It perfects every element of the band’s sound and ensures everything is top-of-the-line. ... This is the Rolls-Royce of Alter Bridge records, and a high-water mark to which all rock hopefuls should aspire.

It's a mad house of friction, attitude and ambition. [Oct 2025, p.77]

It’s mood music for people who have not been taking their prescriptions (all of us, I reckon), and it’s full of bruised beauty.

Inevitably, the two extra discs are thick with superfluous alternative and extended mixes. But there are fine non-album singles here too, notably the glossy synth-funk stomper European Son and a plastic-soul remake of Smokey Robinson’s I Second That Emotion. Also included is the four-track Live In Japan EP first released in 1980, and a full live album recorded at the same show. ... Glorious.

Sunwatchers' third album takes no prisoners with squealing opener New Dad Blues,. [May 2019, p.87]

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]

Great modern music. [May 2021, p.88]

Torture, disgust and danger are all here, but so too are some sharp-barbed observations on screwed-up modern living. [Sep 2013, p.90]

It's all delivered in a broad range of tech-rock colours. [Apr 2022, p.78]

Ultimately a completist's set. [Dec 2023, p.84]

This is a beautiful record, a reflection on an extraordinary 50-year career that's more a memory of life than a memento mori. [Mar 2019, p.89]

The results is at once joyous, poignant and heartbreaking. [Feb 2021, p.86]

This is a return they can be proud of. [Nov 2022, p.70]

A wonderful return. [May 2025, p.79]

Their pain is very much our gain. [Summer 2014, p.91]

The Overview is not so much a return to form (Wilson hasn’t been off it) as a return to full-fat, unskimmed prog from the man whose work with Porcupine Tree gave the genre a good name even before it earned reappraisals in more recent years. [Apr 2025, p.72]

Even if Earle occasionally falls back on roots music autopilot, the power of this work is undeniable. [Jul 2020, p.89]

Whether he's musing insightfully over alcoholism or parenthood, his band are blazing and Isbell takes a tired format and charges it up with passion and perceptiveness. [Jul 2020, p.88]

This si the sound of lost Los Angeles; of excitement; of wildness; of a deep-rooted passion for biting rockabilly riffs, for life itself. This is beautiful, urgent and, frankly, unlooked for. [Summer 2020, p.84]

This is his biggest, brightest, most crackling and electric album since his Sugar days. [Apr 2019, p.86]

The haters will protest, but this is the sound of metal dragging itself into the future. [Jan 2021, p.83]

A rather fine rock record indeed.

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]

A near-constant crisis of confidence isn’t always the best character trait for a rock’n’roll singer, but this Devon power(ish) trio make it work on their solid debut album.

The quiet/loud dynamic is an elegant partnership here. [Sep 2018, p.93]

You still have a man born with the gift of a sandpaper voice, which seems to shred itself afresh with every word. [Apr 2019, p.84]

Delivers assurance, class and a timely, powerful study in historically ingrained racist ideology. [Sep 2020, p.89]

While long-term fans might initially be disappointed by the marked absence of the bar-room swagger of yore, repeated listens bear fruit. [Jun 2021, p.80]