The first word that comes to mind while listening to Destiny Fulfilled is: boring!

[A] thoroughly underwhelming debut, an album that merely paints within the lines already drawn by Pavement and the Pixies.

Less immediate than their brilliantly untouchable 1998 album Mezzanine, this project is unsettling, uneasy and, okay, sometimes unbearably depressing.

Most of the good parts of the Britney that originally hit us, baby, one more time (then oops!...did it again) drown in breathy vocals and multiproduced, tweaked-to-perfection studio gimmickry.

A largely boring affair.

What once sounded like the future's music a decade ago just sounds creepy and dated now.

Gold Medal's tempos are sluggish and the lyrics are emotionally vacant.

A set of predictable, plastic, street-tough R&B jams.

Has a polish that verges on parody.

Sadly, Keith's least-clever disc yet was almost completely written by him for the first time.

While the band's wounded vulnerability and breathy melodrama will probably imitate enough to sell well, this is predictable second-rate stuff.

There's something high-concept going on here, if you listen closely enough. Sad thing is, you probably won't want to. There's something high-concept going on here, if you listen closely enough. Sad thing is, you probably won't want to.

At their best they sound like a female Black Sabbath tribute band, at their worst they sound like slutty old goth rockers. Frankly, neither is all that appealing.

Though not terrible, Trey Anastasio's latest is miles below what he's done before.

His crisp voice has dulled, and his inspiration has gone with it.

In the end, Island makes Dave sound like he's just not enthusiastic about making music anymore.

It doesn't help that the best song here, "Feel," sounds like a bad Richard Ashcroft B-side; the worst is a seven-minute mariachi stomp about traveling to Las Vegas with a monkey, called "Me and My Monkey."

It's not exactly a convincing change of gears, nor is it particularly groundbreaking--unless you consider jamming as many four-letter words as possible into three minutes (on "As I Come Back") novel.

Velvet Revolver sounds like a hungover bar band playing catch-up, wading through tired blues licks and meaningless grunge imagery.

Sure, sanitary party jams like "Switch" will get the PTA meeting rocking, but there's just no getting around Smith's insipid rhymes.

Feels like it was designed by committee.

Aside from some cool collaborations with Missy Elliott, Twista and Method Man, Kim spends most of the album lecturing her fans with less-than-stimulating lines.

Therapy's diagnosis ultimately is not positive, because the disc's split-personality disorder results in too much incoherence.

Weighed down with bland lyrics and blander arrangements, it meanders off into chick-rock clichés and lazy easy-listening melodies.

For the most part, the vitality is gone.

From the amateurish cover art to a succession of clumsy diss tracks aimed at Fiddy, Blood in My Eye merely makes the Tupac disciple look desperate and directionless.

Despite the fact that nobody bought their lackluster last two albums, Art Alexakis and his two lackeys are back with the even more banal and unnecessarily loud Slow Motion Daydream.

Carrying none of the charm or innovation of the duo's earlier ABBA tribute, this set is salvaged only by a relatively straight reading of Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill."