The new Massive Attack album...

...is lame. It's the biggest disappointment this year so far - I know we haven't got too far; there haven't been a lot of huge releases yet in 2010. But a new album by Massive Attack should mean something. Something beyond the final curtain.

This album is remarkable only in the fact that it is the equivalent of Robert Del Naja somehow managing to hammer the final nail into his coffin while he's inside it.

That is the extent of his talent this time round.

Recently someone sent me a message about the upcoming Massive Attack show, asking if I was excited. I replied that I was, then I checked my calendar and realised it was not 1998. That is when I would have been interested to see Massive Attack.

This revered band has not contributed anything of substance in over a decade. Sure there have been some soundtracks with a few menacing pieces (Danny the Dog was okay) and 2003's 100th Window was not a total embarrassment (however close) but it was the beginning of the end. And now, almost definitively, Heligoland sounds out the death knell.

I have no problem with people continuing to rave about Blue Lines, Protection and Mezzanine. They are all great albums. My favourite (most played) would be Mezzanine and then Blue Lines. (I also really like the Mad Professor-assisted remix album No Protection, more so than Protection.)

But 100th Window was nothing special at all - worse than that, it was really not needed. Massive Attack's spotless record was tarnished. And the passage of time might make people more impressed when they return to Blue Lines and Protection but with every new set of sounds it seems the band is struggling to recapture the sound; the quality of the band at its darkest, moodiest, edgiest. Well, that quality is gone.

So - to Heligoland:

Opening track Pray for Rain sounds good for at least 60 seconds, maybe even for 90 seconds. Then it sounds like the sons of Sting and Peter Gabriel have joined a TV on the Radio-covers band from a world music label that neither of their fathers would endorse.

And this sets a tone for the album: very much one of daft B-grade world music ensemble combining boring pop-music offcuts.

The attempt at an edge surfaces with Babel; again it's a very nice intro - sharp subverted drum'n'bass. But then Martina Topley-Bird sounds like she wants to be on a new album by The Cardigans rather than by Massive Attack.

Splitting the Atom features a Mike Patton-impersonator over a dubious synth vamp and then Horace Andy whimpers in. It's Massive Attack - kinda - but not really.

We are four tracks in and with Girl I Love You there is a thrum that again signals what could almost be Massive Attack, but it falls away all too easily. And what we have is not so much Mezzanine as the staircase that leads somewhere then just drops off. This is possibly the best track on the album - and there are moments that nearly (re)capture the magic. But too often Horace Andy, these days, sounds like he is just using his Aaron Neville Megaphone (presumably borrowed from Peter Griffin).

With Psyche we are back to Ms Topley-Bird. And she still thinks she's singing pop but has forgotten that pop needs a hook.

The bleeps and blips and blurps that lead in Flat of the Blade are okay. But then it feels like Coldplay being slowed down by any one of a hundred faceless, past their prime electro producer/DJs. But Elbow fans might really enjoy hearing Guy Garvey in this context. I didn't. It's a boring plod of a song.

Track seven is Paradise Circus and features Hope Sandoval (you may remember her from Mazzy Star). I have always liked her little-girl-lost vocals but here she sounds like an English-language Melanie Pain and isn't lost; she's just going nowhere. Another "song" that is really a 20-second looped track with no purpose.

Rush Minute has the vocals handled by Del Naja. And it falls into the category of the worst thing that can happen to a once-great band: here Massive Attack sounds like a bad covers band attempting to cover Massive Attack. It's time to hang up the boots when this happens.

Damon Albarn is on the penultimate Saturday Come Slow, sounding as spectacularly bored as he almost always seems to sound. This track vaguely sticks its hand up, offering - casually - to be deemed a subtle epic. It fails.

And then we wrap up with Atlas Air, again with Del Naja at the mic. The organ slurs and primitive drum groove make way for a clever mood to swirl in and around. It never arrives.

So much of this album feels like elongated demos - waiting for the extra coat of aural paint that never arrives.

Massive Attack continues to go backwards. But there are enough fans who will want to hear enough in this to please them.

It's a dud though. A turkey. An embarrassment. Remember - soundtracks and remixes and EPs aside, this is Massive Attack's fifth album. They had no right sounding so tired and lazy on album number four. And this is diminishing returns once again. It's time they gave up the ghost. It would be nice to think, actually, that the ghostly, ethereal presence sometimes felt in the band's music was somewhere near Heligoland. But it's not.

It's a case of pick this album up from the letterbox. Listen to it once. Get disappointed. Very, very disappointed. Listen to it a second time - try to spot individual track merits - struggle with that. Put the CD in a box. And forget about it.

World music percussion that sounds tacky and tacked on, lyrics that say absolutely nothing, basslines that never quite get towards the grunt and hook of early promise...this is a litany of failures and laziness. And it's a shame - I used to really like Massive Attack.

I hope this is the band's last album. I see no point in them even trying to redeem themselves. It will only end in another lacklustre album; a batch of ideas that never stretch beyond the first minute of vague promise.

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