With Getting Away With Murder, Papa Roach offer fans of this sound an appropriately hard punch in the face. But there's a hollow sound as the bones collapse, because all that's supporting it is expensive art direction and a big scaffold of clichés.

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

Sure, it might be easier to accept if it was called a Damon Albarn solo album, but that's splitting hairs. A lousy album is a lousy album, no matter who gets credit.

One fulfills all of the "faceless" criticisms thrown at them in the past, while alienating whatever fan base they had before.

Jackpot is superior in every aspect.

Her voice is damaged, and there's not a moment where it sounds strong or inviting. That alone would be disturbing, but since the songs are formless and the production bland -- another reason why the hip-hop announces itself, even though it's nowhere near as pronounced as it has been since Butterfly -- her tired voice becomes the only thing to concentrate on, and it's a sad, ugly thing, making an album that would merely have been her worst into something tragic.

Emotive falls flat and fails to raise the bar set so high by the quality of their previous two releases.

Looper drops their bright playfulness for a sophisticated, darker counterpart which uses jazz, R&B, and trip-hop as its foundation.

Human is the sound of an artist painfully trying to sound modern but -- by trying to sound fresh -- sounding older than he ever has.

This rather bizarre disc is something of a self-aggrandizing concept album. In song after song, Josie sings about how off-beat, sensual, and unique she is...

Ultimately, it's hard not to feel that this album is little more than a blatant attempt to ape the Postal Service's Give Up.

Far from being the second coming of Dylan, Oberst is as precious as Paul Simon, but without any sense of rhyme or meter or gift for imagery, puking out lines filled with cheap metaphors and clumsy words that don't scan.

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.

Apart from the lovely ambient instrumentals that open and close it, the album is all valley and no peaks.

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.

Too many of the cuts appear pieced together in the studio, never once capturing the energy of a band playing live.

A meandering drag.

No matter how hard Simpson tries, no matter how foreboding the surface, beneath it all she's still light and frivolous. But that doesn't mean, by any stretch, that this is bubblegum music, since that term implies that this music is frothy, fun, and, most important, hooky, and I Am Me is none of those things.

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.

Despite all their newly developed relative nuances, Nickelback remain unchanged: they're still unspeakably awful.

A bland, friendly affair that disappears into the ether the moment it's finishing playing.

A joyless experience.

It's the first time Adams has sounded completely worn out and spent, bereaved of either the craft or hucksterism at the core of his work.

Though he's as loud as ever, he has never sounded more tired.

For those listeners who pine for a world when Seven Mary Three received heavy rotation, this will satisfy, but anybody expecting the spark of Jane's Addiction or even a dose of Navarro's campy on-camera charm will be sorely disappointed.

Mildly entertaining but tremendously taxing.

Hoodstar only makes it all the more apparent that the St. Louis MC's overnight popularity was like lightning in a bottle.

That he fails is not the fault of his individual performance; it's the fault of botched execution.

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 painfully disappointing artistic failure.

Corgan repeatedly buries his threadbare melodies beneath squeals of guitar that are too processed to either soar or sear. More than anything, it's this digitally dulled sound that saps Zeitgeist from any impact it may have.

Underclass Hero is ingratiating enough as background music—it's hooky enough to have momentum but not enough to linger in the memory—but they've never sounded quite so toothless and it's all down to this increased ambition.

Which may make it a change of pace for Korn, but it sure doesn't break them out of their midlife slump--if anything, it exacerbates it.

Welcome to the Doll House is a paler, plainer recycling of their debut.

Hard Candy is as a rare thing: a lifeless Madonna album.

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.

It's not that the Offspring sound behind the times on their eighth album, Rise and Fall, Rage and Grace--it's that they sound disconnected from it.

It's not the worst thing imaginable to make a nice, pleasant record that wouldn't trouble anyone; it's just that Vandervelde (seemingly) promised more than just a peaceful easy feelin', and Waiting for the Sunrise is an almost complete disappointment in that regard.

Jessica's team haven't had a knack for picking the right song but she could possibly clear that hurdle if she showed some sign of life as a vocalist, but she's unfailingly listless no matter how many theatrical gestures she attempts to cram in her big boring ballads.

