Surrendering to its strange charms could be one of the smartest decisions you make this year. [Jul 2013, p.106]

For what looks to be a one-off, it's remarkably fleshed out and intricate. [Oct 2008, p.151]

It's not an album that will change your life, but it could alter the way you look at bits of it. [Feb 2003, p.64]

Recalls the band's earliest days. [Apr 2003, p.74]

On Nothing Violates This Nature, the Boston hardcore mob demonstrate once and for all that they’re far more than the sum of their parts. It is also one of the angriest and most violent records you will encounter in 2013.

His world-music diversions should challenge even those who aren't pedestrian Iron & Wine fans--but that's what EPs are for, right? [Apr 2005, p.116]

On paper this may sound bleak--and in many ways, Curse Your Branches is--but ultimately there's a level of solcae in Bazan's sadness that's remarkably reassuring and, stranger yet, satisfying. [Sep 2009, p.106]

You may be surprised to learn that the roadside corpse does more than twitch; it gets up and positively rumbas in places ("Girls of Summer"), while "New Birds" heaves with the same fidgety agitation that occasionally made Joy Division seem special. [#147, p.83]

Everything here is so enjoyable that it really doesn't matter that the man who helped give birth to the whole lo-fi movement has embraced a certain level of maturity. [March 2001, p.76]

It's still hard to believe that a punk band formed more than 20 years ago are capable of releasing a new album that's both vital and worthy of the promise of their early material.... With Dizzy Spells, the quintet may have topped it all. [#155, p.83]

The music is mostly an interesting hybrid of unlikely elements and naggingly catchy tunes. [Jul 2005, p.186]

The songs explode with more energy than the whole underground combined. This makes it very hard not to love Los Campesinos!, and makes it easier to forgive the fact this record could have been better served as an EP. [Nov 2008, p.162]

America is an even blend of the oddball Deacon you know and the more refined, mature artist he's growing into. [Sep 2012, p.88]

They hold their own with the noisy, angular and often bluesy rock found on Harmonic. [Jun 2012, p.82]

The end result is Silverstein's career-best work and one of the best albums of the year thus far. [Mar 2013, p.91]

These 11 songs are decidedly more polished. [Oct 2015, p.100]

Aggressive is probably the most compelling statement you’re going to hear for the validity of heavy rock music in 2016.

You'll blare Valuables on the car radio one moment, then throw it through headphones for study time later. [Jan 2017, p.83]

Give[s] Skyward In Triumph and Earth 2 a run for the title of Best Album By A Duo, ever. [Jan 2005, p.113]

They deliver a collection of moving songs unified by skillful, understated songwriting, and a warmer, more organic tone than its predecessor, 2009's winning Chasing Hamburg. [Oct 2011, p.110]

Palmer captures the human condition like no other artist. {Oct 2012, p.90]

Stand too clsose to the bagpipes, harmonica, scream-along choruses and a constant artillery of thundering drums, and your ears are gonna get powder burns. [Apr 2010, p.130]

Anxiety's Kiss is what Coliseum have been working towards all these years. [Jun 2015, p.97]

Through every shift in tone and style, Fernow keeps his focus, connecting these songs with small bits of spoken word that conjure up dark visions of people desperately searching for meaning in an increasingly dismal world.

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is an absolute blast, rich in ringing guitar and euphoric synths but thankfully light on fromage and staid rehashes. [Jul 2009, p.130]

Stag for the most part rocks with biting fierceness and vibrant energy. [#155, p.81]

Nobody creates teeth-rottingly sweet indie rock better than Denver's Dressy Bessy. [Sep 2003, p.102]

Musically, it doesn't seem like Chan has gone anywhere. [March 2003, p.88]

The quintet's Molotov mixture of suburb surrealism and sonic extremity is the perfect scrub for everything you've been subjected to in culture and daily life. [Apr 2003, p.73]

It’s just the right balance of heavy and light tones, a mixture that Barnett & Co. continue to perfect throughout the whole album.

Architects somehow increase the ferocity with hit-and-run instrumentation to highlight Sam Carter, the genre's strongest clean vocalist and screamer. [Jun 2016, p.100]

The result is a vivid, nostalgic traipse into what good rock bands ought to sound like. [Mar 2008, p. 144]

Tempos have been ground down to a slow crawl, but as Melvins and Sunn O))) have proven, that tactic just gives a band the chance to prove how heavy they really are. [Jun 2010, p.105]

Dear Youth is a one-size-fits-all hardcore album, one that will lead many fresh faces through the door but leave returners looking for more.

