squeals and pummeling double-time drumming pitted against accessible melodic hooks in the chorus.  Closer “Andy Warhol” is the requisite Strung Out anthem, sure to have you singing along and starting your own personal moshpit while you rock out to your iPod on the subway.  Successfully blending punk and metal without watering either genre down can be tricky business, but after 15 years, Strung Out have it down to a science.

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Poison The Well – The Tropic Rot

Poison the Well create the music nightmares are made of.  After pretty much defining the metalcore genre with their early releases, they have now largely abandoned the crushing riffs and brutally heavy breakdowns of their first couple albums, in favor of twisted mood pieces with angular melodies that slowly snake their way around the discordant harmonies of jangly guitars.  The screaming is still intense, but it’s less relentless than on their earlier work.  Instead, vocalist Jeffrey Moreira’s approach is closer to that of Mike Patton, exploring his full range of pitchless shouts, yelps, and screams.  The lyrics are often disturbing too, adding to the strange tonalities and eerie harmonies to create a feeling of general unease.  In “Pamplemousse,” Moreira sings, “Look in your hair, young love / I’ve left you a present you will not find unless you look / I have left a part of me there / don’t be surprised when I end up never leaving again / because of so many pieces of myself I’ve hidden on you / when we say goodbye / one day we won’t say goodbye.”  Creepy stuff.  If you’re looking for a way to scare the trick-or-treaters this year, don’t bother with jack-o-lanterns and cardboard ghosts.  Just pick up a copy of The Tropic Rot.