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Personnel: Ted Birkey (keyboards).Recording information: 14the Street Music Works; Silent Sound.Photographer: Steve Vacariello.Unknown Contributor Role: Mickey Benzo.Calling an album GANGSTA RAP might seem like an absurd platitude coming from any rapper other than Ice-T, the undisputed originator of the genre. Ice takes time off from his acting gig on LAW & ORDER: SVU to douse listeners with a potent shot of classic ghetto storytelling and explicit recaps of O.G. sexcapades. With a host of guests (including wife Coco) and a solid boom-bap production style dusted with the requisite g-funk flourishes, Ice-T takes the nearly-self-parodying thug posturing so prevalent in 21st century hip-hop, and reminds listeners who invented the pose and why it was so deadly in the first place.

Personnel: Matthew K. Heafy (vocals, guitar); Corey Beaulieu (guitar); Nick Augusto (drums).Audio Mixers: Colin Richardson; Martyn "Ginge" Ford.Recording information: Audiohammer Studios, Sanford, FL; Chapman Studios, Orlando, FL; China Glass Warehouse Lofts, Orlando, FL; Paint It Black Studios, Altamonte Springs, FL.Photographer: Jonpaul Douglass.Arranger: Trivium.By and large, the heavy metal community can be counted on to listen with open ears and form individual, unbiased opinions, but some prejudices still run deep, and the members of Trivium have been on the receiving end of several of these throughout their career. Cursed by their own precociousness, musical malleability and, most problematic, their earnest ambition and self-confidence, the quartet has quite simply been blacklisted by a considerable swathe of listeners, led by self-appointed officers of the heavy metal poseur police, and helped none by their contract with leading heavy metal label Roadrunner, whose very success can ironically become an

Elvis Costello/Elvis Costello & the Imposters: Elvis Costello (Wurlitzer piano).Personnel: Elvis Costello, Elvis Costello (vocals, guitar, tenor guitar, ukulele, piano, Wurlitzer organ, glockenspiel, electric bass, tambourine); Davey Faragher (vocals, Fender Rhodes piano, bass guitar); Dennis Herring (guitar); John McPhee (pedal steel guitar); Steve Nieve (accordion, melodica, piano, Wurlitzer piano, harmonium, organ, Hammond b-3 organ, Wurlitzer organ, omnichord, Theremin); Pete Thomas (drums, percussion); Emmylou Harris, Lucinda Williams (vocals).Audio Mixers: Dennis Herring; Chris Shepard; Clay Jones.Recording information: Delta Recording, Clarksdale, MS; Detla Recording, Clarksdale, MS; Ocean Way Studios, Nashville, TN; Sweet Tea, Oxford, MS; Village Recorders, Los Angeles, CA.Photographers: Dennis Herring; Jesse Dylan.In between Elvis Costello's 2003 album of jazzy, piano-based ballads (NORTH) and his 2004 album of orchestral, neo-classical compositions (IL SOGNO), rock's original Renaissance man somehow

Recorded in 1978, Bluegrass Collection is the Osborne Brothers' tribute to the fathers of bluegrass -- Bill Monroe, Flatt & Scruggs, and the Stanley Brothers. The duo throws in nice, but unremarkable, remakes of their older hits as well, making the album a pleasant exercise in nostalgia. ~ Thom Owens