I feel like nothing happens in this album. Sure, there are chords and melodies, but none of that builds up to anything. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts has interesting ideas and is overall very well crafted, but these ideas are not expanded upon. Every song here feels like a good intro to a longer song... except the full version never comes.

I like the concept of noise music, but I've found that bare-bones noise/industrial records like this one tend to be rather boring and not really appealing to me. I like when noise is used as an extension of other genres, to add more weight, texture, accetuate certain parts of the record. Kollaps, however, doesn’t do that and is mostly a sound collage of different noises without a concrete structure. Look, I don’t hate noise. The genre that got me into music was metal, which tends to be pretty noisy. Noise rock and shoegaze are some of my favorite genres. And my favorite band, Swans, used to be a noise rock band and still frequently incorporates elements of noise into their music. I understand that all I’ve listed here is basically "child's first exposure to noisy music," but I'm totally fine with liking it. Kollaps is a lot more sonically offensive than most of the noise music I like. This is not a problem on its own. What I don't like here is that there's not a lot structure or musicality, which is also not necessarily wrong, but I think there's only so many of music conventions you can sacrifice before it becomes completely unengaging. I'm not saying "This is literally not music!" and I actually find that kind of attitude to be incredibly annoying and unfair. Who is to decide what counts as music and what doesn't? This kind of discussions are stupid and pointless. People come up with all kinds of arbitrary boundaries, but always fail to explain why would any of that matter. Jazz is not music because "it's just improvisation"; hip hop is not music because "they're just reading words" (also, the ones who think that tend to be not the biggest fans of black people, but that's a different story); metal is not music because "it's just random noises and screaming," etc. You know, vocals didn't used to be a part of the classical musicians' (who’ve invented music theory) repertoire originally. Does that mean every song that has vocals is not music? People need to come to terms with the fact that music, just like any other art form, constantly expands it's bounties and evolves. Whether you like these evolutions or not is irrelevant and doesn't make them any less “music.” Experimentation and diversions from popular norms lies at the core of art and is what makes it so exciting. I think noise music is totally valid, and you're allowed to dislike it, but "this is not music" is not legitimate criticism. This is also not what I dislike about this record. I don’t like when artists use the whole dynamic range their recording equipment allows as I have to lower the gain and make the quiter sounds way too quiet just so the louder ones don’t obliterate my eardrums. I like music to feel actually mixed. I like music to have structure. A typical framework of buildups and crescendos is far more satisfying to me because of the way it balances anticipation and relief. In place of that, Kollaps has quiet, droney backdrops occasionally interrupted my loud metallic noises or screaming vocals, which are not pleasant to the ear (and yes, you can make noise and screms pleasant). The title track is good, though, but it is also the one which the furthest removed from the rest of the album’s soundscape. I wouldn’t call Kollaps completely unlistenable or a total disaster, but I can’t say I enjoyed it. It’s not for me. If you’re a big fan of noise, you may like this, but I personally wouldn’t recommend it. 3/10

Incredible solos. Layla has one of the best riffs I’ve ever heard. The only problem is that it is 77 minutes of mostly the same idea. They’re doing a decent job of keeping it fresh, but the album still feels a tad bit repetitive.

Honestly wasn't expecting to like this as much as I did. I was a bit worried about the runtime, but Stankonia managed to stay consistently good all throughout its a bit bloated 73 minutes. That being said, although I liked pretty much every track, there wasn't a single truly impressive one (apart from maybe B.O.B.). Also, unnecessary interludes are unnecessary.

I guess if you like blues, you'd get more out of this. For me, it just felt like one idea repeated over and over again, with the only highlight being Got My Mojo Working. Although not bad by any means, most of the music here wasn't particularly fun or interesting and felt outdated. It was an easy listen, though, so I can't say I disliked it.

There's not really much I can say about this. It's just rather bland pop rock. Some catchy riffs, some fun lyrics, but nothing groundbreaking. Can't say it's bad, but this album is not something I would be excited to hear again. It's just fine.

