Classic Rock Magazine's Scores

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For 2,213 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 50% higher than the average critic
  • 6% same as the average critic
  • 44% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 0.8 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 74
Highest review score: 100 Bootleg Series Vol. 18: Through The Open Window, 1956-1963
Lowest review score: 20 What About Now
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,863 out of 2213
  2. Mixed: 339 out of 2213
  3. Negative: 11 out of 2213
2213 music reviews
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    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Grinding Wheel
    Almost every song plods along for six minutes or more. It’s punishing. The beauty of middleaged Overkill is that they weren’t middle-aged Metallica. Sigh.
    • 66 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Everything Ever
    Ghost hammers Merseybeat into grotesque new shapes and closer Easily Misbled, an elegant mariachi acoustic noir, is a refreshing respite. But too much here is sub-Dinosaur Pile-Up slush, dredged, ironically, from Britrock’s bottom end.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Everyday Life
    There is the occasional flash of pop brilliance - notably desert-rock nugget Arabesque - but for non-fans Coldplay this dose of Everyday Life will be one they can easily do without. [Jan 2019, p.87]
    • Classic Rock Magazine
      • Posted Dec 10, 2019
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Time
    At best, for a former superstar, returning to the creative fray, the record is mediocre. [Jul 2013, p.88]
    • Classic Rock Magazine
      • Posted Jun 26, 2013
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Daemon
    Mayhem are restrained by an obsession with their past. [Jan 2020, p.85]
    • Classic Rock Magazine
      • Posted Dec 10, 2019
    • 62 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    We're All Somebody from Somewhere
    We’re All Somebody From Somewhere sounds like an album conceived as a therapy project, one in which all the interesting corners of Tyler’s persona have been neatly rounded off. There’s no pizazz, very little spirit, not much sparkle and no sex.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Also Sprach Zarathustra
    As mood music it’s a stunner, the perfect complement to a lost weekend plotting your next Ubermensch moves in a haze of opium. But you can’t dance to it, that much is for sure.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Angels & Ghosts
    Plodding, overwrought gospel epics like Shine and Tempted are the order of the day, pale passionless shadows of the Mode’s mighty, desperate Condemnation.... Things improve on the starker latter half.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dopamine
    The songs are wrought elaborately enough.... Yet this album seems carefully calibrated not to disappoint the conservative fan.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    The Haze
    Scratch the surface and nothing really shines. This nod to the past feels more like regression than a return to former glories.
    • 63 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Songs of Experience
    A handful of tracks shoot for the anthemic uplift of vintage U2, but fall short. The only real left-field beauty here is Love Is All We Have Left, a token reminder of the Dublin quartet’s shimmering ambient avant-rock period.
    • 58 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Old Sock
    Clapton's guitar work [is] sizzling and defiant where elsewhere it merely simmers. [May 2013, p.88]
    • Classic Rock Magazine
      • Posted Jun 21, 2013
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Vaxis - Act I: The Unheavenly Creatures
    Anyone who spends their weekends lurking in the more pungent corners of sci-fi/horror/comic-book shops will lap it up; for everyone else it's less Star Wars, more Space Balls. [Oct 2018, p.85]
    • Classic Rock Magazine
      • Posted Oct 3, 2018
    • 78 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Polygondwanaland
    This is a set of unlistenable, wigged-out, repetitive, directionless grooves in the main, but we love ’em anyway.
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Hope in Hell
    Musically, it's so tried and tested it's almost frictionless. [Jul 2013, p.92]
    • Classic Rock Magazine
      • Posted Jun 27, 2013
    • 67 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Father and Son
    Things take a kitschy turn for the sickly sweet. [Dec 2024, p.79]
    • Classic Rock Magazine
      • Posted Dec 2, 2024
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Murder of the Universe
    Apologists will see it as a paranoic update of the doom-rock blueprint laid down by King Crimson and Amon Düül. Anyone else will be reaching for the paracetamol.
    • 65 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Oxygene 3
    There’s a theme, numbered from 14; dramatic, cinematic, dark but (disappointingly) modern-dancey. 18 hits an ambient spot, though, and 20 is the big ole cosmic epic we really crave.
    • 53 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Heaven & Earth
    A dilution of creativity has occurred, and it makes for dull listening. [Aug 2014, p. 208]
    • Classic Rock Magazine
      • Posted Dec 18, 2014
    • 69 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Platinum Tips & Ice-Cream [Live]
    They’re presented raw, ragged and (if you wanna believe the hype) completely unrehearsed. It’s kind of a mess, but that’s pretty much the point.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Rites of Percussion
    The album reveals it's the breadth of his influences - Latin as well as Led Zeppelin - that accounts for his own style. But you will need to be a drum fan. [Jun 2023, p.74]
    • Classic Rock Magazine
      • Posted May 9, 2023
    • 75 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Kamikaze
    There’s nothing novel or exciting here, but at least they seem to be having a ball.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dreamers Are Waiting
    Finds their former highs trapped behind glass, blurred and beclouded like the past year has been for all of us. [Jul 2021, p.86]
    • Classic Rock Magazine
      • Posted Jun 3, 2021
    • 47 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Life Love & Hope
    It begins promisingly, with weighty guitar and measured vocals, before losing the plot completely, descending into a kitchen sink of confusion and ending up sounding like an incomplete demo. [Jan 2014, p.112]
    • Classic Rock Magazine
      • Posted Jan 2, 2014
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Graffiti on the Train
    Intriguing stuff, but Stereophonics are incapable of shredding the trad rock rule book for an entire album. So the rest of Graffiti is pitched firmly in their beige rock comfort zone. [Apr 2013, p.93]
    • Classic Rock Magazine
      • Posted Jun 6, 2013
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    All Bets Are Off
    A sultry, smouldering, non-committal vocal meanders over bass-heavy backdrops. [Apr 2021, p.89]
    • Classic Rock Magazine
      • Posted Mar 3, 2021
    • 70 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Cool to Who
    What's missing from these pastiches is a sense of Walrus's own identity. [Jan 2020, p.88]
    • Classic Rock Magazine
      • Posted Dec 12, 2019
    • 64 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Burning Cities
    Produced by Youth, it’s a routeone volley of loud guitar riffs and peripatetic punk energy, railing at the establishment. It’s our world, they roar, and it’s on fire, so let’s not go gently.
    • 60 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Road To Utopia
    A Brock-sung acoustic setting of We Took The Wrong Step Years Ago is a highlight, but the less said about how the massed saxes treat Down Through The Night the better. [Sep 2018, p.91]
    • Classic Rock Magazine
      • Posted Sep 21, 2018
    • 71 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Universe Room
    Universe Room continues the indie-prog leanings of last year's Strut Of Kings, as though R.E.M were dipping into the less coherent corners of Tommy and Nursery Cryme, but across its 17 tracks finds time for plenty of lo-fi diversion too. [Apr 2025, p.72]
    • Classic Rock Magazine
      • Posted Mar 7, 2025
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