Six years is an eternity in modern music. In six years, your old fan-base has grown up, moved to the suburbs, and bought a baby-hauling, suburban utility vehicle, or two.

It’s not like the influential, noise duo, Lightning Bolt, intended such a long delay between albums, either. In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Brian Gibson and Brian Chippendale recounted multiple recording sessions that simply fell flat.

New single, “The Metal East, the first track to be released from their forthcoming album, Fantasy Empire, is anything but flat. Opening with two minutes of churning hardcore assures us as much. The real treat, however, comes in the form of a final salvo where the two are absolutely locked in and work what was once a brutal groove into something approximating an Xbox set to warp drive, as pieces and flashes of rhythm and melody flee from the mix. Yes, I think Lightning Bolt found it whatever it was they were looking for. This thing rips.

I swear, there are days where I should just go ahead and rename this place the Obnox Appreciation Society. Lamont “Bim” Thomas has been on such a tear the past few years that the rock du jour coming across the internet and into my ears often sounds shit by comparison.

Now, less than a month removed from his last Obnox joint, here is Bim, again, dropping another album. Blaxx comes from an impromtu jam session between Thomas and two members of Austin’s OBN IIIs. If you know Obnox and know the OBN IIIs, then you know this is gonna be one bad piece of wax. “Let Me Hold Your Hand,” and its old-school blues melody, twisted and cracked beyond repair doesn’t as much hint at that fact, as much as it piledrives the point home.

If you now my disgust for all things Joanna Newsome (I’ve heckled and booed and bragged incessantly about my own harp skills, but it’s only gotten me death stares at her shows), then you already know half of the appeal of Welsh popsters Joanna gruesome. The other part of Joanna Gruesome is the way they play dream pop songs like they’re in a punk rock band. Or, is that vice versa, punk rock songs like a dream pop band. Jam, “Last Year,” from their new LP coming out on Slumberland and judge for yourself.

See that picture down there in the embed. I don’t believe it for a second. I don’t believe slacker-rock queen, Colleen Green wants to grow up. Not when “TV” is such a perfect distillation inaction and isolation. I mean, Lou Barlow, the king of can’t bother to leave the couch to give a fuck, even if it means this bong ain’t gonna load itself, couldn’t have captured the sentiment any better. Green writes a pretty mean pop melody, too.