First off, who gave these people a second audio channel? Seriously, they use stereo way too aggressively. Sound stage? Nah, drums left ear, guitar right ear! It adds nothing to the music and is just annoying and distracting. Okay, now to serious stuff. This is my first The Beatles album. Furthermore, I've actually been avoiding listening to them. But why? They're The Beatles. Aren't they one of the biggest bands of all time? Of course, I'm aware of all the praise they get. But whenever I hear someone talk about The Beatles, it is almost always about how "influential" or "monumental" they are and rarely anything about the quality of their music. I'm not trying to downplay the band's impact on the music industry, but this is not what I'm looking for when choosing what music to listen to. Call me a philistine, but I don't care how important a specific song or album was to the history of music or how technically impressive it is—I just want it to sound good. Of course, I've seen praise for their music too, but none of what I had heard or read made me excited to listen to it. That's why I avoided The Beatles—I was afraid that I was not going to like them. I realized that there was a pretty good chance that if I heard their music, I was going to become one of the very few people that don't care for them. And it's not like it's a simple unpopular opinion. Liking The Beatles is like some sort of a default opinion everyone who dares consider themselves a music nerd is simply expected to share. Not praising them is almost seen as flat-out wrong and an attribute of annoying contrarians and attention seekers. And I'm neither... well, at least I hope I am. Look, I hate not sharing probably one of the most popular opinions in music as it will now forever sit at the back of my mind whenever I see people discuss the band and certainly don't want to be the person to go, "The Beatles? Yeah, they're mid," but unfortunately, this is what I got out of my first experience with their stuff. So, does The White Album sound good? Well, yes... but I'm not impressed. Sure, It has a couple of bangers (Back In the U.S.S.R., While My Guitar Gently Weeps, Helter Skelter), but there are 30 songs here and most of the other ones are just decent to good. There's nothing wrong with the music here; I certainly didn't have any trouble getting through the album, but "decent to good" is not something you're supposed to expect from one of the most popular albums from arguably the most revered bands in history. The White Album is good, but it didn't grab my attention and felt like road trip music—pleasant but not exiting. Maybe it was revolutionary at the time of recording, but it's not really an argument. The problem is not that it's old, the problem is that its outdated. There are amazing bands like Pink Floyd, King Crimson, Yes, Led Zeppelin, and many more that came immediately after The Beatles yet for me their music still feels gripping and fresh many decades later. And yes, it's likely that The Beatles actually influenced the creation of at least some of these bands, but it doesn't make their music any batter. The White Album, on the other hand, by today's standards, feels like simple pop rock with folk elements. Yeah, I'm sorry, I don't get the appeal. My opinion may change when I listen to some of their other albums, but for now that's that. Your mileage may vary. 7/10

Folk and country music is not my cup of tea, but Harvest is great. The low-key moments interconnect well with energetic electronic guitars and even some huge orchestral bits. The vocals are great and bring forth a nice vibe. Wasn't really a fan of some of the more laid back parts, but other than that, there's not much to complain about here.

Laid-back, vocal-based songs is probably my least favorite type music as there's usually not much to catch my ear. Not saying that Stardust is bad—the vocals here are great, and the instrumentation is… fine, I guess. I just didn't particularly care for any of the songs here since this kind of music is not for me. It was a little underwhelming. 5/10

I feel like nothing happens in this album. Sure, there are chords and melodies, but none of that builds up to anything. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts has interesting ideas and is overall very well crafted, but these ideas are not expanded upon. Every song here feels like a good intro to a longer song... except the full version never comes.

