One Day is massive, even if it is short by comparison. Again, the sound is huge with layered guitars and ghostly layered background vocals. Singer Damian Abraham’s bark is a blasted out as ever. But, whereas Fucked up is sometimes dark and scary, here the sound is positively bright.

Midnight Scorchers is one of the rare LPs that takes the lightning out of the bottle, blasts it around the room, and then puts it back in another bottle.

The album itself is PROOF that chaos and anger and conflict and an open mind and fun is what gives Morris his strength, creativity, and singularity.

Truly, this is one of the best reggae records of the year… and one of the best records of the year.

Ultimately, it's not a bad album, but not the greatest either.

An infectious album of either punk influenced pop or pop influenced punk. Whatever the appropriate term for the music here is, it gets stuck in your head.

There’s an intelligence wrapped in the machinery here. This is cyborg music driven by metal fingers, but the human heart is still intact.

It sounds like everything has been sounded down to the point where instruments tend to melt together and it can actually be hard to hear what is going on at some points. It doesn’t ruin the release, but it does make it sound vastly different on different unites. (i.e. the EP actually sounds really good – if not a little too slick- on my home stereo, but on my car stereo, it sounds watery).

Overall, Moral Hygiene is a damn solid Ministry album. The band has had many peaks and valleys over the course of a nearly 40 year career, but they’re once again proving that they’re still relevant.

Cool is not only a masterful release sonically, but it strikes a cosmic chord that few release can hit.

What’s particularly neat here is that record masterminds Mike Haliechuk and Jonah Falco have forged their most diverse and chameleon-onic sound bed to date.

It's wildly accessible and I think what works the most is you just wouldn't be able to tell what kind of band they really are and what's their definitive sound -- which is a beautiful chaos that works in Turnstile's favor.

Vocalist Tim McIlrath must be given credit as well, as his voice -- and overall production -- is as tight as ever. Technically, I found their last couple albums lacking, feeling too generic and polished, but it's a much better balance now.

Ultimately, it feels like too much is crammed in and AFI can't tell if they want to go pop, goth, retro or symphonic. And with something that schizophrenic, it undercuts a lot of what could have been diamonds in the rough.

This is a slight return to form for Dropkick Murphys. It’s probably not going to occupy the same place in your heart as Do Or Die or Sing Loud, Sing Proud, but you can’t expect 50 year old guys to make the same record they made at 25. Give Turn Up That Dial a listen. You might just be pleasantly surprised.

Here, it's a lot more of that soft-loud dynamic, that visceral arrangement on the buildups and honestly, a lot more of Andy's iconic poetry. ... It frees them even more creatively, and I love the growth shown.

Assembly shows that while Strummer solo may have more nuance or more room for interpretation, the raw power of his early work had been washed over with music that, was frankly, quieter. ... It also proves that Strummer solo can stand on its own, even if that stance will always be in the shadow of an earlier band.

Whereas most inside/silly jokes are used by a closed group to draw their own bonds closer, here, the Melvins are using that device to invite people into the world. And frankly, it’s a fun and funny world despite the gratuitous use of the F-word.

Detroit Stories is fully formed and tells its story without trying too hard… or too little. The band cranks on the engine and lets Jesus… err… the Ashetons, Fred Sonic Smith, and Glen Buxton… take the wheel and they drive this record on home.

Open Door Policy is the album longtime fans have been waiting for. The lyrics are there and the music is there.

I didn't get that rough cut as much as I would have liked on this album, but other than that, this is a front-to-back gem with great replay value and anthemic shout-alongs I wish I could take in live.

I think this record has to be taken in isolation and taken in context of needed something to do during the pandemic. But regardless, No Fun Mondays is a pop-rocking good time.

There’s a lot of good here. The band’s personality has never shown through like this in the studio before.

I think the punk rock attitude is to not easily be impressed with technical musicianship that doesn’t make you feel much of anything. American Head didn’t hit me in the heart or in the gut, but it did make me want to go back and listen to “She Don’t Use Jelly” again and, if nothing else, that’s a positive that comes from this experience.

Te nearly two dozen guests here add both a gravitas and liveliness to the LP.

It's another commendable effort from Weiss waxing on about life and love, and the changes we're all enduring in these dire times. I can tell it would have had more impact for me if some of the fat were trimmed, or if it were split into two EPs, but hey... IIOI not at their best is still quite better than many bands hitting their heights these days, especially in the indie/emo genre.

This is a good album, but it’s one of those albums that either has too much or too little of something.

If you're a fan of The Front Bottoms, you should consider that folk/indie/acoustic era totally dead. And it's not a bad thing to accept because art involves evolution and experimentation, and while it even took me a while to get accustomed to TFB's pop-mainstream aura, it's a jacket worn pretty damn well as In Sickness & In Flames shows.