I stopped reading it after I came across "lulzy"

Is this some peculiar attempt at horrifying the reader? I really dislike how he seems to consider popularity an indicator of quality. The writer is apparently 29 years old - I wonder if.

@CrimsonFloyd
That Bathory song you are speaking of in your Countess review is called "Enter the Eternal Fire", not "Enter the Eternal Flame."

Woops! Thanks for pointing that out.

The positive reaction to Undead kind of has me dumbfounded. Three almost identical positive reviews so far. Could it be? Has this embarrassing bastardization of a band actually recorded a good album? Guess I'll have to listen to it.

I'll be reviewing it soon, definitely will not score it near 80. I was thinking around 60-65. It's listenable (and the best album of all time in any universe ever by Six Feet Under standards), but still kinda dull. I mean, it's Six Feet Under, but they've improved dramatically.

This is sad. Look at that review page. No other full-length has any consensus for the average above 70%. Pathetic. Not one song by this band has stirred anything in me to listen to them any further. The positive review streak reminds me of the positive Lacuna Coil reviews for the newest album. I then heard it expecting a change and it was the same drivel. Same thing applies to any positive Skylark review. That band's positive reviewers stun me.

It's actually not that bad, have you sampled a few songs? It sounds MILES above anything they've ever done. Barnes sounds better on Undead than any SFU release, and the riffs are semi-decent. It's actually not that shitty.

EDIT: Reread the post, I'm a bit drunk, my bad.

Woods of Ypres, too. There are maybe six negative reviews out of 45 or something, which is completely baffling considering how incredibly retarded the music is. Most of the positive reviews seem to give a rating of above 85%, aswell. Utterly perplexing. Anyhow, the ones that are negative being very negative (and justifiedly so), the averages on all but the latest album are in the 70s and the Green Album is 50% something. The latest album's average is, guess what? 86%.

You know what to expect from an album when a reviewer calls it "dark and dreary, but definitely enjoyable".

I think that at least two of the three reviewers (hells_unicorn and autothrall) have opinions worth considering, though, whereas that Lacuna Coil album was getting reviews from themselves, the band manager, and family members for all we know.

An artist's works gets appreciated a lot more once they're dead. Looky looky. Woods of Ypres is another band that did nothing for me. Not to say I'm the arbiter of what's good and what isn't, but coincidental that the best album was the last one before he died?

That's what's weird. hell_unicorn especially is the guy that wrote the "Royal Seal of Gayness" series and any SFU album could have been on it. Not the first time the two of us, or three including autothrall, disagreed on something. Will I check out the band now? No. There's no amount of reversal that'd make me not check out one band so I can check out SFU.

Anyone thinking about getting their panties in a bunch about my reaction to this should think otherwise.

So would SFU be the Skylark of death metal?

Do they adhere to all the worst characteristics of their respective genre? Pretty much. Do they have a fanbase that salivates at their every work and worship the lead singer? Pretty much. Skylark not so much anymore after the blonde bimbo left.

Skylark aren't even that well known so its hard to say they have a raving fanbase like the SFU twats.

One answer to this: Japan.

Oh believe me, both "Maximum Violence" and "True Carnage" are both going to enjoy slots on the series once I get around to them, the latter is in the top 10. But just like the latest Soulfly album, something just changed on "Undead" and they've gone from being terrible to pretty good. Granted, I liked the vocal work on Cannibal Corpse's albums a little better when Barnes was doing them so I might be a bit prejudiced in that regard, and this new album sees him going back to sounding a lot like how he did on my two favorite early CC albums.

http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/M ... e_Thrasher

Almost written well enough to fool me into thinking it wasn't run through google translate. Still not really sure. Reading any positive review for that album is painful for me, but this one was particularly hard to swallow.

What do you guys think of this review?

It's not the best piece of fiction/fact out there, but acceptable.

Yeah passable, but a pretty mediocre review.

Does anyone notice that a lot of the bigger reviewers aren't doing it as much anymore? Noktorn and Caspian seem to be reviewing much less frequently and Perplexed_Sjel quite like a year ago.

At least I am back now. Managing more than one every month now...

I'll be back!

Us once prolific reviews have stepped down to give young guns like the prophetic ConorFynes a chance to pad their way to the top.

As for me, my goal is to ace through a band's full-lengths while doing a handful of individual reviews in between... every so amount of months.

I do about one a month nowadays. Really it's just I'm holding myself to an absurd standard and I never like anything I write. Hell I haven't been fully proud of a review since my Diamond Plate one last year, and before then I can't even remember the last one.

Noktorn's MIA in general, it seems. Haven't seen him do anything online (on any of his online accounts) since early March, actually.

hells_unicorn liked Biomechanical's Cannibalised...we really can't agree on anything.

Quick stupid question about review titles - if my title is a direct quotation from lyrics in the album is it necessary to put it in quotation marks?

I'm not even sure if it's possible to use quotations in the review title. I once tried and it wouldn't let me save the review, so I had to use single quotation marks. Then again, that was way back in V1 - things may have changed since then.

Oh come on, we both like Evile's debut, and I think you also took to Cain's Offering pretty similarly to me.

Yeah Cain's Offering is pretty good. Has not aged that well though, mostly due to the rather overly loud production...a couple songs I really like like "My Queen of Winter" and "Morpheus in a Masquerade" though. Surprised you liked that one, however, as the song structures on some tunes were a lot like later Sonata Arctica stuff.

I do it with the reviews I title with lyrics from the album.

You could do it in V1 and in V2. I know because I have reviews from then and now that I've done so in.

Honestly, the big thing that sort of annoyed me about "Unia" was the choruses, not necessarily the slower tempos and the groove riffs. And Cain's Offering sounded a bit closer to "Reckoning Night" which I still consider part of SA's earlier period. Oh, and I think that Tony Kakko's vocals have gotten a bit too throaty of late for my taste in context to all the keyboards and melodic trappings, so Koltipelto's vocals made a pretty big difference as well.

So I finally finished reviewing Psychotic Waltz's discography. Eh, it only took me two bloody years!

I just wish that they would release a new album at last...

Your reviews were pretty good, gave me the will to check this band, I always forget about them

Thanks mate. The one for the debut won't be that good though, I was in the early beginnings of my writing at that time. I just love these guys and I can't grow tired of listening to them. I mean, I'll go for months without hearing them, which is normal considering how much different bands I listen to, but when I hear them I always have a blast and they really grip unlike others.

You should really check them, at least I think everyone should. But that's the fanboy inside reaching out.

Agreed. A Social Grace is absolutely amazing. I haven't been able to get into their other stuff in the past, but maybe I'll make a revisit one of these days.

So I just started a blog and I want to build up content. So mods, is it cool if I repost some of my reviews I've written here on my blog? I'll post "originally posted on The Metal Archives" and provide a link to the original, to avoid people suspecting plagiarism.

You don't need that disclaimer; it's your own content. You can put it anywhere you want.

That's a good move.

Or you can edit all your reviews and add a link to your blog here instead. Either works, whatever you're comfortable with my man.