This is an interesting unexpected extra--pretty, rather than essential. [Sep 2011, p.51]

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

Their career trajectory continues its upward arc--but with City of Vultures, Rise To Remains have stamped on the accelerator. [3 Sep 2011, p.50]

This is an album packed not only with exuberant and quirkily innovative songs--songs that are busy with bounce and swerve--but also come equipped with a sense of energy and defiance that suggests that their authors are not going to give up simply because the terrain underfoot has become unsteady. [Sept 17 2011, p.52]

There's nothing here that doesn't earn its spot or tell a story and as a grab at something great, Polar bear Club may have just succeeded. [20 Aug 2011, p.51]

Its lo-fi, organ-heavy, cheap drum machine-driven jams reveal his ear for fusing classic team-dream rock'n'roll with demented pastiche. [Sept 17 2011, p.51]

Covering Ground is [Chuck Ragan's] third album, and once again demonstrates his versatility as a musician. [Sept 17 2011, p.51]

Twenty years and counting, Pearl Jam are still the kings. [Sept 17 2011, p.51]

It's an album that succeeds on its own terms but if it really does mark the effective end of Opeth as a metal band, that will remain our loss. [Sept 17 2011, p.50]

It can be no surprise that the group's second effort in this style is a triumph of both authenticity and quality, of fine songs and tasteful playing. [3 Sep 2011, p.51]

Layered and controlled, Elsie is an album comprised of fine music and superior lyrics. [3 Sep 2011, p.51]

While much of the record sounds like the Rolling Stones if they'd grown up as LA punks instead of English art students. Superb. [27 Aug 2011, p.52]

There is nothing incendiary here. [27 Aug 2011, p.51]

Bar the addition of piano on a few tracks, I'm With You is not so much a fresh start as a wonderful, trouble-free return to the familiar, laid back West Coast rock terrain of their back-to-back classics, Californication and 2002's By The Way. [27 Aug 2011, p.50]

The classy atmosphere of Hisingen Blues makes Graveyard sound timeless rather than retrogressive, and wholly relevant in 2011. [14 May 2011, p.51]

Impeccably executed as it all is, though, the songs lack genuine distinction and the whole thing plays out in a series of weary cliches. [13 Aug 2011, p.52]

Black Tide possess a thrash influence; they've suppressed it to make something they consider commercial metal. The result are neither, though do give rise to a new genre: boy-metal. [13 Aug 2011, p.51]

In Waves draws from the band's entire repertoire and shapes what it finds into a defining and definitive set. [6 Aug 2011, p.50]

While the band delights in surprising you, it's still slowburning doom that finds Wino at his best. [23 Jul 2011, p.51]

The Verge is the sound of a band trying far too hard to hit the mark--and falling short as a direct result of that. [2 Jul 2011, p.52]

Throughout, his sandpapered larynx lends a satisfying serrated edge here, only occasionally undermined by incongruous metalcore balladeering and the odd interchangeable riff here and there. [2 Jul 2011, p.52]

This is a noble and compelling body of music. [Jul 2011, p.51]

If all you're after is a pit-bothering lurch 'n' grind then My Damnation has it in spades, but if you're looking for anything more memorable, you'd best be looking elsewhere. [30 Jul 2011, p.52]

It's hard not to get swept along by the torrent of farce and sheer loose-footed skill on show. [30 Jul 2011, p.52]

They trash out a slew of throwaway instant classics and refresh a well-worn format for no better motive than the fact that they can. [30 Jul 2011, p.51]

Flat, uninspired riffs dressed up in pointless electronics and presided by the watery wailing of Darroh Sudderth. [30 Jul 2011, p.51]

It's extreme in a way that corpse-painted clowns will never understand--but as an expression of raw, wounded humanity, it stands as Dir en Grey's most captivating, compelling and soulful release to date. [30 Jul 2011, p.50]

It's mid-tempo, arena-ready rock that won't challenge. [9 Jul 2011, p.52]