72 Seasons isn't an easy listen; it demands work. ... Metallica's only concern is making the best Metallica album possible irrespective of what's going on around them. On that score, 72 Seasons is a ringing success. [May 2023, p.76]

The Groovies are indeed back, still majestic, supernatural and magnificently defiant, and as a result the rock‘n’roll world feels back on its axis.

It’s obvious that under the production guidance of Andy Sneap, the band have been pushed on every level. The result is one of the best metal albums of 2016--one that proves Testament can match anyone.

Characteristically dramatic readings of festive favourites. [Dec 2018, p.89]

While he’s not straying too far from the mothership, nothing here is phoned-in. As befits the craftsman he’s always been, he’s taken the time and trouble to fashion a bunch of songs worthy of standing alongside anything in his catalogue. Hats off.

As with most of Anathema’s records, this is one that fans of Elbow and Radiohead would love every bit as much as fans of Opeth or Marillion.

Palms is a marriage made in post-rock heaven. [Aug 2013, p.86]

This is no means a case of Brock and co serving up space rock comfort food to the faithful. But at the same time the final, nine-minute The Fantasy Of Faldum would be welcomed onto any Hawkwind album of the last 40 years. [Nov 2019, p.80]

Lazarus--partly because it’s a show with a great band, partly because many of David Bowie’s songs are peculiarly adaptable to the musical format--works as a record.

Occasional bursts of fierce, psychotic guitar evoke the spirit of punk-rock alter ego, Rikki Nadir. Otherwise it’s voice and piano and very little else. The intimacy is at times so intense it’s almost frightening. It is, to borrow the title of a VdGG song, ’eavy mate. There are some clever subplots too, Hammill being at the very top of his lyrical game.

It's a credit to the line-up's combustible chemistry and Setzer's twinkle-in-eye storytelling that these songs feel fresh and often thrilling. [Jul 2019, p.84]

This record pumps Royal Blood forward without diluting their strengths. They might have to tweak something next time around, but by then they could well be the biggest young rock band in the world. Two boys making true noise. It’s in their veins.

Lady Gaga adds majestic soul diva clout to Find Yourself, Nelson proves to be a sterling guitarist and the whole thing is hellacious, meaning good.

Sharp, bright, brilliant. [Summer 2023, p.79]

Together they craft a devastatingly detailed fictional portrait of a married couple falling apart in a maelstrom of drugs, regret and the sort of silence that "murders the heart." [Summer 2021, p.87]

An urgent half-hour adrenaline surge that will lodge itself in your brain after just one listen. Impressive. [Dec 2023, p.73]

What's surprising is that Anderson can kick up more menace with his flute than any number of hoarse roaring voices and thrashing guitars. ... The music lightens up when Anderson moves on to the sagas themselves, but the intricacies remain. As do the idiosyncratic allusions. [Jun 2023, p.78]

It's a brimming grab-bag of brilliance and a total joy. [Oct 2022, p.77]

What is surprising is just how good it is. [Jul 2019, p.82]

Some early Talking Heads fans would say something was lost when the band lost their preppy soul edge and went down the Byrne and Eno art-school alleyway with their next pair of albums. Others might say More Songs About Buildings And Food suffers from being a halfway house between the band’s early sound and what it would become under Eno and Byrne’s constrictive guiding hand. But even as a transitional record More Songs About Buildings And Food is extraordinary. [Aug 2025, p.83]

A richly dense experience that also channels syncopated avant-pop, semi-symphonic prog and luxuriant soft-rock. [Sep 2021, p.74]

It's the culmination of four years during which Megadeth have continuously raised their game. [Jul 2013, p.92]

Their fifth album, their first in just shy of a decade, is perhaps their most purely enjoyable, eschewing the furrow-browed genre-jumbling of earlier work. [Apr 2022, p.80]

A deeply rageful affair. .... Heavy. [Jul 2023, p.79]

As with their nine albums before it, Get Rollin’ is crafted to satisfy their fan base rather than to pick up new but casual admirers. And they’ve succeeded completely. [Dec 2022, p.74]

For all its psychedelic abstraction, King's Mouth is often melodic and warmly accessible. [Aug 2019, p.80]

Well worth seeking out. A cracker. [May 2024, p.79]

An excellent snapshot of the post-punk, post-Iggy-tour Bowie, consolidating his past and present incarnations for the faithful in significant style. [Aug 2018, p.96]

The fact that The Fall are still going is remarkable enough; the fact that they're still making extraordinary records is even more so. [Jul 2013, p.92]

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

Anyway You Love, We Know How You Feel is full of things we’ve become accustomed to over the band’s previous three albums: psychedelic trippiness, carefree country-soul, swampy southern rock rolled out under a baking California sun. Yet it’s also wonderfully loose and instinctive.

