Classic Rock Magazine's Scores

  • Music
Select another publication »
For 2,212 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 2212
  2. Mixed: 338 out of 2212
  3. Negative: 11 out of 2212
2212 music reviews
view
per page
    • 76 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Don't Get Lost
    There’s plenty more to like. The imaginary soundtrack piece Fact 67 is full of neat Sturm und twang; Dropping Bombs On The Sun is a pretty, hazy piece with a spooked Parks vocal that lives up to the title. If you like Ornette Coleman and all that jazz, then Don’t Get Lost is your friend.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Emperor of Sand
    There are passages of experimentation around this album’s edges, such as the post-nuclear drones of Roots Remain, and electronic effects that suggest prolonged exposure to mid-period Tangerine Dream. But Mastodon never really develop these intriguing tendencies.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Ghost of Hope
    This moving yet strangely exhilarating album is a distant relative of The Residents’ 1979 album Eskimo, their sonic studies of Arctic culture.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Ultramega OK [Expanded Reissue]
    Six inessential demos added to the original album hardly warrant the ‘deluxe edition’ tag. But as a document of a musical sea change, Ultramega OK is indispensable.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Millport
    Their punk training doesn’t quite lend them that particular grace. As a result, this can feel like a bit of a rough ride in places, albeit an intriguing one.
    • 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.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Jawbone [Original Motion Picture Soundtrack]
    Jawbone is not only accomplished, it’s also occasionally stunning.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Notes of Blue
    There’s gold to be uncovered here.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Nightmare Logic
    Harder, heavier and more cohesive than their Manifest Decimation debut, Nightmare Logic is precise and snappy enough to win over hardcore fans too.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Spirit
    Only diluted by a couple of thin tracks, Spirit is an impressively robust late-career album. Emotionally naked yet clad in thick, metallic armour, Depeche Mode are growing old angrily, and it suits them.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Wild Cat
    Wild Cat does get samey with 11 songs, but it’s a whole lotta fun and fans will lap it up.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Bobby Fuller Died for Your Sins
    Ultimately, every track on this masterfully sculpted set courses with life-affirming pop-rock passion.
    • 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.
    • 49 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Black and White Rainbows
    Bush are far from the abomination of media repute, but Black And White Rainbows won’t convert the long-term haters, and seems too torpid to mobilise a fresh generation of fans.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Talk About That
    Mayall’s never going to dislodge Beano, but it’s ridiculous for an 83-year old to sound this relevant.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Burn Something Beautiful
    Feedback maestro Buck leads the layers of exultant guitar ideas, such as the T.Rex riffs deep in the mix of Shave The Cat, and they help Escovedo drink deep of his sources to climb back into the light.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Hard Love
    New album Hard Love is altogether more bullish, Showalter unleashing his inner rock beast on a collection of songs that seem to reach for some kind of epiphany through sheer volume.
    • 70 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Damage and Joy
    This album is as good as we could expect from the Mary Chain in 2017.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    All These Countless Nights
    A little bit of growing up wouldn’t go amiss.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Crystal Fairy
    Genderbender is a born star, charisma dripping from every syllable, while The Melvins’ trademark heaviness complements and contrasts her bohemian, dramatic delivery like sea salt in caramel. This fairy wears boots and is ready to kick ass.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Why Love Now
    This is modern life sliced up with the precision of a medical scalpel and then force-fed through a high-density filter of piss and vinegar.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    In Between
    The Feelies’ grip of melody remains very much in place throughout, as do their love of jangling intertwining guitars and a strict sense of rhythm.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Sleeping Through the War
    Sleeping Through The War apparently has some kind of political undercurrent, but its (thankfully) obfuscated by Charlie Michael Parks Jr’s unhurried drawl and the layers of fuzzy atmospherics that, hopefully, point to the shape of stoner rock to come.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Sick Scenes
    Sick Scenes is among LC!’s most accomplished collection yet.
    • 67 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Blackfield V
    Strings stutter and fall, the tone can best be described as lush, gentle and reassuring.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Occult Architecture, Vol. 1
    Still favouring extended excursions (see White Rose), their acquaintance with melody is developing into first-name terms to create a fabulously hypnotic trip.
    • 69 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Oczy Mlody
    A couple of lesser tracks bloat into shapeless abstraction, but overall this is a sonically lavish and formally bold reinvention.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Return to Ommadawn
    As it is, there’s a certain Wagnerian tweeness about the record, its changes predictable, it’s progressions too easily resolved, his tunings over-familiar. The whole thing feels like drinking several pints of spring water.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    A Big Bad Beautiful Noise
    Big Bad Beautiful Noise is their first album in four or so years, and it’s their best and most consistent since 1988’s seminal Birth School Work Death.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    America’s Velvet Glory
    The Anglophile lingo (‘He’s such a dear boy’), opiated nursery drawl and woozy organ of Charlie’s Lips is deep in homage to Barrett’s Floyd, just as the Hammond in You Never Learn is to Al Kooper on ’65 Dylan duty. More interesting is the tendency to trancey, transformative repetition on the likes of the autobiographical, sick-bed sweaty Little Stars.
Page: