In short, The Book of Souls is what every heavy metal fan might want a new Iron Maiden record to be and more.

While often a little too unfocused, The Anthropocene Extinction is a fine addition to their catalog.

As a result of their indulgence, The Night Creeper feels somewhat forced to be something it isn't. The mindset is far from what we heard on Vol. I and Blood Lust, although the ideas are the same. Recycling is good, however, 4 albums later it turned against them.

Depression Cherry is a startlingly easy record to get lost in.

On balance, Lost Worker Bee simply does not do enough to distinguish itself from the rest of Elbow’s oeuvre, and therein lies its greatest failing.

M is painfully bland and too on the nose.

With the progressive-pop-doom hybrid that Ghost have crafted on Meliora, with the occult aesthetic running in parallel to the music--is a resounding victory for the Swedish sextet and is assuredly the band's strongest album to date.

While the album also has its fair share of bona fide, looks-like-we-just-broke-the-bottom-of-the-barrel moments ("Fire It Up" instantly comes to mind here), Disturbed manage to do just enough to keep metal purists from dispensing with them completely.

Positive Songs for Negative People lives up to its name and is an enjoyably straight forward record. Unfortunately, the album’s biggest strength also holds it back from ranking among his finest, as the overarching optimism makes the record feel slightly thin and superficial compared to his previous offerings.

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.

HEALTH have never sounded as focused as they do here. These are sounds that will grab you by the hair and drag you where you need to go. It’s control of a potentially unpleasant, entirely intoxicating sort.

The Most Lamentable Tragedy is the product of one of the best punk bands of our time making music in their prime, and when you factor in the level of ambition present, you’re left with a rock opera for the ages.

This is a beautiful, cohesive album that stirs so many emotions and speaks for itself. It might not be as immediate or as catchy as ADD, but does the most important thing: paving new grounds.

Edginess and quirkiness aside, the band's latest is an immaculately constructed beast that never straggles behind or overstays its welcome.

[A] foggy, glorious mess of an album.

This is the sound of a cohesive unit letting it rip in the studio for by far the shortest album of their careers--and not a note is misplaced or wasted, despite how (intentionally) messy it sounds.

It’s reductive and doesn’t help really anyone by saying the hooks just aren’t there on the level they used to be, but it’s telling that I searched the rest of Currents in vain for anything as immediate as the crashing waterfall of multitracked vocals on the chorus to “The Moment.”

Hammer of the Witches is the post-Midian release fans have been asking for while retaining the riff-oriented sound the band have been attempting for the past 15 years--only this time they’ve actually pulled it all off.

These tracks of moderate length are dull and lack any sort of imagination or emotional intensity.

Although Freedom isn’t the return fans were hoping for, there’s enough experimentation here to at least remind old fans of what made them adore the band in the first place.

Pale Horses easily stands on its own as one of the year’s better albums. It entails almost all of the band’s greatest strengths, with the vigor that comes from a renewed focus on the post-hardcore stylings of yesteryear.

Restless Ones can’t quite translate their live show to record (2005’s Stairs and Elevators remains the high water mark for that), but it does perhaps the best job yet of mediating between the band’s ragged past and its veteran road warrior present.

On Connector, the accomplished quartet have recorded an immersive album that is not only satisfying in the moment, but also reveals further layers and textures upon subsequent listening.

It’s hard to move past this when there’s so much going on but, whether we expect to like it or not--which mostly translates to whether we expect to be able to put up with him or not, we owe it to Universal Themes to try. Despite his behaviour, it's still a great album.

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.

This rather back-loaded LP--which has fittingly been released in time for the Northern hemisphere summer--will not only go down a treat live, but also rates as Four Year Strong’s best record to date.

Although the softer moments here are only soft in comparison to the dazzling cacophony that usually accompanies her songs, Welch does seem more confident here letting her pipes do the heavy lifting.

It remodels slabs of wax in a way that not only acknowledges but embraces the pop potential those snippets of sound have been denied for so long.