A patchy, flawed effort.

As a whole, the album feels less definite, less driven, than the 'Want…' albums, which is both a strength and a weakness.

While there’s no denying that Metallica have produced a huge – and welcome – blast from the past, it also represents a monolithic slab of noise that stretched over 11 songs and 75 minutes is just too dense and daunting to be truly enjoyable.

It's all hugely ridiculous, of course, but executed with a surprising amount of passion.

this is pretty much all good stuff. So why does it feel like there's something missing? Haven's problem is their chosen genre - epic, ball busting indie, guitars that jangle, then jangle harder, vocals that ride melody like diseases might pterodactyls.

The question is: do you actually need another disc like this, given that it doesn't quite have that sense of otherness that Boards of Canada have in spades, or that sound-as-texture that Aphex Twin utilised so sumptiously on 'Richard D James', or Amon Tobin's truly forward looking drum programming.

'Exciter' stakes a hell of a claim on bringing Depeche Mode into the 21st century.

When they're good, they're alright, but when they're bad, they're unstoppable and Dirty Vegas' biggest mistake so far is that, sometimes, they're not nearly filthy enough.

A sprawling beast that's unexpectedly heavy on the instrumental front.

Offers the sound of Stereolab doing what they do best. Love it or hate it, it won't alter the world, it just is.

Not, perhaps, the hugest of leaps from 'The Noise Made By People', granted, but that album, fine though it was, was very much parking on specific continental territory; 'Ha Ha Sound', by contrast, feels like it wants to explore somewhere more bearingless.

'Lovebox' doesn't quite scale Vertigo's dizzy heights, but it'll be perfectly at home both in clubs and in your lounge.

It's crude, certainly, but Ludacris has enough wit and chutzpah to elevate this above the dross.

Despite its many wondrous moments, 'Feels' is not a record for everyone.

The whole experience becomes rather draining after a few listens.

While the record lacks any of [Queens of the Stone Age's] belligerent twisted rock weirdness they have definitely pumped up the Good Charlotte-style teen anthem choruses.

'Silence Is Easy' is non-challenging "pretty pretty" music for early-ageing types who might recoil at anything without an acoustic guitar and tomtoms.

It's a bloody nice record, which may be damning them with faint praise but it's an area they've stalked out for themselves immensely likably.

There are some fillers on 'Shootenanny!' like 'Rock Hard Times', which means it's never going to be an absolute classic, but it's good to hear E is suffering a little less despair than he's been forced to tolerate in the past.

There's an abundance of softly slashing guitar, an air of sophistication writ indelibly large by its orchestration (with the string-laden weepie 'Epitaph' as probably the outstanding example), and, wrapped in Arnar's strong tones, there's more moodyness than you can shake a particularly angsty stick at.

Musically there's nothing on 'Stars of CCTV' that stands out as particularly innovative or imaginative[;] it's above average modern indie fare made with gusto by people who want to make records that sound like the records they like: The Clash, The Specials, The Verve and a bunch of other bygone Britpoppers.

On a first listen it sounds very long. On a second listen it sounds just like the eponymous debut, with the odd anthem missing. On a third listen we have to concede there are some fine moments.

The album suffers from serious momentum problems. You get something that hammers in a good and interesting way and then a few minutes later it's like the tap of a blue tit's beak on a milk bottle top.

This is a rather stronger record than [Daft Punk's] on the whole, even if it likewise suffers from flaws in execution.

More often than not displays a penchant for melody and tension which would shame many of the new millennium's pop pups.

It's hard to truly love a band that are so chameleonic that they sacrifice signature definition for adventurousness.

Whereas their debut album 'Good Health' saw the unlikely and frankly scary collision of Fuzazi and Rocket From The Crypt, 'The New Romance' leans resolutely on the emo-punk side.

This might be quality above innovation, but it’s also maturity above cliché, and above all, passion over cynicism.

It's slinky, suave chill-out music, gently exotic, best listened to lounging on throws amongst cushions.

Sandoval has a voice quite unlike almost any other and perfectly suited to stark, narcoleptic laments, which is what this, with a couple of curious-if-brief instrumental diversions, delivers on a regular basis.

It's a joy to listen to but tough to recommend.

The Information is as creative, tuneful and interesting as you could wish from an established artist.

