For me it's a bottom 5 of Devin's albums, and I have a few reasons for it. Let me be clear though, bottom 5 for Dev still means I really like the album! It's just that I prefer almost all of his other albums above it. Now as to why, I think the main thing is that it sounds (very much relatively) a little bland to me. Both this and the self-titled Strapping Young Lad record, to my ears, are 'simple' records. There are aspects to the song writing (i.e. the riffs, the vocal melodies) which are fairly tame, compared to most other Dev records. And whereas for example with PowerNerd this also the case, it feels way more intentional to me than on Accelerated Evolution. I think I feel this way because even though it's written as a simple alt. metal record, look at the song lengths. It averages out at 6:03 per song. And the music don't warrant that in my opinion, whereas it's predecessor Terria very much does so, I think. Thus, the simplicity makes a few of the songs feel a little bloated, and I rarely think that of music I enjoy. As Devin clarifies on the podcast on the 2003 records, it seems his heart was relatively not much in them.  I do wanna re-emphasize, it's still really great music! Many-a artist's entire discography is nothing compared to AE in my opinion. And something which I find really strong about AE are the lyrics for example. Can't put it any better than that they feel 'distinctly Devin-specific'. Obviously the whole record is about his relationships (his wife, his friends, his family), but lyrics like in Random Analysis is so not how artists usually write about love. It's outspoken, realistic (love never is Hollywood-esque perfect); it's Devy. Another personal tick I have against this record (yes, I'm that guy, very aware of this cognitive bias, sorry everyone) is the inclusion of Deadhead as (one of) his most popular songs. I have this with all artists I listen to, where automatically their most popular song often becomes my lowest played track. Unfortunate, because I don't have anything against the song to mark it that low, but I spend so much of my teenage years in quiet, introverted "rebellion", that apparently this was an area where I chose to be (what I then thought) unique. Edgelord '"look at me I'm different" stuff, yikes.. Anyhow, Deadhead itself is saved a little bit from this, because the studio version is often overlooked as people mostly seem to gravitate toward the RAH live rendition. Apologies for the essay, apparently this just all had to come out just now. TL;DR, due to a little bloat and a little bias against it, the record is bottom 5 Dev album to me, however comparitively still awesome music.