‘For All Kings’ not only stands with my favorite Anthrax records – it’s easily the best complete metal album I’ve heard in several years.

Zakk Wylde’s “Sleeping Dogs” makes a good promise for ‘Book of Shadows II.’ Here’s hoping the rest of the album delivers on it.

This won’t compete with those classic late-1970s and early-1980s records, but it does seem that Hank Williams Jr. has found his way again. It’s about time.

Picking a Best of 2015 list wasn’t easy. A few albums were outstanding, but I sometimes had a hard time finding new music that connected.

Uncompromising, unafraid and utterly cool, the late Motorhead frontman Lemmy Kilmister embodied the spirit of rock ‘n’ roll.

‘Condition Human’ marks the full return of the Queensryche that I know and love.

In a year that, for me at least, has been largely uninspiring on the music front, Amorphis’ ‘Under the Red Cloud’ is a glittering jewel.

Glenn Danzig has a pretty good history with covers, and ‘Skeletons’ makes a direct reference to that with another Elvis Presley song.

The campy Halloween film ‘Trick or Treat’ doesn’t hold up so well anymore. But Fastway’s original soundtrack? That’s another matter entirely.

‘The Pale Emperor,’ more than any from Marilyn Manson in the intervening years, seems like the natural successor to ‘Mechanical Animals.’