Hardrock New Release

The 1975

Album: I Like It When You Sleep, For You Are So Beautiful Yet So Unaware Of It

Release Date: February 26th

Judging by advance singles "Love Me" and "Ugh!" Manchester rockers the 1975 have mined funky Eighties hitmakers like Peter Gabriel, Terence Trent D'Arby and Prince for their second studio album. "[The Eighties were] a time where technology came into play vastly," the band told iHeartRadio. "It was a forward-thinking time, and trying to capture the ethos of that time without being over-referential, in like a pastiche, is something that we wanted to do." The album will be supported by a North American tour that begins April 18th in Los Angeles.

David Bowie

Album: ★

Release Date: January 8th

You probably didn't get tickets to Lazarus, the New York Theatre Workshop musical which David Bowie co-wrote with Enda Walsh. (That is unless you could scrape up about $800 for scalpers; otherwise, tickets sold out for the entire run within minutes.) Luckily for the rest of us, there's his 25th studio album, ★ (pronounced "Blackstar"). The early singles — the title track, and, yes, "Lazarus," — have somber brass and textured production that hint at spacey, jazz-inflected, mid-to-late-1970s Bowie. "The goal," producer Tony Visconti told Rolling Stone this past November, "in many, many ways, was to avoid rock & roll."

Elton John

Album: Wonderful Crazy Night

Release Date: February 5th

At 68, Elton John is still devoted to writing new songs with longtime lyricist Bernie Taupin. And Wonderful Crazy Night, which reunites him with longtime sidemen Davey Johnstone and Nigel Olsson, is his rowdiest and most upbeat album in decades. Mercury/Capitol, who released his downtempo 2013 album The Diving Board, will issue the album in February, although John says the label wasn't thrilled with the rocking new record and would rather him just settle down and record a Christmas album or Motown covers. "I want this record to feel joyous from beginning to end," John told Rolling Stone in November.

Ed Sheeran

Album: TBA

Release Date: TBA

In a pop landscape driven mostly by EDM and hip-hop, Ed Sheeran made being an acoustic guitar-wielding singer-songwriter cool again thanks to tender ballads written for himself, Taylor Swift, One Direction and Justin Bieber. This year, he's planning on releasing his as-yet-untitled third album and quit social media in early December to focus on his music. Back in September, Sheeran confirmed to Rolling Stone that he was hard at work on his fourth album as well and would soon travel to Africa to look for new sounds. "I know a load of Ghanaian musicians in London, and they've always told me to go over there," Sheeran said. "I feel like I'd go there and be revitalized."

U2

Album: Songs of Experience

Release Date: TBA

The 14th album from U2 has been talked about ever since the release of Songs of Innocence, Rolling Stone's best album of 2014. "Early on it became obvious that we were working on two separate albums," the Edge told Rolling Stone. "The majority of the unfinished songs are worthy of becoming part of Songs of Experience and some are already as good or better than anything on Songs of Innocence." U2's plans have a way of getting derailed — just ask Bono's surgeons — but the singer has been playing intimate previews of tracks from his phone, offering commentary such as "this has got a really crunchy beat" and "on this one we were going for a broken cassette recorder type of sound." The band has accumulated at least 18 tracks, which they plan to whittle down to a dozen for a 2016 release.

Metallica

Album: TBA

Release Date: TBA

It's been nearly eight years since Metallica won back fans and critics with return-to-thrash-form Death Magnetic (and five since they almost alienated them with their controversial Lou Reed collaboration Lulu). So it's no surprise that they're taking their time to perfect what will be their long-in-the-works 10th LP. They're staying tight-lipped about its progress – in April 2014, Lars Ulrich estimated they were in the "fourth inning" of the process, though Kirk Hammett guessed they were "30 percent" done a year later. Regardless, they want you to know they're working. Last March, Ulrich said the group was working with 20 songs on the heels of their 2014 tour single "Lords of Summer." They've also teased new material with video of James Hetfield playing a crushing new riff on guitar and of thrash-y song snippet on a computer. The band has only one tour date on the books so far, so they'll have plenty of time to release more snippets this year.

Radiohead

Album: TBA

Release Date: TBA

Radiohead fans were given an unexpected Christmas gift with the surprise release of the band's unreleased Bond theme, "Spectre," the band's first taste of new music in four years. While the band has not confirmed a new album's title or release date, drummer Phil Selway told Drowned in Sound last January that the band began working on new material in September of 2014. Johnny Greenwood later confirmed that the band had "done a couple months of recording" that "have gone really well," noting that they've changed their method of making a new album again. In early December, Thom Yorke debuted a new song called "Silent Spring" at the UN Climate Change Conference in Paris.