Play The Goddamned Part sounds like an annihilated sci-fi war zone haunted by the ghosts of nightclubs and patrolled by warbots constructed from the shrapnel of jazz saxophones. The more ambient I’m Not From This World feels like sticking your head into an alien death race’s knackered fusion drive and getting a face full of proton beam. Elsewhere, remnants of rock’n’roll survive the sonic desecration. ... It all reflects the corrosion of the millennial age, personal, political and ecological.

Frontman Stu Mackenzie nails a Hetfield-esque gurgle from the galloping, squiddle-spattered opener Planet B, and it’s hard to resist the rat-a-tat riff and stuttering vocal of Self-immolate or the insistent turbo-Sabbath churn of Mars For The Rich.

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

This knuckle-biting howler ["The Season's Upon Us"] aside, SASIB raises the roof with good vibes and memorable songs. [Mar 2013, p.96]

Cohesive, diverse and swollen with hidden depths. [Jul 2020, p.88]

Supple but robust at 50, Bowie's power glows undimmed. [Jul 2020, p.93]

A collection created purely for dancing to, a millennial disco that leaves the troubles of the world outside its spiky bubble. [Apr 2022, p.86]

With a golden voice at work, this is luscious sunshine-filled Californian rock with storm clouds on the horizons. [Oct 2014, p.91]

Once the album stops yelling and stamping for attention, the strong suits of this outfit come through, and dark, sinister atmospheres trademarked by Depeche Mode and The Banshees are allowed to thrive. [Jul 2021, p.81]

A droll, tender-hearted and richly rewarding album.

The London post-punkers keep the pigeonholing hack on their toes throughout this third album. [Apr 2019, p.85]

Encapsulates shoegaze, garage, grunge, self-analytical Gen Z catharsis and off-the-leash, anything-goes, fourth-album-itch experimentation, yet still retains its key pop core. [Nov 2023, p.81]

A carefree antidote to worrying times. [Summer 2018, p.91]

Hynde's fire is undimmed as she tackles love's drug-like addiction, tears up a roughshod storm on the rockers and delves into surf-guitar reggae on Lightning Man. [Jun 2020, p.88]

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.

There’s much to enjoy about Pylon, not least on the punitive, jet-black musical side of things.

Not essential, then, but well worth a peek through the window. [Nov 2019, p.84]

Home In Another Life may have sadness running through it, but it's also very cool indeed. [Sep 2024, p.69]

It's rock. Everything pounds excitedly, Rick Neilsen's guitars garrulous, until the inevitable slow one halfway through as a token node to light and shade. [Dec 2025, p.74]

The techno-noir sonic palette here is as eclectic as ever. [Oct 2013, p.90]

It's a pleasant enough album, but not a crucial one. [Jan 2020, p.85]

A collection of songs so sugar-coated it should probably have been packaged with insulin. [Oct 2025, p.72]

This is perhaps a musician's album, in that peers will admire his skill and originality, while it could be rather challenging for the untrained. [May 2018, p.89]

It's got some absolute burners on deck. ... It's also got plenty of noisy psychedelic horseshit they did in the early 90s, but even that stuff sounds glammy and cool. [Mar 2019, p.88]

The album really benefits from Buck's undimmed musical sensibility. [Apr 2020, p.88]

Baroque, doom-laden proclamations are Manson's bread and butter, and We Are Chaos is stuffed with them. [Oct 2020, p.86]

Thematically, if previous Andrew WK albums have felt like having entire kegs shotgunned in your face, this one is like being syphon-fed after-dinner brandies.

The Nightmare OF Being is up with the Swedes' finest albums. [Summer 2021, p.87]