The Dreaded Press

Bored of angsty and schizoid guitar-driven post-hardcore? Maybe you should try the piano flavour as offered by French three-piece My Own Private Alaska.

If you’re thinking of sending us some music and a press pack, the answers to these five questions from a PR company might give you some ideas as to how to avoid pissing us off before we even get the chance to hear the first note of your record.

Cumbrian rockers Falling Red play respectable retro cock-rock with straight faces, and they make a decent job of it on debut album Shake The Faith.

Sardinian oddballs De Grinpipol have some great garage-pop to share on this self-released and eponymous debut album. Quirky, and full of Mediterranean sunshine.

A career-spanning retrospective, Decades Apart catches marginal punk icons The Stranglers at their best… but also, rather unfortunately, at their worst.

After The Ordeal may have won some Download airplay with their bedroom jams, but first single “The End Never Comes” doesn’t get a medal just for showing up.

If you think the title The Rising Tide (Part 1): Corsa Al Ribasso is pretentious and clunky, wait until you hear the music Djevera put on the album of that name.

Promising young Scots proggers A Torn Mind have the skills to pay the virtuoso bills, but the Barriers EP suffers under its wilfully retro pallet of tones.

I don’t know what precedent there is for it, but Crime In Stereo’s new album I Was Trying To Describe You To Someone gives hardcore a good hard kick in the arse.

Matt Skiba and friends are still cranking out the albums… but This Addiction says it’s time for Alkaline Trio to retire gracefully from the field of battle.