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The Verve Urban Hymns (Hut/Virgin) Eighteen months of student prayer have been answered: the Verve are back. This is an album of grandiose proportions but also of deep, personal themes. The music rises and falls, taking you through a painful world of love, sex and drugs. Bleak but incredibly uplifting. Carried along by the strings of "Bittersweet Symphony" and the acoustic guitar of "The Drugs Don't Work," these themes expand and encompass you. Everything we could have hoped for from people this thin. 9/10 (Toby Blakey) Company Flow Funcrusher Plus (Rawkus) If you've never owned any Versace, your dinner plans don't include a bottle of Möet and you can appreciate a real MC, Company Flow is for you. This Brooklyn/Queens threesome stands tall on hip hop fundamentals: abrasive basement beats and lyrical dexterity. No attempt is even made to lure the jiggy set to the dance floor. El-p, Bigg Jus and Mr.Len have made a record that is definitely for those who can appreciate where this thing called hip hop came from. 8/10 (Scott C) Biohazard No Holds Barred (Roadrunner/Attic) With the release of a live album that boasts it's "big in Europe," we find Biohazard dancing a little too close to the 99-cent bargain bin. "Live in Europe" could very well be the final nail in the coffin for this muscled Staten Island hardcore combo. With the exception of the testosterone-fueled cover of Black Sabbath's "After Forever," this offers nothing new, let alone heavy. 5.5/10 (Johnson Cummins) At Medley with B.A.R.F., Anonymus and Minds, Oct. 3, 7:30pm, $12-15
Boyz II Men Evolution (Motown/Polygram)
The title of the latest Boyz II Men disc would suggest a change, something beyond their trademark marketable ballads. No such luck. The first half of the disc is buried under one plodding ballad after another, the latter half picks up the pace somewhat via samples and remakes, but it all boils down to been there, heard that. 7/10 (Gerard Dee)
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