For all the innovations in music production since the beginning of time, two of the most venerable instruments are the human voice and a hand drum, and there's plenty of that on this album. Not surprisingly, the most evocative tracks are the rawest. "Racing Away," "Bushes," and "Daphne" rely on chants, cries, ethereal drumming, and undulating rhythms, and bear an unabashed soul. Michael Stipe, who sounds like he ate a vocoder, weighs down an otherwise stirring collaboration with Asha Bhosle on "The Way You Dream." Robbie Williams' lilting voice was at home with Maxi Jazz's on the track "My Culture."

While One Giant Leap is a great CD, featuring artists that listeners would probably never have discovered on their own, the fusion of modern dance music with traditional music is nothing new. DJs have been incorporating tribal music into their house sets for years. Combining digital music with roots music to create a patchwork album that crosses borders successfully finds "unity in diversity." But musically speaking, the results on One Giant Leap are only slightly more thrilling and worldly than the average Moby track or Pure Moods album. More often than not, I wanted to peal back the layers of wiggity-whack to get to the core of it. — J.F.

You can hear the progression from Hatebreed's initial work to now. Their first full-length album, Satisfaction Is the Death of Desire, is a hardcore classic. It's brutal, punishing, and full of Jasta's emphatic roars. But Perseverance is aimed at reaching a broader audience, not just the hardcore kids and metalheads who loved Satisfaction.... While the music certainly isn't a watered-down version of an original, it tends to be more streamlined (a bigger budget helps with that), therefore more accessible to devotees of say, the Warped Tour or Slipknot. The fight-to-the-death intensity on songs like "I Will Be Heard," "You're Never Alone," and "Smash Your Enemies," keep this small Connecticut hardcore band from ever sounding comfortable. Nothing will keep them down. — J.F. and P.E.D.