A whole that's less than the sum of its parts, a bittersweet pill that's best taken in small doses. [Feb 2005, p.88]

Eschewing the DJ-friendly club format they perfected on 1999's Remedy, the Jaxx are now writing R&B-flavored pop songs... But their success is hit-and-miss... [Jul 2001, p.60]

Easily ranks among their best. [Oct 2002, p.83]

Confield not only documents the future of IDM; it also cements Autechre's name in the pantheon of sonic visionaries. [Jul 2001, p.63]

Doiron's presence and Squire's understated electric guitar imbue the album with haunting, spectral beauty equal to anything Elverum's done. [Dec 2008, p.138]

Thier debut album is one of the most inventive in recent memory. [Apr 2008, p.153]

While minor lulls can be found and their habit of zeroing in on daily life's mundane nuances risks self-parody, this s*** still rips. [Mar 2013, p.92]

Bardo Pond have become equally adept at making hearts and heads ache. [#155, p.68]

A collection of delicate love songs with a back-porch feel, but the electronic warbles add enough texture for a new generation of stoners to space out on. [June 2003, p.96]

A playful retro-pop event full of shifting moods. [Nov 2001, p.77]

M. Ward's creations have the fragility of drawings made in the dust that's settled on a china cabinet. [Apr 2003, p.87]

These six songs offer moments as heavy as P-Tree have ever been, but are wistfully, sprawlingly melodic as well-sometimes in the same tune.

Like Stay What You Are on steroids, it's a half-hour of instant gratification with paeans to overcoming romantic and introspective obstacles. [Oct 2014, p.101]

It crushes with more speed, weirdness and sheer sonic weight than "Hope For Men" and the band's punkier debut, 2005's "Shallow." [Sep 2009, p.108]

Ritual reminds fans that these Michigan death-metal merchants are capable of greatness. [Jul 2011, p.107]

The results are hit-or-miss. [May 2005, p.132]

Easy Pain reminds you how horrible the world can be, as well as the catharsis you can achieve if you'd only just immerse yourself in the maelstrom. [Jun 2014, p.111]

That this open-ended philosophical query ["Is it human to adore life?"] has no easy answers makes Adore Life that much more intellectually dense and appealing. [Feb 2016, p.100]

American Music Club are as morose as ever. [Dec 2004, p.150]

Like all great albums, De-Loused in the Comatorium takes multiple listens to absorb, and, even then, you're probably not going to have a clue to what Bixler's raving about. [Jul 2003, p.107]

The kind of album that functions as both background BBQ beat and windows-down sing-along. [Jul 2003, p.112]

Rather than suffering from the absence of Technicolor mania, Point instead revels in its nuances and depth, emanating a maturity and cohesion that Fantasma lacked. [Feb 2002, p.68]

Doomsdayer's Holiday shows a band pushing the limits of psychedelic post-rock and testing the boundaries of post-metal. [Dec 2008, p.142]

Through it all, they retain their fundamental hardcore power-chug while vocalist Liam Cormier gives his most diverse screaming/growling/speaking performance yet. [May 2010, p.105]

Music doesn't get more devastating than this. [Dec 2012, p.90]

Sixteen-tear-old vocalist Lydia Night isn't afraid to speak her mind, and the members of the Regrettes match her gritty vocal delivery and feminist sentiments with raucous rock 'n' roll guitars coated with buzzy noise and distortion. [Feb 2017, p.80]

This album truely is a collection of gems. [Oct 2007, p.162]

It truly does feel as if they've been holding this emotion back since the day they parted and now unleashing everything in an explosion of creative energy, delivering a magnificent record that while fresh and exciting, could only be the work of far. [Jun 2010, p.102]

Packed with timeless rock songs. [May 2005, p.174]

STD are as tight and melodically brilliant as ever, but the previous trilogy’s anguish and inner turmoil seem to have been replaced by warm sentimentality, declarations of undying love, and smart discourse on relationships and the human condition, with the occasional killer curveball.

