Zeit is imperfect, but there’s so much to be savoured here, and aspects you won’t get from any other Rammstein album.

The Long Road North is a more sophisticated record than A Dawn to Fear, and Cult of Luna’s reputation for steely competence is quite at home in its various details and refinements. It’s less contingent on the intensity of individual moments, benefitting more from a pervasive atmosphere of the risky-wilderness-journey variety.

Super Champon’s genius lies in the way it brings this relatively complex subject matter down to a set of laser-sharp bangers, all supported with just enough English to resonate either side of the Anglosphere frontier.

It wouldn’t be a Pineapple Thief record if we weren’t served some moody tracks. There are less than usual (no complaints about that) and often spiced with louder sections throughout.

Regardless of its intention, whether vapid or passive-aggresively referrential, SHE IS COMING is really, really fun. It bounces from eye-roll-inducing to warmly dazzling without asking whether or not it should.

The end result is an album that passes by without any significant misfires, and at least a handful of headshots. It's probably a stretch to say that he's met the potential signified by the queue of people within the industry that have recognised his talent and reached out to him, but TYRON's best cuts provide further unequivocal evidence that there is something special about Tyron Frampton.

Spiral in a Straight Line strives to strike a balance. It’s a collection of great songs, varies in pace, and is recognisably Touché.

There's a fair bit of tension in his rhymes and it works for him. Earl upholds a dangerous, unpredictable presence--when he slurs “step into the shadows, we can talk addiction” in “Grief” there aren't many who would take up the offer--but at times he holds himself wide open.

Dream Weapon, bold reimagining that it is, could well be the line in the sand that releases the four-piece from the shackles of their historic hallmarks. The dream of another Dead Mountain Mouth or Board Up the House may have been shattered, but a new, better dream may yet be forged from the pieces. Here’s to finding out.

The album feels wonderfully grounded as such, and is ideally placed as an ambassador for the open-heartedness, peace, and healing that are as key to new age as its otherworldly mystique.

A higher level of ambition and a confident balance of the various changes in tone is felt all over the record. While not all of the flaws from the new Opeth are gone, the band are giving their full effort and showing off how creative they have always been, and still are without doubt. Renewed inspiration and a fine balance between the dark and light sides of Opeth’s music make In Cauda Venenum their best work since Heritage.

They return with something more uniquely insidious than anything heard from the label so far, something which attacks and intoxicates in equal measure, completely assured of its success and all the more awe-inspiring for it.

Even though this LP may not be a complete game-changer, they are certainly on the right path to come out with one sooner rather than later.

As entertaining as this album may be, a lot of these songs, needless to say, feel rather parched of vitality.

A return-to-punk that simultaneously honours Green Day's history of arena-friendly alternative rockers, full of adrenaline and feeling. A mere four years after the execrable Father of All Motherfuckers, it may qualify as a minor miracle.

The good thing is that all songs have a character of their own and hence an appreciable replay value.

IV Play succeeds in spades with its production and songwriting.

For old school fans of the band, Dying of Everything would be more than enough. ... for newcomers, this might be an issue, as we're not in the 90s anymore, and to impress a new generation of metalheads that think this or that deathcore album “could use more blast beats”, Obituary would need to submit themselves to a change that isn't feasible or realistic.

Rivers' lyrics are just as bad as they've always been, the band's sense of pop-song structure is still the backbone of every track, but that doesn't matter when everyone is having fun.

Sure, The End of the Middle might not be as breathtakingly immersive as Ruby Cord or as transportive as Peasant, but it further cements Dawson's place as modern folk's most fascinating auteur, turning historical echoes into something eerily prophetic.

If you’re looking for something with a bit more bite and ambition, you might be a little disappointed with what’s on offer. In spite of that, this is easily one of the strongest rock albums to come from 2023 so far, and if you’re a fan of the band or you enjoy the genre in general, this is sure to quench the majority of people’s thirst.

Eight albums into their career, Jimmy Eat World still know how to generate and craft some brilliant songs, but most importantly, they continue to demonstrate a keen sense for how to connect with any audience.

They delivered neither a classic nor an embarrassing flop that revealed them as a flavour-of-the-week fancy, but just a pretty good album with room to improve.

Brown still raps like he's from the future, it's just a timeline less removed from ours where Tribe Called Quest nostalgia and retro instrumentation is fully in vogue. Of course, this being Danny Brown we're never getting an easy meal, and some of the best moments see him shaking it up once again.

The negative bits that afflict the songwriters individually--clunky lyrics, a tendency to trend towards clutter, influences taking up whole damn sleeves--certainly remain here, but somehow, together, the couple’s issues never overwhelm, never distract from the Raconteurs’ thesis statement of just making great, concise rock songs.

