Dissolution is entirely convincing in its maturity and intelligence. [25 Aug 2018, p.55]

Floral Green's pleasant, pastoral title belies its 11 jagged cuts. [22 Sep 2012, p.51]

It’s heavy, undoubtedly, and several tracks flirt with death. But exorcising their demons together has strengthened American Football’s unique chemistry and created their most adventurous music.

It's bigger, louder and better in almost every department. [28 Jul 2018, p.53]

There might be a heavy dose of sarcasm in the seams of its shell-suited soul, but Super Snõõper is never arch or cynical. Rather, it’s an exhilarating endorphin rush you’ll want to return to again and again.

Titans Of Creation – the quintet’s 13th studio album – is packed tight with the precision and power that they’ve made their own for more than 30 years. On tracks such as the hectic WWIII and Curse Of Osiris, Testament sound as forceful as they ever did.

Sounds as powerful as ever. A welcome return from a much-missed thrash battalion.

It's chaotic, panic-inducing and downright delirious. [5 May 2012, p.53]

The punk legend's 11th solo album eschews his dabbles in electronic music for a career-spanning sound that nods and winks in the most unsubtle of manners at his history. [7 Jun 2014, p.54]

Grueling and utterly uncompromising, Widowmaker is a gift to humanity from a band that despises it. [17 Nov 2012, p.53]

Exhilaratingly expansive music balanced by a sense of darkness and foreboding, travelling simultaneously into outer space and inner turmoil. SLIFT’s expansive energy and transcendental creativity provide a uniquely rewarding thrill.

The uninitiated are likely to be overwhelmed by such a glut of material, particularly when it takes so many stylistic detours and about-turns. It’s worth the endeavour, though, because there’s some sublime music here, deep and diverse, which has plenty to offer nerds and newbies alike.

A band finding new ways to be magnificent so far into their career. [10 Jun 2017, p.52]

It's a record that feels truly alive, filled with sorrow, guilt, selflessness and love. [17 Sep 2016, p.52]

The Helm Of Sorrow manages to sound like a different entity, while still riding that wave of existential horror.

Polished production courses through veins of Zig, with each track elevated above its component parts, as the genre-muddling star incorporates elements of industrial, metal and jungle amongst the record’s heavier junctures, with piano and cello bolstering the album’s more delicate passages.

SELF HELL, is their most fearless. The 12-track collection mediates its electronic curveballs with the melodic metalcore mash-up that Sleeps have pioneered over their career, blended to masterful effect.

Hushed And Grim is a triumph from a band who have long been the final word in balancing the intelligent and the primal.

It's boisterously nostalgic noise. [18 May 2013, p.55]

Household Name is, altogether, an ineffably charming release bringing a youthful modernity to old school sounds.

A record that feels completely at ease with itself. [Mar 31 2018, p.53]

As with 2000’s perfect Midian – and this is the band’s best record since – Existence Is Futile’s magic is a surge of inspired creativity and pyrotechnic energy.

Once again, Kylesa have made a humdinger without repeating themselves. [1 Jun 2013, p.53]

The most diverse collection of music NOTHING have yet compiled. never come never morning and the string-assisted purple strings are imbued with a warm sense of intimacy, while the rain don’t care introduces a subtle country twang to the band’s signature shoegaze.

It’s all written with smartness, a rough, street poetry, and a huge dollop of Americana populated by burned-out restaurants and big cars and rock’n’roll dreamers and John Hughes suburbia.

As with all of Bad Religion's albums, True North is music played in glorious technicolour. [12 Jan 2013, p.53]

It’s perhaps not as instantaneous as the debut, as vile as Iowa or as catchy as Vol. 3, but it offers depth, discomfort and danger to those willing to dive into the recesses of The Nine’s collective consciousness.

They’ve never released an album that embraces creativity this openly. My Greatest Moment, for example, is full of ear-catchingly extracurricular sounds – the sort of thing artists in the NIN-to-Starset bracket specialise in, but without sounding like either. Life’s truth might be painful sometimes, but it’s rarely sounded better.

It packs a ferocious, formidable bite. [3 Mar 2012, p.54]

There are few surprises on Beast but it is another superbly realised slab of dynamically raging noise. [12 Feb 2011, p.50]

The Amity Affliction's most accomplished release yet. [7 Jun 2014, p.53]

The songs stick around a little longer, the sarcasm seems tuned back a notch, and melody is the fore in lieu of flurried dashes to the finish line. [22 Jun 2013, p.52]

While it's true that their [Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman] reunion on Braver Than We Are could never change the world like Bat Out Of Hell and Bat Out Of Hell II, it is a bewilderingly brilliant album. [17 Sep 2016, p.53]

The end result is hardly jam-packed with jump scares, but there are more than enough surprises here to keep you wondering what the hell might be coming next.

