Bodies is a well put together album that will appease hungry fans, but it's not the injection of life that AFI so desperately needs at this stage of its career.

Although there exist exceptions, like the gorgeous “Used” (in which Monroe drops this corker: “Used, like a house where a family lived until they died and there’s a soul in every room”), the record as a whole slithers into a sort of unsatisfying middle ground.

With The World I Want To Leave Behind, Moneen have grown up and taken a turn towards a more mainstream sound. The concern has to be whether they have turned too far and become just another run-of-the-mill radio rock outfit.

It’s a credit to Cults that Static is such an enticing initial listen; no one now is pulling the retro Spector treatment with as much stylistic confidence as they are. Over time, though, Static becomes more of the same, that doomed relationship that your friend just won’t get over.

Afflicted in the end with a touch of offputting sameyness, LEGACY! LEGACY! nonetheless has remarkable staying power and a gracious ambition to in some small way materially improve the world of which it is an image. Aesthetic or not, that's worth something.

It's an important album for Scuba, as a means of transition, of mastering his new craft. It's just not a terribly important album for the rest of us.

Strings, masses of fans, and stadium-size choruses make up the patchwork for the majority of this album; the end result is pretentious and overblown, but that doesn’t stop This Is War from succeeding--well, for the most part anyway.

Harper sounds hardly inspired even in a city like Paris, and his homage to past artists sounds like cheap imitation more than anything.

There’re a lot of fumbles here unfortunately, a couple tepid ballads, a lot of irritating goon-hop, and a couple songs that go on for far too long (though most of those fall under one of the former categories.) However, the band impress again on ‘Touch too Much’, possibly the album’s best track.

I Disagree is a record you’ll want to enjoy, but not necessarily analyze. It’s perfect for a romp down the highway at 90 MPH, or engulfing your personal critics in flames. It’s not going to spark much conversation intellectually or musically, with the caveat to the latter being the obvious hype that will emanate from just how contagiously fun it is.

On their third outings most bands attempt to step up their game in terms of consistent songwriting. Instead, there's as many skippable tracks on this record as those worth revisiting. Mere competency is not sufficient to turn heads, especially in the year that abounds in high-quality stoner rock releases.

Immolate Yourself is a finely produced record, and still features a good chunk of material worth listening to, even if it doesn't exactly stack up with the duo's previous efforts.

Glitterbug is pleasant enough and far from a chore to listen to, even if it feels too safe and inoffensive to warrant repeated listening.

Angles ends in a horribly frustrating manner, with none of the assurance of "Take it or Leave It" or "Red Light." No, Angles, even in ending with its strongest song, dies the way it lived: in sheer ambiguity.

There is nothing radical or daring about the faithfully rendered tunes we find on Twelve.

'My Gun' is one of the best tracks Fifty's lent his name to; Adam Deitch and Eric Krasno's skilful production keeps the tension bubbling just below the surface with a muted hard rock guitar riff; 50's rhyme and flow is more varied and expressive than his usual monotone drawl.... The remainder of the album is as inconsistent as Fifty’s career to date.

One listen to this album though and you come to realise that its Noel's absence that has made it.

There isn’t enough content in Mudboy to make it much other than a vibe. There are traces of A$AP Ferg, Waka Flocka Flame, and OG Maco locked beneath its consistently muddy sound. But there isn’t enough nuance or ‘moments’ to make it worth repeated listens (like Sheck’s mentor, Travis Scott).

Swallow the Sun should have released this as three separate albums. The connection between the three pieces is frail, and given the relative lack of direction this is not a surprise. The album’s strengths are numerous, yet scattered, and its weaknesses are unfortunately a lot more concentrated.

This Delicate Thing We’ve Made is undone by too much, too much, too much of everything. Too many ideas aren’t allowed to compete with each other, meaning that the bad ideas are given just as much importance as the good ones.

This unconventional marriage winds up being one that's most conventional, with the traffic of conversation decidedly one way.

Kasher still embraces his flaws and while that may not work to the record's advantage when it does Cursive hits hard as ever.

Smile does have it's special moments, but the problem is that they never amount to anything better than the star parts on their previous efforts.

This Is A Photograph is an album which aims for an impressively grand vision, but rarely hits the mark. In its less grandiose moments, though, it’s frequently successful, providing the listener with a number of lovely folk tunes.

At the end of the day, this album might not be what the change-resistant fans wanted to hear but it was necessary and more importantly, they pull it off quite well.

None of these songs will top the charts, and none of them are very immediate, but they work together like a well-oiled machine that delivers a relatively accurate depiction of how you might feel while reading the book or watching the film.

It’s not all bad, but one can’t help but think that this fifteen-track recording is a long album for someone with nothing to say.

Personal Life is nothing new for the Thermals, but that doesn't mean that it's nothing to write home about. It still packs enough of a punch to please the most diehard of fans.