- EPs won't be banned. The only releases that may be banned in the next edition are singles and compilations.

- The problem with a "genre" challenge is there will always be people complaining they don't know the chosen genre enough. Or we'd have to do this often enough to content everyone, but if the Challenge happens too often people will eventually lose interest for it. The current pace of twice a year is fine. Another problem is, where will you draw the line between genres?
For me, the Virgin Reviews Challenge should remain open to every genre.
However, several reviewers are willing to launch other reviewing events, what is an excellent idea. See caspian with his personal contest, which focuses on quality reviews for a single release. Derigin also tried to launch a similar thing a few months ago. In a near future there might be a more genre-centered kind of contest - maybe not necessarily with virgin albums only.

This has made my day, thank you.

My only qualms are with those reviews accepted that wouldn't be accepted if it were not for the challenge because they're just so short. I've purposely made every review of mine over 700 words, just so I don't have to worry about them getting nuked any time soon.

Like Hells said, I sometimes review singles to complete a collection of reviews, or if the singles contain songs I've not heard previously on full-lengths. I've only done a handful. The EP's I've done have usually been for bands who don't get much coverage, like the Arktika review.

If the challenge is still on, which I assume it is, I will review a few more before its over. First ... The last day of the football season!

yes - those are the obvious THEORETICAL downsides to a genre challenge;

interest in said genre could be gauged with a a thread in this very section of the forums. these could ask potential candidates for what genre theyd like a contest for, or merely state the genre, and ask how many dudes would be into it.

the idea suggestion thread could also serve as a recruitment thread for those interested in helping out, and while i'd be keen to help out with stuff like this, i dont think i have the weight around here to be able to approve reviews etc, regardless, a more relaxed, less furious approach to the 'challenge' could be taken, possibly constituting some sort of 'mini-version' of this contest, with smaller total submissions, and a more co-operative/team effort.

for example, i'm sure thered be at least 10 people interested in doing ten 'thrash' reviews in a week, with numbers likely to increase if said challenge was advertised/solicited interest in the 'Metal Discusssion' thread, which gets more readers.

addressing the clarity of genre concern,
1. that could be left to personal integrity (no self respecting metalhead with the brain required to write a decent review would submit Kamelot or something for a thrash contest)
2. it could adhere to what the band is listed as on their MA page
3. it could be at the discretion of the approvers, or fearing that;
4. could be decided by us involved in posting in the challenge-specific thread at the time of it going on.

any rebuttal of these ponits/further discussion?

I can guarantee that this is not the case. The Challenge does not change the standards in any way.

I don't a reason to ban best of/compilations, because there are plenty of valuable releases in that category. Sure, there are all those cha-ching Deep Purple and Motörhead comps, but I can hardly picture someone crazy about reviewing those during the Challenge.

i definitely see your point. plenty of people would benefit from having more of the collections reviewed. people are always asking about bands like motorhead and where to start - often a good compilation could be a good place, and with so many being out there - people could do with a point in the right direction courtesy of someone who knows what their talking about. Hells Unicorns review of Dokken's cash-in affair (doone in this challenge) is an example of a useful compilation review in this sense.

A lot of what Napero said earlier is stuff that should be considered, regardless of what happens. I have hard copies of about 85% of the singles I reviewed, and the ones that I didn't were promotional singles with just the song on them that I elected to do an in depth analysis on because I had not touched upon the particularly song in my review of the full length that it came from. I think that these particular reviews were good supplemental reading, particularly the reviews I did for the Avantasia and more recent Ozzy singles. But on their own as reviews, they're not the best work I've done.

I'll be sure to get another hard drive so I can at least download a lot of full-lengths instead of relying on popular singles. Still, deathriderdoom kicked my ass with the amount of reviews he churned out each submission.

i got rid of my considerable vinyl collection a couple years ago. i do miss tihngs like pulling out the liner notes of 80's classics, but it's another thing to take up space and worry about when you move. where i dont currently posses a hard copy of albums reviwied i either have done, or possess usually the specifically release concerned version (of the download). i think that i have enough of a background in band like Dokken, Krokus to warrant reviewing one of their singles, especially if it's one ive rocked out to for a decade.

I may be off slightly in the count, but i believe i either have 17 or 18 of these at the moment. i'm going to try and get to 20, and then call it quits.

Well it's my best friend's graduation today, so I won't be able to put in any more today. Wish I'd gotten a lot more in, because I have at least 8 other albums that could have been reviewed, there just wasn't the time for me to get around to reviewing, or even listening to them fully. Anyway I think I made it to at least 10 so that's still a decent outing.

