Sputnikmusic's Scores

  • Music
For 2,395 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 53% higher than the average critic
  • 2% same as the average critic
  • 45% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.3 points lower than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 72
Highest review score: 100 The Seer
Lowest review score: 10 The Path of Totality
Score distribution:
2395 music reviews
    • 83 Metascore
    • 78 Critic Score
    Titans of Creation Testament have released another excellent thrasher that proves they’re still the most reliable band of the original thrash era.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Born Again is easily one of the best indie-rock/dream-pop debuts to come out in years. Siggelkow’s firm handle on her sound is genuinely remarkable – it seems like she’s been doing this for decades and that Born Again is the album that finally ties it all together.
    • 88 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Katie is making a point of saying more with less, taking potent emotions and quietly tucking them into a plain white envelope for us to open and interpret. She’s as lucid as we’ve ever heard her, stripping down to her emotional core and daring us to make eye contact.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    If 03.15.20 is a full stop to one of the most dynamic, inventive, frustratingly inconsistent discographies of the last decade. I'm not convinced Glover's multi-hyphenate brain could ever stop working away, creating shows and songs and short films and botching album rollouts to a ridiculous degree.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    925
    Sorry is exactly the shot in the arm that indie-rock has been missing lately – a fearless band that has set out to make its mark on the new decade, and with 925, already has.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    The last thirty minutes or so of Ghosts VI: Locusts feels that little bit more cathartic and rewarding by the end of it. What starts off as simple, sombre piano notes eventually swells up to synthetic ambiences, and the rise of a mechanically unsettling apex for the album’s closing quarter. Both of these albums require time set aside to really benefit from their journeys, but it’s time well spent if you’re willing to accept it.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    The compositions are solid, every member brings something to the table and Eddie sings just as passionately as ever. Despite all these, there are only a handful of songs that spark actual emotion or groove at least, whereas the others fail to deliver memorable hooks.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 72 Critic Score
    The Ghost of Orion is My Dying Bride’s best sounding album from a production standpoint, featuring some of Aaron’s most accomplished vocals, and guitar melodies that harken back to the days of The Angel and the Dark River, and it is a welcome addition to the My Dying Bride discography.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    It doesn’t necessarily feel as tattered or heart-on-sleeve as the group’s earlier works, but it’s also far more entertaining. You Know I’m Not Going Anywhere is a breakthrough for The Disctricts, and it’s already one of the best albums to be released this year.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    This is very lush, star-lit country music that is practically breathtaking in the moment while transcending the typical boundaries of the genre. It's about time.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 74 Critic Score
    here’s nothing wrong with hearing these well-written songs, packed with sashaying grooves and wobbly synths, but by the mid-section of the record there is a definite sagging point, and the album doesn’t feel as effortless to listen to as Loner did. Even so, this is as enjoyable to listen to as its former, it’s just a shame that it doesn’t progress Caroline all that much as an artist.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Chalk Color Theory up as a sophomore slump - a misstep she’s not likely to repeat - and the most aggressively OK album of 2020.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    Miss Anthropocene takes everything about Grimes the musician – her uncanny ability to build a song out of parts no one ever thought to put together before, that idiosyncratic voice, her ear for a classic melody – and concisely packages it into her most penetrating record yet.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 66 Critic Score
    There’s a lot of guests on this album and it brings a heterogeneous quality to Ordinary Man, but for the most part this aspect turns detrimental to the overall vision. Ozzy should have banded together a small fixture of musicians for the album and ran with a consistent tone that would see his mantra through to the end.
    • 57 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Changes is inferior to its predecessor in a lot of ways, but that doesn’t stop it from being a decent album. The most interesting part about this project is it lacks the 101 radio hits he’s so well known for.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 76 Critic Score
    At the end of the day, Parker proves good songwriting can hold the basis of a band’s sound, and despite the lack of guitar here, The Slow Rush does just that. It’s not as pristine as previous entries, but it certainly holds up Tame impala’s incredible reputation.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 82 Critic Score
    UNLOCKED's best features are its brevity and simplicity. Songs drop in, do what they need to and cycle to an end without melodrama.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    What we have here will likely go down in history as the band’s magnum opus. It’s just so fucking massive and Netflix-level binge-worthy. Without a slow song or acoustic number, Brave Faces Everyoneis ten tracks of loud, abrasive rock music that should connect with anyone who’s life isn’t perfect.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 30 Critic Score
    Everything about Father of All Motherfuckers is lazy. It begins with the self-referential American Idiot album cover, which features a unicorn exhaling/vomiting rainbows whilst forcefully blowing flames out of its ass. The music is befitting of said artwork, as even the staunchest fan would have an aneurysm trying to figure out what the hell these guys were thinking on this one.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Despite its flaws, Hotspot deserves its place on the upper shelf of Pet Shop Boys’ discography. It’s the most complete journey from this Stuart Price trilogy, although not the most rewarding to be honest (the spot still belongs to Electric). Even so, it’s admirable how the duo manage to be this consistent and have removed all signs of rust lately.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    It’s not the worst approach they could have taken, but again, there’s nothing super about adhering to the virtues of pop – and in turn, Bonny Light Horseman is a marginally decent record; nothing more.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 90 Critic Score
    Where Circles succeeds, where it becomes a graceful and elegant piece of art rather than an experimental excursion, is in finding the perfect subject matter for its laidback meanderings. Quite simply, these songs are dispatches from a day in the life of Mac Miller.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 50 Critic Score
    Dream On is missing something, and as long as Boman continues to trudge the path of minimalism (that almost borders on indifference), her music will struggle to differentiate itself from the thousands of other indie-pop/folk songstresses out there who all write and sing about heartache in a similar way.
    • 64 Metascore
    • 46 Critic Score
    Music to Be Murdered By doesn’t improve on Kamikaze, that’s largely down to its run time and hodgepodge of styles, but I can say there was at least some effort put into this one. The production is decent, the vocals occasionally hearken back to his playful era, and the guests do a pretty great job throughout, but there’s still too much baggage being carried over from the ‘10’s Eminem albums, and it kills a lot of the potential here.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 70 Critic Score
    Occasional flourishes reveal brilliance (‘Lost’, ‘Start Again’), but mostly it’s a homogeneous trudge through palpable emotional intensity. It culminates in some stunning imagery, which makes it worth the journey especially when you consider the relative brevity of the whole thing.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    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.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 84 Critic Score
    It wouldn’t just be inappropriate to listen to Coin Coin Memphis casually, while playing a video game or doodling in the background, it would be impossible, so arresting and bracing is the experience.
    • 96 Metascore
    • 96 Critic Score
    For those wanting Untrue levels of output, that album will forever be at your disposal. An album designed as worship has now entered that same vault of romanticized antiquity.
    • 91 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    There’s unhinged beauty meeting catchiness, a cabal that draws in its listener despite its inherent capriciousness. Hidden History of the Human Race is an irrefutable classic, dispelling any doubt that Blood Incantation are one of this generation’s leading death metal acts.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    An album this tepid--which is to say, not completely tepid, but tepid enough--from a talent that immense, though, can only register as a minor failure. She can do better. The sonic virtues of her performance on Pang, however mixed, guarantee that I'll be listening.