But as a big comeback for these Welsh titans, it's more lost than prophecy...

What The Time Is Now lacks in coherency, it makes up for in sheer enthusiasm.

Kittie are rubbish, with a permanent lyrical setting of "Feel A Bit Miserable, Parents Don't Understand Me" and no original ideas whatsoever. [21 Aug 2004, p.49]

Sadly, towards the close the balance is lost and the fine-but-inessential ‘Summer Moon’, ‘Weeds Through The Rind’ and ‘Schlager’ end things on a weak note.

There's a 10 out of 10 album that's been thrown away here; as it is, it's the best demo you'll hear all year. [12 Nov 2005, p.41]

Even a late appearance from The Weeknd can't save this omni-tonal snoozefest.

What follows is the sound of a band trying and failing to forge a new identity - boy-band balladry, U2-style stadium rock and Metallica-esque melodic crunch are all attempted with predictably patchy results.

The first REM album to really disappoint. [2 Oct 2004, p.60]

If they want to be treated like adults they’ll have to release something, y’know, gooder.

There’s nothing game-changing about The New Classic, just recycled hustlin’ tropes and an ugly, nasal double-time flow overcompensating for mediocre wordplay.

Exquisite, state-of-the-art beats, rhymes and vocal hooks. [25 Sep 2004, p.65]

Electronic, if not exactly rejuvenated, are rewired, recharged and, really quite good again.

Too often, the follow-up to their 600,000-selling debut 'Spit', is plain overbearing, a violent marriage of melody and brutality that makes for a highly uneasy listen.

Beyond the sonics, the lyrics are embarrassingly piss-poor as well.

Musically, it's nowhere near as life-changing as its subject matter, but MacNeil's mortality menagerie make cute enough companions in the void.

The debut album from half-Scottish, half-Swedish songwriter Nina Nesbitt is pop so sugary it’ll rot your teeth.

A muddled album that claims to love pop, but seems thoroughly averse to having any kind of fun.

‘What Happened To The Streets?’ doesn’t musically reinvent trap the way its more cinematic predecessors did, but the new record showcases 21 Savage’s duality – an ascendant star perpetually wrestling with demons.

Biggest irony? A trillion bucks' worth of vocal talent can't top 'Watch This', a crunching Dave Grohl-embellished instrumental jam. Sounds like a convenient juncture to give Axl a reconciliatory ring, fella.

The result is a record that fully embraces the theatricality of its genre but falls just on the right side of ridiculous.

The effortlessly cool beats, hooky choruses, and above all, his witty, super-fast flow indicate this skinny blond to be a genuinely talented star.

While the album is full of quality tunes that sound nice in isolation, as a complete package, it lacks the versatility to take it to another level.

While Monastic Living might say something profound about this awkward, enigmatic band, if you’re out to explore Parquet Courts for the first time, the facts are plain: you should pick any record rather than this.

Daring as some of the tracks are, they overwhelmingly loop her vocal around a generic house lick that has the effect of giving her very little to do vocally.

This love for dramatic highs and muted lows on this album makes the record a rollercoaster of emotions and sounds, and a polished and entertaining debut.

Individual tracks can feel forced rather than organically nurtured. It all means that by the time they hit ‘Making Up Numbers’ and ‘Everybody Wants Me’, there are no longer enough new tricks in their bag to hold our attention, and ‘Emergency’ bleeds away without a climax.

Instead of bashing critics away with brilliant tunes, they find themselves defining faceless bluster-rock.

it paints crudely and schematically a portrait of the artist as messed-up, disillusioned, self-indulgent twerp with an unhealthy appreciation of the mid-'80s US guitar underground, whose demo-quality doodlings (Graham plays, sings, produces and paints everything. And all to a rather average standard) should probably have never seen the light of day.