I have a small stat which may be of interest to some of you, the total of participants for each previous session:

May 2006: n/a
November 2006: 53
February 2007: 71
July 2007: 62
December 2007: 87
May 2008: 81
November 2008: 70

Leading to the average number of review per reviewer:

May 2006: n/a
November 2006: 2.08
February 2007: 3.25
July 2007: 3.85
December 2007: 3.15
May 2008: 3.98
November 2008: 5.14


The tendency is quite clear. Though the site is growing the number of participants has remained roughly equal, but each reviewer is writing more reviews. I can already predict this present edition will only confirm the tendency.

And also... if caspian doesn't submit a review before today 23:59:59 M-A time, Napero and I will remain the only members to have posted at least one review in each edition

There are none of those, at least I haven't approved any.

However, there are a lot of lackluster reviews that would not have been written without the challenge.

Put yo hands in the air like you just don't care!

interesting indeed. while this will probly be the only one ill ever end up participating in - enjoyed it a lot. doubt id ever be able to top my industrial amount of production.

any thoughts on my further ideas about the genre challenge, Sean16? anyone?

The genre thing - For me I'm for now standing on my position, I see it as a pretty hard thing to implement, when you see we reviewers already disagree on the mere inclusion of singles in the next Challenge...

I'd say, let's talk about it later, after the end of this Challenge, after the end of caspian's (end of next week), probably in a separate thread where everyone will be able to add his contribution more efficiently, without losing it amongst the posts specific to the current Challenge.

I don't mean it like it sounds. Like I said before, if reviews piled in, in the future, for the short and sweet single reviews from the challenge, they'd probably get nuked. Oh well. At least we can be happy about breaking records, individual and otherwise.

As I don't see anyone bothering writing a review for an Ozzy Osbourne single, chances are most of them will stay.

That's beside the point. If they had, they'd be gone, in seconds! Also it kinda highlights the use of those reviews. *Shrugs*

Haven't written anything today, might do later. Will try to reach 75 and leave it at that.

By the way I see another point where the Challenge has triumphed: never in its whole history had the MA reviewers argued so much about it!

My biggest complaint (aside from overdue school work / unfinished school work) is how burnt out I am. I did more reviews this week than in my entire review library of 3 years.

After today - loooooooong vacation from reviewing.

I know what you mean, i've written as much as about two thirds of my old total...and most of you have written more than my complete total. Still, i don't review consistently, so i'm not worried about burn out. i review when i'm not being too active in my fiction, but still want to write, so i'll probably end up taking a break after this anyway.

well you guys certainly deserve points for some quality reviews and evident talent. my comparitive crap serves as more of a basic introduction to the sound of the album in in question that admittedly lacks the natural talent for writing which makes proper reviewers' like Hells, Hats, Ozzy, etcs reviews a pleasure to read. we cant all be this at this level though, with the several reviews ive done serving as pretty good 'practice', that might some day improve.

Ha, I think we reviewers don't hold our own reviews in the light of others. I find MY reviews to be the ones lacking, and one day hope to improve. If you read mine, you'll notice many grammatical errors that aren't fixed, mainly because I don't proof-read my material. Tis a shame, because all of my reviews have some kind of error in them and now I have to go back and take care of them all. This was fun and challenging, though, even if most of us were striking against singles

i know what you mean. due to my (imagined) good command of basic english, i dont feel the need to spellcheck or proof read (i even do it with my schoolwork) which results in those annoying little errors. tonnes in mine, which are accentuated by the 'lacklustre' feeling of them that makes em feel like i 'dont care' .

with regards to the singles, i again i must say i dont see what the big deal is. admittedly albums should be the main focus, but it doesnt mean you cant come across a good single review that serves a purpose - just would be better directed towards an obscure album.

Do you guys write reviews using notepad? What's stopping you in using Word, or a similar software, with automatic spellchecker?

I do use Microsoft Word but the fucker doesn't pick up the errors! It can't tell apart "there" from "their" from "they're" and its all messed up with the "its" "it's."

My problem is that I'll write a sentence, delete some part of it and replace it with something else, and forget to actually read through it again.

For instance:
Notice the "there" that should even be in the sentence. I wrote something originally, thought of something else as I was hearing the song, and completely wrote something else.

to answer your question Evenfiel,things get complicated here in NZ with spell checker - if youll bare with me;

here we use British english (as you probably already know) this means there are slightly different spelings of common words, for example:

Armor in Armored Saint is pelled Armour here.

the spell checking system on this campus system gets confused, and sometimes wants you to change your stuff to American spelling, and others not - it's incredibly annoying and makes for mixed spelling that doesnt fly in the academic world as you probably know. i avoid this little annoyance by just typing and submitting.

pretty lame, right?

