With the release of the single "Play Me A Christmas Song", Stephen Dowd manages to bottle the very specific, blue-hued silence that falls over a living room once the wrapping paper has been cleared away. It is a curious thing, really, how a melody can act less like a sound wave and more like the smell of a candle that was blown out five...

Helladdict’s new single, “Sudden Death,” doesn’t feel like a tribute; it feels like an exhumation. Here are six men from Santiago, all seasoned enough to know that pure fury is a young person’s game, offering instead the far more corrosive anger of experience. They resurrect the chassis of 80s thrash, all bone-raw intensity and punishing tempo, but the engine is modern, built with the...