May 22, 2012 – Metal entered its awkward phase in 1992. The rise of Nirvana and grunge had made the genre seem passé to radio programmers, scene leaders Metallica had traded thrash sensibilities for the commercial sound of the previous year's "Black Album," and death and black metal were not quite ready for prime time. Somehow, a young, hungry band from Texas called Pantera emerged with their second major-label album, Vulgar Display of Power, featuring a sound that could both thrash and groove without sacrificing heaviness — it would go on to sell over two million copies with no U.S. radio support whatsoever. Much of the credit for its success goes to word-of-mouth praise for the single "Walk." From the swinging riff (played in the very un-metal time signature of 12/8) to the quasi-rapped, puffed-chest bravado of the chorus — "RE! SPECT!

May 14, 2012 – Onetime Possum Dixon lead guitarist Celso Chavez died last Wednesday at the age of 44 from complications due to pneumonia. As part of L.A.'s early '90s alt-rock scene, the starting point for groups like Weezer and Eels, Chavez set his band apart by underplaying without wandering too far from his drummer's backbeat. Playing melodic foil to the catchy choruses of frontman Rob Zabrecky, whom Chavez had met at junior college, he helped comprise a sound that got the band headlining gigs early on (sometimes featuring a then-unknown singer-guitarist named Beck), and a major label deal. By the time L.A.'s celebrated venue Spaceland opened in the Silver Lake neighborhood in 1995, the inaugural artists included Possum Dixon alongside Beck and Foo Fighters.

May 7, 2012 – Two incontrovertible truths about the scurrilous cyclone we know as Courtney Love: she is a master of misery (see Live Through This) and she airs her personal demons publicly and indiscriminately (see her Twitter). She is fragile and has no problem telegraphing that fact, but usually shrouds it in a hard exterior. These truisms couldn't seem any clearer than after viewing her first visual art exhibit (or, as it often is in Love's case, exhibition), And She's Not Even Pretty, on view at Fred Torres Collaborations, a gallery halfway down a warehouse-strewn aisle of Manhattan. The show, which runs through June 15, features nearly 50 of the most colorful and revealing works of Love's career — this time done in colored pencil, watercolor, acrylic, marker, and even highlighter. And much like her music, her sketches depict the hardships and insecurities that plague her.

March 30, 2012 – Rootsy indie rockers Delta Spirit are one of those rare groups who sound great on record but sound even better live, their compressed MP3 form only suggesting the vibrant energy the quintet emanates live. Onstage, vocalist-guitarist Matt Vasquez growls and mewls unpredictably, multi-instrumentalist Kelly Winrich plays keyboards, bangs on trashcan lids and pounds giant drums the likes ones you last saw at band camp and everybody else bounces about with glee. In short: they're great showmen. At last night's early evening performance at New York City's Webster Hall, their antics were the quickest throughway for the sold-out crowd, who treated songs from the group's recently released Delta Spirit like tunes they had known for years.

February 16, 2012 – Insofar as it's possible, Richmond, Virginia's Lamb of God have gone quietly about their brain-rattling business since forming in 1995, winning an army of fans without much hype or big hits. Led by frontman Randy Blythe, the groove-metal quintet's ascent was punctuated in recent years by a tour opening for Metallica and an album, 2009's Wrath, which hit No. 2 on the Billboard Top 200. On the heels of the band's latest release, Resolution (Epic), Blythe, 40, shared what he's learned so far. Anybody who gets into music to make a million dollars is in it for all the wrong reasons. I'm not a millionaire and that's not a goal of mine and I don't give a fuck. Even if I'm playing to, say, five kids in the middle of nowhere, it's a very visceral moment of connection that most people don't get to experience in their lives. If you want to be what you are, truly, then you have to be patient.

November 22, 2011 – If there's one thing Mastodon endorse, it's trying new things. Since 1999, they have evolved from grunty sludge-metal Neanderthals into taut melodic heavy-rock assassins on their latest, The Hunter. Compared to their last LP, Crack the Skye — an intricate progressive-metal exercise, complete with a storyline involving Rasputin and astral projection — the new record is chock-full of (gasp!) accessible songs you could hum to. The change in direction has already paid off, as the album's Queens of the Stone Age-like first single "Curl of the Burl" is the Atlanta group's first bona fide hit, having cracked Billboard's Top 40 Rock Songs. "To me, it sounds like our best record," guitarist Bill Kelliher says. "We didn't go overboard and overthink the concepts and all the BS.