Out with a whimper, not a bang, Exit 13 is an off-ramp leading to a boulevard of several mismanaged White Castle knock-offs.

Digging out this handful of songs from the 16-track proper album-- inflated to as much as 24 tracks with the bonus disc added in--is flat-out exhausting, necessitating trawling through too many dull beats, breathy bleats, a phoned-in Snoop Dogg cameo and Missy Elliot name-dropping Katy Perry.

Certainly, it's not the embarrassment of the live album, but it has its own internal logic that keeps it humming along, and that's good enough for a listen and to get the band out on tour again, even it's not good enough for a second spin.

They chuck all that out the window by corseting her cornball humor into an immaculately tailored straitjacket, burying her voice in the mix, cutting away the country in favor of a manicured crossover pop unsuited for Pickler's gawky, gangly voice.

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.

To be sure, there's some pleasure to be had here, but it's all about appreciating the album as pure texture: it's merely sunbleached mood music.

Despite the preponderance of sprightly tempos and sing-song hooks, nothing about 4:13 Dream feels especially light, perhaps because Robert Smith chooses to pair these purported pop songs with a heavy dose of affected angst.

Easily the least accomplished of his albums, Evolver is nonetheless a refreshing change of sorts, for all its faults, at least as far as missteps are concerned.

For anyone sifting through a broken relationship and self-letdown, this could all be therapeutic. Otherwise, no matter its commendable fearlessness, the album is a listless, bleary trudge along West's permafrost.

It would be nice if some of the titular burn could be felt on Dierks Bentley's fourth studio album, but Feel That Fire is an atypically cautious, calculated affair from one of Nashville's best singer/songwriters of the 2000s.

"Don't You Fake It" may have suffered from a lack of variety, but Lonely Road is plagued by different diseases: misguided ambition, outlandish excess, and a bad case of the ol' sophomore slump.

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.

All the charm and fun to be found of "Looks" ends up being pulverized by this bland ambition, and Fist of God ends up being just a loud, inspiration-free, truly disappointing dance album that fails to capture ears or move feet.

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.

Guilt may be a bad title for a pop-rap album so slick and shallow, the completely ludicrous I Am Hip Hop's Savior was the original plan, suggesting that this project was misguided since early development.

As a cold description, this modbilly beat sounds pretty interesting, especially because the group goes to great pains to rearrange many of its covers, but as an album Modbilly drags, offering endless permutations of the same plodding boogie.

All this means is that Chickenfoot's big picture is roughly in place but the pieces don't quite fit, but that doesn't stop the group from trying to force it, with Sammy sounding as awkward singing about south-of-the-border drug runners as Satriani does spinning off complicated riffs on party rockers.

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.

A knack for oversized choruses remains hardwired in Bon Jovi, but in this gloomy context, they act as reminders that they once sounded like they were a working band for working men instead of rich men fretting about a world they've long left behind.

Rewolf ends up being a failure in two ways. The first is that the songs aren't strong enough to withstand the acoustic treatment....The second major flaw, and the one that really kills the album, has to do with what the lack of volume and energy uncovers.

The whole thing sounds like it was made fairly quickly, as if Tim came up with a clever idea and proceeded to fill out the track with whatever came to mind first, rather than truly enhance it.

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.

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.

Ingle's ability to write a pop melody is promising, perhaps, yet it's too hampered by nasal vocals to make much of an impression, and the album’s short running time proves to be one of its biggest assets.

It's a comfortable and familiar fit that poses only one significant problem: nobody bothered to write any songs; they're just playing for the sake of playing.

In the case of Nobody's Daughter, the tattered, ragged survivor in the gossip rags is no different than the one on record, both capturing Courtney in an inevitable, not so romantic decline, inadvertently turning every cliché into truth as she slowly slips into her final role as alt-rock's Norma Desmond.

The dividing line between these two types of songs is a subjective one, to be sure, but even devoted fans would probably agree that the bulk of The Bundles--the first recorded output from a longstanding though intermittent collaboration between these two leading lights of anti-folk--lands sadly but squarely in the latter category.