The band have transcended to a newfound comfort, creating the most natural music of their career. [Jun 2015, p.97]

A fine bounce-back from the lackluster They Want My Soul, as they seemed to have found their attitude and swagger. The glitzy, moody atmosphere they conjure up is a hella good look. [Apr 2017, p.82]

With an occasional chest-bursting "yeeeeeeah", Vile avoids letting his most straightforward, circular songs fall into a stupor. [Apr 2011, p.115]

The album makes a vibrant statement. [Dec 2001, p.82]

Features less avant-garde noodling and more straight-up Youth. [Sep 2002, p.96]

Asleep is just enigmatic enough to avoid plagiarism. [Mar 2002, p.77]

Here, retaking the signature spell that Hellion and crew first conjured in the ’90s Cleveland scene, the band’s haunted hardcore gets a fresh coat of paint for the next stage of darkness. If you’re ready to enter the nightmare, this will get you howling.

Rather Ripped is the sound of a band no longer setting their distortion pedals on stun, and, as a result, the best songs are as low-key as a small town on Sunday morning. [Aug 2006, p.218]

A ripe thriller, the work of a facile talent with a newfound fecund baritone that goes places where Pulp could not tread. [Jun 2007, p.150]

10 tracks of alien grooves, percolating beats and shimmering atmospheres that are engaging, sophisticated, and mature. [#146, p.101]

A bewitching fusion of orchestral prettiness and exploratory electronics. [Aug 2003, p.108]

Like most good thematic albums, or films or books, for that matter, it's hard to put the pieces together on Album Of The Year, and just when you think you've got the narrative unraveled, you'll rediscover another lost passage or double entendre. [Sep 2004, p.122]

Sykes’ increased vocal range also proves a formidable addition to their arsenal, coalescing with the expanded sonic palette for a more intimate, cohesive and engaging collection.

The album's strongest moments are found in the duo's ability to live in the moment and take a deep, cleansing breath. [Nov 2014, p.88]

The folk direction of the group's past few albums still lingers, but it's mostly buried behind immense decibels and frightening intensity. [Nov 2012, p.92]

Iron Balls Of Steel is as serious as a metal recording gets; and, at least until those new Meshuggah and Dillinger Escape Plan discs get mastered, it's also the greatest math-metal album of this still-young year.

Damn odd. [Jul 2005, p.186]

Even though the delineation among colors at times seems a bit arbitrary and difficult to differentiate, The Color Spectrum stands up surprisingly well as a companion disc. [Jul 2011, p.111]

While still drenched in anguish, regret and torrential riffs, Parting The sea gives Bolm's prose-dense vignettes and feral confessions the full punch and epic scope they deserve. [Jul 2011, p.112]

The whole glorious mess creates a dramatic Wagnerian opera that's (barely) held together by Congleton's yelping. [Aug 2006, p.206]

Sure, sometimes the angst gets too angsty and a couple songs feel a bit like throwaways, but this is a great, memorable and oftentimes moving release from someone who sounds like she has about 20 years and 10 albums more experience than she does.

Anyone with an appreciation for smartass MCs and a little of Fender-tapping would do well to give TSOL a spin. [Nov 2010, p.116]

Coxon rocks it in a class of '77 Brit-punk style that'll make record-collecting fetishists in search of Adverts and Chelsea demos soil themselves. [Dec 2006, p.198]

Fever Ray is most reminiscent of the Knife self-titled debut--which means it's merely fantastic rather than transcendent. [May 2009, p.114]

"Do I Wanna Know?" and "R U Mine?" are a couple of satisfying stomps anchoring this collection of gold-tinted kiss-offs. [Oct 2013, p.82]

Misguided in points, Contra shows a more accomplished and daring Vampire Weekend--albeit a less endearing one. [Feb 2010, p.97]

Remarkably cohesive. [Aug 2005, p.176]

The closest punk has come to the dread of Robert Johnson, the mischief of Bessie Smith or the joy of Mahalia Jackson. [Jun 2003, p.94]

This is the best Foetus record in about 12 years. [Aug 2001, p.88]

Both participants' artistic weaponry [is] set for "stun" instead of "kill." [Dec 2005, p.216]

Once you get inside this static, it's the ideal place to hang out. [Oct 2009, p.106]

On Habitual Leviathans, the group are more powerful than ever: but it’s a confident power that requires minimal chest thumping.

Lovely and heartfelt, Wheel is an introspective delight. [May 2013m, p.90]

Settle is a rare animal: an EDM album that actually flows like an album should. Listening to it, there's a feeling that as much thought went into the track sequencing as went into the sequenced rhythms.