Yup, they've always been like that. You can almost always tell when an album/track is going to get BNM or panned on P4K. They always hype up the artist with best new tracks, rising, features, interviews and start reporting every little small thing they do right before the review hits. A lot of times the singles end up being way better than the rest of the album, so they still get best new album but dial down the score. The reviews very rarely have anything relevant to say either. You can always tell as soon as they jump off the hype train as well.
You can already see how any small bit of news related to Animal Collective, The xx and Flying Lotus are being showcased like no tomorrow. Though I don't mean that as an insult to those acts, as I'm a fan of the latter two... but I would be genuinely surprised to see any of those not get Best New Music or even less than a 9.0.