I must admit that I'm what you can call a Coldplay hater (mostly Chris Martin's fault, just can't stand him, his stage persona, his feeble voice, his weak lyric skills), but I also must admit that I quite like their first two albums, most Viva La Vida and a couple songs out of these albums.
Hereupon, I've listened to the new album a few times and it truly leaves me sad that they got to this point. I'm not describing the album because some have done it well already (overproduced, sparse, lyrically weak, with too much going on, not cohesive, desperately mainstream, a Chris Martin album with his band...). I'm not exaggerating if I say that it quite shocked me how bad the album is most of the moments.
I honestly wish they followed the path explored in "Midnight" (this one and "O" are, to me, the only real good songs of the last album) - that really had excited me and had brought me some hope. Unfortunately they decided to follow an opposite direction.
Another funny thing is that Coldply has been leaving as b-sides or non-album tracks songs that I like and that, in my hater opinion, some of their best tracks. "Miracles" actually is the only good song if you count it as part of the tracklist. I also liked "Moving To Mars". And "Atlas" is one of their best songs, to me.
I think I've been rating my self Coldplay's albums when a new one is out and I guess my ratings for each one hasn't changed much. Today it'd be something like:
Parachutes - 6,7/10
A Rush Of Blood To The Head - 7,5/10
X&Y - 6,2/10
Viva La Vida - 7,5/10
Mylo Xyloto (which I call "Miley Cyrus") - 5,6/10
Ghost Stories - 5,3/10
A Head Full Of Dreams - 4,0/10