In a world where many acts of a similar age rely on their past, eschewing their original passion and fire for heritage, tradition and tribute, it's comforting to know that Young can both usurp these elements and carry on ploughing his own furrow.

The most important takeaway when listening to The Pariah, the Parrot, the Delusion is that however centaurian the album as a whole may be, Dredg are a truly special group.

Busdriver gives his best performance thus far.

Though this isn't Maserati at their finest hour, it shows the engine is still running and possesses a lot of potential too. Their universe expanded with VII and Rehumanizer successfully brings all those influences together.

Hurley proves that Rivers still has some gas left in the tank.

There is a savvy depth evident throughout ‘The Family Jewels’ which simply cannot be ignored; fun, serious, poppy and unorthodox, it is an album full of contradictions, but one which rarely fails to entertain.

Drastic Fantastic achieves success due to its near-perfect composition and construction.

Basically, Black Clouds & Silver Linings is an album that continues the band’s increased use of metal riffs combined with extended musical interludes but also brings in strong compositional skills that give the songs the kind of consistency they require in order to be truly memorable and engaging.

Chasing Yesterday is crammed full of natural sounding songs by a man who has only ever known one way of making music, and long may it continue.

What can be viewed as a weakness can also be seen as a strength, and for the most part one can conclude that The Chair in the Doorway is a successful return to form.

E S T A R A is not as strong an album as Ardour, not as surprising because it couldn’t possibly be. But in its own, attenuated, scattered-birds way, this album is everything we could have hoped for.

There’s rarely a song here that isn’t beautiful: Fortino’s sense for gorgeous melodies, both instrumentally and vocally, simply shines throughout.

At only 28 minutes long, Lysandre is easily digestible in a single sitting, but that really just embellishes its true purpose--to temporarily whet our appetites till all those other Christopher Owens solo records appear.

This is Merritt in designer mood, playing with layers and music. The joy is found in watching it take shape.

Remarkably devoid of pretensions, Free Your Mind is a dance record boiled down to its most essential, body-shaking elements, and the purest distillation of Cut Copy’s music and their ethos yet.

Strange Desire is perhaps the fullest-sounding and most charismatic indie-pop album you’ll hear this year, just in time to become the defining sound of your summer.

The ideal summer soundtrack. It is charismatic, warm, and sexy, with just the right touch of mystique.

V is a welcome return to the consistency of I and II, being an elegant return to form for Blackfield while brightening their sound just enough to remain recognizable.

As of right now though, Evil Urges is on the top of the heap for 2008.

With its obtuse rhythm and the inevitably impenetrable lyrics, Om offer their own truth, one with many questions and answers.

The Serenity of Suffering is easily Korn’s most diverse release; featuring melody, aggression, new sounds and old staples in just about equal measures wrapped into some of the band’s strongest songs in years.

By all means engage yourself in Tomorrow, In a Year, for the prize at the end is one of the essential experiences of the young year. Just understand the scope of the expedition you’re embarking upon before you go.

Ultimately, while there probably isn't anything here truly great enough to draw any more attention to the band, this is a perfectly good album that displays an awful lot of potential.

As with the self-titled release, Mind Over Matter front-loads its more accessible tunes.... Unfortunately, the album’s latter half is a little more hit and miss, with everything being competent enough in isolation, but arguably unengaging when amassed together.

Femme Fatale, after all, is a flawed album, with lyrics that barely clear the level of a Ke$ha and a maturity level to match. But it's a pop album that's supposed to make you dance, and when it comes to that, there's not a star out there that can match Ms. Spears.

They’re darn right they still belong, since Lostprophets have delivered an excellent album that is a reminder to all and sundry that this is a band with not only a storied past, but also a very bright future.

The bands debut album Tourist History is clearly far from original, yet it ultimately wins listeners over with its immediate, enthusiastic, likeable and catchy mixture of ingredients, which results in a sound that is certain to have toes tapping from the pubs to the clubs.

his is the full realisation of the promise of blink-182 with Matt Skiba: the minor-key melodies and desolate lyrics of +44 brush up against a fully comfortable Skiba as lead vocalist, delivering his best vocals in fifteen years or more – all within the confines of a gleaming clean pop-punk production. ... The overproduction is frustrating both because his songwriting is at its best state in at least 10 years, and because for every generic pop moment there are subtle and fascinating production details to discover.