For a band as talked about as they are, Voices needed to be a lot better. For now, it’s just okay.

Overall, Rudimental have shown themselves to be a talented band of men.

Nothin’ but Blood, the latest album from crass cowboy Scott H. Biram is a lopsided effort with some of the best songs Biram has ever written and some of the absolute worst.

Morrison’s occasional lyrical forays into cheeseball territory can detract from the record, but taken as a whole there’s more to like here than there is to hate.

It's a fun album with lyrics that, while they are not exactly impressive, apply to me and are fun to sing out loud.

Yours Truly is more tempered and less likely to put you in a beaming state of catatonia.

While the EP isn't the best material of the band's career, it shows a promising future that looked ever so bleak just a mere three years ago.

When Best Intentions closes, the rapid growth of the young band does not go unnoticed at all.

Slightly unfocused by design, Lantern broadens HudMo’s repertoire while also reaffirming his status as the premier producer of the sound that brought him to fame.

It’s cheeky, groovy, and it always sounds as though it’s teetering on the edge of being a genuine irritant.

The results are loud, punishing, totally lacking in subtlety, and at this juncture, almost completely predictable.

At its core, Kintsugi takes broken pieces and finds ways to put them back together into something new.

Unfortunately, there are quite a few pitfalls outside of just weak hooks. The pacing of the album feels a little off, and it starts pretty early on with "Los Awesome" being a jarring change from the opener "Gangsta," though the former is much more enjoyable than the latter.

It makes for a mixed bag of an album--occasionally the band sticks to their wheelhouse and sounds great, occasionally their normal stuff gets a bit stale; sometimes they experiment and it goes well, sometimes not.

Potential runtime issues aside, Rot Forever is a great record.

Sophomore albums always find bands trying too hard, struggling to live up to their magnum opus and Mind Over Matter has all the hallmarks of exactly that.

With Man on the Moon II: The Legend of Mr. Rager, it seems he's on the road to finding what works, with varying degrees of success.

With Common Courtesy...love it or hate it as you will...A Day To Remember is getting started all over again. And the album ensures that this band hasn't yet seen the peak of its popularity.

Instant Gratification is impressive and for the most part feels like a strong return to form for a band that's well adjusted in its own sound and aura, as Dance Gavin Dance continue to be an anomaly in a mostly tired and boring scene.

Overall, Young Hunger is the sound of an artist spreading himself too thin.

Fiasco has since gone on record as saying he both loves and hates this album. After all he went through to get it released, it's hard to blame him. But all the hard work he supposedly put into making sure Lasers remained true to his vision seems all for naught.

Forging a path not quite dismissing their last batch of cuts, Architects' drive to re-assert their heavier influences makes for a back-and-forth slug match that draws on a little too long at points – yet is still memorable enough to keep you coming back for the highlights.

What A Time To Be Alive is ultimately the kind of release that will be relegated to curio status in the near future. It doesn’t hold a candle to the strength of either rappers best work, and for Future in particular its overall quality feels like a steep dip from the highs of his most recent run.

Overall Wig Out at Jagbags isn't exactly a disappointing release, especially since it's far better than the breed of record many other artists multiple decades into their respective careers make. It is a frustrating one though.

For everything Smith lacks in wordsmithing, his bandmates make up for in straight up dramatic songwriting.

An understandable desire to have her traumas understood by everybody inevitably results in a bland mush of melodrama. Despite this, The Pinkprint is Nicki Minaj’s most successful album by a fairly wide margin, as she becomes more empathetic than at any point in the past while Pink Friday’s DMZ between pop and rap becomes little more than a historical footnote in her career.

There are absolutely stunning passages on here to be sure, but as a whole the record fails to really take your breath away like one would hope.

Because the band took the songs from Carlile's solo sessions and integrated them with the songs the band wrote during the front man's absence, The Flood's final product lacks some cohesiveness.

The record as a substantial body of work comes complete with up-tempo numbers that are danceable but without an enticing hook, a few straightforward pop/rock tunes with tremendous choruses, and an album ending ballad that renders the album slightly indifferent, inconsistent and lacking an underlying direction and purpose.

For any other group purveying hardcore-influenced post-rock (or vice versa), Recitation would be a career-defining moment; but for the band that created All the Footprints and A Dead Sinking Story (releases introducing a new language in aggressive independent music), and to a lesser extent Insomniac Doze, Envy's latest is a bit too middling.

The majority of the songs on Hyperview sound very, very similar. Those two songs are different enough to differentiate themselves from the rest of the album, but most of them aren’t.

With Tracing Back Roots, We Came As Romans have shown just enough progress to make me believe that LP4 could be the game changer they’re looking for.

