Kerrang!'s Scores

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For 1,584 reviews, this publication has graded:
  • 63% higher than the average critic
  • 4% same as the average critic
  • 33% lower than the average critic
On average, this publication grades 1.8 points higher than other critics. (0-100 point scale)
Average Music review score: 75
Highest review score: 100 Yellow & Green
Lowest review score: 20 What The...
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1,108 out of 1584
  2. Mixed: 465 out of 1584
  3. Negative: 11 out of 1584
1584 music reviews
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    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Power Up
    Power Up is a reminder that this music has a power that belies its apparent simplicity (and here do not mistake this for being easy – go stand in a practice room and listen to how many drummers can’t do the ’DC beat properly). The context and tragic shadow from which it comes and the world into which it arrives makes its odes to freewheeling good times so very poignant.
    • 85 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    May Our Chambers Be Full
    There’s plenty to latch onto, whether it’s the neck-rending riffs, the snarling/soaring vocals or just wanting to vibe out and let the darkness envelope you; it’s a display of artistry.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Anti-Icon
    Ghostemane knows who he is. That he expresses himself this articulately without giving too much of that away is in itself testament to his esoteric skills.
    • 82 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR [EP]
    BMTH have long known how to play what cards when, and just when we need something cathartic, something heavy, something with an element of the familiar in amongst the creativity, they deliver richly here. Fourteen years on from their debut, much has changed, but in some other ways some things are exactly the same.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Existential Reckoning
    The beauty of Puscifer is that they can be taken any way you like depending on how you look at them. It is more than enough that the music on Existential Reckoning is superb. But should you attempt to get under the skin and solve the puzzles within, there are vast riches to be had.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Great Dismal
    NOTHING, a band noted for their none-more-dour demeanour using a black hole as inspiration might be a little too on-the-nose for some tastes. At a time when hope feels in scant supply, wade into the blackness of these waters at your own discretion.
    • 81 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    The Raging Wrath Of The Easter Bunny Demo
    Grown men revisiting their youthful hijinks should be a terrible idea or, to borrow an FNM title, a midlife crisis. Instead, this record is an absolute rager, testament to both the original material and the present-day dedication of its lunatic creators.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Razzmatazz
    Razzmatazz comes at just the right time and it was well worth the wait. iDKHOW might not be changing the game exactly, but they’re packing the kind of addictive, dopamine-like qualities that’ll make you want to keep pumping coins into the slot for another hit, time and time again.
    • 68 Metascore
    • 40 Critic Score
    Moral Panic
    The main selling points of this album are a sleek production job and the technical performance of vocalist Conor Mason, who once again proves himself to be in possession of some serious lungs. The problem, however, is that despite the surface sheen, too many of Moral Panic’s songs fail to really go anywhere.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    This Place Sucks Ass [EP]
    A reminder of how fun music can be. Sure, it’s not as joyous as Morbid Stuff, but for a stopgap to keep fans going in these bewildering times, it does the job nicely.
    • 84 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Forgotten Days
    There’s nothing too out there on Forgotten Days – the ’80s synth of the closing Caledonia probably the biggest surprise, but a welcome one: a playful take on the pain of the past – and all the tracks are solid, with any experimentation woven tightly around Pallbearer’s doom roots. This is the sound of a genre being refreshed, and of a band making it entirely their own.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dealing With Demons I
    Throughout, DevilDriver are taut, tight and tenacious.
    • 83 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Lament
    This is the band’s most engaging and expansive musical outing to date.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    CMFT
    It’s a lot of fun. With all this in mind, will such an eccentric listen be for everyone? Probably (k)not. But, right now, you’d be silly to not let yourself get caught up in it.
    • 80 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Atlas Vending
    Each of their previous three albums have proven invigorating examples of their punishing aesthetic, but Atlas Vending finds them pushing things forward, broadening their horizons to tremendous effect.
