Nightbreed

The death-punk rat pack Allergic to Whores was as averse to harmony as it was to hussies. But in Nightbreed, the new trio led by former ATW frontman Ray Terry, the heart-pounding pace has been abandoned for harmony and hopelessness.

The transition is akin to Glenn Danzig's leap from the Misfits to Samhain. On Nightbreed's debut demo, Terry favors a rueful yowl over his larynx-mincing growl of old. The ghostly rhythms, along with stabs of guitar as black as these dudes' nail polish, are enough to make rain clouds form over your speakers. This is pallbearer punk, culminating in the primal howl of "The Circle" and the haunting "Closing Off the Outside," where unsettling processed vocals and forbidding keys congeal into the sound of sorrow.