As a follow up to the legendary Marquee Moon, Adventure seems somewhat unassuming. It's not only far less ambitious than that album, but also far more gentle and light-hearted. The whole thing is infused with this blissful warmth that is infectious. I'm not going to pretend like this is some sort of slept on masterpiece, because it isn't, but I will say this: if you love Marquee Moon as much as I do, there is definitely a lot of value to get out of this project. In that album's case, the value ... read more

I honestly think the psychedelic elements of this project aren't utilised anywhere near as much as they should be, because this could have ended up being a truly excellent psych album with the right ambition. Still, what we do get is some really solid pop rock with brief moments of psychedelic and baroque pop thrown in the mix. The use of harpsichord and piano is what mostly creates the psychedelic tone, particularly on cuts such as Rosy Won't You Please Come Home which are sonically ... read more

This album is about as thrash-heavy as Metallica gets, but to call it purely thrash metal may be doing it a disservice. Their development into a slightly more progressive sound is foreshadowed by certain moments of the long strong structures this album provides. Seriously, tell me the middle interlude of Phantom Lord isn't a clear precursor to Master of Puppets. Somehow the least interesting tracks are the shortest ones, because the band excel at delivering thrash metal journeys. As fun as ... read more

Considering Layne Staley is one of my favourite rock vocalists of all time, I was rightfully pretty hesitant going into this project. While I'm all for bands continuing to make albums after the death of a member, Alice in Chains making another worthwhile album without Layne Staley feels like an impossible task. Although Black Gives Way to Blue certainly doesn't reach the heights of any of their previous work, it comes surprisingly close at times. This album leans pretty significantly into the ... read more

I honestly wasn't fully bought on this album at first, but yeah, it's fucking great. Lots of great hard rock with some creative elements thrown in here and there. The band's songwriting has been refined to a tee, all the choruses are fantastic and delivered by Josh Homme with the same fire as he's always done. They manage to take pretty conventional hard rock riffs and make them feel interesting and adventurous, which isn't easy to do. My only notable gripe is with the mixing, which often feels ... read more

looking forward to the king gizzard depressive black metal album

Admittedly this is only my second King Gizzard album, but I was already aware of how much the band switched up genres throughout their discography. However I can't say I expected them to go full thrash metal, nor did I expect the outcome to be so great. It's technically proficient and highly ambitious progressive thrash metal, with the band's signature personality to make the ride that much more fun. Stu kills it with this vocal ... read more

One of the most brutal records of the year thus far, The Gray in Between manages to balance the band's dissonant and brutal tone with an immersive and at times beautiful soundscape. For the most part the album consists of short, tightly performed screamo tracks with similar riffs being used for each track. The more noticeable instances of this repetition can take away from the brutality somewhat, although the consistently great atmosphere redeems this for the most part. Obviously the lead ... read more

The Velvets go full pop rock on this album, which if you paid attention at all to their first album, was bound to go well. Some of the best cuts from that project, Sunday Morning and Femme Fatale, are as gentle and woozy as this album's entirety. Candy Eyes is perhaps their most utterly beautiful song, Pale Blue Eyes is about as tender as Lou Reed ever gets, and After Hours might be the cutest song ever recorded. The one exception to this sound is the experimental The Murder Mystery, which is ... read more

It says a lot that this album gets better the louder it is, then tapers off in excitement on the lighter tracks. Without their punk innovations, The Sonics are essentially just an inferior Beatles with a frontman who screams too much. The highlights are seriously great, with The Witch being impressively heavy, and other cuts such as Strychnine and Do You Love Me being simultaneously fun and sonically impenetrable. The covers on the other hand are largely uninteresting and lack the punch that ... read more

There are a few things about Transformer that make it seem unappealing on paper. First off is the obvious - Lou Reed can't sing for shit. The only track where he has a pretty much perfect vocal performance is Walk on the Wild Side, on which he hardly sings anyway. Otherwise, his voice quivers constantly and misses most notes by a decent margin. Yet somehow I'm still drawn to his subtle lack of real passion or care for what he's singing, and the sense that he's really only using this album as an ... read more

