I can see someone calling some of the keys inorganic, but I still like it because it still presents itself so nicely.

Well I was expecting to get some annoyed comments since I basically thrash a release from a seemingly very popular band on this forum, but I didn't really expect this. Some things confuse me a bit though about the comments:

1. Most of you claim I don't get the band. I couldn't agree more. I don't get the music and it does not appeal to me at all. Does that mean I should not be allowed to write a review for it?

2. I was under the perception that Summoning was fundamentally black metal with heavy use of the keyboard and hence my expectations fooled me. That does not in any way make the music more appealing to me and yes I chose to express my dislike for the music viewed from those expectations. Would it have been more acceptable if I simply described how I perceived the music and that I dislike it without the expectation part?

I clearly stated, or at least I believe i did, my expectations, my unfamiliarity and that I don't get the music in the review which means that people who are into the band can basically disregard my opinions. I don't know how the rest of you read a review, but for my part it is helpful when a reviewers previous experiences and expectations of the band are stated. It makes it easier for me to relate my opinions to the reviewers and decide if his or hers taste are in line with mine or if I might still like a record despite a low score.

I welcome any constructive criticism on my writing/language to help me improve any day, but to start off I would like some answers to the questions I pose above simply to find out what people expect/demand here.

Zodijackyl >> Please tell me what is so awful about the reviews from metalcovenant in a constructive manner. Like I said, I like to improve my writing. If you have the time, please send me a PM or we can continue that part in the review feedback thread.

I really agree with this. Such reviews are always such glaring shit stains that it makes me surprised they're accepted.

The "take an apple and review it as an orange" thing pretty much explains the problem. Having expectations and taking them into account is one thing, but letting them entirely dictate everything is pretty pointless. It's a bit like if I reviewed raw black metal stuff giving ultra-low ratings based on bad production, or classic heavy metal based on lack of blastbeats or growls... I think you see where I'm going with this. The album should be reviewed for the most part for what it is, not for what it was expected to be - sure, expectations may definitely influence the final opinion and rating, but when it feels like you don't really know what you're doing and what the band or genre is about, it's not going to look good.

The review I mentioned (not for the first time) that pisses me off was a similar case, of someone bashing an album of a band often tagged "progressive metal" (even though they're the furthest from a typical representant of a genre possible), because it was not technical enough and starting the review with mentioning Dream Theatre. Yours is not this bad, but unfortunately the problem is the same.

(On a different note though, in this case I pretty much don't know the band so I probably count as sort of objective here.)

Lib will miss no opportunity to get up on his soapbox, will he?

That said, he's kind of right in a way this time. Mentioning that this wasn't what you expected is one thing, and that's totally fine and something that nobody would complain about being in a review. But basing the entire review around the idea that this isn't what you expected and then rating it negatively for not doing something it wasn't ever supposed to do is just ignorant. Now, that's not to say everything that does what it sets out to do is good by default, my disdain for Brain Drill style tech death and the intentional cacophonous bullshit of Obscura show my opinion on such a stance, but it's not like I popped in that Gorguts album and thought "Well shit, this doesn't sound anything like Vader!" and then trashed it because I was hoping it would sound more like something it clearly isn't.

If a vast majority of the review was spent on explaining why you didn't think it worked, or why it sounded bad, or anything like that, it'd be totally fine, but the fact that you seem to completely miss the point of what Summoning was doing and has always done and then formulate the review around the idea that they don't play a sound you thought they'd play just leaves a bad taste in everybody's mouths.

Also, the reason reviews like this get accepted and stay is because we don't expect everybody to be an absolute expert. Some people will suck, some will be total noobs, some will miss the point, but we aren't a staff of writers, and I like that. We're just the metal community.

And just once, I'd like to see a debate like this about a very positive review, because it always comes off as red-faced buttraging from fanboys. In fact, most people against this Summoning review are self proclaimed fanboys, and that's cool, I'm a total fanboy of certain bands too. But really, it's the same old song and dance, and it's really tiring always going through it.

Summoning basically started out as sort of a symphonic black metal band but these days they're really more of an epic dungeon synth band with some remaining black metal elements. I wouldn't say it's a million miles removed from bands like Askival, Lustre or Falkenbach but it's still less metal than all of these.

Tengan, to answer your questions:

1. Technically, no, but it's a very quick road to being a totally irrelevant reviewer that nearly everyone disregards by default.

2. I don't really get it. If you would have given the album a zero even if it was *exactly* as you expected it to be, why expend so much effort in the review explaining how it didn't meet your expectations?