I NEVER use Americanised English. I didn't do it there either. I wasn't brought up to use their variation of the language. Having said that, there are a LOT of capable reviewers here who's first language isn't English, even some of you forum members, so I overlook little differences. Its not like I know any other languages, so I won't complain.

I have Firefox which automatically spellchecks everything I put into these windows. Makes it easy.

i share your sentiment on all counts. being a heavily British-ised (notice i used the s there, not the z) ex colony, we are eductaed with only the Queens English being acceptable.

yeah, its amazing how many people speak and write great english on here even though it's not their native tongue. ive always respected that - we're luck to not have to learn other languages here, but its something ive always wanted to do.

That is why I did not push it this time, but kept the amount I was writing on down, as I have several promos and the like around here, which will need a review... even though I do not beg for promos, there is some steady flow of them comming.

Wow, i'm honored that you think that. With regards to proof reading, my writing really helped me there. i write everything in word, and then i read it over immediately after it's done. the next day i read it one more time, often rewrite segments, and then submit it (and i always ignore word's corrections, they're worthless). I'm somewhat worried about some of my challenge reviews, as i cut out the last step, and i've already had to edit one due to a stupid mistake that the band members contacted me about (Deiphago). As for the quality of my reviews, i agree that we all view our own work in a disparaging light. I think my reviews are generally in one of three styles: A, reviews where i try and keep it interesting, but that come out as long, unprofessional, jokes (Whitechapel, Boy Will Drown), B, far too dry, in which i'm just regurgitating facts about the album in a completely boring fashion (almost all of them, as an example i suppose Godless Rising, Dodsferd, Sonic Violence), and finally, C, the reviews were i try and play to my strengths and work in either mood-related short stories or extended metaphors, all of which feel like complete gimmicks looking back (Khanate, Chemikiller).

In other news, i'm just starting my 20th, meaning i met my goal (which is twice what my original goal was).

^ your review on Dodsferd is interesting, because now three people have bashed their first three releases; first me, then Noktorn and now you ... looks like their whole early stuff can be skipped.

I had this problem last time. I reviewed beyond my limit and didn't review for months afterwards. I wrote a total of 52 reviews in November 2008 (I document how many reviews I write per month) and wrote a total of 9 between December 2008 and March 2009. It wasn't until last month, when I did 28, that I started to get back on track. Mind you, I did move during this, had no internet connection for a long time and had loads of personal things going on. Then again, I exhausted myself anyway and never felt like reviewing until April this year.

I suppose that is true. I remember getting Cursing... and really liking it, and looking at those earlier reviews with quite a bit of curiosity. while i would give their split a higher rating than Noktorn, their earlier material does turn out to be quite skippable. i'll give the album this, though, it changed a bit each time. the first i thought it was utterly awful and struggled to get through it. the second, months later, i was pleasantly surprised and would have probably given it a 60 or 70. the third i realized, wait, no, this is pretty shitty. not many albums can do that. of course, that's not a particularly good trait, but still.

OzzyApu - It amazes me how anglophones have problems with "there", "their", "they're", "its" and "it's". The differences between them always looked crystal clear to me.

DeathRiderDoom - If I were you, I would just choose one type of English and stick with it. That's much better than not to use a spellchecker.

Now I'm not that sure you're lucky for not having to learn another language. I mean, I can speak well three languages and I'm always studying others. I consider myself lucky for not being a monoglot! Maybe if my first language was English I wouldn't have the initial impulse to learn new languages.

Empyreal - Yup, the automatic spellchecker that comes with firefox (or Google Chrome 2.0) is quite handy, especially when you often need to write in multiple languages.

Unless your home life means that you have to learn an additional language, or you actively try to learn a new language here in England, then there's no chance you will speak another language. The education system isn't well developed for teaching foreign languages unless you pick it up easily. The same goes for English really, but they try to impose that on us because its the native tongue and whatnot. I studied English at degree level myself, but the system is totally shit.

No no no I don't have a problem with them - Microsoft WORD incorrectly "corrects" them.

I'll write: "the band changed their sound"

Word will automatically correct it: "the band changed there sound"

I don't know why it does that.

well, if I count the dialect of the region I live in, too, then it would also be three languages. It differs quite a lot from normal German and you need translators for some regions of the northern part of Germany.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low_German

My Word does not do that. It seems you have some retarded version.