Happy Friday the 13th, y'all! After a few weeks practically bursting with new releases, this week sees a slightly more modest but no less enjoyable or interesting slate. Below you'll find seven releases we wanted to highlight for you. Go check 'em out!

Babymetal - Metal Foth [Capitol]

BABYMETAL (ベビーメタル), the Japanese kawaii metal band, are back with a new LP titled Metal Foth. It’s been six years since their last full-length release, and they’re making it count, this ten-track album is packed with high-profile collaborations and special guests. The lineup includes Poppy, Tom Morello (Rage Against the Machine), Electric Callboy, Jordan Fish (formerly of Bring Me the Horizon), Spiritbox, Slaughter to Prevail, Bloodywood, and Polyphia. It’s a who’s who of the current metal scene. – Ricky Adams

Joshua Ray Walker – Tropicana [Thirty Tigers]

Texas country crooner Joshua Ray Walker is no stranger to concept albums. But when he found himself battling stage 3B colon cancer, his mind drifted to sunny beaches, ocean breezes, and longneck bottles. Reuniting with producer John Pedigo, Tropicana is Walker’s twangy island escape fantasy — a chemotherapy fever dream of a Jimmy Buffett-style beach bar built to ride out what he imagined were his final days. “It’s the sort of place where you order a piña colada at the pool bar and go wander down a nondescript beach,” Walker says. “I couldn’t go to the beach, so I decided to bring the beach to me.” – Nic Huber

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard – Phantom Island [p(doom) records]

Yet another King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard album has dropped. Their 27th studio record, Phantom Island, shifts to a more orchestral sound, featuring collaborations with the Los Angeles Philharmonic on the tracks. "The songs were written in a very ‘improv’ way, stitched together from multiple takes or longer jams," said vocalist and guitarist Stu Mackenzie in a press release for the album announcement. While it's one of KG&TLW's first forays into writing orchestral compositions into their rock music, the new album seems to be more laid back and jam band-y. If you can keep up with the industrious output of King Gizz, then give this new album a listen. – Victoria Borlando

Lyra Pramuk – Hymnal [7K! / pop.soil]

There’s no shortage of substance when it comes to this third album from Berlin-based Lyra Pramuk. The story behind the writing and recording of Hymnal voyages through deconstructed poetry, mapping, and exploring the potential of a path-finding slime mold to conjure a soundtrack that filters contemporary club music through a futurist folk vision, string ensemble experiments, and the chopped-up results of an 8-day vocal improvisation session. For Pramuk, it’s music as a gateway to imagining a better, fairer world. “The West dominates the Earth with protocols of extraction, surveillance, and exploitation. I do not adhere to this philosophy,” she says. “This work represents an attempt to articulate my own belief system. Everything about our society is designed to distract us from our true power, innate beauty, and connection with all (real) life. It’s up to us to unlearn this.” – Alan Pedder

Nina Nastasia – Songs for a World of Trouble [self-released]

When Steve Albini died, Nina Nastasia wondered if she would ever want to make another solo record, so tightly had their paths been intertwined over more than 20 years of friendship and seven striking albums. We partly have Will Oldham to thank for urging her to carry on, and Songs for a World of Trouble is the result: eight vignette-like songs recorded over one weekend at a new friend’s home studio close to Seattle, where Nastasia now lives. It’s her first self-produced work, and is available exclusively through Bandcamp, digitally packaged with a 32-page e-book of stories, poems, lyrics, drawings, and photos. – Alan Pedder

Patrick Wolf – Crying the Neck [Apport]

It's been almost 13 years, but Patrick Wolf is finally back with a new LP. Crying the Neck is Wolf's grand return to full-length albums, followingu p 2013's Sundark and Riverlight, which was itself a compilation of reworkings of his own matieral. (You have to go one year more into the past, to 2011's Lupercalia, to find the last album of original material.) On the heels of 2023's Night Safari EP, Wolf is back with a record "inspired by the transfiguring power of grief at the death of his mother, rehabilitation, local folklore and the East Kentish landscape." Produced and arranged by Wolf himself, and featuring contributions from Serafina Steer and Zola Jesus, Crying the Neck is a mystical and grand return for one of the great art-pop auteurs of the aughts, hopefully back to stay. – Jeremy J. Fisette

Queens of the Stone Age – Alive In the Catacombs [Matador]

Desert-singed rock quintet Queens of the Stone Age have gone underground, playing amongst millions of deceased souls, for their new live release in the Paris Catacombs. Alive In the Catacombs features five songs from across their discography, including a mashup of 2007's "Running Joke" and recent banger "Paper Machete." The selected songs have been reimagined in acoustic format with a string section, plus plenty of ambience from the catacombs themselves. If you're craving some silk-smooth, velveteen seduction with a memento mori here and there, take a listen on streaming and consider giving the live film a watch. –Tyler Roland