It's a great thrash record, not the jokey novelty of the genre's boom, as stainless, hard-edged. aggressive metal album that would be just as deadly were it from 2011, or 1986. [24 Sep 2011, p.51]

Whereas Puscifer's early output exercised his funny bone, the rather brilliant Conditions Of My Parole exorcises it. [15 Oct 2011, p.52]

[The] band's strange brew is as striking as ever it was, and is no less potent for being restrained by both taste and age. [15 Oct 2011, p.51]

Where the joke on Feel The Steel has yet to feel old, the laughs on Balls Out grow stale. It's fortunate then that, once again, the music holds up. [15 Oct 2011, p.50]

This is both an unpredictable, risk-taking venture and the truest hearted Alice Cooper album in many years. [10 Sep 2011, p.52]

As ever, they do a fine job here juggling endless solos among intricate vocal passages and harmonies. [Sep 2011, p.51]

This blend of grace and discord never feels jarring, combining to produce an immersive, transcendental whole which reveals the true breadth of this duo's impressive artistry. [Sep 2011, p.51]

They are creative and explorative, restless and even daring. For the most part, though, these days they're also not that good. [Sep 2011, p.50]

Nu-Metal stars release a solid effort. [Sep 2011, p.52]

If your taste in music runs to bands that are very much one of a kind then this odd and oddly loveable album might well be to your liking. [Sep 2011, p.52]

A five year pop-rock trilogy concludes in audacious style. [Sep 2011, p.52]

This is an interesting unexpected extra--pretty, rather than essential. [Sep 2011, p.51]

This album's consistent quality should easily re-establish Evanescence back on the rock map in 2011. [1 Oct 2011, p.52]

Their career trajectory continues its upward arc--but with City of Vultures, Rise To Remains have stamped on the accelerator. [3 Sep 2011, p.50]

This is an album packed not only with exuberant and quirkily innovative songs--songs that are busy with bounce and swerve--but also come equipped with a sense of energy and defiance that suggests that their authors are not going to give up simply because the terrain underfoot has become unsteady. [Sept 17 2011, p.52]

There's nothing here that doesn't earn its spot or tell a story and as a grab at something great, Polar bear Club may have just succeeded. [20 Aug 2011, p.51]

Its lo-fi, organ-heavy, cheap drum machine-driven jams reveal his ear for fusing classic team-dream rock'n'roll with demented pastiche. [Sept 17 2011, p.51]

Covering Ground is [Chuck Ragan's] third album, and once again demonstrates his versatility as a musician. [Sept 17 2011, p.51]

Twenty years and counting, Pearl Jam are still the kings. [Sept 17 2011, p.51]

It's an album that succeeds on its own terms but if it really does mark the effective end of Opeth as a metal band, that will remain our loss. [Sept 17 2011, p.50]

It can be no surprise that the group's second effort in this style is a triumph of both authenticity and quality, of fine songs and tasteful playing. [3 Sep 2011, p.51]

Layered and controlled, Elsie is an album comprised of fine music and superior lyrics. [3 Sep 2011, p.51]

While much of the record sounds like the Rolling Stones if they'd grown up as LA punks instead of English art students. Superb. [27 Aug 2011, p.52]

There is nothing incendiary here. [27 Aug 2011, p.51]

Bar the addition of piano on a few tracks, I'm With You is not so much a fresh start as a wonderful, trouble-free return to the familiar, laid back West Coast rock terrain of their back-to-back classics, Californication and 2002's By The Way. [27 Aug 2011, p.50]

The classy atmosphere of Hisingen Blues makes Graveyard sound timeless rather than retrogressive, and wholly relevant in 2011. [14 May 2011, p.51]

Impeccably executed as it all is, though, the songs lack genuine distinction and the whole thing plays out in a series of weary cliches. [13 Aug 2011, p.52]

Black Tide possess a thrash influence; they've suppressed it to make something they consider commercial metal. The result are neither, though do give rise to a new genre: boy-metal. [13 Aug 2011, p.51]