Let us forgive The Backstreet Boys -- if only for the sake of fairness.

Let us forgive the fact that they're a long way from being boys. And that the age difference between them and their teenage fan base is quickly moving beyond embarrassing to downright creepy. Let us forgive that they've reunited with a manager they went to court to escape a few years ago. And that they still don't write their own songs or lyrics, or produce their own music.

Never mind any of it. After all, BSB aren't the first fallen idols to set aside their differences, box up their pride and hit the gym in a self-deluded bid to reclaim their dubious throne. Nor will they be the last. So really, all their past and present sins don't matter. What does matter is the music on Never Gone, the long-unawaited comeback album from Kevin, Howie, A.J., Nick and Brian. So let us clean the slate and review it strictly on its own merits.

But here's the problem: It doesn't have any. Or at least too few to mention. What this disc does have are sluggish power ballads and lame pop laments. What it does have are overwrought vocals, overdone harmonies, and repetitive lyrics about change and growth and new beginnings and "crawling back" to a lost love (hint, hint). What it does have are songs so tepid and gloppy that even Velveeta peddlers like Bryan Adams and Jon Bon Jovi would reject them as hokey and insipid.

And all that is something we cannot forgive.

Track Listing:

1. Incomplete
2. Just Want You to Know
3. Crawling Back to You
4. Weird World
5. I Still...
6. Poster Girl
7. Lose It All
8. Climbing the Walls
9. My Beautiful Woman
10. Safest Place to Hide
11. Siberia
12. Never Gone