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]

[The] band's most atmospheric music to date. [14 Oct 2017, p.52]

This is music with brains and bite. [12 Oct 2013, p.52]

It's a bleak, nihilistic affair, but dynamic enough never to lose its focus. [25 Feb 2012, p.52]

It’s a go-getter of a record that pays homage to the greats whilst still feeling brand new. YUNGBLUD’s outlandishness makes him a hard pill to swallow for some, but his guts, drive, and devotion to his craft cannot be denied.

In allowing their imaginations to run riot in a gloriously self-indulgent way, they've made a record possessed of an extremity all of its own. [5 May 2012, p.53]

L'Enfant Sauvage is staggering. [30 Jun 2012, p.52]

A fine album from an often overlooked band. [30 Jun 2012, p.53]

It's extreme in a way that corpse-painted clowns will never understand--but as an expression of raw, wounded humanity, it stands as Dir en Grey's most captivating, compelling and soulful release to date. [30 Jul 2011, p.50]

Relapse finds them wielding those familiar sledgehammer beats and streamlined thrash riffs in a most effective fashion. [7 Apr 2012, p.52]

Sure, the band haven't exactly come up trumps on originality here, but at least they're delivered some huge songs. [25 May 2013, p.54]

This is an excellent album in its own right, but ONE MORE TIME… also points to an even more exciting future for blink-182.

There will be doubters and there will be haters, but Heaven :x: Hell is Sum 41 at their zenith and is, without any shadow of a doubt, the album of their career.

For Deftones, finding the sweet spots between compromise and balance, factoring in each member’s duties and creative inputs may be a more appropriate way of assessing the delicacy of the task at hand. It’s within that push and pull, that the aptly-named, tension-charged Ohms proves itself a fascinating entry into the band’s canon.

Out of Ian’s time of crisis, Militarie Gun have made themselves a silver lining, a record that’s not just a tremendous step up but one that could be their defining moment.

life Cycle is the sound of [their] potential exploding into being. [30 Jun 2012, p.54]

They trash out a slew of throwaway instant classics and refresh a well-worn format for no better motive than the fact that they can. [30 Jul 2011, p.51]

Good Charlotte have written an album for the modern era: honest, powerful and, most importantly, real. [22 Sep 2018, p.54]

A few teething problems aside, Between The Stars is a brilliant reinvention. [1 Nov 2014, p.54]

So while this is a familiar, albeit more polished ride, it’s replete with beautiful moments, such as Black Crown and Gold Long Gone, that stay with you and work on you; it’s music that lovingly infiltrates hearts and minds rather than bludgeoning you over the head with its message.

It’s not just the righteous fury of the music that makes it so great, either – these are songs built on a truly wide world of extreme sounds, welded together into a unique sonic bomb.