This debut release on their own label is an uncompromising instrumental beast, rammed with weapons-grade jazz-metal riffing and ultra-heavy No Wave sax skronking. [Aug 2009, p.85]

The likes of "Stay Here And Look After The Chickens" and "Never Go Home Again" sound as if they've been shaken out of the band in rickety fashion of early Violent Femmes, Tattersall the penurious narrator whose rambling delivery contains flashes of brilliance. [Jun 2012, p.84]

Not only a welcome "return to form" but sounds like a career pinnacle. [Feb 2015, p.82]

Music Must Destroy finds original members Segs Jennings and David Ruffy in reassuringly rude health, bludgeoning their way through a bunch of songs that weld punk and metal. [Dec 2016, p.37]

The evening set is more dynamic. [Jun 2017, p.23]

The excellent "Misheard" and "Useless" swirl with a cathartic sense of rage and helplessness, but while it's effective, the entirety is a lot to take. [Apr 2018, p.30]

An album you can get lost in. [Mar 2018, p.24]

Like the stormy contents of 2015's Transfixiation, songs like "Never Coming Back" have no lack of velocity and ferocity, though APTBS often fall between two poles, being not quite able to deliver memorable songs yet unwilling to let the music dissolve into purer forms if turbulence. [May 2018, p.23]

Though some of its textures could do with a little more edge, the result is undeniably poignant, with HArdy's voice elegant and expressive as ever. [Jun 2018, p.28]

[The title track's] foreboding gothic folk finds equally despondent bedfellows in the more musically upbeat "Judgement Day" and the bucolic jangle of "Each Manner of Man." [Apr 2021, p.34]

Subtle this isn't, but ironically, for a band once compared endlessly to Interpol and Editors and their Joy Division-inspired brooding indie, White Lies Have probably shown more versatility and evolution than either on their latest. [Apr 2022, p.36]

Opener “I Suck At Grieving” is a musical marvel, a song about losing a parent that’s genuinely fun to sing along to. “Jealous” is a garage-rock Gen Z remake of Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated”, while “Pretty Good For A Bad Day” – a duet with All Time Low frontman Alex Gaskarth – offers a clever sense of perspective. [Jun 2024, p.33]

Ian Gillan doesn’t attempt as many sky-scraping howls as he once did but still delivers characteristically rascal-ish lyrics such as “Lazy Sod” and “A Bit On The Side” with swagger and relish. [Aug 2024, p.32]

Bulat's reliably warm-hearted songs still benefit from the rejuvenating effects of the twinkling synths that fill "Spirit" and "Laughter". [May 2025, p.28]

The songs are worthy heirs to that heritage [Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd]. [Aug 2025, p.79]

Power's voice is improving with age, especially confident and commanding on the closing, psych-baroque "Birds Heading South". [Feb 2026, p.33]

Rigidity is a hallmark of electropop, from Numan to Miss Kittin, but Ladytron's plodding rhythms and banal melodies straightjacket their songs. [Sep 2011, p.88]

It privileges technique and texture over hooks, but as a pitch to be the next Danger Mouse, Aquaria is not a bad one. [Jan 2016, p.73]

It's a muscular, Butch-Vig-produced behemoth that impresses. [Dec 2014, p.77]

Tankian combines prog pomp and a variety of vocal techniques, all irritating, to uniformly unlistenable effect. [Nov 2007, p.125]

Street entirely avoids DIA’s flinty spectrality and staticky crackle and turns a bright light on the smart, compact and relentlessly exciting arrangements he’s here coaxed from the band.

The hipster-redneck rhetoric could grate, but O'Death are too good to be dismised as a novelty act. [Dec 2008, p.105]

There is a knowingness to Burning Daylight that sometimes verges on Pastiche, but Cowgill's Mordant deadpan means the mask never slips. [Nov 2012, p.77]

FoW's impeccably assembled works rarely stir little more than fond memories of their obvious influences. This is largely true of Sky Full Of Holes, though there are moments of irresistible sticky sweetness. [Sep 2011, p.84]

With Ash & Ice, they're back on compelling track, cranking their songs' rhythmic drive while focusing as much on structure as mardy atmospherics. [Jul 2016, p.75]

With strictly 1978 sleeve and clothes, and no new ideas, they just don't matter like their models did. [Sep 2003, p.97]

T&C are more approachable than most, replacing numbing virtuosity with a kind of meditative warmth. [May 2002, p.110]

It's far from hip, but unfairly dimissed. [Jun 2010, p.91]