When a hip-hop album opens with a collaboration with modern-day prog-rockers the Mars Volta, you know to expect the unexpected. That's pretty much what Brooklyn's El-P (born Jaime Meline) has been delivering since day one, first as a member of now-defunct indie-rap heroes Company Flow and later as founder of the maverick New York label Definitive Jux. Trent Reznor and Cat Power also show up on his first new release in five years, but El-P remains the one to watch, rattling off his typically complex rhymes about the state of the world (and the bedroom) over the cling-clang of industrial beats and frenzied noise. It's dense and weird and sometimes even scary, all of which makes it a marked improvement over the usual Saturday night boom-bap. --Aidin Vaziri