"Christ Illusion" for the most part consists of leaden, grinding sludge devoid of any urgency or malevolence.

Either they've been taking too much heroin or not enough, but 'Black Rebel Motorcycle Club' is as limp as a soggy spliff the ragged morning after.

People will tell you Ladyhawke is fresh and exciting. They're wrong. It's horrendous.

A stunningly bad record.

Quite the most lifeless and unloved record to be released by an artist of Spears' global stature.

This is pretty fluffy stuff.

Track after track in an aimless blur of humming amps, pointless mucking about with effects, dreary jams propelled by meandering guitar interplay, and bleak, endless droning.

This is a genuinely dreadful album.

Despite this album's production credits reading like a PhD thesis, Korn's commercial masterplan is fatally undermined by certain glaring weaknesses, the main one being that their singer is a dunderheaded, sexist, self-pitying fool.

The Spirit Of Apollo, a record boasting some of the most pioneering musical talent of the last three decades, does not sound "timeless" but nor does it seem an appropriate tonic, voices passing unheralded in a confusion of mediocre, glossy production, guests from the stratosphere reduced to faces in the crowd.

Therein lies the danger of building an iconic persona on your current obsessions and an unerring belief in everyone else's interest in your thoughts. When it hits gold, it's magnetic; when judgement lapses, the convictions seem tired.

A cold and unengaging collection.

You can forgive Cruz for wondering who he's meant to be for his second album, but we're less indulgent of such wishy-washy nonsense that "Rokstarr" puts across in the name of heartfelt R&B.

A product so meticulously calculated, so shamelessly designed for the widest possible demographic, so wholeheartedly shallow, you suspect Simon Fuller and Simon Cowell must be dumbstruck in admiration.

This album is nowhere near as imaginative or as interesting as its maker thinks it is.

If the "Energy Never Dies", as Black Eyed Peas' acronymically-titled fifth album has us believe, why do they continually sound like the most tired, idea-less group on the block?

The dominant sound is of flickering sequencers and heavy-handed synth-pomp which showcases Linkin Park's keen interest in the work of Depeche Mode, but also often leaves them sounding about as cutting-edge and dangerous as Jesus Jones.

If this is what we get - because this is what enough of us apparently want - the end of the music business cannot come soon enough.

Most of 'Dead Media' resembles a third rate Pulp, Denim or Babybird - steeped in tales of sexual disappointment in bedsit land but without the considerable charm, warmth and wit of the aforementioned bands.

Represents an ill-advised body swerve from the duo’s idiosyncratic home territory and plunges them deep into the thoroughly becalmed waters of MOR ambient pop, offering up languid, beats-driven, down-tempo tunes that aren’t so much radio-friendly as downright sycophantic.

Songs that used to bounce and strut with foolhardy glee now amble, lamenting, the stench of booze and self-pity turning Romance At Short Notice into a wake.

Far from a behind-the-scenes veil-lifting, though, 'Doggumentary' largely ensures that the worst preconceptions of self-indulgent hip-hop remain in place.

To live in their world is like being trapped at an idiot's convention and almost – but only almost - as bad as Limp Bizkit.

Relentlessly bland and bourgeois, "Twelve Stops And Home" sounds like the product of focus-group analysis.

The big-beated momentum of yore is bogged down in McClure's new graceless Gallagher sneer and left to stagnate by a band more interested in re-heating anaemic Kasabian-esque psychedelia than building a plinth from which to preach.

He preens, poses and struts like a self-proclaimed and extremely delusional love god.

Everything about this album smacks of contrivance and careful planning.

Driving yet jaunty guitars abound and backing chants fill the required spaces, yet it all comes across too much like a sub-par parody of their former selves.