New touches only further dilute P.O.D.'s already watered-down sound. [Jan/Feb 2006, p.96]

Cook's dance music has seen better days. [Oct 2004, p.115]

The musical treatment is Depeche Mode-lite, setting generally passionate songs in an antiseptic electronic context, and Gore's over-earnest voice lacks the presence to reinvigorate them. [May 2003, p.120]

[He] falls back on stagnant street tropes and the tinny synth-and-sneer antics of old standby Swizz Beatz. [Sep 2006, p.139]

His campiest, and skimpiest, since his debut. [#17, p.138]

An assured yet curiously unsatisfying shamble. [Apr 2005, p.119]

Only the fuzzy reggae of "Power of One" is lively enough to rouse a dozing listener and hint at what the record might have been with a little less midnight meditation. [May 2003, p.121]

Its attempts at a more ethereal sound crash up against Common's cumbersome intellectualizing. [#13, p.91]

For all their craft, the songs are bland and vague. [May 2004, p.126]

Weakened by a slew of club-oriented pieces that drown its personality in repetitive grooves. [Apr/May 2002, p.113]

What initially feels jubilant soon turns grating. [Jul 2005, p.115]

When they slow the tempos and introduce "soulful" singers and the dreaded jazzy flute, their music stinks like old fromage. [Apr/May 2002, p.118]

"Beer for My Horses," a rangy duet with Willie Nelson, and easy grooves like "Ain't It Just Like You" don't chase away the overbearing taste of "Red, White and Blue," the album's centerpiece first single. [#9, p.150]

Rossdale still has that sexy catch in his throat, but his new songs are ass, evoking a mealy-mouthed, cliché-ridden, bombastic Chris Cornell solo joint more than Bush, and whoever Auto-Tuned the vocals has some explaining to do.

This time they've vacuumed all the loose dirt out of the silicon chamber and left a low-funk environment. [Nov 2006, p.154]

Tom Smith's stentorian baritone, irritating in its overenunciated approximations of gravitas, is better suited to some community-theater group than a rock band.

The mood is too inconsistent to connect. [Oct 2003, p.127]

With this kind of self-pity, Kid Rock was better off staying shallow. [Jan 2004, p.110]

The melodies are strikingly generic for a star act. [Dec 2005, p.144]

A band that traffics in momentum can't afford to take their foot off the gas as often as Yellowcard does. [Mar 2006, p.112]

Now, on only their third major-label release, they sound almost middle-aged. [Oct 2007, p.110]

All the post-punk components are here, but they don't jell into anything more than a mannered take on the punk that punk forgot. [Jun/Jul 2002, p.112]

Live In New York City may be the first example of Springsteen allowing himself to be reduced to what he has carefully avoided becoming up to now: pure product. [Jun/Jul 2001, p.112]

He's never tried so actively to fuse prescriptive politics into [the] mix, and the move feels suspect. [Aug 2005, p.115]

Oliveri needs a grounding element; without it, he just plays the Neanderthal wild-ass screamer. [Sep 2003, p.126]

This is rock theater of the most uninspired kind. [Aug 2004, p.136]

What remains is a concept that's been stewing too long and a singer who's one scream away from a hernia. [Dec 2006, p.180]

Green manages to charm even as he annoys. [Aug 2006, p.108]