The good news for casual listeners, though, is that the music works as a standalone experience. [Jun 2022, p.82]

The album was written on the hop, Newcombe spilling his brains right onto tape, and it shows – imperfections are made into a positive, the songs allowed to just naturally come into being.

Easily the best since their debut, but there's still a way to go before they produce an LP as fine as that again. [Oct 2023, p.87]

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

III is the sound of a less restless McCartney simply doing what he does best. [Jan 2021, p.86]

This jubilant, ritzy resurrection offers a Poundland paradise. [Mar 2019, p.95]

There’s a surprisingly thoughtful plague-themed concept running throughout, which, if you care to dig deep enough, equates the sins of the medieval church with today’s societal ills. All this elevates Ghost above the herd, placing them in the sacred company of Blue Öyster Cult and Marilyn Manson.

If the band’s grander statements are buried beneath the record’s bursts of crushing speed-punk and pounding buzz-rock, though, their vivifying passion and excitement for a genre too often ploughed through like a chore makes it utterly forgivable. Depths do emerge. [Nov 2024, p.78]

The presence of old Jam oppo Steve Brookes on slide guitar during a pop-art inspired In The Car, meanwhile, only adds to the sense of Weller returning to what he knows best. [Jun 2015, p.94]

These lush ambient soundscapes mostly make great backdrops to the 62-year-old crooner's pithy musing and archly allusive lyrics, especially on more widescreen numbers. [Summer 2023, p.75]

The results sound thin, contrived and ultimately laborious. [Aug 2020, p.89]

Nothing Last Forever might even be the closest approximation yet of what the 60s actually sounded like. [Oct 2023, p.83]

On the evidence of this quite brilliant record, brighter days lie ahead for one young American at least. [Dec 2013, p.103]

It's this latter sense of indefatigable positivity that shines through, a sense of togetherness engendered by a celebration of classic, no-nonsense rock'n'roll. [Nov 2020, p.83]

It might be ultimately pointless, but it works because Fogerty's voice is so extraordinarily intact and because the songs are still invincible. [Sep 2025, p.77]

For The Sake Of Bethel Woods confirmed that they are not the band they once were but A Bridge To Far flows directly on from there with many of the songs more theoretical in nature. [Dec 2025, p.78]

This is beyond immersive; this is music to suffer a cleansing obliteration to.

They have directly inspired some truly dire pretenders to the throne in the intervening years, but Dark Matter sees them sweep those bands away, and reset and reclaim their own signature sound. [May 2024, p.72]

It's elegiac, claustrophobic and contagiously disturbed. [Apr 2023, p.79]

The DIY arrangements--treated guitars, keyboards, the odd banjo--sometimes sound like they’ve been fixed up with gaffer tape, adding to the immediacy of songs like Boy Band, a comedic tale about has-beens on a dodgy comeback trail, and the autobiographical, genuinely affecting Property Shows.

Clever, articulate and big dumb and sparkly, the Mael brothers are still pulsating, foot to the floor, full throttle.

Really it should get 10 but nobody’s perfect.

Perhaps more than any other Rammstein album, it feels like a collection of songs deliberately built to soundtrack a future series of spectacular live set-pieces. [Jul 2022, p.81]

Mind Control may occasionally lack the outright mania of its predecessor but this is music made in a puff of red smoke, heady and hypnotic. [Jun 2013, p.90]

Aggression Continuum sounds as it should, like the next last word in extreme metal futurism. [Jul 2021, p.80]

Listening to it is a wonderfully disconcerting experience, each track swirling and merging into new patterns like a murmuration of starlings. [Apr 2022, p.78]

Genre-defying angst never sounded so good. [Nov 2025, p.80]

With its gentle, unwaveringly steady, never-changing tone and rhythm, it demands work on the part of the listener. [Jun 2021, p.79]