With its obtuse rhythm and the inevitably impenetrable lyrics, Om offer their own truth, one with many questions and answers.

The Serenity of Suffering is easily Korn’s most diverse release; featuring melody, aggression, new sounds and old staples in just about equal measures wrapped into some of the band’s strongest songs in years.

Strictly speaking, it's a Gorillaz album in name only. You could commend Albarn on one hand, but then slap him with the other; the use of a 'rolling studio' and the latest in technology is inspired, but it ultimately represents the downfall of the album.

The end result is a record that runs quite average, there are some quality songs that can be picked from it ("We Are the Night," "Do it Again," "All Rights Reserved") but by itself it will lose many listeners.

The end result is a mish-mash of styles that leaves this LP somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean at the turn of the millennium.

By all means engage yourself in Tomorrow, In a Year, for the prize at the end is one of the essential experiences of the young year. Just understand the scope of the expedition you’re embarking upon before you go.

A gimmicky novelty album that has a handful of redeeming songs but will ultimately fade into the ether within a few months.

Ultimately, while there probably isn't anything here truly great enough to draw any more attention to the band, this is a perfectly good album that displays an awful lot of potential.

Repo isn't a bad record, but it's certainly the least fresh and consistent one I can remember Black Dice releasing and both of those traits are a big deal with 'difficult' music like this.

As with the self-titled release, Mind Over Matter front-loads its more accessible tunes.... Unfortunately, the album’s latter half is a little more hit and miss, with everything being competent enough in isolation, but arguably unengaging when amassed together.

There is just about enough top quality pop music on offer to ensure Snow Patrol’s star continues to grow on the world stage but, worryingly, A Hundred Million Suns is another middling affair from a by-now-mature pop act, and now might be the time to ask why.

It's really unfortunate that Inc. hasn't been able to elevate beyond these very basic production mistakes; they give an impression that No World was either unmastered or mastered haphazardly.

Femme Fatale, after all, is a flawed album, with lyrics that barely clear the level of a Ke$ha and a maturity level to match. But it's a pop album that's supposed to make you dance, and when it comes to that, there's not a star out there that can match Ms. Spears.

There’s glimmers of the old brilliance here and there of course. Exotic BOP may be a pale, miserable ghost of the glory days, but there’s life to be found in Angela, its funk line feeling like it's going to be the root of something that’s about to flourish, but whoops, there it goes into its weird low-effort basement style as Stas THEE Boss delivers a verse that’s passable enough, but which doesn’t do anything to dig the rest of the track from out of its own mire.

Outer South is too long, too uninteresting, and too uninspired to be anything better than not good at all.

They’re darn right they still belong, since Lostprophets have delivered an excellent album that is a reminder to all and sundry that this is a band with not only a storied past, but also a very bright future.

The bands debut album Tourist History is clearly far from original, yet it ultimately wins listeners over with its immediate, enthusiastic, likeable and catchy mixture of ingredients, which results in a sound that is certain to have toes tapping from the pubs to the clubs.

Bodies is a well put together album that will appease hungry fans, but it's not the injection of life that AFI so desperately needs at this stage of its career.

Its strongest moments don’t quite stand with the best that The Menzingers discography has to offer, but they’re well worth a listener’s time and showcase the group’s inherent songwriting prowess. What’s sad is to see a band now nearly 20 years into the career suddenly desiring to be entirely different, independent of the type of music they are writing and releasing.

his is the full realisation of the promise of blink-182 with Matt Skiba: the minor-key melodies and desolate lyrics of +44 brush up against a fully comfortable Skiba as lead vocalist, delivering his best vocals in fifteen years or more – all within the confines of a gleaming clean pop-punk production. ... The overproduction is frustrating both because his songwriting is at its best state in at least 10 years, and because for every generic pop moment there are subtle and fascinating production details to discover.

The brevity of this soundtrack makes for an overall calming effects with a few great moments.

Aureate Gloom distinguishes itself in Barnes’ catalog as its own inexplicable set of contradictions: a record rendered inert and sabotaged by its own ambitions.

Our Earthly Pleasures, in contrast to the water-tight radio punk of its predecessor, overflows with ideas, even if it’s to the detriment of the material.

The defense that it isn't trying, that it's just for kicks, would I guess be admissible if the songs weren't so entirely devoid of substance.

The very things that inspired Maybeshewill to make music in the first place--social unrest and robust melodies--are both absent on Fair Youth, and there isn’t a whole lot left to take their place.

Kintsugi suffers from many of the same flaws that have afflicted past releases, from a tendency to overthink arrangements to Gibbard’s more frequent relapses into trite turns of phrase and the occasional hint of immaturity.

If you get past this wall of noise, only bothering to burden Share the Joy for a freaky sixteen seconds, you'll find a record contained within its little motto, the noise dropped, the joy shared tenfold, the delightful "Dance (If You Wanna)" circling our heads, encouraging us with a smile.

A spunky, Hayley-driven vehicle that nonetheless proves that Paramore justly deserves whatever critical acclaim it was getting.