While Hypnotized nudges Perro and Chiericozzi out of their established comfort zone, it also has the effect of making you appreciate the tightened-up craft and finely curated song selection they exhibit with the Men.

Ministry of Love does come off like something of a fashion victim, sounding expensive but uncomfortable, looking good but doing little to stand out.

If Eternally Even was James’ aggrieved effort to engage directly with a world in unrest, Tribute To 2 is an attempt to offer succor. It’s a little glimpse of the past James hopes will soothe and reassure us.

It's not that these 40 minutes are too extreme or overly dependent on too many ideas; it's that Dragged into Sunlight haven't found out how to synthesize their best impulses and broad ambitions into a whole.

This album feels more like a series of genre exercises, a place in which they occasionally work up a palpable tension, but never enough to make this more than an adequate diversion from the resources they're obviously sourcing.

Mostly, En Är För Mycket och Tusen Aldrig Nog offers driving, instantly catchy songs that would sound excellent blaring from beneath a laser show, some ferris wheel spinning in the background. The destination is almost too familiar; before, Dungen often led listeners down a thornier, less trodden path. The preferable voyage will depend on who’s listening.

Regardless of Heart Head West’s stretch of sweet-and-sour ballads, its lack of textural and rhythmic variety leaves you hungry for something heartier.

Paper Trail more often succeeds when the positivity sounds more earned than court-ordered.

This is a great album to throw on when you need something to enhance the mood or otherwise fill the air when working on something else.

As a once-in-a-half-decade demonstration of Talbot's vital signs, The Ghost isn't necessarily compelling enough to make you want to hang around for a follow-up, but the vitriol of a line like, "If you let them burn books, you'll let them burn bodies," is a strong sign of life at least.

At times, Gods of Violence plays like an unresolved tug of war between quintessential Kreator and grandiose symphonic metal--often in the same song. If you like both styles, you can expect to be in hog heaven. But if you prefer one over the other, you're left to skip over certain sections of songs.

Ash & Ice is an album of quality comedown tracks surrounded by run-of-the-mill rockers that plateau instead of peak.

Unfortunately, Vek's voice outstays its welcome by the middle of the album. Leisure Seizure is front-loaded with its best material, such that the second half of the record becomes rather tedious.

It's an uneven but captivating album that sounds like an artist still looking for his stride and trying to balance between two extremes.

The soundtrack succeeds with taut moments of electronic beauty, but it just as quickly slips into a frustrating, self-defeating insularity. While the precise formula of Boy Harsher’s music hasn’t faltered, The Runner’s soundtrack lacks drive, or a deeper expansion of their sound: It feels more like the musical equivalent of an engine idling.

Across six tracks that clock in at over an hour in total, Long Trax 2 tends to melt in and out of the background, making it an ambient album that almost makes you want to wiggle a little, or a house album content to exist as wallpaper.

As it stands, Barbara feels like a meticulously carved treasure box to which one has lost the key—magnificent to behold, impossible to unlock.

The Black and White Album can feel, at times, thematically spastic, spinning more like a mixtape than a proper LP.

24K Magic is the rest of the park: rebuilt shinier and glitzier and safer, every element engineered to please more than the real thing, and with a hell of a tour guide. It’s not history, not even historical fiction, but harmless fun.

Jarvis is the record of someone losing hope, the sound of dejection turned up to 10.

Ultimately, they're at their most engaging when maintaining an ironic distance between subject matter and tone.

While Tha Carter IV isn't the first indication that Wayne's finest verses are behind him, it is the most glaring.

Recent hit single aside, Smith has somehow never felt further from pop’s molten core. It’s still a pleasure to watch a singer who once consigned themselves to lovesick, gender-neutral ballads spread their wings.

If you hate PC Music, you will continue to; if you love them, Reflections will not change that. But producer A. G. Cook’s done a lot since 2013, so inevitably, these tracks register less as individual Cook songs than as types of Cook song.

Them Crooked Vultures still feels like a record to be checked off a list rather than one to live with and fully invest in.

The album does have its charms. Cosentino is still in fine voice, and she continues to have a warm and agreeable persona... [Yet linear] thinking permeates The Only Place, a grinding sense of marks being hit while inspiration is in short order.

The purpose of Sun City doesn’t seem to be a cohesive project but a vehicle to throw seven different sounds into the world and see what sticks. Khalid comes out of the project, mostly the same, still the least controversial pop star we have right now.

When the ways Bodan tries to eliminate distance come together--the voice, the lyrics, the rawness of the emotion on display--the final product can induce claustrophobia. The effect is undeniably powerful, but there's a fine line between powerful and overwhelming, and his work should grow more potent as he manages to find a balance between the two.