Each South Park episode is made in 6 days, from writing it from scratch to animating it and doing the voices, they knock it all out in less than a week every time. Trey Parker said that time crunch is good for creativity, and if he had all the time in the world, he'd dick around with every episode infinitely longer, and in the end it would end up like 5% better. I think this approach was great for South Park (even though it went downhill the last couple of seasons or so), it kept the show fresh, current, and it maintained spontaneity.
The same principle could be applied to music. DT worked infinitely longer on FII than on SFAM, for instance. So I agree, whatever the approach is, it's not inherently good or bad.
However, the problem with many of Mike's projects (SoA is a prime example in that), is that it's obvious that it was a rushed, rough-and-ready effort. The songs are unoriginal and they're copy-pasted together, the lyircs are as generic as they get, Mike has his "bag of tricks" he randomly fills up the songs with. To me, it's obvious that the album would have benefited a lot if they had worked more on it (way more), especially since it's their first time playing together. The music has no real depth.