A must for serious Velvet-heads. .... Something of a mixed bag. [Nov 2024, p.87]

Satirising the music industry itself as impressively as The Fall, The Sherlock Holmes... is classic Headcoats. [Dec 2025, p.77]

It's still awesome, of course, just don't expect to enjoy it. [May 2013, p.85]

It's built to be savoured, not rushed. [Sep 2014, p.94]

Sometimes, as on Domina, the mood is almost singalong, but much of the album, including the title track is sublime. [May 2013, p.84]

Fans will already know that this is a strong, alert Dave album, as Dave albums go. [Aug 2013, p.86]

It cuts and blazes and works well live in all its kinetic abandon but, if Shining really want to lay claim to a new genre, they need to integrate their progressive elements into the mix rather than add them as a side option.

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 Charlatans of this 14th album have evolved into a far richer and more reflective band, as much concerned with inner as outer spaces. [Dec 2025, p.75]

Furious first single Cast The First Stone sets the pace for an album that’s utterly relentless in its intensity. There are the now-expected acoustic interludes so you can catch your breath here and there, but as face-melters like Wolf Named Crow and Forgive Me will attest to, this is Corrosion Of Conformity with their amps and their snarls turned up to 11. Thank Christ.

Plenty of pallid indie math-rock imitators--from Godspeed! downwards--have attempted to do what Boris do here, and all have failed. Boris abide.

Swampy southern sounds are their stock-in-trade but it’s a soulful brew with all the authentic trappings you’d expect of a recording from Woodland Studios, Nashville.

Marlowe’s Revenge proves that his creative well is far from dry.

The punk energy remains, frontman Davy Havok’s vocal delivery dripping with drama and passion, but with a glorious, gilded production job from guitarist Jade Puget, AFI (The Blood Album) luxuriates in a velvety richness that makes it a sumptuous listen.

Sacred picks up where they left off with 1994’s The Church Within, ramping up the grinding riffs and Wino’s tortured Ozzy-esque wail.

There’s little ground they haven’t covered before, whether that’s the old school Steve Harris gallop of The Seductiveness Of Decay or the choral interlude of Achingly Beautiful, but no one does it quite like them.

This third album finds the Los Angeleans aided and abetted once more by the late Neal Casal to transformative effect. [Nov 2019, p.85]

Dream Nails are the 21st-century Mambo Taxi. Who? Exactly. [May 2020, p.83]

Overall these Merseyside extreme-metal veterans sound a little unfocused and uninspired on this record, falling back on tired retro-metal tropes. [Oct 2021, p.72]

The title and lyrics may scream apocalyptic gloom - Living is Killing Us, Doomscrolling, Born Again Pessimist - but there is an increasingly bright, infectious, power-glam polish to the band's sound. [Dec 2022, p.74]

Sublime harmonies rule on You Don't Have TO Cry and The Lee Shor, both featuring guest Daid Crosby. But once the Memphis horns kick in during the show's second half, Stills seems to be fighting for pace, resulting in an overwrought For What It's Worth and Bluebird Revisited. [Jul 2023, p.92]

Trademark intimate ballads shine again on startling subway tragedy The Third Rail, Beck uncurling dramatic punctuation, and What Would I Do Without You reaffirming Hunter’s love for wife Trudi with Williams’s counter vocal, closing the set with Hope’s widescreen optimism. [Jun 2024, p.76]

A charming history emerges from Young's immerse archive. [Apr 2025, p.70]

It never lags. [Sep 2014, p.95]

Hynde may not win over many new converts with this old-school collection, but the rich soil of classic Americana is a fine place for one of our greatest rock voices to find fresh inspiration.

It only ever recalls a fuzz-jangling, beefed-up Sundays is surprising, but yeah, it'll do. [Dec 2025, p.79]

There is a desperation here, a helpless wonder and dread that lifts Pond above their alt.pop and psych-trance peers. [Apr 2019, p.87]

Unique and, indeed, endlessly fantastic, this album is the work of a man committed to his own vision, both for his music and for the troubled and broken world around him.