Nu metal kind of got the worst of all worlds. It doesn't have the dark atmosphere or the songwriting of classic metal; it doesn't have the energy of early '90s metal; nor does it have the raw aggression and heaviness of modern metal. What does it have to compensate? I don't know actually, and this album certainly doesn't make things clearer. That being said, I personally don't have a strong opinion on nu metal and just find most metal from that era to be kind of mid, Slipknot included. But I recognize that there are also good things that came out of the nu metal era, like Deftones or System of a Down. Nu metal seems to be treated as this bastard child of metal by much of the internet community, something you don't like but with whose existence you have to cope. For that matter, Slipknot being the poster child of the genre, it's hard to find any sort of civil discussion about this album, or any of their discography, really. For some reason, people seem to be more concerned with what is the age limit after which you're not allowed to enjoy Slipknot; whether or not you're a "poser" for liking them; or can you even consider nu metal as a whole "metal" (because that's an argument that exists, somehow). But since nothing is going to stop children (be it mental or literal) from airing out their insecurities by stating that they definitely, without a shadow of a doubt didn't like a popular thing, let’s just not worry about any of this shit and talk about the music from Slipknot's self-titled, because this, at least in my humble opinion, is what music reviews are for. I actually was pleasantly surprised with this album initially. Although simplistic, the first half had plenty of catchy riffs and lyrics. But that quickly started falling apart towards the second half. The riffs became monotonous and repetitive, and the vocals lost all of their charm. It is obvious that they just ran out of ideas after some time. This album just didn't have to be this long. Why commit to a 55-minute album when you don't have enough material? Just cutting this album to 35-40 minutes would've made it noticeably better (although all Slipknot albums tend to be on the longer side, for some reason). It also seems to have some problems with the mix. The guitars on some tracks sound overly compressed and sort of distant. Overall, although I can't call this good music, I didn't hate it. The first half was pretty fun, but the second half has some boring songs and definitely drags the experience down. The people calling this unlistenable garbage are definitely overreacting, though—it's not that bad.

Nothing particularly special, just extremely fun, energetic riff rock. It’s simple and enjoyable. There's surprising amount of variation here, and the same riffs are not repeated over and over again (even in the 14-minute song). I wish they'd cut the talking out of the digital release, though, but it's not the album's fault.

This is why I don't usually enjoy pop-adjacent music. It often isn't bad and actually a pretty fun first listen, but it so quickly becomes bland and uninteresting. Most of the time when I listen to pop music, I can't stop thinking, "This is just engineered to be inoffensive." I'm not trying to diminish The Killers' effort here, but since this is made for a wide audience, the result is a well-produced piece of decent but painfully unremarkable music. And this probably wouldn’t have been a problem if I hadn’t known what remarkable rock sounded like, but I do.

I think it's extremely hard to make relaxing music not boring, but Moon Safari nails it. The first track set expectation extremely high (god, that bass), and although the rest of the songs didn't quite reach the same height, this album didn't disappoint. The songs here are chill yet atmospheric and engaging. The instrumentals are well-produced and are complemented greatly by vibey vocals. This album is not something I would've chosen to listened on my own, since calm electronic music without crescendos is not exactly for me, but I'm glad that I did. I mean, Daft Punk if they were good, amirite?

Jazz is one of the genres I don't fully understand yet, but I know that I'll probably get into later down the line. As for this album specifically, honestly, there's not much to criticize here. Although I feels like it doesn't do a good job at separating itself from the rest, Home Is Where the Music Is is a solid jazz record with great performances all around. That being said, I don't understand why many artist are so averse to cutting their albums to more appropriate lengths. I'm not against long albums, but for the record to justify its length, in my opinion, it needs to either constantly rejuvenate itself with new and exciting ideas or be based around one idea and explore it with different approaches. Unfortunately, a lot of longer records, this one included, tend to fall under neither and be just repetitive. 7/10

The Beatles continue to leave me woefully unimpressed. The music is nice, but "nice" is the highest compliment I can give it. It's enjoyable and has a couple of bangers, but it doesn't stand out. And this album is not something that I'd be particularly excited to relisten. 7/10

Quite basic and pretty uninteresting hip hop. It doesn't have any unique ideas, and most songs are not that catchy (Work It is a banger, though). It's not bad, but I got bored after the first half, so there's that. 5/10