I think it's important to keep your audience in mind. People reading a review for that album likely fall into a couple of categories: people who are wholly unfamiliar with the band and are looking for a place to start, a reason to listen to the band or a reason to avoid them; people who are familiar with the band but not with this release in particular; and people who already own the release and are simply interested in reading more about it. For the first group of people, your review doesn't really help much since you aren't really being descriptive about what the music *is*, instead focusing on what it *isn't*. For the second group of people, your review is going to be worthless because they will very quickly see that you missed the point and move on. Ditto with the third group. That leaves pretty much the personal value of getting your thoughts down in writing, but why then go on to publish the review on multiple platforms?

A zero score for the album would be much more valuable if you had understood exactly the aesthetic the band was trying to achieve but, in your eyes, had utterly failed at accomplishing. Instead, you bash the band outright for the elements that the fans love (the cheap synth patches, the repetition, the drum machines) AND place undue focus on how the band fails at elements that aren't really as essential (the traditional black metal elements).

Alright everyone who replied I think I know what the issue is here and I realize the review became way too much oriented in one direction, that is the part of unmet expectations. What I believe Summoning is trying to achieve musically is an epic medievel-ish sound based on a special synth sound and elements that iamntbatman mentions such as drum machines and repetition, please correct me if I am wrong on this one. My opinion is that I don't like the way the music is performed/produced, and I think they fail at achieveing a grand medievel sound. Partly because of the sound which is far from medievel in my book, hence the reference to Winterfylleth, and partly due to lack in songwriting. I was under the impression that I covered these elements but I can see now how this kind of drowns in the black metal comparisons.

On a second note: I gave it 10%, not a 0.

In the context of the complaints, the score is irrelevant there, so.changing the 0 to a 10 doesn't actually fix the issue. If you think its utterly worthless, keep the zero, the actual review needs to reflect why the actual content on offer is so horrible rather than a simple score change

It was a 10% from the start, y'all.

It was always ranked 10% not 0, don't know who started that. The 10% is for doing something fairly unique and for some bearable parts in the title track.

Ah fair enough, I was a late arrival, comment withdrawn.

If you're determined on pointing out the shallowness of Tengan's perspective, write a well-articulated and insightful review of your own. While Tengan's is hardly a ham-fisted one such as someone like UltraBoris could've written, an elaborate and thoughtful positive review should give the reader the right idea of what Summoning's new album is about, juxtaposed with the approach of the only negative one: one-dimensional and seemingly heedlessly dismissive.

As Tengan said, let his review speak for itself. You can hardly expect everyone to like something as unique as Summoning. Even though I thoroughly enjoy almost everything they've released, I don't find it hard to believe that someone would find them slightly ridiculous. Their aesthetic can easily come across as campy if you can't wholly immerse yourself in it. I don't know what my opinion on them would be if I hadn't gotten into them at a comparatively early age - Dol Guldur is among the first actual metal albums I have heard.

Now that I'm at the computer, I did have one thing I wanted to comment on outside the actual review (Which I didn't find particularly bad, maybe tinted by my own dislike for the band, and maybe I read into the parts where he touches on what I hate a bit too much).



You can totally do the first one, because you are reviewing it for what it is not for what it isn't, which is a pretty major aspect of what makes your second example so valid and offensive; just because an album is what it wants to be, doesn't mean you have to like it. You can hate on a tech death band for being mindless and poorly composed, you can't hate on it for not sounding like Incantation. In this context, Tengan commenting that he thinks the whole sounding like 90's videogame played on a cheap keyboard sounds like ass is perfectly valid, it's the other stuff where he goes on about it not evoking the feelings of the black metal properly that it gets a bit off track.

Technically, lord_ghengis, many wholly acceptable and valid negative reviewss follow the same logic as your tech death and Incantation example, merely in a much less black and white manner. Consider, for example, a pure black metal fan reviewing for Alcest. The reviewer will hardly like anything outside of the second wave sound, and therefore criticises Alcest for sounding different from that. Of course, superficially, it would seem that the reviewer criticising it for Alcest's lack of power and irritatingly saccharine style, but naturally, he/she's reviewing it based on certain standards of what he/she fundamentally considers to be quality music. If those standards are entirely composed of elements of second wave black metal and nothing else, as in this example, he/she is technically criticising Alcest for not sounding like second wave black metal. This example can be extrapolated so that the reviewer's preferences consist of a multitude of genres.

The question of validity of criticism is the extent to which the reviewer is capable of articulating his/her lack of taste for the music in question. Eclecticity of taste is not a part of reviewing ability by any means. In Tengan's case, we can question whether he tried to like the music; if he dismissed it too hastily. But such speculations would seem like fans being in denial of that the music might have elements that someone might perceive as major faults, ie. immature.

