With longer songs between their trademark short frenzied blasts, they maintain a clenched grip on how the ethos behind grassroots hardcore and the necessity of a modern punk fusion can mix effortlessly to create something truly special.

It’s a 43-minute blast of ingenious, future-proof rock, virtually flawless but from a band that--importantly--are still flawed like the rest of us. This is the best album you’ll hear this year and more significantly, it’s the most important rock album of the decade.

Make no mistake, Gira has his mojo back and Swans are very much alive.

Whitechapel are one of the best and downright annihilating bands their field.

From start to finish there’s almost nothing to fault here.

It's a consistently satisfying rock experience.

There is a welcome confidence throughout The Latest Fashion that Attack! Attack! have not previously shown and it's likely to propel this lot to great things.

A record that pushes the boundaries of post-rock to stratospheric new levels.

This Is War is passionate, rousing and astonishingly focused.

The results are shufflingly majestic, loaded with blissful truths and, it must be said, startlingly close to perfect.

It's a record that tells its own story, but its impact resonates far beyond.

The frantic, high-pitched vocals of old are still present and correct, but they're also tempered by frequent downbeat melodic refrains, echoing the likes of Nirvana more than, say, The Blood Brothers. Musically too, the band display a staggering diversity.

Put simply, this is another wonderful release from a brilliant band.

This record will reward repeat spins generously.

It’s an album dripping with class, craft, heart and soul and Deaf Havana’s most accomplished to date--a step out of their comfort zone and a step up in every regard.

Ferocious and beautiful--Funeral For A Friend sound more like themselves than they have done in years.

Crusty, jarring and still as acerbic as ever, this is Cancer Bats at their best.

For all those teens who grew up disgracefully with Taylor and Jim Root's other band, Audio Secrecy is the soundtrack to the rest of their lives.

The Poles’ most infectious work as it bristles with the best songs they’ve ever written.

Prior To The Fire will set the Canadians aside from their peers.

Like Wes Craven reanimating the slasher genre with the Scream franchise, The Black Dahlia Murder play with enough conviction and knowing reference to metal's most spectacular parlour tricks and add enough contemporary muscle to drop your jaw no matter your age.

Duality is a full-blown orchestral dance-pop masterpiece that will make you throw your arms in the air with glee, even if you think you should know better.

Featuring the classic, jagged and tar thick riffery and off-beat timing that have become Helmet's signature, Seeing Eye Dog is a great (especially re the vocals) and gritty listen.

This cements their position as one of the world’s most exciting, vital bands, and it’s unlikely you’ll hear many (if any) more impactful records in 2016.

48 minutes that will go down among the very best of this year.

This is an album of atmosphere, huge highs, crushing lows, melodies, crescendos and something entirely new that still sounds natural. Stunning.

The almost unbearably intense ‘Slowburn’ and ambient ‘My World’ are just two cuts of an album littered with highlights, meaning by the end of this 33-minute pummeling, you’ll only need one word: breathtaking.

Crisis Works is at base a heavy rock record, the likes of 'Twin Victory' an absolute whirlwind of crushing riffs. However, there are plenty of dynamics, tender moments and a definite through line of melody here too.

Uneasy listening doesn’t get much better.

To fans it'll undoubtedly shine as their best record yet, while the uninitiated may be about to find their new favourite band.

Circa Survive have managed to stay both relevant and utterly compelling – not just surviving but thriving.

Short of any psychotropic assistance, Wild Light is a credible substitute for nirvana, demanding you suspend your disbelief and just jump in feet first, setting yourself free from all corporeal existence.

It's a frenetic, hugely entertaining and inventive genre mash-up full of punk rock aggression and rock 'n' roll swagger that blends inventive chaos with a real ear for melody.

This is a deafening, destructive and devilishly diverse affair, serving as a firm and timely reminder that when it comes to this particular game, nobody does it quite like this.

Production-wise, the vocals could do with sounding more 'live' (they are note perfect)--but the musicianship present is enough to justify the polish.

The eagerly anticipated album from London based indie-rock three-piece The Joy Formidable far exceeds all expectation.

