If not the album of the year, it's at least the punk-rock album of the year, fiercely representing a musical ethos that has suffered the ignominious shame of commercial popularity. "We want the airwaves back!" shrieks singer (if you can use that word) Dennis, and over the course of The Shape of Punk to Come's 12 sonically stunning tracks, they reclaim the right to rage, rant, and innovate. The Refused broke up soon after recording this album, but they've left behind an invigorating manifesto. -Tod Nelson.

With a boneheaded obstinacy that would be applauded even by the die-hard Japanese infantrymen who fought World War II until 1973, Thunder continue to fly the flag for old-school British hard rock. As is the case with their kindred American spirits The Black Crowes, a Thunder album is the sound of grown men sticking their fingers in their ears, closing their eyes, and pretending that pretty much everything that has happened since 1975 never happened. Giving The Game Away, then, is the usual fare: all very well played, passionately produced and so on, but so devoted to its sources as to verge on pastiche. A developing interest in acoustic guitars not withstanding, there's little here that wasn't done earlier, and better, by Free and Bad Company, among many others. -Andrew Mueller.

REM have no right, at this advanced stage in their career, to be making such spirited and beautiful music as that on Reveal. Twenty years after "Radio Free Europe", they're still jiggy as year-old pups. Reveal is the sound of a band who have moved beyond feeling the need to change or to prove themselves to each new generation, but still want to make music that expresses a passion for life. Michael Stipe's voice has never been more evocatively beautiful than it is on "I've Been High", and Peter Buck's eclectic tunesmithery has continued in the highly accessible vein it was mining on their previous album, Up. Those who yearn to hear the Stipe of old, mumbling incomprehensibly behind murky Byrds-u-like chords, will remain disappointed by his increasing emergence as an upfront vocalist whose lyrics, if never entirely self-explanatory, now make ingenious use of phrases, images and vignettes that anybody can identify with. Hovering over much of the album is the spirit of Brian Wilson, whose melodic and harmonic genius is echoed in "Beachball" and almost transcended in the astonishingly plangent "Summer Turns to High". With so much to live up to from "Losing My Religion" to "Man On the Moon", it's not far short of astonishing that REM can still come up with a song like "Imitation of Life", whose gorgeously chiming and shimmering chorus sets the heart soaring and the eyes misting over. That song alone would be worth the price of admission but, fortunately, from the first synthesiser swirls of the album's opener, "The Lifting", there's not a dud to be heard in the entire dozen cuts. -Johnny Black.

Nominated for a 1998 Grammy award for Best Rock Album and featuring the single, "Falling in Love (Is Hard on the Knees)", nominated for a Best Rock Performance, Nine Lives is Aerosmith's first album in their lucrative re-signing to Columbia Records. Together over 25 years, the Boston band has always been known for their gritty sex anthems, hard-buckling rhythms, and bic-flicking power ballads. Not nearly as flat-out rock as previous releases, Pump or Get A Grip, Nine Lives experiments with a multitude of instruments, including hammered dulcimer, Indian fiddle, and Chapman stick. This Noah's Ark approach allows the band to experiment within its rock parameters with the appropriately titled "A Taste of India". They haven't sworn off the ballads ("Fallen Angels" is what you'd expect) and they still riff like the Aerosmith of old ("Crash"). -Rob O'Connor.

It took a few years, but the "Seattle sound" migrated south. In 1997 Creed emerged from the sunny state of Florida wielding dark and dulcet post-grunge tones. Their 10-cut debut, My Own Prison, has became a surprising success by filling a niche for needy teen gloom-rockers. Singer Scott Stapp has the soulful and rich Eddie Vedder inflections down pat, but despite Creed's slightly hackneyed approach, My Own Prison is full of strong, memorable, tuneful songs (and numerous solid singles) coupled with compelling and dark emotions. Titles such as "Illusion", "Unforgiven", "What's This Life For", and "Torn" clearly peg Creed as dour introverts. But despite lyrics such as "Their souls are lost / Because they could never find / What's this life for," Creed is musically tight and dynamic, drawing on melodies that are often moving and uplifting. in a depressing sort of way, of course. -Katherine Turman.