Aside from a thin outer veil, This Modern Glitch is a disappointment from a band who most listeners were probably only hoping to get a few catchy singles from.

Of the 12 songs on the album proper, Sean is left to his own devices on less than half of them (two of which are the intro and outro), and the first signs of wear on the album come as soon as one of his solo joints succeeds another.

Vulnerable contains its share of lemons, but there is a spark, an energy, that hasn't been heard from McCracken's voice in a while.

If I lived completely under a rock, I'd say Screamworks, and HIM in general, would hit Twilight tweeners straight in the heart with its dark, dismal and dire themes, but the more mature crowd would see the excessive sentimentality as almost self-parodying.

The best thing that can be said for the majority of this record is that it sounds great.... The problem is, Green's songwriting here simply isn't up to par with the artists he's trying to imitate.

Wolf is still packed with signs of potential, and at this point it would be just as foolish to write Tyler off as it would be to call him one of the best in the game.

Musically, The Circle in the Square is a bit too wobbly to stand up even amongst the rock acts channeling hip-hop a little less obviously.

From its atmospheric nineties leanings to Bellamy's consistently on-the-mark channeling of Bono, it's not too hard to imagine The 2nd Law having a similar legacy ten or twenty years down the road: not a great album, but an adventurous one.

What Is Love? is a very enjoyable record and a lot better than what I expected. Christofer Drew has given his listeners a taste of his potential, because, musically, he knows what he is doing.

Time just feels far too fabricated, far too forced and well far too late.

At this stage in his career, he is firmly focused on doing whatever he and his band want to do. That kind of artistic freedom should certainly be applauded, one just wishes the results were far more satisfying.

Unfortunately, Rustie’s seemingly inherent need to zig when expected to zag has resulted in an awkwardly stitched together ragdoll of otherwise intriguing and successful pieces.

As it stands, its hard to call anything on this album an evolution, since many of the tracks feel like they're just more beefed up but far less interesting versions of what they gave us on Shrines.

The final outcome of this is an extreme lack of consistency. The high spots are high, but the low spots are even lower.

Musically, it's pretty much vintage Zombie-- relatively catchy metal with the occasional industrial vibe.

Overall, About To Die isn't particularly great. The EP is quite unnecessary.

Each song will become the soundtrack for Mean Girls soccer moms and pre-teen pre-sluts everywhere.

So really what Neck Deep have here is something that is both faithful to its influences, and striving to be free of them. What that creates is an album that, though narrowly defined, is still working through something of an identity crisis.

If Purpose focused on the excursions into global dance sounds that earned him popularity outside the insular Belieber fandom, it might have been one of the best pop records of the year and alleviated some of the headaches induced by his lyrical persona. It certainly doesn't help that Purpose is another entry in an ever growing catalog of big tent releases that relegates some of its best tracks to bonus track status.

Folds just doesn’t seem to have the same grip on likable, semi-charming songwriting he once did.

Hit The Lights came back in 2015, and all things considered, sound like they did in 2011.

Connector tries to juggle too much in too short of moments, confining juxtaposing or conflicting elements to 15-20 second bursts, often between choruses.

There are some parts you'll have to suffer through, but there are at least a handful of tracks that we can save and enjoy into the future.

Unfortunately, a handful of good moments aren't enough to outweigh an album jammed with songwriting that just doesn't amount to anything.

Generally speaking, the Jack Ü project is fully functional party music that hedges its bets with collaborations and does little in the way of genuine innovation.

While the album is often an enjoyable listen, it is difficult not to wonder what the collective talents of Andrew Dost and Jack Antonoff of fun., or even the talents of a Sam Means of The Format, could’ve yielded to Grand Romantic’s songwriting.

It’s not going to be a new favorite album for anyone other than Avril Lavigne’s most ardent admirers, but a handful of great summer mixtape songs and a few other exercises in mindless pop fun are still enough to make Avril Lavigne the eponymous singer’s best record in nine years. That might not be saying much, but it's a step in the right direction.

Last year’s stellar Battle Born, felt considerably more vibrant than Right Thoughts, Right Words, Right Action ever does.

It is not deserving of a Hurley-level bashing, and it’s too aware to be Pinkerton. It’s an album they could have made 10 years ago, but it’s also one that feels moderately current.

Candela makes for an, at times unpleasant, but ultimately forgettable listen.

Simply put, Death of a Bachelor is exactly the hot mess it wants to be. It’s been a while since I’ve heard an album that’s so divisive in its quality, so manic on one end and so lazy on the other.

Yes, the lack of production and general scuzziness of the record is reminiscent of what we’d like to hear from No Age, but aside from this the music lacks excitement and inspiration.

