Here you're thrilled by how refreshingly streamlined these songs are from the off. [20 Jan 2018, p.50]

As obvious as it is to say, Baroness are completely singular in what they do.

More often than not, though, Rise Against let you reach your own conclusions, and therein lies the difference between merely preaching to the choir and reaching the whole congregation. [3 Jun 2017, p.50]

This is a painstakingly composed work of art--and an absolute masterpiece at that. [15 Jul 2017, p.50]

It prises beauty from unimaginable suffering. Make no mistake, Foo Fighters have delivered a masterpiece – one they never would have wanted to have to record, but a masterpiece nonetheless.

A positive and uplifting album, and one that marks the most hard-fought comeback of the year. [12 Dec 2015, p.50]

Rock'n'roll used to be about greatness, about escape and heroes. Once, you could get lost in an album, entangled in its world. It's been a long time since that has been the case. Danger Days...will change that.[13 Nov 2010, p.50]

Their debut has hooks sharper than new scissors. [10 Sep 2016, p.52]

It's all deathly bleak, fantastically original, and the heaviest album of 2014. [12 Apr 2014, p.54]

This is a wonderful document of a great show. [24 Nov 2012, p.52]

It's just an album of bona fide, polished, often odd, perfect pop-rock. [27 Sep 2014, p.52]

Sanguivore may well be Creeper in their ultimate form, and by embracing their biggest, most bombastic sound ever, they’ve created black magic.

Swans are a feast of musical riches, and To Be Kind is kind of essential. [10 May 2014, p.54]

Here, her already fulfilled promise is given the opportunity to breathe and find even deeper depths of wonder and intriguing brilliance. Hear it and weep.

With tracks such as Clarity and Without Prejudice helping make this the most accessible Protest The Hero release to date, every one of these 11 tracks have enough substance to fulfill all your musical wants and needs. [26 Oct 2013, p.54]

The result is a claustrophobic classic that sharpens the focus of what is possible in the name of high-minded rock. [6 Jun 2015, p.50]

There’s plenty to latch onto, whether it’s the neck-rending riffs, the snarling/soaring vocals or just wanting to vibe out and let the darkness envelope you; it’s a display of artistry.

A supergroup that lives up to the hype. [1 Oct 2016, p.52]

Not only is it moving, it's arguably one if the best records Chris has made in the last 15 years. [26 Sep 2015, p.53]

This is an album that will still stand as a monument to just how scaldingly intense music can be.

It helps the record sounds amazing. [6 Jul 2013, p.52]

Every Time I Die have just released one of the most essential records of 2014. [5 Jul 2014, p.52]

The result is an album which is remarkable on every level.

By trying to annihilate what's gone before and truly raise themselves higher, they've created a special record, with a depth that will still have you under its spell a decade from now. [15 Jun 2019, p.53]

Kind Heaven is a beautifully conceived, exquisitely constructed and fully realised work of towering ambition. ... The perfect album to soundtrack the summer. [15 Jun 2019, p.54]

The Hunter is an album in which to lose yourself. [24 Sep 2011, p.52]

Here, The Wonder Years have grown into the rarest of bands: one whose meanings accumulate between songs.... There's so, so much to hear this time around. [22 Aug 2015, p.50]

The Wonder years have not only delivered a genuinely great pop-punk record but a genuinely great record, period. [8 Oct 2011, p.50]

No mere nostalgia trip, S&M2 stands as a tribute both to Metallica’s growing confidence as players and composers, and an absolute vindication of their decision to revisit one of their most inspired creative outings. Within our world, they remain utterly fearless and inarguably peerless.

Honor Found In Decay is another milestone in a catalogue which consists of nothing but milestones. [3 Nov 2012, p.53]

It's an utterly loveable album which truly says more in those 13 minutes than some bands manage in entire careers. [19 May 2012, p.54]

A staggering statement of endurance, diversity and sheer unbending power. Bow down to the kings.

The Physical world is a perfect storm of groovy punk. [13 Sep 2014, p.54]

It’s in the staggering breadth of what Code Orange dare to do here that’s as striking as how much they want you to break your neck from turning your head every time they dart around a corner.