A set that casts a smoky haze over a remarkable event were characters from the shadow kingdom of Dylan's past come out to play one more time. He'll be a hard act to follow. [Jul 2023, p.91]

The CD gives you the uninterrupted concert, the most focused of the lot. [Mar 2020, p.92]

While the results haven’t got the near-reckless zeal of the young Yorn’s records, the sense of longing reflects the broken-down feel--strumming acoustic guitars, the light thrum of a snare--of some of the material he was writing back in the early 2000s.

Art Dealers hums with life, its garage rock'n'soul bolstered by female backing vocals straight from the Phil Spector school. [Nov 2023, p.79]

Abstract and startling, listen to the hefty groove of Prayers/Triangles or the slow blooming Phantom Bride and feel the earth move beneath your feet.

The band focus on capturing moments rather than arranging songs, interspersing tracks with tone poems including Millenial Prayer.

Extensive sleeve notes featuring a perfect potted history by CR writer Mark Beaumont and background detail on each track by Gedge help make this a must have. [Oct 2025, p.87]

Sad And Beautiful Worlds finds him showing off those songwriting skills, delivering country-tinged ballads, bubblegum pop and twinkling Americana in typically effortless fashion. It's when he lets his guard down, however, that Malin is at his most impressive. [Oct 2021, p.72]

Alkaline Trio temper napalm guitars with a keen sense of melody, placed front and centre on Blood, Hair, And Eyeballs by Hot For Preacher's dark, dramatic opening flourish, and continued with impressive consistency throughout its 11 tracks. [Apr 24, p.76]

The nearest to a rock record Thompson has ever made. ... A very good album. [Oct 2018, p.83]

Quality levels inevitably vary, but there are enough counterfactual detours and half-realised experiments here to excite even casual fans. [Jan 2020, p.94]

Never mind dig in deep: this is an emotional excavation.

Hansard says of his emotional, spiritual and musical journey to complete this record. He’s succeeded. Ramble on, indeed.

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]

All of his solo work is worth owning (These Foolish Things and The Bride Stripped Bare might be his best records), but this collection is a mighty big entry point (and there’s a great new track, Star). [Nov 2024, p.82]

The finished product is actually more like AC/DC having a crack at making their White Album, in that it’s as varied, expansive and crammed with drug-crusted invention as a band embedded in blues and hard rock can get. For a record relatively light on pop-rock stadium slayers, it’s also easily the Foos’ most elemental album yet.

A lively return to fun. [Sep 2024, p.69]

With That’s The Spirit, they’ve hit a new direction and a creative peak that finally matches their thirst for fame and fortune.

It's a delight to hear the fully emergent Young so up and close with such a pantheon of wonder, and the sound is near-perfect. [Jul 2022, p.87]

The album is still as random as a Frenchman’s hat at times, though, and songs like Mad Shelley’s Letterbox and the superb 1970 In Aspic (‘Your bacteria are in me,’ intones Hitchcock, wide-legged and eyeless) couldn’t be written by anyone else. A worthwhile ball to put in his canon.

Irritating... in the very best way. [Jun 2026, p.77]

Cinematic, evocative and potently trippy. [Jun 2021, p.83]

How does it burn? Darkly, but with sparks.

It's testament to the brilliance of their interplay that not even a guesting Emmylou Harris can steal the spotlight on Here Is Where The Loving Is At. [Oct 2018, p.85]

Nobody is allowed to dominate the sound of the album, which is haunting and imperial at the same time. [May 2023, p.76]

You'll feel dirty. In a good way. [Jan 2019, p.89]

An iron-clad structural damage-inducing delight from start to finish. Early contender for punk album of the year. [Apr 2024, p.79]

When a collection of contrasting voices tackle [Mose Allison's] songs for charity here, it's that character of songwriting which shines through a diverse range of new styles laid upon it. [Jan 2020, p.86]

There’s a joyous spontaneity behind the obvious discipline. What makes this such a damn fine record is that the band never allow themselves to get bogged down in minutiae; it’s the big picture which counts.

