Electro-industrial cousins Skinny Puppy and Front Line Assembly both released brand-new studio albums this year, and Bill Leeb — who launched FLA after leaving Skinny Puppy in 1985 — has a pretty great idea: a North American “Monsters of Industrial” tour featuring both acts.

This week’s new releases include brand-new studio albums from Skinny Puppy (‘Weapon’), British Electric Foundation (‘Music of Quality and Distinction Vol. 3: Dark’) , The Stranglers (‘Giants’) and The Pastels (‘Slow Summits’), plus a Public Image Ltd. reissue and a box set from The Woodentops.

Metropolis Records is offering up the first taste of Weapon, the upcoming 12th studio album from Skinny Puppy, in the form of lead single “paragUn” — which you can now stream in full. Weapon is due out May 24 in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, May 27 in the “rest of the world” and May 28 in North America.

Skinny Puppy return late next month with their 12th studio album in 30 years, a timely 10-song collection called Weapon that the band’s publicists say stands as a philosophical commentary on “the concurrent glorification of the gun culture and simultaneous horror at the devastation guns can cause.”

Today we continue with more results from our Readers Poll 2012, this time counting down the Top 10 compilations, box sets and live albums, with titles from the likes of World Party, James, Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros, Roxy Music, The Specials, Skinny Puppy, Duran Duran and more.

Long-running electronic outfit Delerium — led by former Front Line Assembly member and Skinny Puppy collaborator Bill Leeb — this fall will release the 15-track ‘Music Box Opera,’ the group’s first new studio album in six years, which is preceded by the debut today of music video for lead-off single “Monarch.”

Reactivated Canadian New Wave stars Men Without Hats this week announced a late-fall U.S. tour in support of comeback album Love in the Age of War. The Ivan Doroschuk-fronted group plays a handful of early September dates before the full tour, which opens Nov. 20 in Orlando, Fla., and runs through Dec. 1 in Boston.

This week’s new releases include brand-new studio albums from The dB’s (their first in 25 year), the Bodeans and Men Without Hats, plus a live album from electro-industrial giants Skinny Puppy and a reissue of ‘File Under: Easy Listening,’ the second album by Bob Mould’s band Sugar.

Skinny Puppy next month will release the live album ‘Bootlegged, Broke and In Solvent Seas,’ recorded on the band’s 2010 European tour — and you can get a first taste via this live version of ‘Dogshit,’ the infamous lead-off track to 1988’s ‘VIVIsectVI’ that was renamed ‘Censor’ when it was released as a single.

Men Without Hats are set to release ‘Love in the Age of War,’ their first album in nine years, this spring, and last week frontman Ivan Doroschuk premiered the album’s first single, “Head Above Water,” on Montreal’s CHOM 97.7. You can hear the track, produced by ex-Skinny Puppy member Dave Ogilvie, here.

As 2011 quickly winds to an end, we’re happy to roll out our fourth and final days’ worth of results from our second-annual Slicing Up Eyeballs Readers Poll, in which nearly 500 of you cast ballots for your favorite music of the year. Today, we bring you the big one: The best albums of 2011.

This week’s new releases include brand-new albums from Thomas Dolby (first in 20 years!), Magazine (first in 30 years!) and Skinny Puppy, plus the U.S. version of The Smiths’ deluxe ‘Complete’ box set, the Peter Gabriel ‘New Blood: Live in London’ DVD/Blu-ray and ‘Fac. Dance,’ a compilation of Factory Records 12-inches.

This week’s headlines on Slicing Up Eyeballs included posts about the reunited New Order, David J, X, The Dead Milkmen, Skinny Puppy and R.E.M., plus our interview with the Pixies’ Joey Santiago, and quite possibly the biggest news of the year: the long-awaited reunion of The Stone Roses.