For all its bluster, There Is A Hell is far more than the story of a man battling his self-perpetuated inner turmoil; it is the sound of a remarkable band establishing themselves as one of the finest of their generation.

The Foo Fighters may have ballooned in size over the past few years and if it took them going back to their roots to make an album this good then so be it, but when all is said and done Wasting Light is as an example of how to be a globe-eatingly massive band and still sound young, hungry and, above all, important.

Clocking in at just under an hour across 14 songs, about 12 of which could easily be singles, Technology is engaging, fun and an early contender for album of the year, plus the album of this band’s career.

Throughout, the highs are tinged with sadness and the lows with hope, making Simple Math a complex and rewarding album that soars above the pack.

It might lack the narrative arc of 09's An Imaginary Country, but it's hard to imagine that 2011 will see many finer releases, of any genre.

This is ace.

This record could slot into any punk rock fan’s record collection in the last 15 years and get worn out--it’s just great, timeless songwriting.

The self-imposed time restraints have merely served to sharpen the quartet's focus in quite glorious fashion.

Lost Forever, Lost Together is the sound of Architects finding and unleashing the buried treasure they’ve been searching for.

It’s not a progressive album per se, but The Finer Things is a bar-raising attempt at revolution in pop-punk.

This is music that creates a vortex in your brain, sucking the entire cosmos in through one ear and out the other, leaving behind only the secrets of the universe and the unerring tranquillity of space. Yes. It really is that good.

Continuing where the dark grooves of 8's Nude With Boots left off, The Bride… exhibits the perfect marriage between the Big Business boys and Melvins main-men King Buzzo and Dale Crover.

Front to back, start to finish, this is pop-punk for those who have lived, loved and lost and aren’t afraid to contemplate the fact that maybe, just maybe, it isn’t going to be their weekend or their year.

Influences are obvious but the balance between light and dark is perfect here.

TesseracT have taken the djent blueprint and, barring occasional plunges into riff soup, have re-engineered it into a living, breathing, emotive display of rousing poly-prog.

Coheed And Cambria are always at their finest when they're being dramatic, and as such 'Year Of The Black Rainbow' is possibly their best record to date.

The melodies are huge, the hoarse vocals are fairly infrequent – but this is probably one of the most punk rawk albums Rise Against have recorded.

While tracks such as Broken Home still deliver the crushing might (albeit in a more subliminal fashion) to his other outfit, the recently resurrected Godflesh, there's a sense of hope in the levitation-inducing riffery. Stellar.

While several tracks would sit comfortably on a Best Of ...Trail Of Dead playlist Tao Of The Dead certainly feels like their most consistent collection in years.

Most strikingly, Darkly, Darkly, Venus Aversa displays a masterful control over the multi-faceted Cradle Of Filth sound; brutal vocal gymnastics, skull-rattling double-kicks, symphonic flourishes, dramatic narrative and balls-out axe-slinging all make their presence known, but in a manner which routinely serves to bolster the coherency of the greater whole.

To hear a band with such obvious and deep passion playing unencumbered and liberated rock music is an utterly captivating experience that Rock Sound would thoroughly recommend. Holding nothing back sounds exactly like this, everyone else please take note.

Their name might suggest one thing, but this lot are definitely not going around in circles; this is their best record yet.

Individually, tracks like ‘Hymn To The Pillory’ and ‘Somersault’ aren’t particularly staggering, but as a whole body of work it really is something else.

It's a war of emotion rendered in the most extreme tones and is more and more rewarding on every listen. One day, all bands will be like Dillinger.

Where 07’s ‘Is Dead’ hinted at the band experimenting with a more progressive sound, it was nowhere near as cohesive and accomplished as this. I Was Trying To Describe You To Someone is a phenomenal album.

If you had ever written the band off or traded them in for a younger model, this is the record that will force you to reconsider and repent.

This is a ruthless, heartbreaking and agonisingly profound release from a truly unrivalled band.

A right dirty dose of LA rocking is in order courtesy of Buckcherry, and boy, is it great to have them back!

What Fucked Up have done here is to take what they've been honing for the past 10 years and go one better, adding lush female vocals and celestial, electronica-inspired effects in an effort to constantly titillate and surprise.

The Computers' impressive debut is a riotous, riff-laden affair.

