It's the sound of a veteran band coming back to the game without missing a beat, and churning out some of their best, liveliest, and catchiest material in the process.

On the whole, American Beauty/American Psycho is Fall Out Boy's most consistent and bottom-line best album ever.

Generally speaking, the Jack Ü project is fully functional party music that hedges its bets with collaborations and does little in the way of genuine innovation.

Of the 12 songs on the album proper, Sean is left to his own devices on less than half of them (two of which are the intro and outro), and the first signs of wear on the album come as soon as one of his solo joints succeeds another.

If you just want another batch of Torche tracks, some of which stand up to the best in their discography, then Restarter will prove to be a worthy addition to the Torche catalog.

As it stands, its hard to call anything on this album an evolution, since many of the tracks feel like they're just more beefed up but far less interesting versions of what they gave us on Shrines.

If You're Reading This It's Too Late comes with all of the baggage and experimentation a mixtape brings while managing to surpass the quality of most artists' output.

Then Came the Morning is still a solid next step for a promising young band. The songs are catchy and memorable, the musicianship is impeccable, and the production... well, suffice to say that Aaron Dessner should soon find himself an in-demand producer in the folk/Americana world.

Whether Murder by Death ever gets the credit they so richly deserve still remains to be seen. But more albums as dominant, complete and enriching as Big Dark Love probably won’t hurt their cause. In an era dominated by singles and ample amounts of filler, it is a delight to hear an album as engrossing as this.

The majority of the songs on Hyperview sound very, very similar. Those two songs are different enough to differentiate themselves from the rest of the album, but most of them aren’t.

Best of 2015? Maybe not, as Cloakroom could do well to add just a bit more variety to their sound. Nonetheless, they’re off to a rather auspicious start, as Further Out refines positive aspects of their debut EP and ups the production value immensely.

For those who are willing to go in without preconceived notions, this album is a masterpiece: a stunning feat of songwriting depth, emotional maturity, and melodic effortlessness that stands as one of the best albums to come out in years.

"Summer Brings You Closer to Satan" would be an fair pick for the album’s best track, except that Runners in the Nerved World hardly falters in quality at any point.

Though not nearly as strong as 2008’s Ganging Up On the Sun, Evermotion is stronger than 2010’s Easy Wonderful and will continue to keep the band relevant in 2015 and beyond.

The palpably effervescent joy of Rae Sremmurd feels untainted by the ills of reality and stands against a backdrop of contemporaries like Shmurda and Chief Keef who use their as a way of combating the grim reality of inner city rot.

An understandable desire to have her traumas understood by everybody inevitably results in a bland mush of melodrama. Despite this, The Pinkprint is Nicki Minaj’s most successful album by a fairly wide margin, as she becomes more empathetic than at any point in the past while Pink Friday’s DMZ between pop and rap becomes little more than a historical footnote in her career.

Her melodies are always on point and her voice is as strong and confident as ever, a very large and noticeable step up from the teenage True Romance.

Very much a step forward from last year’s The Coming Tide, Everlasting Arms is a sterling effort from an artist who fully understands who he is and what he is and is absolutely loving every minute of it.

Quite simply, there hasn’t been a Copeland album as complete as Ixora.

While the record’s bloat does kind of compromise its overall consistency and cohesion, Lost on the River probably still has more of the year’s best songs in one place than almost any other album.

Overall, if you’re going to listen to one seasonal release this year, Los Campesinos! have created an EP which provides that festive hit whilst maintaining exactly what it is that makes them special with their usual work. Another stellar release from one of the most under-rated indie rock bands in the world.

On her debut album, Azealia Banks has established herself as a brash and crude personality both on and off record, and she’s complemented it with a competent execution of a bold artistic vision.

Cadillactica very rarely falls short of its goals, and the few throwaway tracks are unobtrusive enough to not take anything away from the record.

White Noise stands to be one of the most promising and impressive debut album of the year, but more than just deserving that title, it stands to be one of the best albums of the year.

Run The Jewels 2 is the logical follow up to Run The Jewels; it's bigger, bolder, and feels like a punch to the gut that you'll be feeling for weeks.

With this record, the band not only rose up to the bar set by their contemporaries, they raised it to a new level-- which is a good thing, because if this record is the new standard for the metalcore genre, then the future is looking incredibly bright.

The New Sidewalk isn’t their great album, but it’s undoubtedly a stepping stone on the way there.

All told, it’s a solid record with no glaring weak points (a first for the Foo Fighters) and with some of the band’s more rewarding and adventurous songwriting.