Yeah there's a lot of grey area and ways of presenting it, and as such taste and what not, and I think that at least being somewhat subtle about it by focusing on the music offered reads a lot better, even though as you say, it can mean basically the same thing. I'm definitely not one of the ones suggesting that obliviousness to the subject matter should be grounds for rejection, your post is a perfect example of why it wouldn't work. And at any rate, the viewpoint of an outsider looking in is a perspective many readers in the same situation could find useful.

Ilwhyan > After the first listen I tried to clear my predispositions on the music and listen to it with a fresh pair of eyes (so to speak). I did not however appreciate it for the reasons mentioned. In retrospect I should have started off by dismissing my idea preconceived ideas of the music as to "warn" other people in my situation. Then go on to describe what I believed the band was going for and then move on to what I hear in the music and why it does not work for me at all. Well that is a lesson learned and I appreciate the constructive criticism on the writing. Please keep that part coming.

Having recently started to appreciate folk-inspired black metal such as Winterfylleth I really wanted to like Summoning given that I was under the impression the music were of a similar kind. Well, another lesson learned to expect anything and basically work from that.

It's rare that I do reviews out of spite, but Liberation's going on about my PoS review (done it a bunch of other times) is getting me inspired to piss on their entire discography. Completely different from this summoning review being discussed (which I kinda agree with everyone: misses the point a bit BUT it's easy to see why Summoning could annoy a lot of people, so.)

I mean Scarsick is AWFUL. Needs a few more 5% reviews, for sure...

Before I address the above, let me clear up some confusion: I know the review in question was a 10% score all along; the 0% business probably stems from my mention of Zodi giving LMHSYF a 0%, just as an introduction to my thoughts on Zodi's negative criticism of the band and how it compares to this new review.

Anyway, I can 100% understand why someone wouldn't like Summoning, and I think it's perfectly reasonable for someone to write a scathing review of it. However, I think it would just be so much more valuable as a review if it was better informed. For example, if he had explained that Summoning's music is largely dungeon synth wrapped in many layers around an epic black metal skeleton, he could have then gone on to explain why he doesn't like dungeon synth and therefore why this particular approach pales in comparison to more successful releases by other bands who use different tools to try to accomplish similar goals. (For some reason he goes on about Winterfylleth being a successful epic "medieval" black metal band, though I think they sound much more straightforward than all that.) Maybe if he had compared them to bands with a more organic sound like Bathory, that new Arsaidh album or something like that, explaining how a more natural sounding approach winds up being more majestic/epic/accurately medieval than purposefully "cheesy" synth patches.

I don't think total ignorance of the genre is grounds for rejection under the current rules, and I don't think anyone else thinks it is, either (else this conversation would be happening in the Oven Fodder thread instead of here). That said, I wouldn't be opposed to an addendum to the rules that addressed the issue. Something like:

-When writing a review, keep in mind what genre the release belongs to. Reviewing an album for what it is will be much more useful to potential listeners than reviewing for what it isn't.

It's more of a guideline that way, but could potentially be cited as a reason for rejecting a review that utterly fails to understand the genre or what the band was trying to accomplish in the first place.

All this talk actually made me go listen to a couple Summoning tracks from the new album. I've never really listened to them either, they seem like a band I could listen to if I was just trying to relax at night or maybe on a long dark drive. I don't think it's exactly my cup of tea either, but I would need to hear more to really decide. However I do get the video game music reference from the review, to me this would be awesome music for a Final Fantasy game and I don't mean that in a bad way. Maybe write some more positive reviews of stuff you really like before writing to many bad ones. I have a number of albums in my collection that I wish I could un-buy and would feel bad reselling them since they suck so bad. I almost reviewed one or two of these, but felt like my time was better spent on stuff I actually like.

So far all of my reviews have been very positive since I have reviewed some of my favorite albums. A couple of them were completely unexpected, I was just driving to work listening to Barshasketh for the first time and was just thinking about how I would describe it and wrote a review on a whim. Same thing happened with my Moontower review. Maybe I gave a few of the albums a few to many points/set the bar a little high for my next reviews, but I think all the stuff I reviewed definitely deserves those high scores.

This makes a lot of sense to me, and personally I think it would be a highly valuable asset to the site. I'm tired of reading stuff like that Scum review (you guys know which one) that complains about the album having short songs and no riffs and crap like that. Such a thing in the rules would certainly be able to avert situations like that.

