They are quite good.

"When you're forced to be simple, you're forced to face the real problem. When you can't deliver ornament, you have to deliver substance." -- PG

http://www.metalabdesign.com/about-us/ is full of "cake decoration". Other than that it is nice work.

I'm not sure what you're getting at here. Sure, average people think design is purely decorative, but that does not mean that decoration is not a part of design.

What about their site do you find to be poorly designed?

Look at all of the unnecessary lines framing everything on the page. Instead of adding complexity that potentially confuses the user, they should have used whitespace to group elements.

They also use too many colors. Their use of color is distracting -- it does not add value.

There are a lot of good and interesting ideas there. The problem, I think is that there are too many, and that leaves the page cluttered and distracting.

Also, totally love Refresh Media - http://refreshmedia.com/ - they did http://bacn.com/ for us.