Like every other inferior album by a defunct cult band that has unexpectedly reunited, it is a danger to the band’s legacy.

The repetition and sameness of the 10 songs on 200 Years quickly becomes mind-numbing, the painful plainsong wearing out its welcome before the record reaches the halfway point, let alone by the end of its 40 long minutes.

The problem is that too much which follows repeats the same formula with sadly little variation.

You get the impression Credo came this close to being pretty good then overshot the mark and crashed in a tangled mess. Yes, the Human League are still laboring on. But dignity? Fast running out.

It's not that any of the songs are horrible; it's just that they are so shamelessly middle-of-the-road that you become sickened by the ambivalence that they instill.

If these sons-of-Foo acts want to stand half a chance of being remembered, they've got to master the hooks as well as the edge.

It's just one long drag.

The Cross of My Calling just sounds like an unfinished assignment.

Version is proof that you can’t just slap a bunch of horns and old-time R&B beats on rock songs and turn them into soul songs.

For all of Wolf’s bravery in putting his broken heart on public display, on Jet Lag it is, sadly, only the banality that winds up being contagious for the listener.

Perhaps different production is all this LP would need for me to appreciate it, but I can only go off what I’ve got and this album is not up to par with Juvenile’s run from 1996 - 2003.

If the whole album had the strength of the final track, I would be seriously pleased. But it does not. Rather, Manic Expressive as a whole sounds like a failed attempt at a) minimalism, b) ambient, and c) IDM.

55 Cadillac is a vanity project from a man who might never have seemed deep enough to warrant such a thing.

Staind is one of the worst albums I've heard all year, a top to bottom exercise in bland, formulaic, boring rock.

The problem with this rather chugga-chugga, one-speed record is that he doesn’t persuade you that he feels sufficiently strongly to let it all hang out on record.

At 37 minutes, it feels too short to be epic, at least on the level that Serena-Maneesh is shooting for. It also lacks catchy, listenable songs.

Whenever the hooks dissipate, and the chops are sidelined, Sam Champion is an overindulgent snooze.

What's most shocking is the number of forgettable tracks, something Merritt typically manages to avoid.

HaHa Sound's biggest flaw is its total lack of immediacy.

It’s nothing more than a slap to those fans, then, that the music is so maddeningly poor, all pointless experiments in how to construct a solid alt-rock groove before burying it in a grave made out of studio sheen.

There are classical references, quirky rhythms, and oddball singing as if something serious is happening. But the mix comes off as self-indulgence and childish.

Brimming with half formed ideas and floundering melodies, Too Much Information is easily one of the most uninspired albums released so far in 2014.

Unless you're a die-hard fan of Bozulich's impressive and vast body of work, or like your "music" to be as willfully oblique as possible, In Animal Tongue is the type of record where you can save some precious coin by taking a pass on it.

Louis XIV has a considerable amount of work to do for listeners to regard them as more than aimless glam-rock fetishists.

Despite whatever success they may have had with their debut, The Darkness' return clearly signifies that the major problems underlying their style have come to the forefront, leaving the cheeky humor and catchy riffs that we all liked not too long ago in the dust.

As an art piece, it can be appreciated. As an album of music that people are supposed to listen to and enjoy over and over and over again (which is what it sounds like the intent really was), not so much. It’s too many notes; for an album that purports to be so propulsive, it really needs to lighten up.

Second Round’s on Me just emphasizes everything that’s wrong with gangsta rap.

As it stands, this is something that should have stayed in the vaults, largely, and is pretty much only for anyone out there who is a Slim Twig completist.