The people have spoken and Classic Mode it is! For those of you who are unfamiliar with the Classic Mode, back in the day when V2 was but a glimmer in V1’s eye, we held bi-annual review challenges that involved reviewing full-length albums, live albums, singles, box sets, demos, splits or anthologies that, at the time, did not have any reviews at all. The point of this challenge was to expose lesser-known bands and releases by at least giving them an opinion of some sort to the curious browser wandering around from band to band like a lost puppy, and it became incredibly huge ‘round these parts.

Unfortunately, the last time we tried something like this, the turnout was incredibly low. This was due to a variety of factors: the change from V1 to V2 left some reviewers uninterested, many veteran reviewers either had no interest or left the site in general, sisters_of_merciless and Sean16, two members who both played integral parts of organizing and keeping statistics of the review challenges prior, have largely disappeared. So the idea was scrapped, until now.

A majority of you decided you’d rather tackle a Classic review challenge like we used to do than a themed challenge, and that’s totally awesome! The same rules will apply here. If you’re new to the game or need a refresher, the rules are:

1. Simply put, review items of any nature that don’t have any reviews. It’s that easy. We’ll keep track of the numbers to see who got what.

2. The most important rule of all: QUALITY OVER QUANTITY! I cannot stress this enough. Although we will be keeping track of numbers, your reviews need to be acceptable. If you think you can fire through fifty mediocre reviews just to inflate your numbers in the time you could write one beefy review, don’t even think about it. We’d rather see a few nice, bulky reviews than a thousand mundane, insipid ones.

3. Site rules remain the same. There will be no rule-bending or leeway to up the numbers. See rule #2.

4. The challenge will last one week. Right now, the tentative dates are October 8-14, but this is subject to change if a staggering number of you won't be able to contribute due to outside commitments. Everyone is busy with work, social lives, hobbies, etc., so finding a proper date is indeed very important. Let us know!

5. There will be rewards for the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners, which will all be judged on quality, not quantity. Tony wrote this in the previous thread:



I’ll supply the 3rd place winner with a random unopened CD I have lying around. Maybe I’ll give out a few more because I’m a nice guy. Who knows?

6. You will get credit for an unreviewed album even if you’re beat to the punch and submit it within the week of the challenge. For example, so if Wilytank and I review Vomit Sodomy's Assbarfing Blasphemy, we both get credit for the challenge. If Tony reviews Regurgitated Cow Fetus' Farm Animal Funland of Satan's Hellish Placenta one day, myself the next, Bastardhead on Friday and Empy on Saturday, all four users get credit for the review, and so on. That way, there’s no rush or feelings of inadequacy when the CD(s) you were planning on reviewing were already deflowered.

7. You don’t have to participate if you don’t want to. No big deal.

I can promise the mods will keep the review queue cleaner than a Mormon wardrobe during that week. That seems like everything. Any questions, comments, concerns, incantations?

Everything sounds clear. I'll be sure to participate with one or two reviews. Can't wait to see what gems people write up!

Can you guys keep a sort of "table of contents" stating who wrote what during that week? A line per user (something like this: user - album/title, album title...) would suffice. It could be placed at the top of the thread for us readers to keep up. That would be interesting!

Yeah, we can do that. Every day we'll make a post updating the stats.

Cool!

Oct. 8-14 works for me... one question though, would it be considered cheating if you "scouted" albums? What I mean is, I came up with a list of a dozen albums that I might do a review for, but I'm not sure which ones would end up with a substantive review and which ones not (I figured I might end up trying to finish 2-4 reviews), so I thought maybe I should give each of them some listens and take down some notes about what I could talk about, then when the week came I would write the actual reviews. Would this be ok, or should I wait until the week officially starts to do all of this?

There's no particular rules and I won't come at your house to check if your headphones are stolen ones. Do what you want! Gunther's rules are quite clear about the rest.

Nice, got some good BC stoner/doom virgins I've been waiting to review like Mendozza, Hoopsnake, and Black Wizard. I hope this challenge has a better turn out than last time.

That's totally fine. We don't want any "stockpiling," or folks writing reviews before the time of the challenge, but we can't do anything about it if it happens. We just run on honesty, honestly. Taking notes is totally cool; I've already made a list of albums I want to review. There will be folks jumping the gun so to speak, but we'd prefer if you'd wait to write reviews until the challenge week.

