If anything on Into The Woods Brock and his merry men (including drummer Richard Chadwick and keyboardist Tim Blake) conjure, not the mellowness but the magic and mystery, even malevolence, of nature.

While IOU and Danger are incessantly catchy, glittering amid high-end production, they fell as soulless as the vast stages they're destined for. [Oct 2018, p.84]

A good deal more than alreet, for sure [Mar 2025, p.75]

Demented, wigged out and stupendously mind-blowing, White Hills can't be Brooklyn's best-kept secret much longer. [Sep 2013, p.88]

A mixed bag of variable results, then, though Reid’s voice remains consistently magnificent throughout.

With a dash of peacenik politics the heritage is clear, but Dhani does more than enough to establish his own terrain.

Somewhere Under Wonderland isn't a revolution, but it is assured, interesting and quietly experimental in its own way. [Oct 2014, p.94]

Since 1983, The Melvins have been a wonderfully unstable constant on the rock fringes. Still fronted by Buzz Osborne of the explosion-in-a-mattress-factory hairdo, they continue to make good on that paradox with Hold It In. [Jan 2015, p.116]

Marred only slightly by a couple of scrappy tunes, the album feels like a life-affirming reminder of anarchist Emma Goldman's celebrated maxim that the only worthwhile revolution is one you can dance to. [Apr 2015, p.96]

Your Favorite Toy is a ferocious reaffirmation of the Foos’ initial post-grunge power that will overjoy diehard fans, and it hits the ground racing. [Jun 2026, p.70]

With shades of Tool and Aereogramme, but mainly its own beast, Polaris is pure confidence converted into sound.

If all the album achieves is to serve as a playful reminder of the ramshackle brilliance of Stinson’s old band, so be it. But it deserves better. It’s joyous. And Paul Westerberg is nowhere to be seen.

Randolph's evocative pedal steel soars reliably as his assured vocal attains new peaks of emotive character. [Sep 2019, p.87]

High Water II isn't The Southern Harmony And Musical Companion, but it might just be By Your Side. In the absence of anything else, we'll take it. [Nov 2019, p.85]

Kasabian's USP has always been a cocky straddling of indie rock and rave. It's a shame they pretty much discard it here. [Aug 2022, p.68]

This album will leave you so wobbly and weak-kneed, you might have to take a few days off work to recover. Headphone melter of the year so far, for sure.

Where Is The Water twists and meanders hazily before shifting into gear with a riff from the Jack White school of thud, while opener Needles is excitable garage rock with a stiff, post-punk edge. And over in the kaleidoscopic corner, Wheels Within Wheels flips merrily from one psychedelic landscape to the next and includes a wriggling organ solo that sounds as if it's being squeezed from a tube. All in all, it's quite the adventure. [Dec 2022, p.75]

Sounding refreshed and revitalised. [Jul 2024, p.78]

From Hell I Rise is more than just a retread of past glories. Part of the credit goes to Death Angel singer Mark Osegueda, whose vicious performance consciously avoids referencing Slayer's Tom Araya on the title track and the anti-war Trophies Of The Tyrant. [Jul 2024, p.78]

When Marshall calls himself Madman Butterfly and sings The Presence Of Haman and The End, you’ll wonder why he doesn’t do it more. He may have allowed himself to be overshadowed by his guests, but Marshall is the star here. [Oct 2024, p.77]

Borrell tiptoes his trademark line between the wry and the ridiculous. U Can Call Me is a slice of Bowie-esque sass pop about how much he hates cocaine, Empire Service a slab of buzzsaw rock that argues with itself about what is and is not the ocean. [Nov 2024, p.76]

Merciless - their eighth - doubles down on that solid breakneck thrash metal/hardcore [heard on 2020's Carnivore]. [Dec 2024, p.76]

This baffling mixture of the anarchy and the ecstasy takes some pulling off but the quartet has perfected the alchemical reaction. [Nov 2014, p.96]

Wild, erratic and out for adventure, your mother warned you not to hang out with albums like this.

Opener Finally Free is the instant crowd pleaser, but slow-burners Diamond Girl and Pink Snow find them in ambitious new album rock territory. [Jun 2015, p.89]

There are many less rewarding experiences than hearing Springsteen thirstily sing his favourite songs, but there’s a sense here that all concerned hope it would catch fire and amount to something more. [Dec 2022, p.76]

Nothing here is as good as their Sweet Jane, but it'll do. [May 2022, p.87]

His love for the music shines throughout. [Apr 2023, p.75]

This white-hot furnace of a black-rock milestone shows Living Colour more scathingly relevant (and desperately needed) than ever.

It’s a bold, bombastic rock album that really chimes with our troubled times. Alter Bridge got issues, and that’s a good thing.

