Whatever Funk’s motivation in pumping out yet another breakcore grenade in his long line of breakcore grenades, My Love is a Bulldozer is at the very least an engaging listen--make of that what you will.

The massive hooks and catchy choruses that the band has forever been associated with also return, providing Lowborn with some of the group’s most memorable tracks.

As it stands, Wild Crush is their most complete, well-rounded and accessible record to date.

There’s plenty to be pleased about here.

The Next Four Years isn't the best record of the year, but it is the most honest--and sometimes that means so much more.

Strange Desire is perhaps the fullest-sounding and most charismatic indie-pop album you’ll hear this year, just in time to become the defining sound of your summer.

Yes, they still have a few kinks that need to be worked out--for instance, they need to address the game of musical chairs at lead guitarist--but a whole, The Afghan Whigs look just as unstoppable as they did in their prime.

Days of Being Wild won’t ensnare your senses or make a concerted effort to win you over, which is okay. All you can do is just embrace it, listen to it, and hope that it grows on you.

PQ are at their best when they’re short, sweet and erratic.

Celestite feels like it is more than just a simple companion piece to Celestial Lineage, and there is more than a Cascadian black metal band behind the subtle guitars and massive synths of Celestite: there is an idea that is beginning to take root.

For anyone interested in the world of contemporary analog synthesizer music, Ishi should be a welcome addition to any collection.

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

X is a vapid and overly confident album that feels more like regression than progression for Ed Sheeran's indie folk sound.

Change is what led them to write the album they needed to, and in turn, left us listeners with the album we needed to hear. Change reminds us that we didn’t know Every Time I Die like we thought we did--but they sure read us to a tee with From Parts Unknown.

In the Lonely Hour is less meaningless and vapid than a song as unapologetically hammy as “Classic,” but the result is unfortunately the same.

Filled to the brim with consistently excellent songs, Once More 'Round The Sun serves as a blueprint of how to go commercial without sacrificing one's artistic identity.

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.

It's the very definition of a grower, and this record has something Born to Die never had: more reflection.

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

Aurally consistent, hauntingly introspective, and beautifully self-reflective in its just-over-a-half-hour duration, Don't Wait Up may not rewrite the hardcore how-to book, but it does showcase how to bow out gracefully, with nearly 20 years' worth of respect earned intact.

The compositions and the lyrics are strong, while the guys feel like they had a lot of fun recording.

Hebrews is a wholly new kind of album for the band. Is it cheesy, over the top and a little too saccharine? Yeah, but the first two of those apply in spades to the first couple Say anything records anyways, and honestly I’d rather have someone singing sweet nothings to me when they’re in their 30’s than try and continue spewing venomous bile that they haven't believed in since their early 20's.

It’s a record confident in its own making, even more so when it turns its focus inward.

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

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.

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.

As The Stars is an album for the wide black metal audience, because it shows how bands don’t always have to choose a side and then put up blinders to the world around them. Things can be integrated, but only insofar as the breadth of a band’s musical vision and their talent in transcribing that vision into their songwriting. Woods of Desolation are more than adept at both.

Reachy Prints is yet another tedious exercise in modern IDM attempting to stay relevant, and failing to do a very good job of convincing us listeners that it is.