It feels like Lamb Of God are putting their papers in order and gearing up for the next charge over the top, not thinking about winding down at all.

It’s far grubbier and more riotous than any high school musical.

Initially it's strange to hear that instantly identifiable baritone clashing with organic, rough-edged guitars, dirty Hammond organ, and delicate strings rather than the cold electronics of the day job, but it soon reveals itself to be a perfect pairing.

‘Modern Slaves’ is the only track that reflects the mournful suggestion of the album’s title, its lament of choral voices accentuating a lyrical pain over music that is gently insistent and quietly furious. More often, ‘Funeral For Justice’ is ablaze with energy.

Ambition, imagination, charm and grace - by any measure, 'About A Boy' hits the heights.

One of the most cosmopolitan albums to carry the Giant seal of oddness. [11 Sep 2004, p.55]

Johnny Venus and Doctur Dot prove to everyone that rap groups are on the rise. In a genre overpopulated with solo artists, it’s refreshing to see a duo emerge from the ashes. If you give the sick lyricism and jazz overtones a few more years, they could be the next Outkast.

What’s really intriguing about Jungle, though, is its darker side. There's a tone of inner-city malaise, romantic ruin and psychedelic alienation to a raft of its tracks that speaks to those modern urbanites feeling screen-wiped and robbed of opportunities, busy earnin’ for nothing.

There’s much to be said for playing to your strengths, though, and they’ve honed their contrasting, distinctive sounds with this impressive double release. Krept & Konan have plenty of days and nights ahead of them.

The album’s pleasures are tactile and immediate, the kind of R&B built for dim lights and late-night texts.

There are signs on ‘Aperture’, Jadagu’s debut album, of a songwriter who is beginning to find her feet in this world. Characterised by warm, crisp synth production that will speak to Arlo Parks fans, ‘Warning Sign’ spotlights this maturity: a minimalistic, R&B-fuelled anthem of reflection that grows in leaps and bounds as more elements make their way into the mix. There’s a newfound swagger and breath of fresh air, too.

Protomartyr are at home here: growing, expanding and putting up a mirror to humanity’s driest and bleakest parts, inviting their listeners to reflect on it all.

At times, a lack of crescendo leaves his songs teetering on the precipice of drama. The money shot, though, comes with the title track--an epic, swirling conclusion to his debut.

Clark’s readiness to be freakish and alone has translated into her songwriting, which is bolder than ever, and out to connect.

An album of reinfatuation and reaffirmation, ‘Fossora’ is invigorating in its drive, if there’s little of real surprise here; hard as the mushroom-gabber beats are, if you’ve heard Pluto or Mutual Core, you won’t be shocked.

The album bustles with defiant spirit while leaning heavily on deeply catchy songwriting and production.

Pretentious, yes, but wonderful.

Noel's still got it. Only a fool would write him off.

It’s the naturalness in how Claud pulls it off that makes ‘Super Monster’ feel so exceptional. Dance, cry, think about someone in particular, fall in love with it overnight.

Ultimately, though, ‘Come Ahead’ may have a whole lot of funk on its surface but still packs oodles of punk and grenades of protest in its trunk.

‘Back of My Mind’ is a dazzling debut from an artist who’s so in command of her own sound that it’s almost jarring when “Exhausted’ includes a shout-out to producer Darkchild.

The fact that this mad man’s breakfast is actually nothing short of jaw-dropping should be the cause of spontaneous mass copulation in the streets.

Doom Days is a vivid snapshot of humanity and an imaginative, adventurous levelling up from one of Britain’s most influential bands.

This record is the perfect display of how to make grown rap music without soiling a legacy that has taken decades to build. If this evolution continues, Ghetts may finally produce the classic album that has escaped him thus far.

You might not want to run into Daughn Gibson on a lonely night, but you’d be a fool if you didn’t listen to him push things forward with such noirish flair.

It makes for a more organically toned collection that proves the grey wizard doesn’t need heavy distortion to stay at the top of his game.

This collaborative foray successfully breaks new ground in terms of Marshall’s solo work, further ensuring that ‘Space Heavy’ will assume a lofty standing in King Krule’s already glowing discography.

An album of stunning emotional clarity that sees Baker’s words sent skyward with help from the beefy instrumentation of a full band.

Overall, though, despite a couple of subpar verses, ‘Insomnia’ is one for the books. The UK rap world has never seen three of the scene’s most in-demand rappers surprisingly team up for an album. Here the best of north and south London have come together and paved the way for others to follow suit.

