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Backstreet’s back, alright!

Only this time, critics are not grooving to the music.

The Backstreet Boys have returned with their seventh studio album entitled, This Is Us. But reviews are in, and they are not in favour of the boy (er, man?) band.

The album was released on October 6, and music critics across North America are in agreement: that sure, the Boys deliver a few catchy tunes, but that at the end of the day the album just sounds like a regurgitation of their previous hits.

“Though the Boys were one of the biggest pop acts of the ’90s, they largely hand the reins off to their producers here, who include Lady Gaga’s hit-maker RedOne, Jim Jonsin and OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder,” writes August Brown of the Los Angeles Times. “Cuts like ‘Bye Bye Love’ and ‘Straight Through My Heart’ have au courant hotel-lounge decadence to them, and ‘She’s a Dream’ benefits from the light melodic touch of guest T-Pain. But when the boys extol a lady’s virtues because ’she don’t even know I’m a celebrity,’ the lyric rings of self-fulfilling prophecy.”

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Nick Carter, Howie Dorough, Brian Littrell A. J. McLean and Kevin Richardson reunite for the first time since former ‘Backstreet Boy’ Kevin Richardson left the band in 2006.

Richardson joined the rest of the band in Los Angeles at the Palladium in Hollywood on Sunday (November 23) for the last stop of their “Unbreakable” tour. He did not perform with the band during the “TRL” finale.

The boys told MTV News in October they weren’t so sure Richardson would return to the group after leaving in 2006. Still, they insisted that the door was always open for him to come back.

“In the beginning of the tour, we left a gap onstage where Kevin would be, and then it started closing up,” Carter told MTV News. “We love him to death. We have to move on. We have new goals and dreams.”

Kevin Richardson has officially left the Backstreet Boys.

Brian Littrell told andPOP last month that the group was planning to go back into the studio at the end of this month to record their next record, which they will continue to do beginning this weekend without Richardson.

The band has no plans to replace Richardson, who has left to pursue other projects.

“It was a very tough decision for me but one that was necessary in order to move on with the next chapter of my life,” Richardson said a statement on the official Backstreet Boys web site.

The band posted a message of their own saying they will miss Richardson and wish him all of the best.

“The door will always be open for him to return to the Backstreet Boys. We wish him the all the best in his future endeavors,” they said.