Music born of despair has rarely been as exhilarating as this. [15 Jun 2019, p.55]

When Rise is good, it's a blast. However, like the boozy gang from which they take their name, there's a tendency toward excess. [22 Jun 2019, p.59]

It's so genuinely anti-social, abrasive and purposeful in its mission to turn you off that it's actually impressive. [25 May 2019, p.55]

A powerful and worthy addition to the band's increasingly diverse catalogue. [15 Jun 2019, p.55]

Kind Heaven is a beautifully conceived, exquisitely constructed and fully realised work of towering ambition. ... The perfect album to soundtrack the summer. [15 Jun 2019, p.54]

By trying to annihilate what's gone before and truly raise themselves higher, they've created a special record, with a depth that will still have you under its spell a decade from now. [15 Jun 2019, p.53]

This is smart, sexy and it rocks like a wild thing. When the Future Dust settles, The Amazons might just stand as a band worth all the hype and more.

The ebb and flow keep you constantly on your toes. [8 Jun 2019, p.55]

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]

What Venom Prison have done is humanised this music by holding up a mirror to a cruel world and viewing people as more than simply walking dummies full of guts, but sentient beings worthy of life, rather than a grisly, gory death. In doing so, they’ve made something more powerful and worthy of your respect than a million meaningless blastbeats. [1 Jun 2019, p.53]

What YONAKA have made here is one of 2019’s best breakthrough rock albums. Put simply, Don’t Wait ‘Til Tomorrow is the birth of a new band of rock stars. [25 may 2019, p.54]

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]

As an example of a band whose explosive energies are captured, rather than recorded, this is strong work. [1 Jun 2019, p.55]

Their confidence in holding back the fury also serves them well, not doing so just to make the heavier parts seem heavier, making the whole thing flow seamlessly, carrying Whitechapel almost effortlessly to the proverbial next level.

While Eternal Forward Motion is most definitely a record that sounds like it would spit in your face before punching you, this isn’t simply moping around. These lyrics have a very real meaning, written for the voiceless millions of disenfranchised youths, growing up into a shitshow of someone else’s making. [11 May 2019, p.53]

This is Earth in their purest form. ... This album is also a perfect introduction to Earth for curious neophytes. [25 May 2019, p.55]

A welcome and overdue return. [18 May 2019, p.55]

This is a record made with care, craft, and nothing allowed in that isn’t just-so. It may seem an odd thing to praise a band as flamboyant as this for, but Rammstein know the value of quality rather than quantity. When they deliver, they still deliver the best.

While these songs may lack the same kind of energetic rage that defined the band in their early years, they're still a formidable way of exposing truths and holding the powers that be to account. [4 May 2019, p.55]

High Crimes is both energetic and spontaneous. It sounds like its members had a ball making it, and that sense of unconstrained fun and creativity bleed through it brilliantly. [4 May 20129, p.53]

The 34-year-old may not quite have reached nirvana just yet, but in his personal quest for enlightenment he’s never sounded more optimistic about life’s possibilities. [26 Apr 2019, p.53]

Gloriously triumphant, weirdly exhilarating and entirely engrossing, Sunn O))) have created something genuinely brilliant here.

There's a middle-fingered severity that runs right through Sulphur English, knitting these different components into a coherent identity which can't be captured by portmanteau tags like blackened sludge or post-doom. [Apr 13, p.55]

Admittedly, the single-minded focus does get a bit repetitive, but Optimal Lifestyles makes for a defiantly fizzy soundtrack to growing old disgracefully. [6 Apr 2019, p.71]

There are a lot of records about the end of the world out there, vying for attention. This is one worth listening to. [6 Apr 2019, p.69]

Remaining as distinctive, unique and bloody brilliant as ever. [30 Mar 2019, p.55]

The result is a superb, invigorated record that invites you to wake up, as they have done, in a brave, bold and beautiful new world.

The quartet take songs that are not always wholly divorced from pop music and turn them into something weird and wild. [23 Mar 2019, p.55]