It's painful to hear such floundering work by a performer who listeners know can do better.

Lacking any of the imagination of previous albums, The World We Left Behind feels brilliantly disappointing, almost to the point of undoing the good work that came before rather than just standing on its own as a weak album.

Nickelback can now afford a little more time in the studio and a little more time to indulge themselves, and they turn out the same record, only slicker, which only highlights just how oppressively and needlessly sullen this group is.

It doesn't help that almost nothing about Unstoppable is modest, not the sounds, not the sentiments--only the songs, which can't withstand these muscle-bound arrangements.

Between the airless production, the clunky arrangements, and the songs that are bereft of hooks, the album is their worst to date by far and hopefully signals either the end of the road, or rock bottom.

Live versions of "Hush," "Part of Me," "Push It," and "Third Eye" reaffirm the band's standing as one of alternative metal's most compelling live acts; unreleased studio tracks such as "Message to Harry Manback II" and "L.A. Municipal Court" definitely sound like abandoned material, but offer a look at Tool's quirkier side.

They seem like a garden-variety hard rock band, one that would have been generic and forgettable in 1974, and one that is generic and forgettable in 2004.

The odd thing about Devil's Playground isn't that Billy pretends Cyberpunk doesn't exist -- frankly, any artist with sense would do that -- it's that he now pretends that he's always been a metalhead, as if his posturing in the '80s was more than an affectation.

Whatever snotty humor they once had has calcified into smug sanctimony, rendering this a slick, stylized, stiff affair whose brief signs of life... only put the shortcomings of the rest of this turgid mess in stultifying relief.

A major disappointment to say the least, Pretty in Black is such an indifferent and transparent record that it makes one reconsider the quality of the album that preceded it.

You can't tell if Wishville is the sound of a band losing steam or just being too self-conscious.

If the band supported his sheets of noise, terrifying guitars, monstrous rhythms, or even a hook every now and then, Durst's narcissism may have been palatable, but the group pretty much churns out the same colorless heavy plod for each song.

Witness is a conceptual muddle but that incoherence could've been excused if there were hooks in either its grooves or melodies. Instead, Witness is populated with busy, tuneless tracks that seemed designed to pulsate in the background of a regrettable night.

Lacking real excitement, verve, or even the stupid type of fun we're used to from him, will.i.am sounds remarkably like his heart isn't in it throughout the record, bored on the job even though it's his job to get the party started.

Largely absent of originality.

It’s more interesting to ponder Wayne's reasons for making Rebirth than to actually listen to it, because the end result is a loud and ignorable bore.

A painfully disappointing artistic failure.

This might be enjoyed by folks who are really into the Burzum albums Varg Vikernes made from his prison cell, but even Suicide fans will likely find Stigmata hard to get excited about.

The press pumps up the fact that Shontelle is Barbadian, just like Rihanna, but her functional dance-pop material and temperate ballads could be delivered by any moderately talented vocalist from the Midwest.

Even if Lee's songs of solidarity are basically sweet in nature, his puppy-dog earnestness winds up being off-putting in the long run on The Rebirth of Venus.

Stranger has its cloud-rap niche and should please listeners eager to enter this world, but casual rap fans should arm themselves with enough patience and caffeine before taking the plunge.

Shaka Rock squanders the promise Jet showed on their previous work, and even if they soldier on and release another ten albums, this feels like the end of the road for them.

Since the beats are monotonous, since the songs are insipid and forgettable, since the girls not only can't sing but have no on-record charisma, since there's no sense of style and, most importantly, sense of fun to this whole enterprise, Dangerous and Moving is the worst kind of pop music: the kind that is better to theorize about than to listen to.

Mos Def's second solo album is not disastrous, but it's a sprawling, overambitious mess.

The problem is not with Katy's gender-bending, it's that her heart isn't in it; she's just using it to get her places, so she sinks to crass, craven depths that turn One of the Boys into a grotesque emblem of all the wretched excesses of this decade.

R.E.M. have never seemed as directionless.

lack of inspired songs, the pedestrian guitar work, and the overall lack of dynamics in the overblown performances make Secret Machines another unfortunate stumble for a band that once held some real promise.

Betke wisely abandons a sound that had been developed to its full extent, yet the outcome is a set of hip-hop/dub hybrids that stumble out of the speakers with a fatigued skank.