Good music, but not for me. Vocal-based music is just not that fun for me. I enjoyed the funky parts with more complex instrumentals a lot more than the relaxing soul ones, but unfortunately, they're not the majority. There's no denying that Stevie Wonder is a great vocalist, but I mainly enjoy music for the instruments, and there's nothing special about them on most tracks here. 7/10

I've listened to Hendrix's debut album a while back and wasn't impressed by it. Considering his reputation, I wanted to relisten to it for some time, since my understanding and taste in music have changed considerably since then. After listening to Axis: Bold as Love, I no longer think this is necessary, since the problems I've found with this album are largely the same. Although I feel like Axis is an overall improvement at production quality, the main issue remains the same—Hendrix just can't write good music consistently. There's some genuine greatness here, and it’s hard to deny how good Jimi Hendrix is at playing guitar, but the rest sounds like generic psych/blues rock. From the two albums from him that I've heard, I would describe his music as "sparks of brilliance in the sea of mediocrity." To be fair, this is probably not his fault. As Hendrix, along with The Beatles, is seen as one of the biggest trendsetters in rock, it's the other bands that sound like him, not the other way around. But how good or bad the music was back when it was released is entirely irrelevant to how good it is today. And today Axis is still good but unimpressive. 7/10

Short and sweet. Simple but fun. Great riffs, great vocals, great vibes. Doesn't have any sort of "wow" effect, but it does what it tries to do well.

Hard rock is so fun, man. Deep Purple's Machine Head is perhaps a bit overplayed, but it's full of iconic banger with great riffs, impressive solos, and fun vocals nonetheless. The only complaint I have is that this album feels a little low energy. It's hard to explain exactly what I mean since I'm not familiar with music production terms, but the mix feels a bit barren, if that makes sense. There is not enough layers, not enough going on. Still a great album, but I wish it had more detail.

I like weird experimental music, but some tracks here I did not like at all. This album is too inconsistent. Some songs are great, others are just boring. The second half, which is less experimental and has more conventional tracks, redeems it a bit, though.

To me, Talking Heads is a band that makes accessible, decently fun, and very well produced music that, for some reason, has almost no charm to it. It's like pop but slightly better, excerpt slightly better is not enough for me to be a fan, because I don't like pop. Yeah, their music just doesn't impress me in any way. Their next album, Remain In Light, is slightly better, in my opinion, but I also couldn't find anything to praise it for. Good music, but nothing remarkable. 7/10

Was skeptical going into this since I like loud, layered, complex music and a cappella is pretty much the antithesis of that. But this album turned out to be just... nice. It's easy to listen to, and I had no problem getting through it despite this kind of music being completely outside of my interests. But aside from being exceptionally accessible, there's nothing to praise this album for. It's too monotonous and not exciting. There's not a single song of even part of a song that stands out. This is nice background music, but it can't stand on its own.

