Symphonic glitch black metal. Sounds pretentious as hell but works in execution. Transcendentalism.

So safe and familiar that it almost falls into self-parody, most evident on "The Academy Award", a track that sounds like it could have been written by a band who just heard "The Dark of the Matinee" for the first time.

Unfortunately, this is every bit as formulaic as you would expect from a band whose peak came many years before. (But what a peak it was.)

I was a bit put off by the first track on my first listen (how dare he sing in a nearly normal pitch!), but the rest of the album ranks among the best work he's done.

Shame, much like Idles in early 2017, have set the post-punk bar high for 2018.

This album got squashed by the Lorde and Fleet Foxes releases on the same day. It's a more than serviceable comeback album with some real bangers (Lannoy Point, All I Want, Weather Diaries, and Cali), but some of the tracks border on generic rock fare (Charm Assault). It doesn't reinvent the wheel by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a solid entry into their canon.

Dull, forgettable, and at times even annoying. Easily Burial's least engaging moment in what thus far has been a mystifying career.

Lorde stands amongst the flashing lights of the dance floor and delivers yet another pop masterclass, one that couldn't be further from the term "music for the masses" but at the same time is universally resonant.

Iggy Pop's latest is a collection of ruminations on mortality, with Pop juxtaposing traditional romps of sexual abandon with stark feelings of vulnerability over the breezy course of its nine songs. Josh Homme makes his musical presence known early, and (in some cases, far too) often, leaving veterans of Stooges era Iggy hungry for the simple, ferocious attack of those halcyon days. Despite that, the album remains resolutely interesting, with memorable grooves and gruff, uncompromising vocals ... read more

An aptly titled record, EVOL is the sound of Sonic Youth propelling itself perpetually forward into new territory and distancing themselves from their work on Confusion is Sex and Bad Moon Rising. EVOL sees the band operating as a fully cohesive unit, confident enough in their place in the world to end the album on an eternally locked groove, as if premeditating its resonance in the indie community.

Top Three Tracks:
1. Expressway to Yr Skull
2. Tom Violence
3. Green Light

Seventeen Seconds is a foundation record at its core, a base from which the band would continue to grow and expand over the course of the next decade. It eschews the traditional (but effective) post-punk sound of their debut in favor of a desolate one that, like its album cover conveys, is best when taken while wandering through a wood, small droplets gathering on the canopy above.

Top Three Tracks:
1. Seventeen Seconds
2. A Forest
3. Play For Today