Dear Science cuts through genres like a laser through a music encyclopaedia, making strange connections, but always with pop clarity as the ultimate aim. As ever, Sitek’s production shines.

Sounds like his band are having too much fun.

‘Loss of Life’ is imbued with just enough sweetness that by the time it reaches its overarching message – “nothing prepares you for loss of life” – it doesn’t just make you want to prepare yourself, it makes you excited to do so.

With ‘Scream From New York, NY’, Been Stellar trade in their title as one of the city’s brightest new hopes and emerge as a NYC staple.

Ruins might see the band playing it safe, but rarely are safety manuals this stunning.

The music develops, gradually growing in its elegance, until further down the path Yorkston takes over, singing the baleful words of the great Scottish poet Robert Burns. The song finds a path across the globe from one visionary figure to another, the peak of a record that is somewhat visionary itself.

On their 10th album, The Chemical Brothers remain the best in the business.

With each song so different to the last, ‘Renegade Breakdown’ is one of those rare records that will have listeners discovering new intricacies on each listen.

Is much, much better than a record made by chronically drunk middle-aged men has any right to be.

As America crumbles, Protomartyr have proved that they can be that cereus, blooming in the dark times we inhabit--and continue blossoming into a formidable and vital band.

While far from a reinvention of the wheel, ‘Power Up’ is a joyous celebration of the unbridled heavy rock that has served them well for almost 50 years and, we can hope, a unifying cry for the future.

This band surf the cosmic channels of krautrock, cruising along on motorik beats, waving at pals The Horrors and tipping their hats to Syd Barrett as they chug through hypnotic, psychedelic pop songs.

In every way, ‘Bob Vylan Presents: The Price Of Life’ is a far more eclectic record than anything the duo have released before. Their alt-rock tracks about inequality will speak to a wider audience but the band never soften their edges or pull their punches in a bid for accessibility.

The Curse Of Love is a neat record, filled with the mystic folk and lithe psychedelia that made them so refreshing back in the day.

'Because Of The Times' cements Kings Of Leon as one of the great American bands of our times.

The Chats don’t so slow songs. They don’t do sad songs. The Chats do good times and this debut is set to inspire plenty.

The tunes--from the devilishly catchy title track to the clattering, anthemic ‘Viva L’Amour’ and the swoonsome, panoramic ‘Tabarly’, complete with romantic mariachi trumpets--are superb.

Park Hye Jin has crafted an affecting multi-layered debut that, rather than reaching a conclusion of fulfilment, manages to find happiness in just being alive.

As with the best of Bright Eyes, there’s a bittersweet meeting of macabre words and folky tunefulness.

Even when English Graffiti sounds like The Vaccines, it’s a kitschier, more colourful, hyper-stylised version.

‘Requiem’ has brought something new to a discography that, until now, has been an exploration of human suffering. It’s led to the band’s most nuanced record to date.

There’s much to be said for playing to your strengths, though, and they’ve honed their contrasting, distinctive sounds with this impressive double release. Krept & Konan have plenty of days and nights ahead of them.

While not teasing her next chapter, in her quest for more, Maidza has crafted a collection of perfectly constructed songs that encapsulate her karmic truth: that living well is the best revenge.

It's a timely refresh of rosy-cheeked indie-pop mores.

This new music sounds fresh, vibrant and effortless.

Drahla’s melodies are gnarled and resist locking together at all costs; warped pop songs emerge out of the gloom. This is a meticulous debut that juggles razor-sharp control with barely contained chaos.

The result is an album that’s spiky, surprising and not quite cohesive, but never ever boring. Tove Lo was always much too interesting to be a slave to the algorithm.

This combination of pop and disco makes Ratchet the perfect summer soundtrack.

Cashback? Pretty close.

There aren’t quite enough classic songs here to render their voice vital, but as long as boring bands exist, this kind of piss and vinegar will always be welcome.

Swiftly recorded in just one day, Warm Slime is an intuitively-conceived, addictively impulsive lesson in peculiarity.

It's bold, brash, trashy fun that will tempt Killers fans to fall in lust all over again. [19 Mar 2005, p.57]

As a whole, it’s winningly Lynchian, and ballsy enough to open with an 11-minute song.

By and large this is as consistent a record as the Foo Fighters have ever made.

Isis’ lewd lines on this debut arrive, then, as the law of diminishing returns for all things brazenly sexy begins to set in.

The album feels genuinely organic, a common ground of moods rather than a forced fusion.

Sweeter than its landfill-conjuring name suggests, Diaper Island supplies the harsh guitar harmonics, reverb and claustrophobic atmosphere VanGaalen does best, but aligns them with some of his prettiest songs.