I like the concept of noise music, but I've found that bare-bones noise/industrial records like this one tend to be rather boring and not really appealing to me. I like when noise is used as an extension of other genres, to add more weight, texture, accetuate certain parts of the record. Kollaps, however, doesn’t do that and is mostly a sound collage of different noises without a concrete structure. Look, I don’t hate noise. The genre that got me into music was metal, which tends to be pretty noisy. Noise rock and shoegaze are some of my favorite genres. And my favorite band, Swans, used to be a noise rock band and still frequently incorporates elements of noise into their music. I understand that all I’ve listed here is basically "child's first exposure to noisy music," but I'm totally fine with liking it. Kollaps is a lot more sonically offensive than most of the noise music I like. This is not a problem on its own. What I don't like here is that there's not a lot structure or musicality, which is also not necessarily wrong, but I think there's only so many of music conventions you can sacrifice before it becomes completely unengaging. I'm not saying "This is literally not music!" and I actually find that kind of attitude to be incredibly annoying and unfair. Who is to decide what counts as music and what doesn't? This kind of discussions are stupid and pointless. People come up with all kinds of arbitrary boundaries, but always fail to explain why would any of that matter. Jazz is not music because "it's just improvisation"; hip hop is not music because "they're just reading words" (also, the ones who think that tend to be not the biggest fans of black people, but that's a different story); metal is not music because "it's just random noises and screaming," etc. You know, vocals didn't used to be a part of the classical musicians' (who’ve invented music theory) repertoire originally. Does that mean every song that has vocals is not music? People need to come to terms with the fact that music, just like any other art form, constantly expands it's bounties and evolves. Whether you like these evolutions or not is irrelevant and doesn't make them any less “music.” Experimentation and diversions from popular norms lies at the core of art and is what makes it so exciting. I think noise music is totally valid, and you're allowed to dislike it, but "this is not music" is not legitimate criticism. This is also not what I dislike about this record. I don’t like when artists use the whole dynamic range their recording equipment allows as I have to lower the gain and make the quiter sounds way too quiet just so the louder ones don’t obliterate my eardrums. I like music to feel actually mixed. I like music to have structure. A typical framework of buildups and crescendos is far more satisfying to me because of the way it balances anticipation and relief. In place of that, Kollaps has quiet, droney backdrops occasionally interrupted my loud metallic noises or screaming vocals, which are not pleasant to the ear (and yes, you can make noise and screms pleasant). The title track is good, though, but it is also the one which the furthest removed from the rest of the album’s soundscape. I wouldn’t call Kollaps completely unlistenable or a total disaster, but I can’t say I enjoyed it. It’s not for me. If you’re a big fan of noise, you may like this, but I personally wouldn’t recommend it. 3/10

To be honest, I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to get out of soul. If it's supposed to be relaxing and easy to listen to, then it succeeds, but it doesn't do anything to be interesting. This is just inoffensive music with nothing exciting about it. There's nothing wrong with that, but I'm not having much fun listening to this, which is what I really want from music.

I really liked the opening song, but most others were a little boring. I feel like this type of music works best when it's energetic. That’s why I enjoyed the first song a lot, but the rest not so much. I would've certainly rated this album higher if everything were like the first song. I actually want to find more of this sort of energetic big band R&B Fallout type beat music, but this wasn’t it.

Has it's moments, but it lack energy, in my opinion. The opening song is really fun, and I wish all the others were like it. I also wasn't a huge fan of the ambient part in the second half. 7/10

Just pleasant easy-listening vocal jazz. Inoffensive, not bad by any means. I was expecting it to be too much of a "quantity over quality" thing (considering it's over 3(!) hours long), but it turned out to be quite enjoyable with a surprising amount of nice grooves. There isn't anything that would draw me to this album over any other one with a similar vibe, but it works well as background music. Also, yes, I did finish it before writing this. Professionals have standards. 7/10

Pop rock (derogatory). Yeah, that's an album that... exists. I don't know what I was supposed to get out of this one. The band clearly didn't know either. This might be the most mid piece of media I consumed in the past year. It's far from good, and it's also far from bad. It's extremely hard for me to imagine someone going, "Yeah, this is fire" over this, but also nobody is going to despise it. It's just so painfully... okay.

Decently fun new wave, but nothing particularly special. I had a good time, through. 7/10

I hate pop because most of it just focuses on not being bad instead of trying to be good. Central Reservation is such a nothing burger, with great vocals and pretty much nothing else. Why would I choose to listen to something that's not trying to be good when there's so much music that actually tries to be exciting and succeeds? Like, being a good vocalist—and Beth Orton is a good vocalist—is not enough to make good music. You have to think about the other aspects of the composition too. But here, in the first half, everything outside of vocals is unremarkable, and in the second half, they just completely gave up, it seems.

