In an attempt to be brave, diverse and different, frontman Rivers Cuomo and company have delivered a couple of rippers amid some of the lamest and cheesiest songs ever.

The biggest silver lining to this lame cloud is The Greatest Man That Ever Lived, an astonishing epic that runs through 10 different musical sections (including gospel, hip-hop, sleaze-rock and punk) in nearly six minutes and plays like a mini-history of 20th century music.

A sense of false bravado is constant through the first half of the album, and works well on catchy opener Troublemaker and The Greatest Man That Ever Lived before becoming cheeky and quirky on the bizarre single Pork And Beans.

Unfortunately it's mostly downhill from there. Heart Songs, in which Cuomo reads a shopping list of all the bands that influenced him, is about the sappiest piece of dross he's ever written, complete with a schmaltzy boy band-ish chorus of ``these are the songs, these are my heart songs''. The song is only notable for mentioning both Debbie Gibson and Eddie Rabbit as well as Slayer and Judas Priest.

Things get worse on Everybody Get Dangerous which comes off as Limp Bizkit-lite (and that's never a good thing).

Input from the other members helps redeem the album. Cuomo's co-write with bassist Scott Shriner Cold Dark World is okay while drummer Pat Wilson's Automatic is solid.

But the bad and passable tracks outnumber the killer tracks massively and even the trademark Weezer moments are few.

Weezer have struck out, for the second album in a row.