Kerrang!'s Scores

  • Music
For 1,584 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 63% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 33% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.8 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 75
Highest review score: 100 Yellow & Green
Lowest review score: 20 What The...
Score distribution:
1584 music reviews
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    As far as sludgy, frenzied noise rock is concerned, there are few who do it better than Melvins, and Working With God is tangible proof.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    Through all this existential and unremitting bleakness, the music is vital and vibrant, using a broader palette and brighter colours than they’ve ever used before.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    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.
    • tbd Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Their most confident collection yet, full of persuasive rock songs in which Taylor, her voice punchily prominent in the mix, holds court on a variety of important topics.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It’s an exhibition of just what a simply, fundamentally good band Foo Fighters are, and how skilled with a tune and a melody Dave Grohl is. You couldn’t call it stripped back as such, but its less hectic nature throws things into slightly sharper focus.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    To nobody’s surprise, the ten pieces premiered on this third instalment often pulse with the sort of ominous keyboard patterns that’ll have you checking over your shoulder for masked serial killers or vengeful sailor ghosts.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    it is a wonderful thing to hear Weezer still actually sounding like Weezer here. That they’ve achieved this while pushing their creative boundaries with an orchestra only underlines it. And the best part is, when the time is right and we go back to stadiums again, they’ve still got what promises to be the perfect album to celebrate with left in the chamber.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Finding solace in the fight, The Hope List is a resounding show of strength from Lonely The Brave – one which points towards a future rich with possibility.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Helm Of Sorrow manages to sound like a different entity, while still riding that wave of existential horror.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It jabs with style, and demonstrates that, far from running out of ideas, this band remain intent on staying at the cutting edge of modern British rock.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Every note and drumbeat speaks of friends enjoying the freedom to do whatever they damn well want, in the company of musicians and composers whose talents bring out the best in each other. Even amongst such impressive back catalogues, Killer Be Killed have crafted a record which absolutely destroys in its own right.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    As with the original, Black Stallion is an album of competing extremities held together in a state of perfect equilibrium. It is certainly true that White Pony needed no augmentation. In its original incarnation it sounds as breathtaking and innovative now as it did in June 2000. To weigh Black Stallion against it would not only be unfair, but also miss the point. What we have here is a whole new set of parallel hoof prints to marvel at.
    • 61 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Cyr
    Does it need to be quite as much of a lengthy binge as it is? Maybe not. But second helpings of something that’s fundamentally good are never a bad thing. And in the moment that Smashing Pumpkins currently find themselves – three-quarters reunioned, confident, dare one even say comfortable – there’s joy to be heard throughout, as they turn over rocks and see what they can find.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A selection of genuinely catchy songs built around cast-iron melodies.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Power Up is a reminder that this music has a power that belies its apparent simplicity (and here do not mistake this for being easy – go stand in a practice room and listen to how many drummers can’t do the ’DC beat properly). The context and tragic shadow from which it comes and the world into which it arrives makes its odes to freewheeling good times so very poignant.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    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.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ghostemane knows who he is. That he expresses himself this articulately without giving too much of that away is in itself testament to his esoteric skills.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    BMTH have long known how to play what cards when, and just when we need something cathartic, something heavy, something with an element of the familiar in amongst the creativity, they deliver richly here. Fourteen years on from their debut, much has changed, but in some other ways some things are exactly the same.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The beauty of Puscifer is that they can be taken any way you like depending on how you look at them. It is more than enough that the music on Existential Reckoning is superb. But should you attempt to get under the skin and solve the puzzles within, there are vast riches to be had.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Grown men revisiting their youthful hijinks should be a terrible idea or, to borrow an FNM title, a midlife crisis. Instead, this record is an absolute rager, testament to both the original material and the present-day dedication of its lunatic creators.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Razzmatazz comes at just the right time and it was well worth the wait. iDKHOW might not be changing the game exactly, but they’re packing the kind of addictive, dopamine-like qualities that’ll make you want to keep pumping coins into the slot for another hit, time and time again.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    There’s nothing too out there on Forgotten Days – the ’80s synth of the closing Caledonia probably the biggest surprise, but a welcome one: a playful take on the pain of the past – and all the tracks are solid, with any experimentation woven tightly around Pallbearer’s doom roots. This is the sound of a genre being refreshed, and of a band making it entirely their own.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Throughout, DevilDriver are taut, tight and tenacious.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    This is the band’s most engaging and expansive musical outing to date.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It’s a lot of fun. With all this in mind, will such an eccentric listen be for everyone? Probably (k)not. But, right now, you’d be silly to not let yourself get caught up in it.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Each of their previous three albums have proven invigorating examples of their punishing aesthetic, but Atlas Vending finds them pushing things forward, broadening their horizons to tremendous effect.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Each is very different, but they’re connected by a sense of the time and space they were crafted in. It’s a collection of postcards from the edge that we’ve all been walking and one that’s utterly engaging.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    A superb dose of head-banging fun by way of The House That Heaven Built brings this record to a joyous conclusion, and caps off an experience courtesy of Japandroids that overflows with vitality.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Not only is Tickets To My Downfall a slick sideways hop from what you might be expecting from Machine Gun Kelly, it’s done excellently. It celebrates everything great about pop-punk without feeling cookie-cutter or third division. It also finds its energy from the knots Kells works through in the lyrics.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Some will inevitably hold every Public Enemy album up against their ironclad classics like Fear Of A Black Planet and It Takes A Nation Of Millions, but to compare What You Gonna Do… to these untoppable milestones is to miss the point. What matters is that PE are not only still going after all this time, but still making music that matters.