New York ? With some 20 million albums sold worldwide, it’s clear Coldplay has its share of fans. What surprises singer Chris Martin is all the people who actively hate the band.

Coldplay doesn’t inspire much ambivalence.

“Everyone tells me it’s very healthy,” Martin said. “It’s very depressing, but it’s very healthy. We always have this bubbling level of vitriol.”

Both sides can renew the debate with Tuesday’s release of “X & Y,” the band’s third album. The disc is an ambitious attempt to cement Coldplay’s status as one of the world’s top rock bands.

Britain’s New Musical Express magazine called it Coldplay’s best. Blender called it a masterpiece, giving it five out of five stars. Yet the influential Jon Pareles of The New York Times called Coldplay “the most insufferable band of the decade.”

The music is “supposed to be compassionate, empathetic, magnanimous, inspirational,” Pareles wrote. “But when the music swells up once more with tremolo guitar and chiming keyboards, and Mr. Martin’s voice breaks for the umpteenth time, it sounds like hokum to me.”

Martin said he had never been able to pin down the source of such antipathy.

“Maybe it’s something to do with my haircut,” he said. “Maybe we’re too feminine for the masculine and too masculine for the feminine. Whatever we go through personally and publicly, we’re so blessed because we have four of us and we’re best friends, so we go through it together.”

Coldplay – comprised of Martin, guitarist Jonny Buckland, drummer Will Champion and bassist Guy Berryman – took one recent criticism to heart. When the New York Daily News panned its concert as dull because of a concentration of slow-moving songs, Coldplay changed its set.

“That’s the great thing about people who hate us,” he said. “We can suck out the energy and make it into something positive. It’s like in ‘Back to the Future,’ where you have this device that can turn garbage into a time traveler.”

Certainly the initial signs for “X & Y” are positive. “Speed of Sound” is a beauty, immediately falling into place with the memorable melodies of “Yellow” and “Clocks” and darting up the sales charts. (The CD was No. 1 on amazon.com the day before its release.)

Martin, 28, has a handful of artists that formed his musical worldview. There’s the expected: the Beatles, Bob Dylan and Bob Marley; and a more up-to-date list: U2, Radiohead, Kraftwerk, Brian Eno and the Icelandic droners Sigur Ros. Much of the latter list is evident on “X & Y,” which often has a chilly, 1980s-inspired sound.