classic or dud: reviewing 2 or more albums in one review

I've never been a big fan of these kinds of reviews, and it seems like they're more common than they used to be, especially in the big print mags with increasingly shorter reviews. which makes it seems like a sneaky way of covering even more albums with fewer words. especially when they're only writing a paragraph or so about each album, with one sentence that points out some tenuous common thread between the 2 as a segue into the second half of the review.

if the same artist or related artists have more than one release coming out around the same time, i say it's fair game. but when it's 2 unrelated releases by unrelated bands that happen to be in the same genre or sound kind of alike, I get a little suspicious. unless the writer has some really interesting way of connecting the albums other than just side by side comparisons, i say dud.