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.