First Flower feels like a reclusive album emotionally, lyrically, and musically--but it’s one that actively strives to break through. It feels like being trapped inside your own thoughts, battling with the kinds of choices that incrementally alter your life on a daily basis.

The Last Act of Defiance isn’t here to dazzle you with musicianship and diversity, it’s here to bludgeon in a way that only good hardcore can.

Metal Galaxy is easily the best and most entertaining release of Babymetal’s career, featuring a diverse array of songs that are all capably carried by Suzuka’s proficient vocals, improved songwriting, and an excellent production.

At the end of the day, there is little doubt that listeners will enjoy The Satanist, because it provides in copious quantities what has made Behemoth a staple in the extreme metal community for over twenty years, while keeping their shortcomings to a minimum.

Home is a sometimes captivating, occasionally flawed, but always intriguing release.

WORLD WIDE WHACK is just another example of how Tierra Whack is so good at carefully removing the barriers between vocal performances, genres, and even emotions that it always ends up looking like no trouble at all.

While not reinventing the wheel, and still struggling with occasional blandness, there are plenty of moments here which simply provoke more excitement and emotion than I’ve felt from Foo Fighters’ music for a while.

An hour of ambitious song structures, disparate vocal and instrumental performances, and lyrical esoterica concerning Houston, tied together by Travis Scott’s affection for autotune and lowest common denominator rhymes and flows. Which isn’t particularly characteristic of a great rapper, but is more or less the ingredients of great music.

Its songs are generally brisk, compositions tame, nuances readily graspable and holistic color palette decidedly uniform.

While it has highlights aplenty, they seem the kind of highlights that would fare better outside of the context of Listening To A Whole Album In 2022. ... As a start-to-finish experience, there’s a tendency for things to melt together as momentum flags, the sequencing grates, or you find yourself paying less than your most devout attention to the swiftly passing milieu.

In spite of its occasional eccentricities, shapeless is daine’s most accessible project yet.

Fragile, mysterious, and powerful, Preservation is one of the most elusively passionate albums of the year.

Subtly exploring pop, soul and contemporary R&B, the nineteen year old recalls everyone from Lauryn Hill to Alicia Keys, and Lorde to Rihanna, on this thirty-five minute record... Often within the same song!

Where Magdalene found itself virtually overburdened by its own emotional weight, this album is almost ponderously short of it, yet malleable and playful in a way that vindicates its escapist bent.

Asphalt Meadows not only lives up to but truly, actually fulfils the promise of Death Cab for Cutie – of music not always new, or unique, or 'experimental', but always, always genuine, and always, always packed with meaning and emotion.

This record does nothing to convince Kurt Vile skeptics to jump on the bandwagon, but for the already-converted it will also do nothing to drive them away. Indeed, this is certainly one of the singer-songwriter’s stronger efforts, even coming eight LPs into his solo career.

It’s easily the most charming she’s ever been--she's no master hunter, but she doesn't need to be.

It’s occasionally a little oblique (“Turquoise Hyperfuzz”’s rhythmic breakdowns feel purpose-built to add a little edge to what’s otherwise the IDM version of straight candyfloss), but packs little of the clutter so often associated with µ-Ziq's quintessential-but-not-quite-essential style.

As bewildering as Will can be, the overall lack of structure leaves a large part of the experience up to the imagination.

In the end, The Brian Jonestown Massacre isn’t among the band’s top 3, most accomplished efforts, however, it represents very well the gist of their sound. Moreover, it is one of their most consistent and cohesive LPs, offering something for most fans out there.

Overall, Anathema have struck gold for the third time in a row, but for the first time there are some prominent flaws as well.

All in all, Bright Magic is one more solid entry into the duo's catalogue.

The Beggar is definitely flawed as a front-to-back experience, but it's also the most engaging release that Swans have put out since To Be Kind.

In short, it’s a Wolf Parade album. Much like last year’s EP4, the aperitif the band dropped prior to a reunion tour, however, it sometimes leans too far on the formulaic side of things to leave a real lasting impact.

Despite being derivative, Esoteric Warfare is worthy of praise, because it keeps alive a sound practised by merely a handful of outfits, some of them sadly disbanded.

One More Light sees the band embracing its melodic core, and offering no apologies as they expound upon it.

There are minor exceptions here – the wondrous flourishes of opener "COLORATURA", the lilting inflections Aoba rides on "Luciférine", the aching nostalgia of the centrepiece "FLAG" (for my money, the one true Aoba classic here in every sense of the word) – but you'll be hard-pressed to find a record so full of subtle details that puts so little emphasis on the spectacle of individual moments, that drifts so freely within itself.

