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]

An album preoccupied lyrically with past, present and future is matched by music that is sleek, chromium-plated, retro-futurist. [May 2025, p.73]

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.

More high-quality psychedelic-doom musings. [Sep 2013, p.93]

Dan Auerbach's production is warmly intimate, LaMontangne's singing a quiet marvel. [Jul 2014, p.95]

Things Change positively aches with melancholy and regrets, but, like the finest outlaw country crooners, Barham manages to find slivers of light in the darkness. [Summer 2018, p.86]

They're a strange band. In places it's as if they've accidently ended up in a room together and just carried on doing their thing, and by some weird magic it all comes together - a game of aural chicken which no one backs down but everybody wins. [Oct 2025, p.78]

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

Necessarily lo-fi, one accepts the sonic limitations of cheap tape and the fact this material was never meant to be released. [Jan 2015, p.120]

Overall, time has not diminished Frame's evergreen gift for bittersweet, heart-twanging introspection. [Jul 2014, p.95]

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

In other hands, this would make for a frustrating listen, but there's a melodic warmth to mainman Stu Mackenzie's cosmic musings. [Jan 2015, p.120]

Fish cherry-picks her favourite bits from the old masters and fuses them with Stax-flavoured brass, southern warmth, classy pop balladry in Fairwell My Fairweather and nicely sleazy swagger in You Got It Bad. [Oct 2019, p.86]

A solid return from a beloved band with plenty of wry lyrical tricks still up their sleeve. [Dec 2019, p.82]

It all makes for a varied, sophisticated and somewhat restrained listen, as the Wakefield trio's bawling attack is tempered to allow subtler flavours to seep through. [Apr 2026, p.75]

Confessional, witty, with a touch of The Vaselines, Swear I’m Good At This finds singer Alex Luciano magnifying small daily failures and turning them into works of art.

This is a promising first step into a new era. [May 2018, p.91]

Some space is wasted--the album would feel more concise without the ambient sonic interludes it's peppered with--but when they hit their stride, as on the magnificent Throw Me An Anchor, Baroness seem unstoppable. [Summer 2019, p.86]

Anthem Of The Peaceful Army isn't quite the finished article. ... At the final count, Anthem Of The Peaceful Army is shaping up to be the finest debut album of both 2018 and 1972. [Nov 2018, p.80]

Their second album sets its heart-on-sleeve emoting to some properly sweeping arena-sized tunes. [Mar 2025, p.75]

A clutch of fine torch songs (Iceman, Dead For Love, the title track) save the day, suaveness replacing the sordid sweat of old. Their youth was doomed, but their adulthood shows promise.

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.

It's hardly essential, but not without charm. [Summer 2019, p.87]

It can, by nature, feel like drowning in melted marshmallow over 55 minutes, but great moments stick out like ice sculptures in a snowdrift. [Dec 2020, p.80]

If you don't like jazz, this is another Metheny album that might change your mind. [Apr 2026, p.81]

The result: low-key mastery from a songwriting lifer. [Oct 2013, p.86]

The Fall, in the same old, and very different hands, remain freshly formidable. [Dec 2014, p.99]

Back in the saddle as bandleader, his tangible labour of love defiantly captures old-school New York’s cross-pollinating melting pot with rich infusions of Latin (Party Mambo), blues (I Visit The Blues), blaxploitation (Vortex), classic rock’n’roll (Superfly Terra Plane), Southside Johnny And The Asbury Jukes (Soul Power Twistin’) and still making a social point on Education.