Despite valiant efforts at punking up "O Come, O Come Emmanuel" and "White Christmas," this is starting to sound like a bad joke. [No. 105, p.52]

Easy listening has never been this painful. [#57, p.106]

He sandbags every song with gigantic, syrupy string arrangements that make John Williams sound like John Cage. [#58, p.82]

Tepid, predictable.... It's sleek and stylized, the spastic, jittery punk replaced by impassioned, searching guitar lines. [#60, p.110]

It's difficult to imagine even a hardcore completist wanting to hear Chilton's interminable orgasmic noises on the title track, long stretches of drunken studio banter or yet another two versions of Third's "Jesus Christ." [No. 144, p.53]

The seventh LP by these Hot Topic/Warped tour faves sees the onetime mainstream screamo success story trying really hard to acclimate itself with whatever constitutes the present mainsteam-music climate. [No. 149, p.61]

It's unlistenable dreck. [No. 126, p.55]

Only a couple of tracks on Nightbird flicker with any sparks of life. [#67, p.96]

Turgid at best. [#57, p.102]

The vocals are on point in Ashcroft's non-plussed yet quintessentially pop-edged delivery, but these arrangements lean more toward boredom and self-servitude. [No. 133, p.53]

After all these years, the band still possesses no originality or musical inventiveness that could distinguish it from the pack. [No. 93, p.58]

Forget Evil Urges entirely; call this one Zzz.

Phillip Ekstrom's vocals echo the tortured moan of Robert Smith with a trace of Ian McCulloch's attitude, but he never manages to find his own voice. Except for the implied reggae pulse on "Blues," neither does the band. [No. 96, p.56]

Paper Gods is an exercise in shamelessly rehashing every tired, vaguely transgressive cliche that's defined Duran Duran's 30-plus-year career. [No. 124, p.55]

Give Up is a record that says, well, nothing. [#58, p.100]

While in his mind, Momus might indeed be a giant, to those of us growing weary of his increasingly tedious shtick, he just might be a weenie. [#50, p.99]

Not even Linkous can prop up this house of cards for long. [#58, p.94]

Dog is Black's safest record in years.... As such, however, the album is a bore. Rollicking American rock and pedal-stell ballads don't suit Black, and the resulting arrangements are both unsurprising and uninspired. [#48, p.78]

Suggests some arcane Canuck payment scheme in which lyricists are compensated by the syllable. [#70, p.106]

Brightblack Morning Light has always been a druggie band; this time, however, the drug of choice is Dramamine.

Occasional exotic loop or surprising flair aside, the rest [aside from three songs] is listenable, charmless and pointless. [No.90, p.58]

Krug's mushy, mixed-down vocals and the lack of dynamic range often sucks all the life out of the music. [No. 132, p.57]

By stripping away the symphonic, avant edge... [Gomez] loses much of what made it unique in the first place. [#64, p.96]

Where 2005's harrowing Frances The Mute strikes the right balance between inspiration and indulgence, the Mars Volta loses its equilibrium with Amputechture. [#73, p.96]

Not only does Bankrupt! propose a big, stadium-ready sound, it offers one that nearly suffocates its creators. [No. 98, p.59]

Sounds like musicians so thoroughly bereft of ideas and energy that they've resorted to lifting melodies from their record collections wholesale while crossing their fingers for luck, hoping no one will notice the difference between inspiration and theft. [#59, p.88]

This time it's insipid, acousti-stomp faux-psych of the down-to-mid-tempo variety, and autopilot riffers that come off like MADtv skits about stoner metal. [No. 104, p.59]

The failing of Plain, however, is its lack of direction and absence of cohesiveness. [No. 98, p.55]