BEST OF THE REST

Other new releases out this month.

Heavy Salad

Cult Casual

DIPPED IN GOLD

With a loose backwards-through-life concept, the Mancunian psychpopping acid-rock trio charm and challenge with a pan-generic melange of cheerfully nihilistic post-Flaming Lips wit and whimsy. 7/10

William Shatner

The Blues

CLEOPATRA

The blues idiom demands impassioned performances of its vocal exponents. As if Shatner needed any encouragement to ham it up, but what a supporting cast. Not least a soaring Ritchie Blackmore. 6/10

The Medicine Dolls

Filth And Wisdom

JUST MUSIC

Cape Town’s Medicine Dolls personify a record collection dominated by Cramps, Birthday Party and JAMC. Kitschy camp, surf-goth reverb predominates, along with The Cure’s vocal hiccups and hair. 6/10

Yes

The Royal Affair Tour: Live From Las Vegas

BMG

Although missing Chris Squire, last year’s Yes (with Billy Sherwood on bass) deliver a set fresh with surprises: Lennon’s Imagine, boldly reclaimed by its original drummer Alan White, and Paul Simon’s America. 6/10

Black Foxxes

Black Foxxes

SEARCH & DESTROY/UMG

A new self-titled beginning on this third from sole survivor Mark Holley, following a rift that saw 66.6 per cent of Exeter’s post-grunge hopefuls replaced. Loud’s louder, quiet’s quieter, emotions intensified, tangibly blacker. 8/10

Carcass

Despicable EP

NUCLEAR BLAST

Stopgap four-track from Steer and Walker’s gore-grind pioneers featuring 2019’s Under The Scalpel Blade comeback opus, but the savage doom diamond here is The Living Dead At The Manchester Morgue. 8/10

King Creature

Set The World On Fire

MARSHALL

Sharp, rock-powered old-school metal with an intrinsic melodic edge and a no-shit punk ‘tude from a Cornish quartet whose cannily produced debut aims for the incendiary and instinctually ignites. 8/10

Nothing But Thieves

Moral Panic

RCA/SONY

As Mike Crossey’s bullishly contemporary, commercially nuanced, radio-targeted production painstakingly aims the Southend quintet’s sound at the airwaves, it just as effectively strips them of their core rock classicism. 7/10

Goo Goo Dolls

It’s Christmas All Over

WARNER

It’s as slick as a Travelin’ Wilbury’s weasel, as festive as a robin on a log, but it sure picked the wrong year to deliver its melancholic Yuletide schmaltz. Shit’s way too real for cynically marketed escapism. Next! 5/10

Wobbler

Dwellers Of The Deep

KARISMA

These Norwegian trad-proggers artfully employ the trilling keys, obtuse guitar wizardry, maths-problem time signatures and upper-register vocals that have come to define their genre’s golden era. Yes? Definitely. 7/10

Moriaty

The Die Is Cast

EASY ACTION

Self-styled Devon ‘filthy blues rock’ duo Moriaty do themselves no favours by shackling themselves to the blues. Their engaging post-desert swaggering can’t (and shouldn’t) be pigeonholed. No arguments with ‘filthy’ though. 8/10

R.I.P.

Dead End

RIDING EASY

Dead End opens with a John Carpenter-echoing instrumental that provides the perfect setting for Oregon’s four hearsemen of the grunge-metal apocalypse to do their all-out excellent worst. 8/10