There are more than a few signs that the band will find the middle ground between the music that prospers live and the music that shines on record; Heirs is a frustrating reminder that they’re not there yet.

Most of these songs are melancholy and soft, waiting for a darkened sky to play to.

Musically, many of the songs here are not as melodic as the ones on TSAF and rely a bit too much on those blueprints. Nevertheless, the lyrics matter most in my opinion, while the music is just as engaging and easily sucks you in its universe. Dig it!

Just as Mosaic flows in easily, it flows out the same way.

This album has the feel of a “for us” record, one that rewards the band for making it and decides that it’s okay to create something deeply personal and a little self-indulgent.

The end result is that The Unforgiving is easily Within Temptation's most ambitious record, an album that benefits from an increased energy level and strong songwriting in order to deliver a collection of the band's strongest songs to date.

Time To Die has its heart in the right place, but the product is not as nearly lovable.

To be fair to the songwriters behind this record, "Make You Cry" is actually the worst thing here - when the sound abandon the '90s and either tries to sound like the '80s ("Heaven" is pure Stock, Aitken, and Waterman), or to be a bit more modern, the quality remains solid. But therein lies the one major flaw of 3 Words - it's simply not consistent enough in terms of sound.

Nightmare is a completely different offering; even though it still has highly questionable moments, it's obvious that a genuine effort was put in, and that's enough reason to listen.

Each of the album's thirteen tracks passes by without any fuss or fight; every song blending into one long blob of grey matter that leaves such little impression in spite of repeated listens.

Although the album barely brings its head above the water-line marked "passable", it's still too slick, too unified and too perfectly structured to convince you that apart from the vocals of Stanley and Simmons, the rest of the album is nothing more than a hodge-podge of contributions from various pony-tailed musos from somewhere sunny.

Get Hurt may go down as The Gaslight Anthem's worst album to date, but that's not much of an assessment: a difficult Gaslight record is still a really good album, and it's commendable to experiment, evolve, or otherwise try something new.

Where the album ultimately succeeds is in its song-craft, with everything from its diversity and song structures clearly improving, without significantly forsaking the trio's effortlessly catchy and engaging melodies.

Ultimately Kids in the Street will go down as a solid album that is an ambitious and interesting grower... Nothing more, nothing less.

By pop standards you could do a lot worse, but ÷ is not an album that will test the ceiling of Sheeran’s tantalizing potential.

Overall, All Visible Objects acts as a love letter to the early ‘90s techno/trance/rave scene, albeit in a pop-instilled way. Moby pays his respects to the respective era, blending various sounds from his discography into what plays like a smoothly sequenced, nostalgia party mixtape.

Nothing is just what it brazenly titles itself as – an empty record, one lacking the sometimes questionable but more often than not intriguing experimentation and oddball weirdness that might not have made their earlier records great, but at least made them interesting.

As a whole, the album is a well-executed pop punk album and shows that Yellowcard are better than the average band.

IV Play succeeds in spades with its production and songwriting.

So while Stronger has its redeeming moments, they mostly come when Clarkson does what she is renowned for doing and has already done better. It is a little too heavy on the balladry and serious tones, which are the same things that doomed her other two slightly lesser received albums.

Born to Die is a brilliant album, but it's one that leaves room for a few improvements, and inspires confidence that they'll happen.

The [line-up] present on Ersatz G.B. were also present for 2008's Imperial Wax Solvent and 2010's Your Future, Our Clutter, records that showed enough touches of class, craft and ingenuity to reassure The Fall's notoriously hardcore following that the future was surprisingly rosy.

Gravebloom is a fun album. Honest. But it’s also a rehash, plain and simple. Nothing done across its eleven tracks hasn’t been done on previous Acacia Strain records.

While there's little substance to be found on 48:13, it can either turn you off from the beginning or get under your skin, making for a harmless listen where you occasionally bang your head to the catchy highlights.

Abnormally Attracted to Sin is, by quite some distance, her weakest album yet.

Just as the Arctic Monkeys do not belong in the American desert, Hard-Fi has little to no place at a London rave. It is such a waste really, since the catchy songwriting nous that still makes Killer Sounds bearable, is also why it is such a disappointment.

The record’s energy is impressive; the craft, even more so. What it doesn’t have, though, is any sense of vision, nothing of that dangerous excess or discovery that the best Cut Copy provides in spades. Instead, Haiku From Zero ends up being a bunch of great songs and little else.

Requiem for Hell is anything but acceptable. It's lazy, trite, mundane, dull, and every other superficial adjective that's been thrown at the genre.