The Book Of Souls is an album of extraordinary vision. [5 Sep 2015, p.50]

He's reached a new creative peak. [29 Oct 2016, p.50]

Set It Off have created their own sub-genre in an oversubscribed pop-rock scene and absolutely nailed it. [11 Oct 2014, p.53]

Already an essential document to one of rock's most exciting periods, the heartbreaking poignancy these bonus tracks add now make it even more so. [3 Jun 2017, p.52]

An album that's by turns gut-wrenching, hauntingly desolate and emotionally devastating. [3 Nov 2018, p.57]

With Time & Space they've made a record that will blow minds as surely as it will elevate them from beyond an emboldened, resurgent and vital scene. [24 Feb 2018, p.50]

Staggering third album GLOW ON changes the game once again. Upping the experimentation and layering on unprecedented emotional textures, its mixtape-alike 35-minute sprawl is more intricate, engaging and ambitious while feeling simultaneously even further laid back.

You better get ready to start your "Best Albums of 2017" list--a serious contender has arrived. [7 Jan 2017, p.52]

The bonus material could've included more B-sides and fewer half-formed demos, but that's a niggle: the 28 tracks here still sound fantastic. [25 Oct 2014, p.54]

Welcome Oblivion confirms that the music world needs a band like How To Destroy Angels, too. [2 Mar 2013, p.50]

They still deliver their challenging music with effortless ease. [[10 Nov 2012, p.54]

Sempiternal sounds like a record that wants the world--that's all of it, not just the bits where longhairs dwell--which is refreshing for a metal record in 2013. [30 Mar 2013, p.52]

Only one [band] could still sound this savage 15 albums in. [17 Jan 2015, p.53]

Dark Matter is many things. It’s thrilling. It’s moving. It’s surprising. It’s a band still operating at the peaks of their powers.

Phillip and Down are on a roll from which there's no signs of them slowing down any time soon. [10 May 2014, p.52]

The Mindsweep is the most enjoyable album Enter Shikari have ever made. [3 Jan 2015, p.52]

What Venom Prison have done is humanised this music by holding up a mirror to a cruel world and viewing people as more than simply walking dummies full of guts, but sentient beings worthy of life, rather than a grisly, gory death. In doing so, they’ve made something more powerful and worthy of your respect than a million meaningless blastbeats. [1 Jun 2019, p.53]

From the embryonic ideas to the songs' live debuts, it's the ultimate insight into the birth of a world-conquering classic. [11 Nov 2017, p.52]

Album number two towers over its predecessor.... There's beauty within these snapshots of frenzy where there was once just void. [16 Feb 2013, p.52]

Thematically taking place over one night, the seven songs that make up Datura are equal parts cinematic, catchy and cool, while also spectacularly showcasing Boston Manor’s creative growth.

With its warm production and perfect pacing The Dissent Of Man is a fitting way to celebrate this band's 30th birthday, and their continued, even elevated, relevance. [18 Sep 2010, p.56]

While Eternal Forward Motion is most definitely a record that sounds like it would spit in your face before punching you, this isn’t simply moping around. These lyrics have a very real meaning, written for the voiceless millions of disenfranchised youths, growing up into a shitshow of someone else’s making. [11 May 2019, p.53]

Twenty serves as a phenomenal mile-marker for both the past and present, and shows off just what a phenomenal and important band Taking Back Sunday were, are, and will continue to be.

Eternal Blue is dizzying, cleansing and frightening. You need to delve deep to find your place within it, but that journey is the very thing that makes this album so interesting. It’s an entrance that brings darkness and beauty in shades of heavy that you haven’t quite encountered before.

Thrilling, challenging, life-affirming rollercoaster of a record. [27 Jun 2015, p.50]

Ex Lives should help them join the big boy's table. [3 Mar 2012, p.52]

This album's consistent quality should easily re-establish Evanescence back on the rock map in 2011. [1 Oct 2011, p.52]

This is a very reflective record that refuses to exist only on one level, and though it's a cliche to say it, the more you put into it, the more you'll get out of it. [1 Feb 2014, p.52]

In its eight track, Ozzy, Tony, and bassist Geezer Butler have managed to once again capture that special essence which makes them so magical. And it's bloody fantastic. [1 Jun 2013, p.52]

It’s Pearl Jam’s most incensed album since 2006. It’s their most musically inventive since 1998. And, by virtue of its themes, it is their most gravely needed of their entire career. It is, in short, a triumph.

This mega reissue brings together just about all the Vol 4 one could ever need. ... The Steven Wilson remixes are superb, a collection of alternative versions of the songs that are worth it for the curiosity factor alone. ... As for the live stuff, the band are simply on fire, heavy as hell, and completely in the zone throughout.