SPELLLING's debut completely pales in comparison to later work. The project's minimalistic soundscape often feeling incomplete combined with their basic and repetitive structure. Many songs simply take one repeated guitar or keyboard melody and repeat it for the entire song, not making much effort to develop its ideas at all. Bolt From the Blue and Blue (American Dream) probably come closest to feeling like fully fledged concepts, but the concepts themselves are not that interesting in the ... read more

"We didn't get no scholarship
We didn't get no graduate degree
But all of that information is still within me"

That was the part that broke me.

Oh Me Oh My is a gut-wrenching album in all the best ways possible. It is utterly gorgeous and puts the true beauty of life into perspective, while also being eclectic and crushing. Moments like Testing, the title track, Kindness Will Follow Your Tears and None of Us Have but a Little While are tender and provide truly passionate ... read more

The Great Annihilator simultaneously addresses spirituality, the destructive nature of humanity and the ultimate demise of the universe, delivered via the framework of pop and viewed through the twisted lens of Michael Gira's introspection. Gira discusses the abuse that takes place among the financial elites on Celebrity Lifestyle, the deranged and confronting murders committed by Dennis Nielsen on Killing for Company, and depicts time's chaotic demolition of all that is on the album's title ... read more

85 -> 94 -> 92
Okay damn, I underrated this a lot. I think listening to every Beatles album before this puts into perspective how amazing of a step forward this album is. The songwriting is on POINT, pretty much flawless, it has the best melodies on any Beatles project to date. The vocals in this album are out of this world, even the backing vocals are god damn incredible. Like seriously, go listen to Michelle and tell me that isn't one of the most well performed songs you've ever heard. ... read more

First of all, I want to say that anyone who was expecting some sort of return to form on this album are deeply mistaken. Clearly you guys didn't learn from literally every album since Load.

With that being said, it's a good project. However it's repetitive, unoriginal and somewhat bloated. The production feels a little bit too clean, with nothing really hitting as hard as it should. James Hetfield's lyrics are pretty much just him listing out as many things as he can that rhyme and relate to ... read more

At this point of their career, Swans masterfully adapt to the troubled stylistic shift that they faced on The Burning World. They become authentically gothic, rather than applying the correct cliches to fall under the category of gothic rock - a mistake that they easily could have made again. Throughout this album the instrumentation is extremely rich and dreamy, although shades of their no wave era linger, as the pounding drums are still ever-present. The drumming adds a lot to the mix, ... read more

The ultimate tragedy of an album like this that is at once a perfectly encapsulating and palatable artistic depiction of the black experience, is that it will ultimately be forgotten and discarded by many ignorant people who may characterize it as merely pretend-conscious drivel. By the kind of people who put it on the background once to try and join in on the "hype", then left appalled by the lack of [insert thing here]. And I don't say that because this album is "real ... read more

75 -> 84
If this album was just made for teenage girls, then I'm teenage girls. Hits me right in the hormones.

Also if anyone is doubting how talented my girl O-Rod is, go watch her tiny desk performance and tell me that isn't effortless, pure talent.

Somehow this grew from 77 to 79 to 80, then months later all the way to 90, which I did not expect to happen at all. But there's good reason for the change.

This project has so many strange an interesting layers that reveal themselves upon more listens - not only thematic layers of corruption and existential criticisms of government power, but also instrumental layers. It ranges from the downright schizophrenic rhythmic composition of This Is Violence Now, to the terror inducing rumbling bass ... read more

I could probably write about this album forever and ever, but that would take a while so this is gonna just be a concise review. What I will say is that Madvillainy is one of the most incredible albums I have ever heard. Every. Single. Fucking. Beat. Is. Flawless. I cannot get over how consistently fucking GOOD this thing is. Madlib has some of the best production of all time on here, with mindbogglingly captivating melodies. Every element and sample of each beat clicks together to form ... read more