Sounds like a good time! I'll try to get a few done that week. The dates you have picked are pretty good too, can't do much later in the month, as the 17th is my anniversary and the wifey would be upset if I spent that week writing up reviews!

Could you maybe post the reviews that have won prices in the past? It's not in order to copy them but to just to get an idea of the quality you guys are expecting. Apart of that, I'm always looking to do better reviews as time goes by and some inspiration is always welcome. English is only my third language in fact and I didn't have that many occasions to practice it in my everyday life. My first reviews on this side were okay but I think I've improved since then and there's still enough room for improvement.

There weren't any winners before; we gave nods to whom wrote the most reviews. This time though, we're going solely on the meat and potatoes.

Unfortunately I have a lot to do for school that week so that probably will stop me from participating to my fullest extent. I'll still try to knock back as many quality reviews as possible, though.

Hehe, I was wondering about this the other day. Good deal, Gunther. I think I may be pretty rusty by now but it's nice to see this going on still.

I will take part for the mere thrill of the challenge and not in order to have a chance to win something. I am "oneyoudonknow" after all.

Ok, Tony.

Guess I'll have to participate this time around. Now, to scan my library for things with no reviews...

EDIT: Wait, how will you know which reviews are Challenge reviews and not just regular reviews?

You send me a message with the review you want to submit for the challenge.

Can we just, like, post in this thread with links to our Challenge-eligible reviews?

I don't see why anyone has to post anything about what reviews they're doing...just review the albums you want to review for the challenge. Is there an underlining theme I'm missing?

All reviews that review unreviewed albums will be counted even if the reviewer is oblivious or doesn't care for the challenge.....is that the question? Mods will keep track of all reviews for count purposes.....is that the question?

This might actually get me to start trying to write reviews again. Hopefully I'll find some time in the next few weeks... but yea, good idea. Good idea indeed.

I have about ten lined up and waiting. Enter my problem: find the time to write them up! If this lasts a week, I'll be happy if I get around four reviews written. This was so much easier when I was still in college...

I only write reviews for releases that don't have any because I'm not a very skilled reviewer, and so I wouldn't be contributing to the site much if I added to more popular releases. I still try to make them as good as I can. I will definitely participate, just don't expect top notch stuff, just the best I can do for little bands I want to support.

That is the general idea behind this challenge. When you look at my early writings and compare them with my recent ones, then there is quite a gap between these. Just start with one or two reviews and get used to describe music ... continue on that and you will improve.

I'm in.

I bet the Death album I picked up last night has zero reviews! I'm going to go look it up so I can affirm my foolish hopes!

/e

In preparation for the contest I've scouted out quite a few albums. For starters, I'll be reviewing the following:

Beneath - Enslaved by Fear
Chaos Divine - The Human Connection
Meridian - Meridian
Odium - At the Bottom
Oral Fistfuck - Demo 2011
Torture Division - Our Infernal Torture

Just updated you all to give everyone an idea of what I'm going to be doing.

Shit guys, I'm really not sure if I can make this one. Almost all of my midterms and essays are on that week. I mean I'll still try but I'm probably not even going to breach the ten review point.

We can change the dates. Everyone ok with bumping it down a week from the 15th-22nd?

The date is fine ... (and I have finally also an album that I want to write on).
This new edition can be seen as a test run ...

The 17th is my wedding anniversary. I can probably still pump some out that week, but I will be out on that day...

The 15th-22nd definitely works for me, and I'm sure some other people are going to have the same problem if their in university. Not going to complain if the original date is kept though, whatever works for the majority of reviewers. I can just go full force in the next one.

Ah hell. I liked the earlier date, if only because I need an excuse to pump out content.

My eighteenth birthday's on the 13th, though, so maybe it's for the best? Whatever works. I'll still be participating.

Well, we can keep the old date as most of you seem to be alright with that. That fine with everyone?

Yeeeup.

Old dates work for me.

Old dates are definitely better for me.

Either set of dates work for me.

We can do the old dates then.


2 days bitches!

Right on. I've got a list of about twenty-five unreviewed albums to dig into. Hopefully I can churn out around ten.

Ooh, this one looks ideal as well. We'll see how it goes.

I'm very tempted to quickly write and submit reviews tomorrow for all the albums that people have mentioned in this thread so far, so they'll be rendered ineligible for the actual contest.