The flow of Strange Clouds tends to vary between songs that are helping make the album great ("So Good," "Arena," "So Hard to Breathe"), and then the ones that keep pushing it down the route of a sophomore slump ("Ray Bands," "Just a Sign," "Play for Keeps"). Right when there's about to be a trend of some consistency, it ends up falling short.

New Glow has its moments, but you won't find it on many EOTY lists.

For a producer who had such a big hand in one of the best records of the year, though, 10 Summers is just too by-the-numbers to excite anyone.

Bangerz is at times touching and at others a blast--but for a disappointingly large portion it’s as annoying as her detractors had hoped.

Watching Movies With The Sound Off is a necessary step that is going to get him there [to be a truly good artist], but it isn't a strong enough statement to make that case for him.

The songwriting on Burning At Both Ends isn't nearly up to par with other prominent pop-punk groups, and Set Your Goals only stumbles more in the execution of their sound.

Even though I'm sad this record has left no lasting effect, I'm also happy that it might mean my life is heading somewhere positive.

There are a few good songs, but A Head Full of Dreams is disappointing because it's the first Coldplay album in awhile that is distinctly less than the sum of its parts.

Although Hot Chelle Rae obviously aren't doing anything new here either, they've mastered the art of cheese pop and took a much more "natural" new route in sound compared to Lovesick Electric.

Three years after his album should have put the "sideline" comments to rest, Cole’s still studying the traditional playbook from the bench, preferring to follow Nas’ bible than strike out on his own.

The Gifted is a horribly disjointed album. If Wale would have gone one way or the other (soulful nostalgic beats or straight up pop-rap), the album would probably be at least a little bit better.

At first blush, things are catchy, the drumming is incredibly interesting and it’s all over pretty quick. But delve into things, and nothing’s changed. Which is lazy on a few levels.

His flows are lazy, uninspired, and flat out boring.

The biggest problem with When Fish Ride Bicycles is the overall dull presentation and atmosphere.

He still has an ear for production and his voice remains a pliable tool, but to keep himself tethered to an aesthetic he defined and completed within a year is to do himself and the listener a disservice.

Aside from a few solid, unspectacular pop-rock songs though, ¡Dos! Has only one thing to offer: it makes ¡Uno! sound a hell of a lot better.

Certain songs on The Temper Trap are just not worth listening to more than a couple of times.

Lil Durk's first album is lacking in a lot of things, the first being songs. Now, ten tracks is not necessarily too little of a number, but when half of the album is filler, that's when that number starts to work against you.

It’s all well and good to deal with tough topics through music, but My Everything puts on a breezy pop face that severely hinders the potential poignancy of Grande’s words, morphing them into a more disquieting figure.

There's nothing to really chew on here, nothing to keep you coming back.

while the 7 or so songs on What A Pleasure have different names, it never really feels like anything ends or begins. It just kind of is, much in the same way that after listening to Beach Fossils, you know something happened but you can't remember why it did so or what it meant.

For most, the record will be too much--it's messy, it's overdone, it's arrogant, and ultimately it's disappointing – making Radke's return not really worth the wait.

An album with too many cooks in the kitchen and not enough good songs to recommend.

This record is guaranteed to indiscriminately piss off both kinds of Black Keys fans: the diehard purists yearning for the blues rock halcyon days and the recent devotees primed for another round of hooky singles.

In essence, A Thousand Suns is a record with no real character or substance.

As a whole, Bullet show absolutely no progression on Fever, despite this being their third album.

Without rising above the sum of the parts brought together, Travis loses control of his own album and it ends up sounding like a collection of tracks from various artists with the loose theme of Travis Scott barely tying it all together.

On Parocosm, Ernest Greene tips his hand too early, too obviously: there’s not a lot to make you believe that he genuinely finds these sounds beautiful without some sort of winking hipness.

It's under-produced on essentially all aspects of the musicianship, while Jordan Pundik's hyper-nasally vocals are mixed poorly and too sugar-coated.

It's basically the third time Attack Attack! have written the same record.

For the most part, Young New England is embarrassingly lost in itself, a superfluous output that floats along at a frustratingly slow pace and lacks even a slight resemblance of direction.

Its 10 songs meander by with enough sense to not stick around, and other than the grungy rock-out moments of “Nightwater Girlfriend,” we barely notice anything.

The issue is that it's these screams and actual emotion that could have saved parts of Am I The Enemy, rather than the overproduced instrumentation and insipid vocal delivery that replaced The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus' edge. Thus, as the record ends, it's clear that third time proves not to be the charm here, unfortunately, as many of us who were fans of DYFI keep hoping for that band to return.

The results of his recent output have been unquestionably subpar.