It's been five long years since iconic Brazilian power metal kings Angra released their latest album, "Ømni". Finally the band is back now with new music, proving once again to be one of the most unique bands of the genre. Angra's signature sound - merging classic virtuosic power metal with progressive elements and rhythms - is on full display here and makes "Cycles Of Pain" a highlight for every fan of sophisticated first-class metal. The band's long-running line-up (founded in 1991) is joined by former Rhapsody of Fire vocalist Fabio Lione since 2013, who once again delivers an incredible performance. Guest appearances by multiple Latin Grammy winner Lenine (on the partly Portuguese song "Vida Seca") as well as Amanda Somerville (Avantasia, Kiske/Somerville) and Vanessa Moreno round off Angra's new masterpiece perfectly.

Lebanese-born, Canadian-Armenian-American soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian is as celebrated for her beauty, dynamic presence, and style as for her strikingly multidimensional voice. With this deeply personal project, she gathers a selection of haunting and poignant lullabies that draw on the memories and experiences of the Armenian people. 29 tracks trace an arc from the Ottoman Empire through the Genocide and beyond, with songs and transcriptions by the country’s beloved folk composer Gomidas Vartabed, Parsegh Ganatchian who joined the diaspora in Lebanon, and Ganatchian’s contemporary Mihran Toumajan. For Isabel, these evocative songs span two centuries and five generations. Sung by her great-grandmother, grandmother and mother, and now to her own children, Isabel’s Armenian Songs have an appeal to children of all ages.

The recordings released in this series are devoted to the music of Bach, never a specialty among Russians, and they have the feeling of something extreme, developed in isolation. Feinberg plays Bach, perhaps, as Liszt might have heard Bach and played him – with maximum use of the pedals, a full range of dynamics, and an approach that in every way transforms Bach into an arch-Romantic. This disc, in the label's Feinberg series, is perhaps the most extreme of all, for here the artist tackles not only piano works but those for organ – the listener is treated not only to Feinberg's interpretations but also to his transcriptions. Sample the booming bass lines of the group of chorale preludes in the middle of the program. Of course, the line between transcription and interpretation in this case is not terribly clear. Taken as a whole, the Chromatic fantasia and fugue, BWV 903, leaves the impression that the music has been pushed nearly as far as in Busoni's Bach transcriptions; it's not Bach, really, but it's quite a thrill.

An array of musical stars converges in Leipzig to celebrate the 300th anniversary of Johann Sebastian Bach taking up his appointment as Kantor at the city’s iconic Thomaskirche – a post that he occupied for more than a quarter of a century, covering a period in which he created many of his greatest works. On a special open-air stage in the market square of Leipzig the Thomaner Choir and the Gewandhaus Orchestra under their current Thomaskantor Andreas Reize were joined by Lang Lang, Daniel Hope, Albrecht Mayer, Sophie Kauer, Francesca Aspromonte and Cameron Shahbazi.

This highly anticipated album-set brings together Valery Gergiev's acclaimed cycle of the complete Rachmaninov symphonies. He leads the London Symphony Orchestra in performances recorded between 2008 and 2015. These masterful accounts are accompanied by his Symphonic Dances and and two symphonic poems by Mily Balakirev that echo the luxurious textures present throughout Rachmaninov's music.

"You love us, sweet Jesus: that we had forgotten," wrote Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992) in the preface to "Offrandes oublieés" of 1930. Much of religiOUS art, with its artificially circumscribed expression and stylised piety, has contributed to this tendency to forget, and it was something Messiaen also fought against in his organ suite "La Nativité du Seigneur" of 1935. While a prisonelcof-war in 1941, during the Second World Wal; Messiaen wrote his "Quatuor pour la fin du temps" at Stalag VIII in Silesia.

The pearl of great price: the German tenor who could make you wish to retract all you ever thought, wrote or spoke about the species, the Mozart tenor who could sound both elegant and manly, the singer who could almost persuade you that Strauss loved the tenor voice as he did the soprano. We hear Wunderlich in this collection additionally as Rossini’s Almaviva, scrupulous with his triplets and almost as careful with his scales. His “Il mio tesoro” drops not a semiquaver and takes the long phrases with confident ease.

The Collection is a compilation album by Joe Cocker, released in 1986 by Castle Communications.

76 minutes of "thinking-man's metal," courtesy of Blue Oyster Cult! Includes all their hits- (Don't Fear) The Reaper; Burnin' for You; In Thee , and Shooting Shark -plus Godzilla; Joan Crawford; Black Blade; The Red & the Black; I Love the Night; Astronomy , and six more Cult classics.

Alice Francis is a Jazz & Neo-Swing/Charleston singer from Romania with an African background, living in Germany. Alice Francis is probably one of the hottest newcomers in modern Swing right now.

Together with "Hoodoo Man" this album marks the peak in the career of the german band Birth Control. Here we have diversity from heavy boogie hard rock to funk to acoustic ballads. If you like Deep Purple/Uriah Heep style of "progressive hard rock" then you will enjoy this album.

Phenomena is a rock concept around a supergroup formed by record producer Tom Galley, Metalhammer magazine founder Wilfried Rimensberger and Tom's brother, Whitesnake guitarist Mel Galley. Contributors were leading rock musicians such as Glenn Hughes, Brian May, Tony Martin and John Wetton amongst others. Phenomena released three albums in the 1980s and early 1990s, and had a number one hit single in South America with "Did It All For Love", while the album charted across Europe, in Japan and Brazil. More albums followed without the involvement of Rimensberger and released under the branding of 'Tom Galley, the creator of Phenomena'. The latest, Awakening, was released in March 2012. Whilst all were well received, they were not comparable to the original Phenomena.

Violinist Théotime Langlois de Swarte and lutist Thomas Dunford illuminate aspects of the elusive amalgamation that is the 17th-century English notion of melancholy. The inconsolable 'Mad Lover' of the album title is reimagined as a character from the reign of Charles II. This tale is told through music from the pen of such violin virtuosos as the prodigiously gifted Nicola Matteis. Heightened by the exuberance and abandon common to those musicians transplanted from Italy, the beguiling nuances of this language of yearning and loss continue to echo in the popular music of our time.

An unimpeachable classic considered to be the pinnacle of Rastafarian inspired music. Master drummer Count Ossie's band, including the incomparable tenor saxophonist Cedric 'I'm' Brooks, recreate a Rasta grounation, or gathering, playing and chanting a sublime supplication, including Bible readings, in praise of Emperor Haile Selassie I.