Songs From The Black Hole is unlikely to mean much to anyone not already dialled in to Prong’s gnarled, existentialist world view, but it’s difficult to begrudge them this indulgence. [Jun 2015, p.92]

Ghost hammers Merseybeat into grotesque new shapes and closer Easily Misbled, an elegant mariachi acoustic noir, is a refreshing respite. But too much here is sub-Dinosaur Pile-Up slush, dredged, ironically, from Britrock’s bottom end.

The album emerging as willfully lo-fi, bouncing along on cheery electronica while McTrusty's almost spoken-word panic attack showcases his rich Glaswegian vocals. [Feb 2022, p.79]

23 tracks is too many. ... But when it's good - as on Marc Almond's ballady Teenage Dream or David Johansen's R&B stomp through Get It On, it's great. [Oct 2020, p.84]

Chaosmosis is not an explosive comeback, but it does at least contain flickers of the band’s lysergic disco-punk magic.

Straining a little too hard for intellectual depth and emotional intensity, The Hunting Party is ultimately let down by its lack of focus and poor quality control. [Summer 2014, p.93]

What it lacks is a pulse-quickening ‘showcase track’ – a Fire And Water, a Mr Big, a Running With The Pack, a Burning Sky… a (to continue the 12 o’clock theme) Midnight Moonlight, even. It’s all rather countrified and subdued. [Oct 2023, p.84]

The rest of the album is all over the map, from electro-rocker Let’s Get The Party Started (featuring Oli Sykes of Bring Me The Horizon) to Charmed I’m Sure’s dub-step metal. It’s fun hearing Morello stretch out, though all but the most broadminded RATM fans are unlikely to feel the same way.

At points it's jazzy, then psychedelic, then with the sort of undulating groove that makes you wonder what it might have sounded like if Booker T jammed with the Average White Band. [Mar 2024, p.81]

There’s a theme, numbered from 14; dramatic, cinematic, dark but (disappointingly) modern-dancey. 18 hits an ambient spot, though, and 20 is the big ole cosmic epic we really crave.

Doherty himself remains endearingly cack-handed and poetically confessional but uncontrollably wayward. By the final third, the band appear to have given up and gone to the pub. [Jun 2019, p.84]

As it is, there’s a certain Wagnerian tweeness about the record, its changes predictable, it’s progressions too easily resolved, his tunings over-familiar. The whole thing feels like drinking several pints of spring water.

Snapshot consists largely of new material written to ape the 50s and 60s standards they've been covering live since puberty. And that's it's downfall. [Nov 2013, p.95]

Produced by Youth, it’s a routeone volley of loud guitar riffs and peripatetic punk energy, railing at the establishment. It’s our world, they roar, and it’s on fire, so let’s not go gently.

There's little subtlety displayed in their mission, and not much in the way of memorable tunes either. [Sep 2018, p.90]

Intriguing stuff, but Stereophonics are incapable of shredding the trad rock rule book for an entire album. So the rest of Graffiti is pitched firmly in their beige rock comfort zone. [Apr 2013, p.93]

A muddled attempt to signal contemporary relevance. [Oct 2019, p.88]

Utilising informed guitar sound palette and Johnny Marr ingenuity. [Aug 2020, p.89]

A handful of tracks shoot for the anthemic uplift of vintage U2, but fall short. The only real left-field beauty here is Love Is All We Have Left, a token reminder of the Dublin quartet’s shimmering ambient avant-rock period.

The result is less a coherent statement and more a collection of songs that simply show off their eclectic influences and their ability to reproduce them well. [May 2018, p.91]

As equipment hums, bass rumbles and Robb bellows over joyfully insistent melodies, it becomes clear that The Terror Of Modern Life is the sound of a band hopelessly in love with the music that made them. [Jul 2013, p.88]

Thirty years later, Documents And Eyewitness works best in the way its name describes: as an account of a moment when bands would do the wrong thing and do it brilliantly. [Sep 2014, p.98]

At best, for a former superstar, returning to the creative fray, the record is mediocre. [Jul 2013, p.88]

For all his apocalyptic bleakness, Moby’s electropopulist instincts remain active, lending a euphoric rush even to suicidally glum Joy Division-style confessionals like Silence and All The Hurts We Made.

Great in parts, but flat and clumsy in others, Bellamy’s bid to become more serious appears to have stunted what he does best, which is operatic excess fuelled by volcanic emotion.

Mostly it works. [Apr 2013, p.94]

Alas, by front-loading the album with the kind of numbers U2 would be proud of--witness Reverend--Walls grinds to a halt in tedious balladry, rather than scaling new heights.

At times recalling the impressive yet aimless psych squalls of early Verve, Ride or Tame Impala, and at others of Can trying to make sense of 1980s pop radio. [Aug 2018, p.91]