Perhaps if this production were scaled back a notch or two, Fearless Love wouldn’t feel quite so oppressive, but its oversized sound fits Etheridge’s sense of self: she’s boxed herself into a corner where she only makes music that sounds important…whether it actually is important winds up being beside the point.

For the most part, Versus falls in line with its parent release's mix of detached hedonism and pleading heartache.

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.

While this isn't necessarily a bad idea on paper, the Concretes unfortunately forgo much of what made them an enjoyable listen in the process.

The rallying choruses are not effective, and he's short on ideas; threatening to steal attached women is a default topic. 5.0 is, by a considerable margin, Nelly's least essential release to date.

When things are light and simple on Live It Up, DeWyze seems like himself: a threadbare talent who floated in on the vapors of Idol's empty tank.

As on their last two LPs, it's heavily reliant on nightclub anthems and will.i.am's throwback rapping, alongside Auto-Tune harmonies and waves of synth

Given Jones' legendary stature and reputation for taste, this set feels unnecessary at best, and downright cynical at worst.

The crew is still intentionally misogynistic and profane, sounding like caricatures of Eminem or Kid Rock as they rap and sing about gangsta cliches like puffing blunts, drinking Patron, getting booty, and "flossing."

Described as a rallying call to guitar bands by Bowman, Up, Guards and at 'Em isn't distinctive or original enough to inspire anyone to swap their synths for a six-string, and instead, sounds more like a final nail in the British indie coffin than the shot in the arm it needed.

Given her promotion to the Paula Abdul seat on American Idol, there's a distinct irony in having the first sounds on Jennifer Lopez's Love? all twisted through a vocoder: she may be judging the pop purity of legions of hopeful singers, but even she can't resist the siren call of the computer.

Free is just too derivative to make the impact the band appear to crave.

Because Light After Dark tries so hard to keep up with the tricks of the trade in 2011, it loses any sense of originality that Maguire brings to the table, which, especially in the pop music scene, is the only way to stand out.

London is far more charming when he's given some space and sings, as he does very sweetly in the chorus of "Why Even Try," featuring Tegan & Sara's Sara Quin. Those moments are scant.

Famous First Words was always going to struggle to live up to the band's bold promises, but it's still a shock at how a Brit-pop scene renowned for its color can be responsible for something so utterly drab.

Apart from ["You Make That Look Good" and "Write My Number on Your Hand"], the songs and production demand that all energy come from young Scotty, who amiably sleepwalks through the tunes.

If Famous Monsters was a step back for the Misfits legacy, this is a bigger step in the wrong direction.

Producer Kevin Antunes never recontextualizes the original recordings; he favors hits-on-parade medleys, letting the hooks--the melodies, the rhythms--sink in before moving on to the next snippet.

It all winds up as an ungodly mess: Crazy Horse do, as Young asserted they would, make these songs their own, but by doing so, they've made them so nobody else would ever want them.

At the very least, it would do Avary a world of good to have someone to urge him to ease up on the throttle of his vocals.

Some of the productions, courtesy of the Runners, Adonis, and Kevin McCall, save it from being a disaster.

On the proper What About Now, the group is striving to sound big and important yet winds up sounding small.

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.

He's never been one for lyrical subtlety, but this set contains several stretches of monotonous, joyless carnality.

It's highly doubtful that anyone other than a true-blue fan would be able to get past the asinine boasts, the overwhelming misogyny, and the pure outlandishness of it all.

The second half is a laborious crawl, a variety of glorified and slow bonus tracks.

Thanks to the introspective nature of the songs and the mannered production, they took something totally alive and wild, and wonderfully fun and exciting, and not so magically turned themselves into just another dime-a-dozen indie rock band.

Rubin skillfully retains a veneer of authenticity throughout Shangri La, adhering to the Dylan in Greenwich Village vibe of the 2012 debut and never letting the electric expansion feel like exploitation, but all this care is applied to songs that are deliberately slight.

Perhaps Derulo has grown as a person since his previous album, but it's hard to call this one a step forward.

Though they might lack the minimal lyrical subtlety of the bands of that era, musically Steel Panther will scratch the itch of anyone craving a little hair metal excess.

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.

Along with empty flash like "Something Bad" and "Time of Your Life," they're all part of Thicke's least appealing album.