'Public Warning' is a good record. It's just unfortunate that (no doubt at the behest of the major label moneymen) Sov's Stateside commitments have led to it emerging here rather bloated, feebly, and late.

'Kratitude' is a far from flawless record and can be a little too hip for its own good.

Whether this is an album that actually suits them is another matter, but it actually makes them feel entirely relevant and, for as prolific a decade-old band, that’s high praise indeed.

KW's album can only be thought of as even remotely good while we don't have a young, hungry KRS One, RZA, Rakim Allah, Gift of Gab or Ol Dirty Bastard to challenge him.

A third of this record sounds like the Cocteau Twins covering Enya, and another third sounds like a trip-hop Blind Melon... But the other third is pure Muggs.

Despite their reputation for distinctiveness parts of 'The Tipping Point' feel distinctly under par by the Roots own high standards suggesting that the departures of MC Malik B (Slacks) and human beatboxers Scratch and Rahzel have, in some ways, led to a successive narrowing down of the range of the Roots' previously loose and eclectic sound.

I usually find Shins albums grow on me slowly but surely yet after a good dozen plays I feel my faith isn't being repaid this time, and as a fan that's frustrating.

An album that exudes both class and conviction, and it's a welcome breather from the avalanche of beautiful introspection that's come to characterise 2001.

Many tunes possess an open, spacious quality, as if waiting for the jigsaw’s last piece.

The lyrics, insincere as they are, grate somewhat, but the spastic grove cannot be denied they're a bit like a pervy, conservative Devo, with more earwax.

This is a record that brattily demands total attention, and as such, will either be lauded as a bold journey, or derided as pretentious indulgence.

There is, undoubtedly, something impressive in the craft and detail of Plaid’s labours, but the whole lacks an intangible something to lodge their 'Spokes' securely in our hearts.

The production is simplicity itself, and by the end you won't remember 'Remember Today' from 'Every Stitch', and you won't know whether 'End To Begin' is at the beginning or the end, or even in the middle.

The Killers album is, whisper it, pretty good in places.

They actually sound like they've elected to live in a cocoon full of aromatic candles, a huge collection of musty records, some drugs, some books, and a collection of mid eighties Peel sessions alphabetically labelled on TDK C90s.

OK, so it tails off towards the end, and there's something rather dishonest about a band so young releasing a track like '1969', but even then it's quite endearing to see them trying to build such an immediate mythology around themselves.

It’s stripped down, tough and raw, but a world away from any gangsta pose – this is more inward facing, an attempt to expand the horizons of hip-hop, striving for a new rap language, with a free flow sprawl of image and polemic.

'Panda Park' is a strange record, though whether you think it's any good or not depends on your tolerance levels.

The Ponys are the band Black Rebel Motorcycle tried so desperately hard to be.

It's a mastery of creating fantastic dirges, then manipulating them into slithering beasts backed by tight drums, precise guitar scratches, and Dunis' quavering vocals that rescues 'We're Animals'.

Unfortunately a lot of the record falls a wee bit flat.

A decidedly schizophrenic experience, if a frequently beautiful and, at the very least, relentlessly promising one.

A decent album, then. But one containing an EP that would've had us going "!!!!!".

Much of 'Trust' dallies down the dark end of the street, where graceful Velvet Undergroundisms lounge around sharing tabs with gentle folk implosions.

A totally modern album that manages to nearly ignore his wilful, malicious past and embrace the California smog/sun with a polished fervour that is almost nauseating to witness.

Alright, so there's no 'Destroy The Heart', the lyrics are uniformly unremarkable, and the odd track is even, dare we say, a touch ropey... 'Days Run Away' is still better than it's got any right to be, and a marginally heroic homecoming with it.

Dubious lyrics notwithstanding, this is exactly the kind of album that a formerly drug-addled, ludicrously randy, city-dazzled English suburban boy ought to be making when he reaches the onset of middle age.

Interpol prove themselves to be men on a mission to take us back to a time when long faces and even longer overcoats were de rigeur for alpha males the musical world over.

As an exercise in hubris and chutzpah it's a rather fascinating affair.

For those who looked forward to the new genre-leading direction in downbeat dance that would come with the next Massive Attack album... well, let's just say the major challenge you'll face with '100th Window' is deciding whether there is a hidden track or that 'Antistar' is really a 22-minute song with an excessively long silent bit in the middle.

