Critic Reviews
| 100 |
Dot Music
This is an awesome album, almost certainly Placebo's pinnacle, although I'd love to be proved wrong.
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| 80 |
All Music Guide
The album's consistency easily outmatches even the highest watermarks of either predecessor.
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| 80 |
Sonicnet
While Placebo's latest, Black Market Music, doesn't have any single track as galvanizing as "Pure Morning," Molko, Swedish bassist Stefan Olsdal, and English drummer Steve Hewitt have again crafted a hip-hop-laced collection of hard-driving rock that effectively mixes clever wordplay with solid musicianship.
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| 80 |
Alternative Press
Charging rock songs and austere balladry make this album resonate more than the morass of bad music currently plaguing us. [#155, p.80]
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| 70 |
Magnet
This is a decidedly more rocking Placebo. [#50, p.102]
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| 70 |
Wall of Sound
Though his voice and attitude crosses Pet Shop Boy Neil Tennant's nasally histrionics with Gary Numan's clinical whelp, [Brian] Molko generally keeps his guitar playing tight and tough with Gothic overtones.
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| 60 |
HOB.com
Placebo's indie-glam rock fusion still sounds on CD like a good idea, and little more.
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| 60 |
Q Magazine
Black Market Music feels like a watershed, a merely good record after a great one, and that in itself is disappointing.
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| 50 |
Rolling Stone
Black Market Music loses its sparkle and its melodic sense whenever it grows a conscience.
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| 40 |
CDNow
Do all of these elements add up to an album that offers something more than the usual steady diet of carefully polished, capably executed, but ultimately unremarkable angst-ridden punk-pop? Answer -- probably not.
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| 30 |
New Musical Express
Unfortunately, this is not only their weakest album, it's their most confused.
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| 24 |
Pitchfork
I suppose that the backstreet Black Market Music will endear itself to gender-exploring teenagers who find the girl-on-girl action in Buffy the Vampire Slayer "fucking awesome."
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