The result is an EP of razor-sharp, barrel-chested, muscular pop-punk that no-one--repeat: no-one--does better. [9 Aug 2014, p.54]

It jabs with style, and demonstrates that, far from running out of ideas, this band remain intent on staying at the cutting edge of modern British rock.

If this is, indeed, the end, it’s a wonderful and profound way with which to say goodbye. It would, however, be a great shame if this was the last we ever hear from Aaron West, because this is more than an album. It’s an actual life.

As a tribute, it is wonderful, but even without the terrible context in which the album has come about, Final Transmission is superb. [8 Jun 2019, p.54]

The result steers closer to accessibility than ever before, without diminishing the understated power of their strangely serene heat-haze atmospherics. [29 Jan 2011, p.54]

This is a raw, vicious and churning blast of a record. [25 Aug 2012, p.52]

It resonates as the work of a band with the chops to translate thoughtful material into a powerful and purposeful force. [1 Feb 2014, p.53]

The end result is not only an album that will delight diehard Tom DeLonge fans, but one that lovers of anthemic and occasionally experimental alt.rock will enjoy too.

It's another masterful, kaleidoscopic trip from your favourite freaked-out uncle. [13 Oct 2018, p.55]

Fever Hunting finds MLIW back at their best. [31 Aug 2013, p.53]

It sees SYB keeping up with US counterparts such as The Story So Far, while marking their territory as bright lights of the genre in the UK. [5 Oct 2013, p.54]

The result is one their most confident, consistent and cohesive record in 10 years. [11 Feb 2012, p.50]

This infusion of punk is quite some achievement given the album is divided into movements, yet in stripping back to a four-piece they strip away pretentiousness and inject rough-hewn power. [5 Feb 2011, p.51]

At times it feels like the band could let loose a little more, but such observations are minor quibbles when faced with a record as enjoyable as I Won’t Care How You Remember Me. An album packed with heart, soul and – despite its title — memorable songs, LP six is another gem from a band who rarely let you down.

This is Steel Panther's most deliciously dirty release yet. [22 Mar 2014, p.53]

There is nuance in the songwriting that, in discovery, has helped Slaves write good album, not just a collection of good songs. [16 May 2015, p.52]

The apocalyptic tone that hangs over much of the record is suffocating, in the best possible way. [9 Jul 2016, p.52]

What’s emerged is an exploration: of the heavenly and the primal, the savage and the beautiful, the ultimate mystery of what it actually is to be human.

It’s music for the loveliest of golden summer evenings, but has a greater depth to it that reveals itself with more and more listens, as if it’s coming out of its own shell. And when it does, it’s nothing but wonderful.

Its slick, sxy grooves coming over as both a stab at the mainstream and a bold reboot of their established format. [12 Jan 2019, p.55]

It's the sound of an already good band driving themselves to become greater, determined to not only maintain their impressive momentum, but also to head beyond where they've already been. [18 Jan 2014, p.52]

It might well be that The Darkness' finest moments are not behind them, after all. [30 May 2015, p.54]

A band who've proven that 21st century thrashers can give their predecessors a run for their money. [14 Apr 2012, p.54]

The push-pull between fragile piano and ruptures of psychic static is arresting, but by far Kristin’s most captivating weapon is her voice. ... It’s an awesome work of extreme beauty and brutality that will leave you speechless.

Thankfully, the band approached this follow-up with exactly the same extravagant, OTT mindset that made Everybody Wants such a riot. [Oct 27 2018, p.53]

Like the very youth it seems to be chronicling, Learning How To Live And Let Go flies by in a blur, blindsiding with the contemplative poignancy of arms-round-shoulders closer It Ain’t Easy.

There's no fat. Here in abundance is evidence of Billy's enduring genius. [13 Dec 2014, p.52]

Shelter is the first great album of 2014. [18 Jan 2014, p.52]

All that you take in is that Gore is Deftones being Good Deftones. [9 Apr 2016, p.50]

Here, nine of the 12 songs are Greg’s, and much of the album revels in his wistful romanticism as a result. ... Not that Hello Exile sits around navel-gazing. The Tom-led Last To Know is a seething rocker, and the just-audible off-mic yell before the guitar solo showcases a band as exuberant as ever, even as Joe Godino’s beats hammer down like a hangover.

This is a record that plays like Eddie’s soul is plugged directly into a jukebox skipping through different eras of music history.