    • 73 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Stay Alive
    Each is very different, but they’re connected by a sense of the time and space they were crafted in. It’s a collection of postcards from the edge that we’ve all been walking and one that’s utterly engaging.
    • 71 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Massey Fucking Hall [Live]
    A superb dose of head-banging fun by way of The House That Heaven Built brings this record to a joyous conclusion, and caps off an experience courtesy of Japandroids that overflows with vitality.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Tickets to My Downfall
    Not only is Tickets To My Downfall a slick sideways hop from what you might be expecting from Machine Gun Kelly, it’s done excellently. It celebrates everything great about pop-punk without feeling cookie-cutter or third division. It also finds its energy from the knots Kells works through in the lyrics.
    • 75 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    What You Gonna Do When the Grid Goes Down?
    Some will inevitably hold every Public Enemy album up against their ironclad classics like Fear Of A Black Planet and It Takes A Nation Of Millions, but to compare What You Gonna Do… to these untoppable milestones is to miss the point. What matters is that PE are not only still going after all this time, but still making music that matters.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ultra Mono
    Always on the front foot, bloodied but unbowed, IDLES are a claustrophobic, relentless, airtight and pulverising machine of perpetual motion. That they are able to keep themselves airborne throughout Ultra Mono is testament to the art and skill that lies behind such an unstinting display of brazen contempt.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Ohms
    For Deftones, finding the sweet spots between compromise and balance, factoring in each member’s duties and creative inputs may be a more appropriate way of assessing the delicacy of the task at hand. It’s within that push and pull, that the aptly-named, tension-charged Ohms proves itself a fascinating entry into the band’s canon.
    • 86 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism
    It’s not just the righteous fury of the music that makes it so great, either – these are songs built on a truly wide world of extreme sounds, welded together into a unique sonic bomb.
    • 79 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Shame
    Shame is a weighty slab of industrial punk that is effectively the soundtrack to a tortured soul mentally coming apart. Reinventing a core element of themselves, Uniform present a side they have previously kept boiling angrily under a darkened surface.
    • 74 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Medium Rarities
    There’s little to link the various tracks on this eclectic collection, nothing to make it a coherent whole, but it certainly underlines the band’s extraordinary ability to shape-shift. Mastodon have changed over the years, but Medium Rarities proves they have always operated in a dimension that isn’t entirely earthbound
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    WE ARE CHAOS
    It’s not pared back, but WE ARE CHAOS is a less immediately antagonistic and forward prospect than recent output. But that’s a good thing that’s been mastered to darkly brilliant effect here. Unexpected, bold and artistic, Manson remains an artist it is dangerous to underestimate.
    • 72 Metascore
    • 60 Critic Score
    Flowers of Evil
    It’s a fun, if not unusual listen, that ploughs deeper into the band’s flirtations with synth-pop and electronic experimentation. It’s lacking in the enormity expected of a celebration of 25 years of existence and this is not necessarily a bad thing, however, as it’s a further example of Ulver’s ability to push the envelope and keep their music fresh and exciting.
    • 77 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Dream Nails
    It’s an intelligent, thrilling and likeable record from one of the most exciting bands in British punk.
    • 87 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Use Me
    It’s never derivative, nostalgic, or trying to be anything that it’s not. It’s a PVRIS album, packing in every quality that she’s built that name upon, while powered by a subtle forward motion. That every idea and sound heard is hers and she can finally, proudly take sole credit for that is to be celebrated.
    • 78 Metascore
    • 100 Critic Score
    S&M2 [Live]
    No mere nostalgia trip, S&M2 stands as a tribute both to Metallica’s growing confidence as players and composers, and an absolute vindication of their decision to revisit one of their most inspired creative outings. Within our world, they remain utterly fearless and inarguably peerless.
    • 76 Metascore
    • 80 Critic Score
    Holy Moly!
    What Blues Pills serve up, like The White Stripes or Rival Sons before them, is a perfect transmission of warm rock’n’roll from a time gone by that effortlessly slinks along with natural swagger, without ever feeling studied.
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