Simon Jeffes's gravity-defying ensemble serves up a compilation of 19 tracks dating back to 1976. A great primer for beginners, this includes marvels of wit and construction like "Telephone & Rubber Band" and "Music for a Found Harmonium" (which is also heard here in a version by Celtic group Patrick Street). -Jeff Bateman.

Following up a commercial flop is an uphill struggle, but on Getting Away With Murder, Papa Roach seem to be doing everything they can to put 2002's underperforming Lovehatetragedy behind them. The opening "Blood (Empty Promises" is an anguished, dense opener that sees frontman Jacoby Shaddix revisiting old themes and reopening old wounds, but it's performed with the sort of spectacular rock dynamics that mark Papa Roach out as something more that nu-metal also-rans. Elsewhere, the likes of "Blanket of Fear" and "Be Free" find the band moving into more bleak, gothic territory with some success. Shaddix's lyrics still stumble a line between brutal emotional clarity and 6th Form poetry: "Does anyone around me feel the same?/ Put your fist up and vent your pain," he barks, balanced on the edge of self-parody, on "Take Me". Still, it's a neat novelty to find a metal vocalist that doesn't feel the need to dress their lyrics up with all manner of impenetrable psychobabble, and it works just fine on "Scars", the LP's sure-fire hit-single-in-waiting. -Louis Pattison.

Every Foo Fighters album, up to and including their fourth studio disc, One By One, fluently merges rock menace with unabashedly cheery melody and thoughtful if somewhat cryptic lyrics. So while insistent, guitar-terrorised tracks like "All My Life" and "Times Like These (One-Way Motorway)" don't expand the Foos' oeuvre, they're as catchy as hell and well worth the proverbial price of admission. Those searching for veiled Nirvana / Courtney Love references will no doubt unearth them (or unearth what seem like veiled references), while longtime fans can relax in the knowledge that a seasoned pro like Grohl knows better than to meddle with a truly winning formula. True, there's a certain sameness to the spiky, percussive bursts of punk-pop tabled by the Foo Fighters. Yet it's pretty hard to fault players as palpably enthusiastic as Dave Grohl and his gang. -Kim Hughes.

Cruelly denied the Number One slot when an administrative cock-up at the UK chart returns office credited thousands of album sales to The Police, 1979's The Raven-now re-issued with bonus tracks-found tuneful toughnuts The Stranglers striding purposefully away from the faltering punk scene with a renewed artistic agenda and a head full of hard drugs. A new direction and an overhauled musical vocabulary (gone was the growly bass and the organ, in came futuristic keyboard sounds, odd time signatures, intricate arrangements and extended instrumental passages) The Raven-as perennially acknowledged by the band's large and dutifully black-garbed cult following-is The Stranglers magnum opus. From the epic title-track-a questing, valorous Norse saga adorned by Dave Greenfield's wuthering Artic synths and sung in breathless fashion by JJ Burnel-to the quirky prog-rock science of "Genetix" (on which former biochemist Hugh Cornwell got to show-off his knowledge of pioneering 19th-century Austrian geneticist Gregor Mendel). The Raven was-and remains-enthrallingly fresh, musically daring and downright ominous. Paranoia abounds-there's the grimly pretty (but rather hypocritical) anti-heroin lament "Don't Bring Harry" and the helium-inhaling vocal freakinessof "Meninblack", a portentous slab of psychedelic lethargy detailing the existence of a black-suited extraterrestrial mafia. But there's pop too-"Duchess" (a Top 20 UK hit later covered by My Life Story) and the doleful "Baroque Bordello", a song almost compassionate and empathic compared to the leerier lyricisations of old but also featuring a keyboard intro which seemed to be cribbed from-of all things-"Inchworm" from the Danny Kaye film Hans Christian Anderson. Blame the drugs? Whatever reason, The Raven is The Stranglers' finest achievement. -Kevin Maidment.

1984 was a successful record not only because it contained solid, catchy hard rock, but also because it incorporated synthesisers into the mix, the first metal album to do so to any serious extent. Although the advances in electronic music make this material sound dated now, it's still a highlight of Van Halen's career. Songs such as "Jump" contain a pop element that gave 1984 mainstream appeal, and David Lee Roth turned the frontman role into an art form on songs such as "Panama", "Hot for Teacher", "Drop Dead Legs" and "I'll Wait". To a large extent, it was 1984 that set the standard for 1980s pop metal, and David Lee Roth who set the standard (or takes the blame, depending on your point of view) for the aggressively good-time attitude most pop-metal bands took for their own. -Genevieve Williams.

They'd soon crash, and hard, thanks to their own excesses. But Rocks captures Aerosmith at a crazily driven peak of creativity; anyone who heard it and continued to dismiss them as mere Stones clones was just being wilful. This is blues rock cranked up to 1970s stadium level, the sound of the Trans Am, or maybe the Porsches several of these guys (surprisingly) remember driving. The psychic battering they would succumb to on the next year's Draw the Line is foreshadowed in Joe Perry's "Combination", but he and Steven Tyler also celebrate the rock-star mythos on "Lick and a Promise. " The party-fuelled tension, the tension-fuelled party. - Rickey Wright.

By the mid-1970s, even The Who's leftovers had more interest than most rock best-of albums-"Glow Girl" is a concise blueprint of 1969's "Tommy"; "Naked Eye" and "Pure and Easy" were victims of the doomed Lifehouse project; "I'm the Face" was the band's mod-obsessed first single; and even "Little Billy," an anti-smoking advertisement, still rocks hard. John Entwistle's faux country "Now I'm A Farmer" was contemptible, but the closing anthem "Long Live Rock" redeemed such missteps. The CD reissue adds studio versions of "Young Man Blues" and "Summertime Blues," among many others, and re-orders the tracks. -Steve Knopper.

Bruce Springsteen followed his muse on this haunting 1995 release. Perhaps that's why it barely made a dent in the marketplace, even while it thrilled the faithful who were willing to take another dark, Nebraska-like journey with him. It's abundantly clear that Springsteen had been soaking himself in the work of John Steinbeck and Woody Guthrie during the writing of The Ghost of Tom Joad, but their combined influence is found on more than just the title track. It's all over these windblown songs (including the haunting "Dry Lightning" and "the seminal "Youngstown") and their hard-scrabble protagonists. Not the Boss's biggest record, but certainly one of his best. -Michael Ruby.