Ready to riot? Then ditch the clichés of 1977, and prepare to jump around and break stuff to the schizoid garage-punk of Bitch Songs by Die! Chihuahua Die!

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.

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.

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.

Until We Are Outnumbered sees Danish bruisers The Kandidate combine the simple and punchy elements of thrash and hardcore to neck-shattering contemporary effect.

This is The New Enemy: four Toronto guys with buzzcuts bringing back the vest-clad and swaggering toughness of early proto-hardcore on their Shakedown EP.

London four-piece Hope & State evidently remember when pop-punk went bad, and their Grand Gestures EP captures the moment before that in ragged lo-fi glory.

Congratulations to Australia’s The Amity Affliction for making Severed Ties, one of the few post-hardcore records of 2009 that hasn’t annoyed the crap out of me.

New reviewer Jonathan McCalmont cuts his teeth on the chilly magnificence of The Life We Have Chosen, the debut album from metalcore Scousers Carcer City.