The album is a stunningly lackluster, impersonal anti-work.

I admire Cunniff's attempt to create positive, breezy music. I just wish it were better.

Quite possibly the worst record by a great emcee in recent memory.

Comparing his remarkable contributions to Deerhoof with this boring, nondescript effort suggests that Cohen should open his studio doors and welcome collaborators.

Despite all the stupid records he's put out before, The Return of Dr. Octagon is the first one that plunges wholly into self-parody. He's now a fully realized clown, a prop, a joke and, most disappointingly, a sub-par rapper whose forced ideas and personality obstacles have devolved into flimsy, uninspired character sketches.

The lyrics are especially vapid here in the Stadium Arcadium.

The simpleness just keeps on coming until it's simply deadening.

A predictable, oversimplified, boring mess.

Sounds like a band mashing all the current trends and ending up with nothing.

Thrilling prospect though it may be, the result is a disaster.

There is bad music here, to be sure, and although the intentions are good, they are expressed in the now-common nihilism of our generation, where nothing is sacred and everything is a joke.

Ahead of the Lions is pure press-a-button-out-comes-album radio pap.

Weak and vanilla.

Sleepy, sporadic and inconsistent.

[A] ham-fisted attempt at being exactly like everything else.