Whatever the case, Ratitude is both a clunker and a fitting end to a decade in which Weezer continuously spiralled downward.

While Bun B's weathered voice and lyrical detail add weight to his words, there are a lot of predictable OG conventions on this overlong album.

Oddly, Lasers is Fiasco's most commercial-sounding album – but think of it as club music with a conscience.

On Electra Heart, Diamandis trades her cabaret post-punk vocal histrionics and thrift-store chic for an unconvincing Jacqueline Susann bombshell image and more overtly top-40-friendly sound.

There are moments here, but ultimately Streetlights pales against BlaQKout, the Kurupt/DJ Quik collaboration that dropped last year.

Their five-song EP produced by Dave Grohl and featuring covers of songs by ABBA, Depeche Mode, Roky Erickson and Army of Lovers is ridiculously lightweight.

What sets Heloise, et al., apart from others mining the same sonic epoch are consistent hooks, guest vocals by Debbie Harry and catchy-as-hell disco bass lines courtesy of a rhythm section that’s tight­er than Williams’s neon spandex unitard.

This reinvigorated 40-year-old (!) Queens loudmouth makes a somewhat fleshy final Def Jam album, but it’s well-chiselled compared to his last ugly, irrelevant albums.

Now and then you get a glimpse of ideas that could’ve made the album more powerful if they’d been further explored. ... But the songs are so spiritless and phoned-in that those moments are too little, too late.

He doesn't sound convincingly comfortable in this power-ballad terrain that once worked so well for him in Temple Of The Dog.

The amoebic versions of Nirvana songs sound only unfinished and strange. If the goal was to render Cobain an artsy oddball more than a rock god with a Midas touch, then mission accomplished.

Fans of Chad VanGaalen will find much to love in Black Mold, the Calgarian’s electronic instrumental side project that reveals just how fertile his imagination is (in case we needed further proof).

The end result is a safe, predictable record that could very well be Metallica-lite (like the new Metallica), in addition to being pretty close to silly.

A shockingly good batch of rock, pop and punk tunes.

They have the formula down, but 10 tracks of this gets a little tedious.

A track like 'Weed, Blow, Pills' shamelessly promotes narcotics and, even worse, goes Mike Jones on us to get its redundant point across, ultimately cementing the main problem with this album: nauseating repetition.

Try as they might to sound different, or even to touch on issues bigger than their own narcissistic garbage, LP still sound like they're stuck back in 00, which is where they should have stayed.

Despite Azalea’s nimble delivery sometimes lapsing into the mechanical, there are moments on The New Classic when she sounds ready for prime time.

It’s when the pace slows that the record drags slightly, though Klein’s lyrics elevate even the mid-tempo songs.

Skip the album purchase and download a few singles.

This disc might not change your life, but it's an undeniably solid hard rock album that proves how much credit Slash deserves for the success of his former band.

Sure, her formidable pipes are as strong as ever, but on every song she comes across as a pale imitation of someone else.

The unexpected bit is that there are a couple of tracks where the Junkies appear to be making a move from their brooding ballad comfort zone toward brooding bluesy shuffles that very nearly get funky.

A deadly dull set of cliché-packed piano ballads probably isn't the best way for aging harmony synchers to prove to their shrinking tween audience that the old Boys (sans Kevin Richardson) have still got it.

Unfortunately, his songwriting isn’t much better, which is surprising given the catchy, melodic bass lines he’s consistently laid down at his day job.

Syd the Kyd mostly drifts through the music, and is more compelling when getting into trouble--as on Cocaine and Fastlane--rather than lamenting love lost.

P.O.D.'s new album sounds exactly like all their other ones.