There's enough here that's new to renew your love of Hendrix. Yes, there's blood in the stone yet. [Apr 2013, p.94]

For all the vein-bulging intensity--which reaches heroic levels on standout The River--you're left with the sense that Gallagher remains a great singer short on top notch material. [Nov 2019, p.81]

While there's nothing here that will alienate fans or frighten the horses, there's no denying the power of songs like the crashing "Brave This Storm" or the rattling "Strife." [Nov 2013, p.93]

Watford's finest are still very much the real deal. [May 2015, p.103]

Avenged Sevenfold have lost any previous limitations and inhibitions, and they’ve crafted a landmark metal album.

The woman's on fire. [Jun 2025, p.70]

Some reasonably good live music (Elephant’s Memory bring to Lennon’s music a bluesy heaviness that sometimes suits it and sometimes doesn’t), some intriguing demos (arguably the best material here, whether it be rare Lennon originals or decent rock’n’roll covers) and most of Some Time In New York City, an album that suffers from: a) being terrible, especially The Luck Of The Irish, a song that makes Ed Sheeran’s Galway Girl sound like The Chieftains), and b) the omission of its one great song, whose title means it has been excised from the album. One for the history buffs. [Nov 2025, p.84]

Their 1997 self-titled release marked their effective rebirth, signalling the end of that period when they used outside writers and became themselves again. But no album since has had quite the consistency and urgency of this, their 17th studio record. Bang Zoom Crazy... Hello.

Only diluted by a couple of thin tracks, Spirit is an impressively robust late-career album. Emotionally naked yet clad in thick, metallic armour, Depeche Mode are growing old angrily, and it suits them.

An exhilarating and unexpectedly uplifting record. [Sep 2024, p.71]

This slick trio from Dripping Springs, Texas add cloying twang to yacht-rock tropes to asset-stripping effect. [Sep 2019, p.87]

The clunky title track aside, swagger and confidence distinctively enhanced by the likes of Garth Hudson, Joan Wasser, Jim Keltner, JA keeps it all alive and diversely tuneful. [Oct 2013, p.89]

Here he duly revisits his own past, on an album that blends new material with covers of his old work and that of others.

Oddly archaic yet thoroughly modern. Which is to say he still sounds pretty timeless. [Apr 2026, p.80]

Redeemer of Souls is irrefutable prof that Priest are still a force on the metal scene. [Aug 2014, p. 204]

C’mon You Know itself is a bit of a cracker, finding a ‘repentant’ Liam (‘I admit that I was angry for too long’ – choir-enhanced opener More Power) gleefully infuriating his usual detractors (with Diamonds In The Dark’s ‘Now I know how many holes it takes to…’ hook), delivering catnip ballads (Too Good For Giving Up), hitting all the right Liam Gallagher buttons (Don’t Go Halfway) and occasionally kicking hand-me-down Stonesy arse (Everything’s Electric).

Its 10 songs are bombastic, unabashed boogies, each one stacked with layer upon layer of symphonic volume. [Summer 2025, p.73]

Classy but strangely sterile. [Sep 2022, p.77]

X – No Absolutes is the sound of Prong feeling comfortable in 2016; still underground and recognisable as the band who snapped our fingers and necks, but also adding essential modern detail.

Wild Cat does get samey with 11 songs, but it’s a whole lotta fun and fans will lap it up.

There’s a demo version of The Ramones’ Rockaway Beach included here, which is as scratchy and worn as you might imagine and, remarkably, lacks any of that patented, and much missed, Motörhead kick. Much better is their gnarly version of Metallica’s Whiplash; if you didn’t know any better you’d swear it was one of their own. Ditto Twisted Sister’s Shoot ‘Em Down.

Legend Of The Seagullmen is inventive, eclectic and gleefully unhinged, but if there are any criticisms to be made it’s that it’s over too soon.

It’s a fine mix of odds and sods to stave off the hunger for the next sonic feast they cook up.

Reassuringly awkward. [Jan 2021, p.87]

Their sugar-coated badass swagger might be toothless and adolescent, but sometimes teenage dreams are hard to beat. [Mar 2021, p.87]

Hi is a renewed statement of intent. [Jul 2021, p.87]

Four discs of heavy-lidded, slope-shouldered, shoe-gazing aural opioids. [May 2023, p.89]

It's the sixties end of the nineties again, yet repurposed with significant flair. [May 2023, p.81]

It's occasionally elegiac, delicate and whimsical on a song like Real Again, with an occasional side of the epic. [Summer 2023, p.75]

This isn’t completely terrible – duets with Willie Nelson improve anything – it’s just frustratingly unessential. [Dec 2024, p.75]

Long on delicately gauzy, seductively shoegazey atmospheric, but short on whup-ass. [Apr 2025, p.77]

Play fast and loose with notions of Americana. [Aug 2025, p.77]

Tasteful and eloquent. ... minus the killer tunes. [Nov 2018, p.85]

The record is rivenwith angst, strife and remonstration. Which makes it sound like a knotty proposition. But actually it’s quite the opposite.

Making few concessions to 21st-century noise but equally never sounding old, Egypt Station is up there with Paul McCartney’s best solo work.