It is by turns beautiful and brash, driven and divine. [18 Mar 2017, p.50]

While bleakness is certainly prominent throughout, this album has many different shades and it is these contrasts that make it so vital. It's an album that bursts with ambition, and that Bring Me The Horizon pull it off so powerfully further confirms their greatness. [25 Sep 2010, p.50]

Freewheeling spirit and casual non-sequiturs are all over Almost Free, with a cornucopia of ‘anything goes’ creativity on offer, comprising flashes of hip-hop, glam rock, fuzzed-out funk, punk and everything in between. Yet not once does it sound contrived or anything but an album very much of the here and now. ... An absolute joy to behold. It’s a trip to listen to, and an instant modern classic.

Neck Deep are the most fully formed British rock band to rise to prominence in ages. And in Life's Not Out To Get You they haven't as much made a record as created a world. [15 Aug 2015, p.50]

A truly first-class record and establishing their place art the top-tier of the genre. Its choruses are huge, its lyrics are every bit as chant-able as they are poignant, its energy is relentless. [15 Apr 2017, p.52]

One Day is a fearless from a band who punched the clock out cold.

Deconstructive, deliberate and exquisitely designed, The Myth Of The Happily Ever After is the sound of a world-class band making truly world-class music. The only thing more exciting than every bar of its 11 songs is the promise of where Biffy Clyro might go next.

The entire effort is catchy, feel-good and quite simply, pop-punk at its finest. [12 Oct 2013, p.52]

The 10 blasts of raging hardcore, death metal and stomach acid they vomit here are delivered with the worst of intentions. [4 Jun 2016, p.51]

By stabbing in the dark and boldly going where they've never gone before, they've made something genuinely great. [12 Sep 2015, p.48]

This is a modern metal classic. [8 Nov 2014, p.52]

It's intoxicating stuff. [2 Nov 2019, p.54]

They deliver 18 tracks of timeless, gimmick-free and inventive rock. [14 Jul 2012, p.52]

Not as romantic as their debut album, or as dynamic as the second, third album proper Eat The Elephant instead comes swathed in captivating coat embroidered by growth and maturation that doesn't unbutton easily. [14 Apr 2018, p.53]

Five years since the release of All We Love We Leave Behind, you could argue this is more of the same and just another Converge album. Pitted against the best of the band's catalogue, though, this one holds its own. [4 Nov 2017, p.50]

Pinkerton still stands tall as a modern rock classic. [6 Nov 2010, p.51]

This is the most intricate and densely-layered album Tool have yet made, but to use the word like "complex" to describe the counting-in-prime-numbers time signatures of Invincible or digital-only track Legion Inoculant would be lazy in the extreme. ... An album that pushes and challenges its creators and its audiences in new ways, the finer details of which will probably take another 13 years to fully unwrap and appreciate. [24 Aug 2019, p.53]

Like the soundtrack to a wedding reception, DOAB is Panic! At The Disco turnt up, both musically and lyrically. [9 Jan 2016, p.50]

Here, remastered, it sounds even huger than ever. And on the bonus North American Tour Live ​’75 discs, the power of these songs live is captured in all its steamrolling glory.

The Black Market is a magnificent wake-up call. [12 Jul 2014, p.52]

The time when even twitter goes quiet and the world belongs to the insomniacs, the troubled and the drunk, all of who will find solace in the Thurlows' urber-moody noisepop. [2 Jun 2012, p.53]

Congregation leaves off with an air of strength. On one level, from overwhelming darkness, they’ve wrenched a set of songs that are not only vitally relevant in the here and now, but which will stand the test of time. On another, it’s clear that Witch Fever’s journey is just beginning.

It's BMTH's innate ability to stay one step ahead, like they do here, that means the future remains firmly theirs. [19 Jan 2019, p.54]

It marks their perfection of the swooning pop stuff they've been churning out since 2006. [30 Mar 2013, p.54]

You've got a positively enchanting album, from what's easily the best new band of 2014. [1 Nov 2014, p.54]

It's a record you'll return to again and again, such is the strength of the songs. [5 Mar 2016, p.50]

With The Black, Asking Alexandria have made the album that they've always wanted to make. Which also happens to be the album fans have always wanted to hear. [19 Mar 2016, p.66]

Biffy Clyro have delivered an album of restless invention, substance and style that arrives like a spray of water on the arid expanse of this saddest of summers.

Fortress is Alter Bridge's most aggressive album to date. [21 Sep 2013, p.52]

20 years since their debut, Slipknot are as bold, fearless and exhilarating as ever.

Forever is sufficiently overloaded with both information and mystique to keep you coming back, well, forever. [28 Jan 2017, p.50]

Badmotorfinger is a masterclass in amplification, intelligence and artistic chutzpah. [3 Dec 2016, p.52]

This is Metallica galvanised, refreshed, refocused and rediscovering themselves. Best thing they've done since The Black album? Yep. [5 Nov 2016, p.48]