Amends is a portrait of the artist as a young man, offering fans the chance to time travel and spend time with an old friend. It’s also the origin of Chester Bennington as a musician and is therefore an essential, rewarding and emotional listening for anyone who is a fan of his work.

Country-fuelled it may be, rather than the expected full-pelt rock, but so open is this letter that it easily succeeds in transcending genres. [1 Jun 2019, p.53]

Anyone who savours battered tunes and growling basslines in general will enjoy this trip through Drug Church's howled at, fractured world. [20 Jul 2013, p.55]

An overwhelming addition to a back catalogue not lacking in transcendental power, Purge finds Justin channelling distress and disgust into music that hits both body and soul, creating something wonderful out of horror and pain. This really is a perfectly-titled album.

Devour is a rock record, full of fine songs--gimmick- ,pretention- and affectation-free. [5 Oct 2013, p.53]

This is a great rock album, built on its creators' own terms, and delivered with musical flash, songwriting panache and, at times, immense force.

On Oceania, Smashing Pumpkins finally sound like a band with an idea of where they're going. [10 Jun 2012, p.52]

Tantalisingly, this record also feels like the next building-block in a potentially genre-defining body of work. As much as we can’t wait for 100,000 gecs, however, there’s a mountain of fun to be had before we get there.

Impressions is thrumming with big ideas, bigger choruses and is imbued with the pearly wisdom learned from rolling with life's punches. [4 Mar 2017, p.53]

The unreleased and rare recordings here make this a brilliant salute to a much-missed hero. [17 Nov 2018, p.70]

It's a study in twisted instrument abuse. [10 Jun 2012, p.54]

It's a beautiful, bruised patchwork: all fragile optimism and ebbing regret. [18 Mar 2017, p.53]

Throughout, Anthrax have much to recommend them. [13 Feb 2016, p.52]

Bumbling and awkward in the best way. [1 Mar 2014, p.54]

This is a brilliant mix of heaviness and The Wicker Man-esque oddness. [25 May 2013, p.54]

Under Brian Sella's smartypants lyrics and eye-catching admissions is a beating heart and a rare honesty. [1 Jun 2013, p.53]

Ultimately, though, Krüller is best experienced not in its individual segments but as an overwhelming whole. The meld of muscle and mechanisation still demands that listeners hand themselves over entirely. So stay plugged in through the epic title-track’s spiral down into an inevitable acid ending and you’ll be haunted by the ghosts in this machine.

It's 14 tracks of craziness to be embraced and shouted at the rafters. [10 Feb 2018, p.50]

The haze delivers both sleazy rock'n'roll and sugary glam-pop, with the band putting equal dedication into their myriad components to create a joyous whole. [18 Mar 2017, p.53]

Die Knowing is something darker and angrier than 2010's 5K-rated predecessor, Symptoms + Cures. [1 Mar 2014, p.54]

Another pack of incredibly weighty riffs that slowly march and stomp like an iron bloke heading out to war. [22 Mar 2014, p.53]

It works and then some. [1 Jun 2013, p.54]

Killer stuff. [1 Sep 2018, p.55]

The final album in the set is the best of the bunch, [8 Dec 2012, p.50]

American Football have matured, but what remains unchanged is their ability to gently tug the heartstrings. [23 Mar 2019, p.55]

It’s wilder and unvarnished, adding up to a self-portrait that’s intensely candid and intimate.

The Liverpudlian quartet have every reason to be overloaded with strident self-belief, but the striking vibrancy and surging energy with which they translate it to these 12 tracks is utterly remarkable.

Like the sonic equivalent of a Rorschach test, each track is riddled with vast soundscapes begging to be explored and made sense of. [2 May 2015, p.54]

Amid softer, acoustic-led material are jubilant anthems like Walls Of Jericho, the biggest-hearted, most openly singable Bon Jovi track for many years. We Made It Look Easy and My First Guitar salute the past in different ways, but both are fond and emotive rather than chest-beating, and Living In Paradise is another big chorus showpiece that grows in both momentum and feels.

The eclectic sounds of Wolf Alice's debut made them stars, but this sequel finds them doing everything bigger and better. [2 Sep 2017, p.51]

Heaven Upside Down betters that record [2015's The Pale Emperor]. [14 Oct 2017, p.50]

Crucially, it captures some of the magic of their debut, and will satiate those who've waited so patiently. [22 Oct 20163, p.68]

The band sound as good as they ever have, hitting the pace they set with 2005 debut, Black Thunder. [12 Oct 2013, p.51]