While it's got to be said 'Amerika's Nightmare' certainly has its moments over the space of a complete album the familiar themes and reference points start to feel a shade tired and predictable.

Almost everything about 'Kicking The National Habit' is righteously unfashionable.

Some of this record is excellent and after all this time they can still sound like four teenagers kicking up a racket in a rehearsal room.

'Happiness In Magazines' is likely to make you smile, and may even have you remembering a bygone era when Blur provided the soundtrack.

They still sound as spunky and powerful as they were nearly two decades ago when they kicked off this long-term assault on American culture.

Great album though this is in it's own right, the failing of 'The Endless Not' is that it just sounds like it's happy to play safe. No shocks, no surprises... and , sadly, none of what made TG arguably, together with the Sex Pistols, THEE most important force in the evolution of modern popular music.

Nearly every line contains a shock, a sharp intake of breath. To say this album is worth more as a social document than a musical one is no insult.

This is no whimsical, fey take on folk music, rather a bold, buoyant frug with the skeletons of The Doors, Teardrop Explodes and other likeminded explorers of the stoned side.

Whereas 2001's 'Confield' often felt like a thankless task 'Draft 7.30' is often, by Autechre standards at any rate, a much more welcoming beast.

If 2002's 'High Society' found them honing their nascent pop sense then this effort finds the New York trio sounding almost too cool for their own good.

A lap or two behind many of the albums it seemingly aspires to be (Cat Power, Radiohead, Fiona Apple and Elliott Smith comparisons have been made before and seem almost invited) 'Knives...' still has enough personality and original thought to shield it from accusations of simple derivation.

'Cassadaga' is much less of a draining emotional journey for both chief player and listener alike than Bright Eyes previous work.

There's way too much power balladry, rawk guitar, Steven Tyler and MTV-by-numbers to make a genuinely stand-out record.

There are tunes galore, and ideas that some groups would do someone in for, it’s just a shame he decided to do an approximation of all his favourite bands, and didn’t try something a bit more progressive than 'Rock‘n’Roll'.

When 'A Drug Problem That Never Existed' is at its best, briefest and most brutish, it's a cracking piece of work indeed; daft, dirty and, in many ways, devilish.

It's painstakingly layered and often lush, but sometimes scrubby and miserably sparse.

Only problem is, though, Ladytron still sound too self-consciously detached and robotic for us to view this as a great leap forward.

The trouble is that Jay is stuck in an artistic straitjacket of his own making.

It doesn't strictly feel like a No Doubt album at all.

The sonic palette here is just so relentlessly perfect that, for me, it becomes constricting and cloying.

There's an 80s Anglophilic feel throughout, and like the era they're paying homage to it's all very hit and miss.

Now there was nothing wrong with Stone Temple Pilots, but anyone who’d hoped for Guns‘n’Roses mark II (or III) will be very seriously disappointed. Weiland’s dry, powerful voice cancels out the music, like light cancels out dark, or Owen Wilson cancels out Ben Stiller.

It nods in so many directions that our heads should be spinning, but the gel in the system is a linear production ethic that weaves the threads whilst keeping it refreshingly rough.

This ain’t no classic.

A joyously audacious opening salvo.

It's like a thicker, dirtier Good Charlotte.

Most of the time 'Lowedges' is so laid-back in Hawley's well-bedded-in, Fifties crooner way, it almost buries itself.

As an album, the thing seems to suffer from a lack of texture, variation, and (dare we suggest) innovation.

'Apropa't' sounds as organic as a dump and as lush as a drizzly sunset.

In isolation you can imagine any of these songs may have appeared over the last 10 years giving a warm comforting feel, but listened in its entirety the effect is strangely soporific, a steady morphine drip running from start to end.

You'd probably want Missy to wash her hands before she got anywhere near a real kitchen if this album is anything to go by. The perv.

Blueberry Boat is a frustrating, niggling, great idea of a record.

Most of this album, basically, doesn't work.

Iggy's own production fails to lift it out of the nu-metal quagmire - sometimes the perfectly executed power chords and unimaginative guitar licks feel every bit as raw and dangerous as Bowie's Tin Machine farrago.

'Pocket Symphony' fails to grab in the same way that previous Air albums have and places too large an emphasis on mood, texture and composition to ever really be anything other than polite background music.

Ultimately, this is merely a straight-down-the-line rock'n'roll album.