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.