It's a pleasant enough album, but not a crucial one. [Jan 2020, p.85]

A collection of songs so sugar-coated it should probably have been packaged with insulin. [Oct 2025, p.72]

This is perhaps a musician's album, in that peers will admire his skill and originality, while it could be rather challenging for the untrained. [May 2018, p.89]

It's got some absolute burners on deck. ... It's also got plenty of noisy psychedelic horseshit they did in the early 90s, but even that stuff sounds glammy and cool. [Mar 2019, p.88]

The album really benefits from Buck's undimmed musical sensibility. [Apr 2020, p.88]

Baroque, doom-laden proclamations are Manson's bread and butter, and We Are Chaos is stuffed with them. [Oct 2020, p.86]

Thematically, if previous Andrew WK albums have felt like having entire kegs shotgunned in your face, this one is like being syphon-fed after-dinner brandies.

The Nightmare OF Being is up with the Swedes' finest albums. [Summer 2021, p.87]

An album true to his roots and his wrecked country, unwavering of vision. [Sep 2014, p.88]

A beautifully constructed, artful and imaginative debut. [Jan 2014, p.116]

There is still enough here to inspire hope for the band in the future, but this album is not quiet there yet. [Dec 2014, p.106]

The concept of this album is about following a path that is eventually going to lead 20 years down the line and wonder where it will take you. [Nov 2014, p.94]

Amid all this doom, Therapy? sound reborn, utterly at ease with a sound they largely abandoned 20 years back. [May 2015, p.106]

This album takes Graveyard into a new realm, marking them as modern blues-rock craftsmen par excellence.

Each and every one of the songs on Priest’s latest full-length Firepower--and yes, we know Legs Diamond were there first--are three-way collaborations between fellow six-stringer Glenn Tipton, frontman Rob Halford and Faulkner himself. And hell, the latter doesn’t so much step up to the plate on this, the second album of Priest’s BOK (Beyond Our Ken) era, as trample it into tiny little pieces.

There's a renewed freshness and immediacy to several of the tracks, particularly in his laconic vocal delivery. [Dec 2019, p.80]

Blacktop Run reminds us that he is more of a musical rebel than his tattooed brethren. [Mar 2020, p.89]

Wire's past still sounds like rock's future. [Sep 2020, p.95]

Blue Oyster Cult continue to do whatever the hell they want. But the good, and perhaps surprising, news, given how long it’s been since we’ve last heard new music from them, is that it’s all good, and in places great.

Their interplay of conventional instruments is unconventionally jagged, pastoral, abrasive, exotic, heavy and light in equal measure. [Jan 2021, p.82]

The nine-song eulogy assumes the quality of a heady elixir. All told, a very wonderful thing. [Summer 2021, p.83]

No Taste is positively obese with ideas, street smart with a side order of Sonic Youth, a grrrlish death disco diva Banshee fest. [Dec 2021, p.75]

Cantrell's voice remains as strong as ever, unwavering and carrying a portentous authority. similarly, Let It lie, with its pounding, doom-laden, Black Sabbath-influenced riff, is the punch in the nose none of us knew we needed. [Nov 2024, p.78]

They're fully committed to the mythology of Gong throughout. [Apr 2026, p.79]

The result is masterful: unsettling, retro-futuristic, beautiful and intense, but deeply immersive and listenable.

While the album lacks the killer punch of a big hit single, it's full of charm and depth, making it a rare treat indeed. [Apr 2015, p.100]

A set of songs that sound like someone's favourite record collection. [Feb 2020, p.89]

Even when Fallon does resort to simply weeping into the sawdust – You Have Stolen My Heart and When You’re Ready – it’s over the sort of gorgeous and poignant love letters to his family that make homeliness feel close to Godliness. Such saccharine succour.

Bright New Disease weaving delightfully through disparate sonic territories, not so much pushing boundaries as booting them off a 100-story building and capturing the ensuant mess. [Summer 2023, p.76]

Visceral stuff, but here's hoping their post-Fitzsimmons (RIP) era takes The Hives on further unexpected journeys. [Sep 2023, p.80]

Bela Lugosi's Dead was a happy accident. The rest of the material finds a band fumbling for direction, even touching on ska, before an eerie delay appeared to invent their sound for them. [Dec 2018, p.93]

This ominous set of industrial ire and theatrical brooding sees him in his element, prioritising atmosphere over tunes, both coldly alien and vulnerably human. [Jul 2021, p.82]

What remains is a solid, engaging late-period Korn album that doesn’t add an awful lot to their legacy, but certainly doesn’t disgrace it.