On a record full of sprawling, guitar solos, textural acoustics and steady drums, J Mascis's plaintive howl of a vocal tops off everything, adding one more layer of poignancy. [Mar 2024, p.81]

Here they're more rock than folk--or, to be exact, more prog than folk, extending the jams and minimising the survivalist backwoodsman imagery for more obtuse bong-flavoured lyrics. [Dec 2013, p.103]

If the music's a bit uniform, it'd sound great scoring a scene in Sons of Anarchy. [Nov 2014, p.91]

If you compare this to past triumphs like Come My Fanatics and Dopethrone--albums that pushed doom metal into heavier and more joyously drug-addled territory than ever before--Wizard Bloody Wizard falls a spliff or two short of the mark.

This album solidifies Cabbage as one of the UK's more exciting new prospects. [May 2018, p.88]

For any given sideman, a Bowie gig was invariably an occasion to rise to, and on this particular night rise they did. ... “And it’s fucking great.” He’s not wrong. [Dec 2018, p.99]

As displayed by the title track and the pumping Brutalism, Oxymore feels stuck in the 90s rather than the work of two trailblazers, though at least Epica’s hands-in-the-air dynamics feels fresher. [Nov 2022, p.71]

It gets a bit samey, as if noise alone is enough of a statement of intent. Thankfully, things pick up in the second half. [Dec 2014, p.104]

Passwords is full of lustrous folk, as on My Greatest Invention and I Can't Love, with the odd innocuous AOR moment, though there's hidden bite. [Summer 2018, p.89]

Sick Scenes is among LC!’s most accomplished collection yet.

The basic country sounds frame a compelling singer. [Apr 2015, p.97]

Although these notes from an underground that was basically dug 50 years ago, they crackle wit contemporary need. [Jun 2018, p.88]

Longtime fans of the band's intense, neck vein-popping hardcore rock'n'roll have to hunt and peck their way through this album to find the good stuff. [Jun 2019, p.89]

The sloganeering surfs in on a wave of ultra-catchy punk melodies, dragging the listener along in its wake. [Jul 2021, p.85]

Archive Material is teeming with wonky, everyman charm. [Mar 2022, p.80]

Ironically, without really trying, ZZ sound more soulful and vital here than they have for years. [Summer 2022, p.74]

An evocative semi-concept work based in the 1890s. [Jun 2022, p.83]

A bumpy ride overall, but with enough peaks to excuse the more pedestrian sections.

Tunes like Autograph and Hometown Blues rush forward with purpose and verve. [Jul 2014, p.95]

The drunken waltz of Bad Reputation offers a few minutes of interest, but the album fails to adequately raise the temperature. [Nov 2025, p.81]

Recorded with Thomas’s snarl up front and the band on screeching overload, they pile through new titles such as Welcome To The New Dark Ages and revisit Sonic Reducer and Final Solution, plus the Sonics’ garage classic Strychnine.

A little bit of growing up wouldn’t go amiss.

Sure, there are standout, radio-ready moments, with Song #3 and Fabuless, while the bounce-along Friday Knights propels your arms into the air, but the grit has been sandblasted away and the edges polished. And with 15 tracks, it’s a bit of a slog. Still, when it hits, they know how to hit hard.

One of the most upbeat albums in his catalogue. [Mar 2019, p.91]

Hitchcock strips away all the production embellishments of its musical highlights and presents them as they would have been written. The resulting album is a decidedly mixed bag. [Nov 2024, p.73]

Southern rockers like Under The Gun, Get Yourself Together and Breaking Down are as infectious as mad cowboy disease. When they do branch out, it's into Fleetwood Mac gossamer balladry and adorable Stealers Wheel soft rock. They'll find that the world has not changed the locks. [Aug 2019, p.83]

Like all Bush albums this is really Rossdale’s. When they take a breather on Creatures Of The Fire, his Eddie Vedder-esque croon seizes the moment, and on the outstanding Identity he deals with paranoia (‘Please keep your kids indoors’) and loss of status (‘We used to be someone, now we’re nobody’) in swashbuckling fashion.

Recent converts need not be overly alarmed, however, for while Ellipsis contains some of the most aggressive material Biffy have yet recorded (Wolves Of Winter, the gloriously infectious Animal Style and On A Bang) there are equal measures of fragile beauty.

The cover of Tift Merritt’s Bramble Rose is affecting too, a stately country shuffle that finds Henley trading verses with Lambert over pedal steel and mandolin, while Jagger blows harmonica and sings like a cat pleading to be let in from the rain. At other times, the album is less successful, particularly when it falls back on weepy honky-tonk tropes.

Weird, beautiful music to get lost in space--or at least a hammock--to.

As a stand-alone album, it’s a trip. Where it fits in Dwyer’s canon is another kettle of bananas entirely.

A niche but strident record. [Aug 2013, p.88]

It's an excellent reminder that a great band with a great back catalogue can be just as beautiful without make-up. [Summer 2014, p.99]