The Membranes’ first album in 26 years is an extraordinary comeback.

Its mix of clanking rhythms, bleeps and whistles is certainly insistent, although it's the vocal tracks that stick.

If there’s a criticism to be made it’s that the album’s perhaps a little one-note.

Although his mission proves futile, he approaches it with a curiosity of spirit that makes ‘Along The Way’ a captivating and nourishing listen, less noodly than his early solo releases and more in the vein of the composerly streak exhibited on 2011’s ‘Get Lost’.

Beneath the radio polish lies a wickedly caustic songwriting wit.

Here and there, though, it’s a bit of a grind.

The music here might be gimmick-free, but it's imbued with a dark sense of confidence.

A varied album that lacks any monster riffs like the ones White used to write for The White Stripes, but includes enough intrigue, originality and plain weirdness to delight and, in some places, appal.

The shimmering beauty of 'Tame The Sun' and the My Bloody Valentine atmospherics of 'Bones' serve to elevate the aesthetic that Male Bonding established on their debut Nothing Hurts to greater heights.

Six years in the making, Mew's sixth album is opulence in excelsis, the Danish dream-weavers gathering all the synths and power chords at their disposal to conjure a feast for the ears.

At 73 minutes, it could easily have been boiled down to give it more punch, but you can’t bemoan the celebratory feel of The People In Your Neighbourhood.

Never have Patterson Hood’s five-piece sounded quite so cranky and furiously righteous as they do on this terrific, ear-splitting sprawl of shit-kicking country boogie.

Ultimately though, sensitivity outweighs ’80s cliché.

Sporadically brilliant, perhaps it is The Knife’s Inland Empire--a fearless piece of work with its own logic, one that shears away all safety nets.

When it works it’s potent enough to rival his 2003 breakbeat opus ‘We Want Your Soul’. When it doesn’t, such as on opener ‘Do You!’ and the turgid ‘Best Fish Tacos In Ensenada’ (every bit as lame as its title suggests), it sounds like the kind of crap that gets played early on at Reflex on student night.

His default mode--brisk canters with elements of beefed-up psychedelia and proto-punk--can be a little samey, but deviations occur, see the bludgeoning folk of ‘Dark Road’.

Her 2011 debut 'Hearts' had the drift and shimmer of shoegaze, but Chiaroscuro is sharper, even flirting with techno on the densely layered 'Faith' and handclapping electro on 'Denial' as Lindén tries out all the electronic styles of the 1980s.

Is it an improbably good second album? Looks like it.

The beats on Tongue N’ Cheek are still raw, clamorous and unpredictable, but in a springy, primary-coloured way.

The novelty-obsessed stay-at-homes who made Toro Y Moi the buzz hit of 2009 might react unfavourably to all this accessibility, but by digging deep, Underneath The Pine shows Toro Y Moi setting down roots and, perhaps more swiftly than expected, flourishing.

They stake a firm claim for parity with arguably their most consistent set yet.

And though the change in volume might be ‘Howl’’s defining characteristic... it’s the shift in attitude that is its finest.

'Road To Rouen' is the sound of a band at last hitting their stride, finding out who they are and sounding like it's finally making them happy.

Anglocentrically and have eternally teenage garage production values. In other words, a GBV record that sounds like everything GBV fans love about GBV.

There are times when the album feels strangely medicated; the positivity, when heaped upon the listener in brutal doses, makes you feel trapped in one of those American self-help groups.

Synth-heavy disco and boogie, sleek Italo and plenty of New Order course equally through their veins; the duo spin a heavily thumbed vinyl library into something largely fresh, and even coax '70s smoove-rocker Michael McDonald into guesting at the end.

A titanic assault of monstrous proportions. [29 Jan 2005, p.59]

A collection of culinary-themed tracks... that Doom handles in his surrealistic, unflappable flow. [18 Dec 2004, p.51]

By the time you reach the halfway point and prepare for CD2, you realise Opposites is not, as feared, an unedited expanse of rock-band mind splurge, but two albums' worth of well-constructed songs.

There are a couple of duff tracks here, in the shape of ‘Fear Of The Knife’ and the horrible cod-reggae of ‘Bandbreaker’. More broadly, Skaters’ whole shtick can feel about as current as that Hot Hot Heat T-shirt lurking in your bottom drawer.

While it's unlikely that he'll pursue anything as historically precise as this for a solo career, 'Cold Mountain' proves what most of us have long suspected: when The White Stripes end, White will be far from finished.

Anna falls frustratingly short of hitting the back of the net.