What


Well this is not entirely relevant to the topic, but what I meant that it's kind of pointless since it's obvious that the genre usually a) can't afford good production, and even if then b) they often don't want it. Unless it's genuinely, offensively horrible (until recently I thought I'd have lots of trouble finding a release to give a honest 0%, but actually I came across a piece of crap that really is hard to call music), I think you see my point when I say it's pretty stupid to rate raw black metal poorly because of, well, raw production. If the songwriting and musicianship sucks as well then it gets worse.


Go ahead, you've written one ultra-shitty review (which is the genuine equivalent of bashing Dimmu Borgir for not having a raw production and stating that you like Bumzur in the intro) that got accepted through some apparent miracle, so if you want to "piss on" your reputation as a reviewer further...

There's no need to be a twat about this, Liberation. You wrote a crappy review and got critisized for it. It's quite common.

You are taking this all very, very seriously. Too seriously, really.

I wouldn't give a damn if he wasn't an ass at more than one occasion as well (e.g. me daring to disagree about his vision regarding elitism).

I used to hate Caspian when I was new here too. Toughen up, he'll grow on you after you chill out a bit and (and this part is important) stop feeling like it's your duty to hunt down and target reviews you disagree with on an ideological level.

I'm not hunting them down, I just mention those I feel are genuinely crap, as that's one of the purposes of this sub-forum I guess... I'm not going to be a raging fanatic as I found out a few times that it's generally a) unsuccessful, b) not perceived well

He hasn't shown me any reasons to like him this far, and it's not like I'm desperately looking for love here or something.

As much as I disagree with caspian on POS, his criticisms are pretty much wholly valid. He admits he's no expert on the genre, never condemns the genre as a whole and just says the band's sound isn't to his liking, plain and simple. I don't see a big deal with it.

I figured I'd share this bit of an acceptable review that made me roll my eyes:

"Lasombra, this name says it all: this is a concept album based on one of the darkest video games ever released: Vampire: The Masquerade."

I really don't want to continue this, but... the point is that he admits to reviewing the album as a typical progressive metal album, looking for technicality and crazy instrumental sections above all else (which is the furthest from what the band has always been about possible), and the whole review is based around that. This is really not a different case than the shitstorm which rolled through the last page here, someone reviewing an album entirely based on their expectations while having little to zero idea about the band.

I'd like to leave this now. I've said all I have to say on the matter, the review is shit and I won't change my mind, but don't want to drag this forever.

At least they didn't say Vampire Rain!

CrimsonFloyd on Fenris Kindir:


- There's no Gothenburg anywhere, especially not on Fenris Kindir
- Arckanum riffs in general aren't subtly melodic in the least, they're very plainly melodic
- Riffs on Fenris Kindir aren't that usual for Arckanum riffs, as most of them aren't melodic, not subtly or unsubtly

I don't admit to reviewing TPE as being a typical prog metal album. I was ruminating on the genre as a whole. I assume Liberation is getting a sandy vag about this


which is legit. Then I say this



Which is also legit.

So effectively, I say that I like Prog Metal but Pain of Salvation is weak as piss throughout this album and I didn't enjoy any of it. At NO POINT have I said "man i was really looking for tech and crazy instrumental sections"..

Now I admit it's not one of my better reviews, it's a pretty old one, probably in my first 50 or so. But it's perfectly legitimate and describes the album perfectly. In short, I'm not sure why I'm arguing with Liberation, as he's proven to be an idiot and he'll probably drag me down to his level and beat me from experience

Sounds like you listened to the album? I ordered it on red vinyl (which are still available on a couple websites if anyone wants one), but have still only listened to it through headphones. It's different and definitely not very melodic at all. I think I really need to listen to it through real speakers when I'm not preoccupied at work, but so far I have mixed feelings about it. I like the darker sound he went with and the last few songs seem really strong (not counting the noisy filler songs) I think I'll give it another listen today.

Of the 22 reviews in the queue, 18 of them are for either Slayer or Metallica (plus one Megadeth one, not counting the two for Super Collider that I dealt with already).

noobs
stahp

Wooooooow. Sucks to be you guys, my condolences.

I get called an idiot by someone who managed to use the two most pathetic pseudo-arguments ever to justify a song is bad, which is "it has no riffs" and "it's nu-metal", in one paragraph, and even added the highly sophisticated, erm, insult, about "vaginas" in the same post. Holy fucking shit

You are incredibly hilarious, although I mostly prefer more sophisticated types of humour.

Holy shit that's a mod's worst nightmare

Does that happen everyday?