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

As bananas as it is brilliant, Face Stabber is a poke in the eye for anyone who says guitar bands are running out of ideas. [Sep 2019, p.83]

In short: 13 hugely enjoyable songs that all sound like old friends. [Dec 2020, p.85]

If not a classic tour de force, this pressure-cooker set remains an era-capturing document of the social turmoil and pressures Hendrix faced as the world's greatest rock guitarist. [Dec 2022, p.81]

Eggsistentialism might just be their best. [Jul 2024, p.79]

Plentiful showstopping melodies and an authentic dedication to their influences--Todd Rundgren even plays Shane's dad--will see Go To School run and run. [Oct 2018, p.86]

Their basic musical ethos - pounding, bass-driven punk brutalism delivered beneath a banner of love, compassion and unity - comes into its own, particularly when recorded in Le Bataclan, a venue with its own powerful stamp of solidarity. [Jan 2020, p.89]

What’s apparent immediately is that it’s a tremendous album, up there with turn-of-themillennium Opeth high-water marks Still Life and Blackwater Park. [Oct 2024, p.70]

You'll find much to love on Global. [May 2015, p.102]

Sleaford Mods are still kicking ass with acerbic beauty. [Feb 2026, p.80]

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.

To The Bone is arguably his best and most complete solo album yet.

What resonates is how creatively potent he remains. [Dec 2025, p.75]

This is unquestionably Weller's most personal and most heartfelt record in years. [Oct 2018, p.88]

On the evidence of Painkillers, Fallon doesn’t really need the backup of a regular band. With this debut he’s placed his stake as an American singer-songwriter of style and substance.

Stronger melodies, more powerful performances, now an emphatic lead [Maiah Wynne], it's as if she's finally decided to step out of her famed compatriots' shadow and taken centre stage. The band have expanded musically, too. [May 2025, p.74]

Neither a work of nostalgia nor a move away from the blueprint that made them so special in the first place, this album demonstrates that artistic quality cannot be confined to a specific place in time.

Live In Brighton 1975 showcases a band at the height of their immense power. [Jan 2022, p.91]

Thanks to some multitrack tapes of exceptional quality, mixed by Young and Stills, we get to hear what all the justified fuss was about. Divided between acoustic and electric sets, this is a joy from start to finish. [Dec 2024, p.85]

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]

Aat its best this reassuringly svelte and only occasionally sparse eight-track EP is a thing of beauty.

Mykki Blanco pops up on Midnight Legend, but the highlights break out elsewhere when Alli Logout furiously punks the shit out of post-disco. [Nov 2022, p.75]

A crystalline classic.

Fear Inoculum is an intricate record that calls for you to reserve judgement until you’ve been fully immersed. It might be long (running to 86 minutes) but it’s a worthy investment of your time. [Sep 2019, p.82]

Almost comically explosive and full of exhilarating moments. [Nov 2018, p.81]

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]

This is fine work indeed. [Apr 2024, p.80]

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

Bookended by the glorious, galloping sludge-fest, Bridgeburner and the Dio-era, Sabbath-indebted doom-laden title track, the likes of Soft Spot In My Skull and the pummelling 1000 Mile Stare prove that this is much more than a vanity project and it’s as thrilling as anything they’ve put their names to in the past.

A droll, tender-hearted and richly rewarding album.

The album tells you everything about what the recently renamed Theory Of A Deadman represent, one thing being class. [Mar 2020, p.87

Showcases an undeniably more varied sonic palette, even if that just means there are more classic bands that its 12 songs remind you of. [May 2021, p.84]

Bashed out between gigs, this music is vulnerable and diverse enough to be essential. [Dec 2013, p.108]

Sound-wise there's a gravelly, mature, post-punk bluesiness about The The in 2024, some of the blackness of Johnny Cash. But there are silvery moments of hopelessness. [Sep 2024, p.71]

Everyone has done their bit to honour the music and the man. The result is a record that hums with excitement and does Miller proud.

If you don't have [the original Live At The BBC set], get it. If you do and want more, here it is. [Dec 2013, p.109]

This is essentially raw, acoustic, heartfelt, a 21st-century blues, but heavily treated, clouded with atmospheres, immersed in dub, stretched across the skies, ground finely into the soil. [Sep 2018, p.86]

This is primarily a curio, but a fascinating one as it indicates directions Young could have taken if the weather had been different that day. [Oct 2023, p.91]