It's hard to be overly harsh on the band for getting too hung up on a good thing, even if there's a missing something holding Cartwheel back from knockout excellence. Get your twelve-year-old into it; be your own twelve-year-old to it; ravage yourself on caffeine with it.

All of the songs here have excellent qualities to them but have their momentum jarred by some by-the-numbers moments. ... These flaws are not new though, and they don’t stop Senjutsu from being another solid album in the new-millennium Iron Maiden catalogue.

If you felt Be More Kind and No Man’s Land missed the mark, FTHC will remind you of why you fell for Frank in the first place.

E S T A R A is not as strong an album as Ardour, not as surprising because it couldn’t possibly be. But in its own, attenuated, scattered-birds way, this album is everything we could have hoped for.

Overall, Strawberry Hotel manages to create a very dynamic experience, especially by introducing shorter tracks. Only during its latter half it starts meandering, a thing that could have been avoided had a couple of intense numbers been introduced at the right moments. Nevertheless, the album is another successful entry in Underworld’s catalogue, one that seems to be a grower this time around.

It's a shade overlong and overuse of certain choruses dampen the calculated effect of a few songs, but these flaws are barely noticeable when set against how gut-punch raw and earnest the writing is.

Norah Jones may be the same artist who sang “Don’t Know Why” on the beach 22 years ago, but that doesn’t mean she hasn’t taken steps to advance or update her core sound. Visions is solid proof of this.

Even with an eight-year gap between, it's easy to think of Final Transmission as a sister album to White Silence. The facts of each album's creation are remarkably similar, down to being nine-song hitters largely recorded in practice spaces rather than a recording studio proper. The difference, of course, is that Final Transmission is short and raw by necessity rather than choice.

It absolutely rests on Big Red Machine and Fiona Apple's heavy lifting with the bookends; IDLES and Courtney Barnett deliver fine but uninspiring retreads of the originals, whereas more electronic indie-pop renderings of "Dsharpg" and "One Day" absolutely pale in comparison.

It’s a very digestible and fun debut LP.

The production is a tad artificial at times, way less organic than the somber, daring spirit of Opus Eponymous, but every instrument is performed with impressive precision by every ghoul, and Forge's vocals sound on point most of the time, save for some grating moments when he seems to fall out of character. The added backing vocals and the meticulous arrangements enhance greatly the album's overall sound, but the question remains if these sorts of embellishments are enough for the loyal sheep to keep their faith on what the Clergy is feeding them.

Skinty Fia won't tell you much about whether that vein of insecurity that runs below the band's surface level of confidence can fuel good art indefinitely; in its best moments, though, it may make you want to hear the band crack open that ground and let their strangest selves out completely.

Blackbox Life Recorder 21f / in a room7 F760 ends up a glorified, if very welcome, double-single as such: its satisfaction lies less in an end-to-end listen and much more in the binge mileage of its cornerstone tracks. Aphex Twin's sound is in as vitalised as it's ever been, but this release also suggests that a little contortion is more vital to his matrix than some may have thought.

At its core, The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here is a rock solid record that sees Alice In Chains settling in the confines of their own style.

What sets the album apart from what they’ve churned out the past 18 years is its ability to channel exactly what has always made them great, while injecting a renewed sense of genuine musical creativity that finally sticks it to the tired notion that all they needed to do was play around with a new gimmick.

There are times where the record behaves so obtusely it could be trying to shut its own audience out (example: the conflicting rhythms in Bread directly averse to a “population of people who deal in cliché”), but finding the hidden entry points is half the fun. The other half is trying not to trip up on your way in.

The Men have given up on trying any sort of innovation here, and instead seem to have set out to simply jam some rockin’ tunes at high volume. Call me a simple man, but yeah, it’s pretty great.

Make no mistake--this is the record that Linkin Park know they should have made seven years ago.

All in all, these more "experimental" tracks had some very pleasant surprises, with "Golden" including sax leads and Clementine singing in a whispery register that falls outside of her usual belting.

Comprised of bass-driven pop turns (see the hooky backing vocals of ‘Formaldehyde’) and evocative mood pieces containing occasional flourishes of Americana (courtesy of American co-producer Jacquire King), nothing in the album’s solid latter half will reach out and grab you. However, there is just enough diversity evident in these tunes to stave off indifference and reward repeated listening.

Goon surpasses any suggestion of mediocrity by a significant margin.

