Some songs feel like opening a message you were never meant to read. Agnes Fred's 'After Death' has that private charge, the kind that makes you lower the volume even when you are alone. It is small, strange, and heavy in a way that sneaks up on you. No fireworks. No dramatic chest beating. The track simply appears, pale and close, then leaves a mark...

When Indianapolis-based progressive metal project Pentrilox announced "Apotheosis: The New Frontier", I genuinely didn't expect to be handed a literal digital antidepressant. But here we are. Operating entirely out of their in-house production studio, this independent outfit utterly rejects the exhausted, dystopian sci-fi tropes we've all been choking on lately. Instead, they’ve engineered a massive, heavy sonic blueprint for celestial optimism. https://open.spotify.com/album/1lXMirFmYCFLZ8CJ8LJGfi?si=oXWz-hzbSV-i2MNymOiwDA The physical force of...