This is my first reggae album... and I'm unimpressed. It was kind of boring and way to repetitive. It's vocal-based music, which is not really for me. I like music to be exciting, but this is laid-back and not really atmospheric at the same time. It's fine but not that fun. Also, it is probably the remaster's fault, but some track have way too much bass and it overpowers the rest of the sound (more of a minor complaint). 5/10

As much as I'm not a fan of electronic music, Fatboy Slim has a couple of iconic tracks under his belt that I love. This album demonstrates that he can make incredibly catchy music... but not necessarily that he always does. This album consists entirely of repetitive loopy songs with occasional interludes and minor additions to the loops. The problem with this style is that for the songs not to sound boring, the loops need to be really good. This album achieves this... with various degrees of success. And here's the issue: The average song length here is over 5.5 minutes, which is on a longer side for dance music. I don't mind The Rockafeller Skank begin almost 7 minutes long, because it's fun as hell, but there are some tracks here that are not that good (In Heaven, You're Not From Brighton, Acid 8000), so instead they feel like an overly long slog. You've Come a Long Way, Baby is definitely of its time, but it has its charm and the songs mostly range from fine to incredibly fun. 7/10

A lot of singer-songwriter albums fall short for me because I don't care about vocals that much and the instrumentation is usually quite boring and doesn't do much to make the songs more fun. However, I happen to enjoy this heavy alt rock style of instrumentation, so Dry, while still maintaining a bit of that singer-songwriter vibe, is a lot more exciting to me. It's simple but fun, catchy, and overall a pretty pleasant listen. Gives some Nirvana vibes. Whoever mixed that needs to be taken out back, though.

The more I listen to music, the more I realize that the classic vinyl 40-minute format makes the most sense for compilation-style albums. I don't have anything against longer records, but I think that if the required time commitment exceeds 40-45 minutes, the album needs to justify it (like having an overarching narrative/some other sort of progression, or a lot of variety). An hour of standalone songs is just a bit too long for me. And it's not like the songs here are impressive. Don't get me wrong, they're pretty good overall, but aside from The Champ, none of them are all that memorable. I would rather artists make shorter releases but focus more on quality. And interludes... Don't, just don't. 7/10

This album is quite unique in a way that all the interruptions, jokes, bickering, and audience reactions are left in on purpose. And although I'd usually prefer the recording to be as clean as possible, it's hard to deny that all the imperfections add quite a bit of charm to it. That being said, I just don't get what people like about vocals. No matter how much I listen, I don't understand what I'm supposed to be finding in vocal-based music. I like vocals to be just another instrument, not completely take over the song. For me, it makes the music so much less interesting and engaging, especially when the songs are as monotonous as these ones. I just don't get how I am supposed to like music there only one "instrument" is good and all the others just support it when there's music there every instrument is good simultaneously. 5/10

Fun indie rock. There's not much more to say. It's pretty good, but lacks some extra punch, so I can't say it's great. To be honest, I don't really get the hype around Pixies' first two albums. They’re not impressive at all. 7/10

Just like My War, Damaged has horrible production. That being said, I prefer this album over My War because it's significantly more fun and energetic. But just like My War, it's way too simplistic to my taste, and where Dead Kennedys, for example, have been able to compensate with just how incredibly fun their vocals are, the vocals here are just fine, I guess. One song here (TV Party) even has a similar vibe, but the rest are quite a bit different, so I didn't like them as much. Still a good album, but there are other ones that do the same better. 7/10

First of all, this is one of the most sick cover arts I've seen... and second of all, the music is almost on par. I was not expecting much from this album as I don't have a great tack record with pop rock, but wow, was I impressed. Finally, pop rock that actually does its job well! Despite the sad name, it's a bunch of fun songs with simple but great riffs and vocals. It's a bit on the longer side but manages to hold up well. This is what pop music supposed to be. Sorry, Blur, I was not familiar with your game.

This might seem like blasphemy, but I'm not a huge fan of Radiohead. I don't really understand the universal praise they get and have always found their music a little... unsatisfying? I can't explain what exactly I don't like about their music. Not that it's bad, I just think that it could've been better. It's one step from great, it's a little unresolving, if that makes sense, and The Bends is no exception. I feels like it's 50% great, but the other 50% are just fine. Yeah, I don't know, just think some parts here a little boring. I might come around to enjoying Radiohead eventually, but the time is not now, it seems. 7/10