Shepherd Head is undoubtedly a solid release, especially considering the u-turns which make it, clearly, a different kind of Young Jesus record. While I’m not sure that the album’s scattershot nature will endear it to a broader audience, its tenuous genre affiliations leave a potentially wide range of listeners in the crosshairs.

Even if she is done splaying out the furthest boundaries of her sound, one can hardly complain that she's doubling down on the qualities she's always excelled at when she sounds as refreshed and refreshing as she does here.

While not without its songwriting inconsistencies, The Enduring Spirit has the supreme merit of forging ahead and exploring new prog(ish) territory, unafraid to take risks or sow distrust and confusion among the more conservative fanbase.

Immolation’s music has once again taken a familiar form, only to contort it so as to spell out your inescapable fate.

For a debut, it’s confident and consistent, moving fluidly through a range of styles and executing it all convincingly, while also conveying a sense of emotion. The biggest gripe is that while the album taken together flows nicely and remains engaging, there also aren’t any tunes which make for proper stunners in their own right. That’s ok for now, though.

There’s so much room for everything to breath and flourish. Olympic Girls takes it slow, and we’re given the perfect chance for reflection through the mid-tempo bliss.

This is a significantly more rustic album than All Mirrors, with major country and folk influences joining that album’s lush art pop sound. Even the songs which lean towards the latter style are often gentle and delicate. It’s also a record which feels infinitely more personal.

On the whole, you’re getting looped, repetitious hooks that are accommodating the style of music being run with. Overall though, Melanie continues to deliver new music to a great standard, which, given how long she’s been in the game, is testament to her talents.

It is simply a good collection of good songs, put together by talented folks to showcase their obvious talents.

Small blemishes aside, CAPRISONGS is cool, calm, composed, and immediately apparent.

Dark Rainbow is the sound they’ve been chasing for five years now, and while it’s not perfect, and lacks the raw edge their earlier works were so good at, it’s definitely a sound I can get onboard with.

Ultimately, regardless of how invested you choose to be in the sentiments of pessimism and dejection, Asphalt for Eden is thoughtful and eclectic, blending elements of shoegaze, industrial, boom-bap, and ambience both sedative and rousing. All the while, it balances a grim, overarching societal direction with a thwarted attitude.

Ultimately, though, the bulk of Holy Fire is another sterling addition to Foals’ repertoire, and the band knows it too.

here’s nothing wrong with hearing these well-written songs, packed with sashaying grooves and wobbly synths, but by the mid-section of the record there is a definite sagging point, and the album doesn’t feel as effortless to listen to as Loner did. Even so, this is as enjoyable to listen to as its former, it’s just a shame that it doesn’t progress Caroline all that much as an artist.

If you’re a fan of Static-X, this is a candid labour of love that moves away from the stigma these releases are known for. It might not be reinventing the wheel, and it may sound like a time capsule dug up from the nu-metal burial ground, but for fans of that time period or fans of the band, there’s no denying its charm.

Present Tense is a comfort album on the pleasant side of catchy; it’s the perfect collection of songs to augment your mood when the weather climbs to twenty-something centigrade.

While not as ambitious as it could have been, Your Wilderness serves as a needed push in a new direction for Soord and co. Whether Harrison remains in the band or not, this will hopefully stand in their impressive discography as a stepping stone to even more lofty explorations for the future.

If you liked the Com Truise of old, you will almost certainly enjoy this, and if you've ever been skeptical about the quality of music that chillwave would be able to produce, Wave 1 should dispel all doubts. Highly recommended.

Memento Mori’s biggest flaw is the middle section, as the respective songs don’t really stand out. Of course, they remain decent at the very least, “Before We Drown” being perhaps the one to return to most. Other than that, this is another solid Depeche Mode album with a handful of highlights that fans should definitely add to their playlists.

Musically, we get a wider array of genres, reminiscing their eclectic classic Feast Of Wire, released in 2003. Nevertheless, Edge Of The Sun flows smoothly from start to finish.

30 might not have been the cleanest of breakups, but it more than translates in lyrical form.

The album endears itself with a simpler style and digestible runtime provided the ridiculous 60s synths and wee-ooh vocals don't immediately turn you off. It clearly will not go down in anyone's book as a classic release, but for a change it's a Pumpkins album that's aware of that fact, cleverly baking that unassuming simplicity into every note and half-nonsense lyric.

It’s a consistently, gorgeously understated record.

While it sounds as though the band are still working on perfecting their recent power/thrash/prog formula that started being established with The Power Within, everything's beginning to be pieced together quite nicely.

No one is ever going to mistake Genexus for anything other than a Fear Factory release, but the band’s slight alterations have produced a change in sound that is minor in execution, yet significant in scope.