Gritty, punchy and hooky. [Aug 2022, p.67]

This album is a pleasant listening experience, if not quite earth-shattering. [May 2026, p.77]

A master class in dancing away the heartache. [Jun 2021, p.76]

The record ends with a burst of Velvets fuzz-rock titled Hey Lou Reid - but it's only fitting on a record that burnishes their legend with such sizzling acid. [Apr 2024, p.76]

There’s gold to be uncovered here.

The Blue Hour is shot through with Suede's trademark gritty-yet-gracious melodies looped around the throats of outsider escape anthems. [Sep 2018, p.90]

The sound of the otherworldly sci-fi R&B that's released when psych country singer-songwriter and a future-pop production legend bond at molecular level. [Jan 2019, p.86]

A consistently sparkling Weezer album. [Nov 2014, p.97]

Luke Winslow-King capably swirls the myriad strands of Americana. [Aug 2018, p.89]

This set contains some wastage, but more than enough demented brilliance to merit serious consideration. [Aug 2018, p.96]

So, far from being another vault-raiding cash-grab by the label, it's a privilege and an honour. occasionally dreamlike. [Dec 2019, p.88]

This 20th-anniversay reissue is a reminder of just how great [White Pony] was and is. ... [Black Stallion is] a uniformly impressive feat of deconstruction and reconstruction. [Feb 2021, p.90]

Howlin Rain have fashioned an album that eschews the harder rocking moves of predecessor The Alligator Bride for a mellower although no less impactful approach. [Oct 2021, p.74]

An overall very classy and engaging collection from a singer perhaps largely unsung as a songwriter. [Jul 2022, p.81]

The lone misstep is Bernard Butler's Not Alone, which without soaring strings loses much of its defining defiance. Caveat aside, this is an album of warmth and depth. [May 2026, p.74]

Just plain beautiful.

["It's A;right, It's OK" is] Yet another foray into shameless retro pastiche, then, but it concludes this gloomy, ear-bashing album with a welcome blast of rousing optimism. [Jul 2013, p.90]

God knows what genre it is, but Fairytale Codex is an arty trip into the unknown well worth making. [Summer 2025, p.77]

There's way more Breeders-reminiscent 90s alt. meat on the bones. [Nov 2023, p.81]

This is modern life sliced up with the precision of a medical scalpel and then force-fed through a high-density filter of piss and vinegar.

Discount the fillers, which are of high, if throwaway, quality and you've a strong 12-banger cracker of a record. [Aug 2025, p.72]

It’s smart: acerbic and politically charged in its bleakness.

Oddly, the title track, a low-key ballad, is the least satisfying song on offer here. It's the only aberration. [Summer 2013, p.94]

The only problem is that the album is too long. [Feb 2015, p.96]

Garwood sounds like he's found whatever he's been blindly searching for. [Apr 2015, p.99]

The gentle acoustic strums and electric licks, all wrapped in lush melodies and driven by Pete Fij’s worn yet honeyed voice, both mask and enhance the ennui here.

It feels retro, a description you can bet Flat Worms would be proud of.

Good to hear the quiet one speaking up again. [Nov 2018, p.80]

Servants Of The Sun is their most cohesive, joyous and beautiful record yet. [Aug 2019, p.82]

With elegant electronics and playful retro-futurism, as on the tile track and Electric Sheep, Flür reminds these days of Dieter Meier and Yello. [Apr 2022, p.77]

Feels like the work of a man who’s rediscovered his mojo.

