Pay The Devil is for Van Morrison completists only.

Mature Themes is simple self-indulgence and that's rarely worth listening to.

There's little in the way of fire or grit here.

It's not all bad, but there's no getting away from the fact the main problem with this lifeless debut is Elkington's voice.

Petits Fours just has too many annoying bits about it to be good.

They're not completely terrible. Their music won't damage your ears or insult you, it's just quite spectacularly dull.

It truly is awful.

Papa Roach have the tools to be a damn good rock band, but they'll never be one unless they change the bloody record.

The Open Door is an exercise in how not to make a sophomore album (or any album for that matter).

Rather than offering reinterpretation, Malin sounds like an annoying guest at a house party, who despite all efforts to hide the guitar has found it and insists on playing a disparate bunch of songs much to the annoyance of everyone else, none of whom quite have the heart to tell him to stop.

When you're at Rihanna's level you can afford the best songwriters and producers in the business and sonically the album is generally far ahead of her peers. Yet if Sia's Diamonds is a sultry triumph, its character and uniqueness highlights the ultimately hollow pleasures of much around it.

Fixin' The Charts comes with a lofty goal: to grind down the blemishes that mar the rock face of the popular music mythos. But to attempt to "fix" history, to paint over its wrongs with a broad, sneerish stroke, is a gross mis-step in the career of one of anti-pop's savviest purveyors.

Replete with tacky production and recycled ideas, its few merits are stretched to near breaking point.

I'm not going to pretend I know anything about dance, and the experts out there might be thinking this album features the 'tune' of the summer, but for a former Simian fan, this is nothing but a huge disappointment.

Unfortunately, all this really means is an extra emphasis on weirdly pitched keyboard riffs and slightly dated sounding beats.

To Lose My Life is an album made to a predefined plan with skill and no heart.

The bits which 'aren't bad' are the bits which don't involve Ms Hilton.

Hi-Tek's construction of techno beats and rave stabs on the quirky I Fink U Freeky and heavy brostep on opener Never Le Nkemise just add to the nauseating concoction of trash that comprises Ten$ion.

With half of rEVOLVEr emulating his older tracks and the other half making strained attempts to branch out into rap and dance, it appears that the rappa ternt sanga simply hasn't found anywhere else to turn.

All in, it suffers from a lack of focus and direction.

The whole thing simply flat lines into mediocrity.

Clarke is a genuinely talented songwriter, if rather earnest in his intentions, but in Music for The People he and his mates seem to have lost the plot.

After a while, it grates badly on the nerves.

Unless a couple more of these tracks manage to repeat the success of 'When I Grow Up' and stick on commercial radio, this is an album heading straight for the bargain bins.

It's downright bad.

So there are a couple of silly tracks - but then there were two silly Bennett sisters [in Austen's Pride and Prejudice]. Sadly, the remainder of the album is all Mary and no Elizabeth; devoid of life, wit, or energy.

Switzerland lacks any track with even a tenth of the standout potential of Danger! High Voltage. And it's a critical absence for Switzerland, because there's nothing on this record that makes you want to hear it a second time.