14 September 2025
Here's how it works: The Recent Releases chart brings together critical reaction to new albums from more than 50 sources worldwide. It's updated daily. Albums qualify with 5 reviews, and drop out after 6 weeks into the longer timespan charts.
Browse specific styles
Eventual third album from the rock giants, a mere 17 years after Use Your Illusion
5.8
Let's get right to it: The first Guns n' Roses album of new, original songs since the first Bush administration is a great, audacious, unhinged and uncompromising hard-rock record. Read Review
The music toggles between two primary modes: grinding industrial rock and keys-and-strings balladry. Read Review
The songs are epic, long-winded, cleverly stitched together, and subject to constant mood-swings - much like Rose himself. Read Review
These aren't songs, they're suites, energetic and skittering and unpredictable hard rock hydras cut with miasmic industrial grind, stadium rattling metal solos, electronic drift and hip-hop churn. Read Review
So rather than taking popular music one step forward, it's an unashamed Nineties rock album, hence the grunge tinge to Shackler's Revenge and the gigantic ballads Street Of Dreams and There Was a Time. Read Review
The stomping of an imperial army on the march? Or a nod to the self-serious metal monoliths of the '90s - less hair and more scare, perhaps? Read Review
Chinese Democracy's Finnegans Wake-esque gestation means that each track is dense, heavy and will take multiple listens to unravel. Read Review
Clearly not the greatest rock album ever made, but nor is it an absolute and utter failure. Read Review
Woefully flabby in places... but there are still enough momentary flashes of the old steel that made the Appetite for Destruction so good. Read Review
Packs both volume and aggression, but its pleasures are buried in the rubble of 14 different studios and a surfeit of Nine Inch Nails-style industrial rock Read Review
It would be a miracle of Sistine proportions if this album amounted to anything coherent and consistent since 1991. Read Review
The only laughs are unintentional Read Review
Let it be known: ‘Chinese Democracy’ is not the disaster it could have been. Not quite. Read Review
Guns N' Roses: Chinese Democracy
David Byrne Who Is The Sky
The artist’s new album of bright, bustling pop is positioned as a celebration of reasons to be cheerful. Often its fountain of optimism feels like a firehose of forced positivity Pitchfork
Ed Sheeran Play
On the enjoyably moreish Play, the ‘culturally Irish’ star sounds as if he’s back on form. Although we’ve only had time for a quick listen The Irish Times
Baxter Dury Allbarone
This record plays like his shot for glory, and with tracks as hooky and well-constructed as "Mockingjay" or the title track, there's no reason he shouldn't hit the big time All Music
Parcels Loved
While not for cynics, LOVED is a late-summer delight that comes at audiences with open arms. Comfortable dancing shoes recommended for listening All Music
Parcels have built something contagious here, with a joy that leaves you feeling that little bit lighter when you’re done with it Dork
Loved is a departure for Parcels but one that is constantly invigorating, the group are clearly incredibly relaxed and that is reflected in the calming, and highly enjoyable soundscape they have created on this record The Line Of Best Fit
The star of this entire record is without question the harmonies. They are razor sharp, technically astounding and forever charming, leaving you wanting more of them at the close of every song Far Out
Maruja Pain To Power
They really have taken a complicated moment and made it into a fantastic piece of music Far Out
Incredible lead single Look Down On Us is just one of three tunes here that capture Maruja’s free-flowing approach by stretching out to the 10-minute mark Kerrang!
The Manchester jazz-punks let loose on their savage debut album through cathartic outpourings of fury, despair and love NME
The thrill of this band is the extremes. From moshpits one minute and silence the next, they are in command with their music, unifying the crowd God Is In The TV
This band and this record want you to punch a hole in the wall, ask if you're willing to step through it – and then beckon others to do the same The Line Of Best Fit
Maruja emerge from the studio with raucous rap-rock and meandering jam music in tow, resulting in an album full of the same songs several times over. By the end, listeners may feel they have deja vu. Fans may feel they have dementia The Quietus
Rage-infused music of dissolution Clash
Jade That's Showbiz Baby!
Debut solo album by Little Mix singer is packed with incident and a multitude of musical styles musicOMH
Since we've been around, that is. So, the highest-rated albums from the past twelve years or so. Rankings are calculated to two decimal places.
Kendrick Lamar To Pimp A Butterfly
Fiona Apple Fetch The Bolt Cutters
Kendrick Lamar Damn.
D'Angelo And The Vanguard Black Messiah
Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds Ghosteen
Spiritbox Tsunami Sea
Self Esteem Prioritise Pleasure
Bob Dylan Rough and Rowdy Ways
Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds Skeleton Tree
Frank Ocean Channel Orange