While Stephen Wilson Jr. and Sierra Ferrell prove to be capable duet partners, Nelson excels alone with guitar. [Aug 2025, p.77]

An ambitious, album worth investing in. [Jun 2026, p.75]

The odd latter-half song gets lost in the sonics, but mostly Kiwi's stew hasn't lost its taste. [Sep 2022, p.73]

A grower, this. ... It's Tim Buckley to Beefheart to Bert Jansch and beyond. [Jun 2018, p.87]

Despite all the gloom, this is a deeply enjoyable album. [Jan 2021, p.87]

This is punk rock at its snotty, hilarious best, rattling along on an 100mph wave of smart, deadly one-liners and beautifully abrasive riffs. [Jun 2013, p.87]

The result is both shamelessly derivative and gloriously entertaining. [Jul 2013, p.88]

Overall, time has not diminished Frame's evergreen gift for bittersweet, heart-twanging introspection. [Jul 2014, p.95]

None of this is especially groundbreaking or radical, but the sound of a veteran in fine voice, making music with his pals (McGuinn and David Crosby are also along for the ride), is very persuasive indeed.

The result is varied, strange and engaging. [May 2025, p.75]

It's tip-top stuff. [Jul 2025, p.81]

As this once-fabled recording attests, the Family Stone's chops and their leader's startlingly innovative tropes (including scat singing and testifying) were already in place that March. [Sep 2025, p.85]

With Shooter Jening's outlaw holler and Sheryl Crow doing her backing-singer bit, the results are country slick but the execution is flawless. [Summer 2019, p.82]

A successful continuation of the Babymetal mission. [Sep 2025, p.74]

It's no surprise party - and less giant leap than consolidatory glide - but Can We Please Have Fun has its fair share of high times. [Jun 2024, p.74]

It's a singularly engaging soundscape you're strongly recommended to sample. [Jan 2024, p.80]

It's relaxed, and effective at that. [Sep 2014, p.92]

The formula is nowhere near broke, so why fix it? Stirring stuff. [Oct 2014, p.91]

Finds their former highs trapped behind glass, blurred and beclouded like the past year has been for all of us. [Jul 2021, p.86]

The classically trained musician's virtuosity - he plays all the instruments - is impressive, and it's matched by his lyrical themes, which are infused with quasi-spiritual belief in positive energy. [Oct 2021, p.72]

A proper ripper. [Mar 2023, p.76]

Thirty-four years and 16 albums in, Therapy? still sound as vital and hungry as they did when they dropped their debut. [Jun 2023, p.72]

A highly more-ish record with real soul and class. [Mar 2015, p.88]

Overall this album is Hynde's most adventurous experiment to date, opening new autumnal terrain for one of rock's greatest voices. [Sep 2019, p.85]

Sweet-voiced grrrl-angst vocals meet grunge dynamics; non-committal Veruca Salt do post-Nirvana loud bit/miserable bit. I Mean, it's fine, but... meh. [Summer 2022, p.79]

Climaxes with a haunting 20-minute prog epic complete with a musique concrete middle section. It's by far the most powerful piece of music they've ever made. The rest of the album is a mixed bag. .... But it's the scattered highlights you'll remember. [Summer 2024, p.76]

By placing the emphasis on Cash's then-overlooked songwriting flair, the album plays like a cohesive lost gem. [Summer 2024, p.79]

The whole thing sounds like they had a blast. [Jun 2013, p.88]

Unlike the mostly acoustic-led Lighthouse, Sky Trails finds him in full band mode, engaging in a nuanced blend of folk, soul and jazz that echoes vintage triumphs like Guinnevere and Déjà Vu.

It's a roguish enough distillation of Aussie rock's most okish corners. [Sep 2022, p.73]

Fans of Byrne's spiky post-punk oddball persona may feel short-changed, but his latter-day incarnation as a folksy, funny, starry-eyed romantic hits rhapsodic new heights here. [Oct 2025, p.73]

Bare-chested canyon rock is present and correct, but so too is much introspection, melancholia, hurt and hope. [Dec 2023, p.74]

Unlikely to win any new fans, then, but this richly textured mix of soft-focused funk, soul, jazz and R&B will delight those in thrall to an artist not so much laid back as horizontal. [May 2013, p.88]

Maybe hilariously, considering the video-friendly drama being aimed at, First You Break It conjures images of Justin Bieber when he makes that inevitable nasty rock album, cavorting in a black puddle. [Summer 2013, p.89]