A patchy, flawed effort.

As a whole, the album feels less definite, less driven, than the 'Want…' albums, which is both a strength and a weakness.

While there’s no denying that Metallica have produced a huge – and welcome – blast from the past, it also represents a monolithic slab of noise that stretched over 11 songs and 75 minutes is just too dense and daunting to be truly enjoyable.

It's all hugely ridiculous, of course, but executed with a surprising amount of passion.

this is pretty much all good stuff. So why does it feel like there's something missing? Haven's problem is their chosen genre - epic, ball busting indie, guitars that jangle, then jangle harder, vocals that ride melody like diseases might pterodactyls.

The question is: do you actually need another disc like this, given that it doesn't quite have that sense of otherness that Boards of Canada have in spades, or that sound-as-texture that Aphex Twin utilised so sumptiously on 'Richard D James', or Amon Tobin's truly forward looking drum programming.

'Exciter' stakes a hell of a claim on bringing Depeche Mode into the 21st century.

When they're good, they're alright, but when they're bad, they're unstoppable and Dirty Vegas' biggest mistake so far is that, sometimes, they're not nearly filthy enough.

A sprawling beast that's unexpectedly heavy on the instrumental front.

Offers the sound of Stereolab doing what they do best. Love it or hate it, it won't alter the world, it just is.

Not, perhaps, the hugest of leaps from 'The Noise Made By People', granted, but that album, fine though it was, was very much parking on specific continental territory; 'Ha Ha Sound', by contrast, feels like it wants to explore somewhere more bearingless.

'Lovebox' doesn't quite scale Vertigo's dizzy heights, but it'll be perfectly at home both in clubs and in your lounge.

It's crude, certainly, but Ludacris has enough wit and chutzpah to elevate this above the dross.

Despite its many wondrous moments, 'Feels' is not a record for everyone.

The whole experience becomes rather draining after a few listens.

While the record lacks any of [Queens of the Stone Age's] belligerent twisted rock weirdness they have definitely pumped up the Good Charlotte-style teen anthem choruses.

'Silence Is Easy' is non-challenging "pretty pretty" music for early-ageing types who might recoil at anything without an acoustic guitar and tomtoms.

It's a bloody nice record, which may be damning them with faint praise but it's an area they've stalked out for themselves immensely likably.

There are some fillers on 'Shootenanny!' like 'Rock Hard Times', which means it's never going to be an absolute classic, but it's good to hear E is suffering a little less despair than he's been forced to tolerate in the past.

There's an abundance of softly slashing guitar, an air of sophistication writ indelibly large by its orchestration (with the string-laden weepie 'Epitaph' as probably the outstanding example), and, wrapped in Arnar's strong tones, there's more moodyness than you can shake a particularly angsty stick at.

Musically there's nothing on 'Stars of CCTV' that stands out as particularly innovative or imaginative[;] it's above average modern indie fare made with gusto by people who want to make records that sound like the records they like: The Clash, The Specials, The Verve and a bunch of other bygone Britpoppers.

On a first listen it sounds very long. On a second listen it sounds just like the eponymous debut, with the odd anthem missing. On a third listen we have to concede there are some fine moments.

The album suffers from serious momentum problems. You get something that hammers in a good and interesting way and then a few minutes later it's like the tap of a blue tit's beak on a milk bottle top.

This is a rather stronger record than [Daft Punk's] on the whole, even if it likewise suffers from flaws in execution.

More often than not displays a penchant for melody and tension which would shame many of the new millennium's pop pups.

It's hard to truly love a band that are so chameleonic that they sacrifice signature definition for adventurousness.

Whereas their debut album 'Good Health' saw the unlikely and frankly scary collision of Fuzazi and Rocket From The Crypt, 'The New Romance' leans resolutely on the emo-punk side.

This might be quality above innovation, but it’s also maturity above cliché, and above all, passion over cynicism.