NOTHING, a band noted for their none-more-dour demeanour using a black hole as inspiration might be a little too on-the-nose for some tastes. At a time when hope feels in scant supply, wade into the blackness of these waters at your own discretion.

Grown men revisiting their youthful hijinks should be a terrible idea or, to borrow an FNM title, a midlife crisis. Instead, this record is an absolute rager, testament to both the original material and the present-day dedication of its lunatic creators.

Razzmatazz comes at just the right time and it was well worth the wait. iDKHOW might not be changing the game exactly, but they’re packing the kind of addictive, dopamine-like qualities that’ll make you want to keep pumping coins into the slot for another hit, time and time again.

The main selling points of this album are a sleek production job and the technical performance of vocalist Conor Mason, who once again proves himself to be in possession of some serious lungs. The problem, however, is that despite the surface sheen, too many of Moral Panic’s songs fail to really go anywhere.

A reminder of how fun music can be. Sure, it’s not as joyous as Morbid Stuff, but for a stopgap to keep fans going in these bewildering times, it does the job nicely.

There’s nothing too out there on Forgotten Days – the ’80s synth of the closing Caledonia probably the biggest surprise, but a welcome one: a playful take on the pain of the past – and all the tracks are solid, with any experimentation woven tightly around Pallbearer’s doom roots. This is the sound of a genre being refreshed, and of a band making it entirely their own.

Throughout, DevilDriver are taut, tight and tenacious.

This is the band’s most engaging and expansive musical outing to date.

It’s a lot of fun. With all this in mind, will such an eccentric listen be for everyone? Probably (k)not. But, right now, you’d be silly to not let yourself get caught up in it.

Each of their previous three albums have proven invigorating examples of their punishing aesthetic, but Atlas Vending finds them pushing things forward, broadening their horizons to tremendous effect.

Each is very different, but they’re connected by a sense of the time and space they were crafted in. It’s a collection of postcards from the edge that we’ve all been walking and one that’s utterly engaging.

A superb dose of head-banging fun by way of The House That Heaven Built brings this record to a joyous conclusion, and caps off an experience courtesy of Japandroids that overflows with vitality.

Not only is Tickets To My Downfall a slick sideways hop from what you might be expecting from Machine Gun Kelly, it’s done excellently. It celebrates everything great about pop-punk without feeling cookie-cutter or third division. It also finds its energy from the knots Kells works through in the lyrics.

Some will inevitably hold every Public Enemy album up against their ironclad classics like Fear Of A Black Planet and It Takes A Nation Of Millions, but to compare What You Gonna Do… to these untoppable milestones is to miss the point. What matters is that PE are not only still going after all this time, but still making music that matters.

Always on the front foot, bloodied but unbowed, IDLES are a claustrophobic, relentless, airtight and pulverising machine of perpetual motion. That they are able to keep themselves airborne throughout Ultra Mono is testament to the art and skill that lies behind such an unstinting display of brazen contempt.

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.

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.

Shame is a weighty slab of industrial punk that is effectively the soundtrack to a tortured soul mentally coming apart. Reinventing a core element of themselves, Uniform present a side they have previously kept boiling angrily under a darkened surface.

There’s little to link the various tracks on this eclectic collection, nothing to make it a coherent whole, but it certainly underlines the band’s extraordinary ability to shape-shift. Mastodon have changed over the years, but Medium Rarities proves they have always operated in a dimension that isn’t entirely earthbound

It’s not pared back, but WE ARE CHAOS is a less immediately antagonistic and forward prospect than recent output. But that’s a good thing that’s been mastered to darkly brilliant effect here. Unexpected, bold and artistic, Manson remains an artist it is dangerous to underestimate.

It’s a fun, if not unusual listen, that ploughs deeper into the band’s flirtations with synth-pop and electronic experimentation. It’s lacking in the enormity expected of a celebration of 25 years of existence and this is not necessarily a bad thing, however, as it’s a further example of Ulver’s ability to push the envelope and keep their music fresh and exciting.

It’s an intelligent, thrilling and likeable record from one of the most exciting bands in British punk.

It’s never derivative, nostalgic, or trying to be anything that it’s not. It’s a PVRIS album, packing in every quality that she’s built that name upon, while powered by a subtle forward motion. That every idea and sound heard is hers and she can finally, proudly take sole credit for that is to be celebrated.

No mere nostalgia trip, S&M2 stands as a tribute both to Metallica’s growing confidence as players and composers, and an absolute vindication of their decision to revisit one of their most inspired creative outings. Within our world, they remain utterly fearless and inarguably peerless.

What Blues Pills serve up, like The White Stripes or Rival Sons before them, is a perfect transmission of warm rock’n’roll from a time gone by that effortlessly slinks along with natural swagger, without ever feeling studied.

Biffy Clyro have delivered an album of restless invention, substance and style that arrives like a spray of water on the arid expanse of this saddest of summers.

This project began as the soundtrack to an art show, and was inspired by vistas streaming past windows on interminably long drives, so none of this was meant to be easy to enjoy. It’s music to accompany contemplative walks, light skies and dark moods. It’s hard work, but it will work on you.

This is more than a revelatory, historical document. While it signals the beginning of the end of the original band, it also confirms that when rock’n’roll is at its best, it pushes forward into new territory and has the power to change how we think and how we feel. Live At Goose Lake is effectively a testament to sonic liberation.