The thing with Chili is Frusciante makes them so much better with his textured chords and his sound is so universally appealing. The new guy doesn't do it for me, it makes them sound like a garage band.

I thought this album was pretty good to be honest. It has a lot of energy and nothing really sounds the same throughout the entire album.

Factory of Faith is a really cool song too, it's probably my favorite off the album:

Definitely not one of their stronger offerings, but in reality even a weak RHCP album is a good one.

I didn't find it to be awful. Disappointing; a little, but definitely not awful. I enjoyed a lot of the songs on this album.

i got that for ages and haven't put it on yet

will get back to you on that one

Honestly, with Frusciante gone I removed almost all expectations, and found a surprisingly listenable album from start to finish.

Not every song is great but there's something great about every song.

pretty mediocre, except for two ballads

give me BloodSugarSexMagik, Californication, By The Way or even Stadium Arcadium, anyday

Agreed, idk how anyone really likes it. Sounds so bland and uninspired. its almost like a bside album to SA.

Kiedis should not be trying to sing, his voice sucks, he should be trying to sound funky because that's the only thing he can pull off without sounding absolutely dreadful. It would be like if Lemmy just started trying to pull off ballads and Motorhead switched from heavy metal to Steel Dan type jazzy soft rock wankery.

Another thing they've had trouble with recently is originality, Stadium Arcadium had pretty much everything lifted from other artists work, slightly improvised to avoid sounding exactly like Jane's Addiction.

Pretty much the majority of what they've released since BSSM has been meh, but this was absolutely dreadful.

I think this has been one of their best since Blood Sugar Sex Magik.

When Frusciante came back to the band, they just took a nosedive. I saw them on the Californication tour...and they only played ballads...till the encore...which I left before it started, but I did hear the opening bit of "Higher Ground" as I left the venue.

It's not great, but I bought it, and it was the first one I'd even remotely considered buying since By The Way...