Blink-182 have delivered an album that recalls everything that makes this band great and gives it all a fresh twist, the end result is California being amongst the best albums they’ve ever produced.

Spiral Shadow might just be the album of the year so far. All hail the kings (and queen) of nouveau-prog.

If world leaders, corporate douche-monkeys and the 1 per cent could just hear Fang Island, there would be no war, inequality or bad vibes.

Die Without Hope shows them at their most uncompromising, bleak and arse-splittingly heavy.

The dark-hued, hard rocking glory of 'Sinead' and the Evanescence-bothering theatrics of 'A Demon's Fate' should draw Within Temptation a wider audience, but it's the ferocious guitar/keyboard attack of the blazing 'In The Middle Of The Night' that might coax most bullet belts out of retirement.

Glasgow’s finest nerdtronica--in the sense they’re slavishly dedicated to unveiling ever-intricate ways to make us shake a leg – quartet have returned with a second album that takes the charm of their debut and cranks up the rave factor.

Listening to the album when fully engaged with the story of its creation is both exhausting and exhilarating. A heartbreaking work of staggering genius? Very possibly.

Common Courtesy is not the end of this band. If anything, it’s their new beginning.

Featuring two members of the late great Jay Reatard's band--the towering garage rawk that defined his sound is tangible with Wavves too but here left to bathe in the sun and taken for a quick dip in the ocean.

Full of textured, wide-screen soundscapes, the record dips its feet in electronic waters, yet retains the emotional vulnerability that has always defined the Atlanta band. There’s an extra dose of sinister unease, too, especially on ‘Lead, SD’ and ‘The Moth’.

Rather than feeling like a mash-up of their favourite bands--which is no bad thing--album two finds the four-man phenomenon firming up their identity and becoming their own band.

This long-awaited second album isn’t just thrilling from start to finish: it might also be exactly what rock needs right now.

These are songs of excruciating truth, eternally relevant and assembled with no lack of heart.

It's a pleasure to report, then, that Hurley is a fine album.

It sparkles with invention, creativity, crushing use of dynamics and, when all's said and done, just really strong songs.

This is a classic Bosstones album; a record that rises above the notion of categorisation and which anyone with a pulse will find it impossible not to warm to.

To some it will seem cloying and trite, but persevere: underneath Scott Hutchison’s warm burr lie a clutch of songs that deserve to be held close and tight.

This full length contains all of Bleeding Through’s hardcore malice only now it’s encased with a perfected, extremity-heavy formula.

Though this offering doesn’t quite live up to genre-busting, career-defining predecessor ‘Gospel’, engaging, inventive albums like this are yet more proof that pop-punk’s renaissance won’t fade away any time soon.

Whatever's being said, though, what's great about The King Blues is that they're always unashamedly frank; with a frontman who wouldn't dream of diverging his accent or over-developing his message, they've set storming music to a totally concise, relevant stream of consciousness.

There's a glorious new depth to the old formula here showcasing undeniable talent.

There's enough excitement and progression here to make Chasing Ghosts a worthwhile look.

It’s their use of modern electronica (‘Unmade’) and metalcore crunch (‘Paper Thin’) that asserts this as bleeding-edge relevant, and there’s enough spark here to suggest they could turn into more than a nostalgia trip.

It's the Bostonians' simplicity that's most endearing though, and this is a terrific, hangover-inducing return to form.

It's taken Title Fight a good while to release a full album, but it's been worth the wait.

The Massachusetts quartet are back with a new EP that reminds us what made them so exciting in the first place.

The Ohio pop-punks are on their finest form in years here.

Topping 2012’s ‘Get What You Give’ wasn’t going to be easy, but The Ghost Inside have kept up the momentum at the very least.

Above all, Vices & Virtues is a complete package that secures Panic! At The Disco as one of the most forward thinking pop-rock acts around.

Lerner's pop sensibility is still there, but now buried beneath distortion and throbbing bass, making this an intriguing, if not entirely welcoming, listen

It feels like they've truly accomplished what they set out to do.

'Coffee And Cigarettes' and the title track slowly uncurl themselves over the course of a few days and before you know it, it feels like Jimmy Eat World never went away.