Yeeeesh..."I myself aren't"?

Despite my disagreement with the review, I did find those lines quite humorous.

Edit: While I'm on the subject, I would like to thank RedMisanthrope for his Portal reviews. He really gets the band and it was his insightful reviews that peeked my curiosity in the band and made me investigate them, initially.

Alright, so you want some more real genuine "what the Christ" in this thread? I'll be happy to help you out. Let me introduce you to cinedracusio reviewing Clandestine Blaze's Church of Atrocity:

You're welcome!

caspian goes honest:

http://www.metal-archives.com/review.ph ... 7812#23414

See the dialogue part in the middle. Made me laugh out loud, not just LOL.

Well, since the review recommendation thread appears to be locked, I'll post this here:

DeathRiderDoom's a great reviewer who has the habit of uncovering some rather strange heavy metal albums (I swear he's often the only one outside of the band members who's heard a lot of it). This amused me:

http://metal-archives.com/review.php?id=53285#165461

A band that sounds like Saxon from the same place as Saxon? Crazy. Anyway, interesting stuff, keep at it!

http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=41

Absurder21's review is atrocious!



Are you kidding me!? So basically the album is bad because it's not full on black metal? This guy doesn't know shit, apparantly, because Bal Sagoth have never been "fully" black metal EVER! The closest they came is A Black Moon Broods over Lemuria, but that's more of a blackened death album. I don't even know why people call them black metal, or symphonic black metal. I find they have more in common with say, Rhapsody than Emperor. Either way, how can one argue with the riffs on songs like As the Vortex Illumines the Crystalline Walls of Kor-Avul-Thaa?



I'm a pretty big fan of Bal Sagoth and their works and this is a display of stupidity actually bordering on offensive, until the end of the review...



If this album was my girlfriend, this guy just raped her mercilessly. Anyone else find this review to be particularily retarded?

I can see not liking Bal Sagoth but that review is terrible. It isn't even close to being BM aside from the harsh vocals. The author is bashing the album for things he himself expected and didn't get.

What. The. Fuck.

Bal-Sagoth have never been black metal in any way in my eyes, except perhaps a few glimpses on the first album as you pointed out. Has a lot more in common with death than anything. I call it Battle Metal, hah!

Well, the guy is an idiot for criticizing the album for failing at being something it's not even trying to do (and furthermore for making it sound like they accidentally do the things they actually want to do) but even in its negativity the album does provide some useful musical description. The barrier to entry to black metal for many symphonic/power metal fans is likely to be the vocals, so Bal-Sagoth are one of the better gateway bands for such people. If I was a big power metal fan who wasn't really into black metal and I read his review, it would sound like something I'd want to check out, regardless of the reviewer's opinion on it.

When people bash my Bal-sagoth I cry a little. I just put the review down to him seeing the album's high average score and wanting to lower it. Life goes on....

It's not like the review is well written either. Oh well.

Every once in a while, Noktorn reminds me why I love him so much.

Agree completely. Reminds me that I miss his work quite a bit, and this proves he needs to start reviewing more often again.

Somewhere I imagine, let's say, Karnstein_Records or ThrashingMad reading that passage and going "Oh, god! He said he wouldn't tell anyone! He said it happened to lots of guys !!"

Idiot of the day: Zombie_Quixtote and his Virgin Killer review:



Not really ballads, though, are they?

Maybe this would have made more sense if he'd applied it to something like Crazy World? Guess he just had those criticisms floating around and just had to pick that album.



Yes, any band courting commerical success has their quirky guitarist sing Hendrix-y ballads in the mid-70s, sure. Also, point me to another band who had a similar chemistry as 70s Scorpions. Formulaic for mid-70s Scorpions... but surely being ahead of your time can't really count as formulaic if you're defining a formula?

Personal opinions aside, this review reeks of "I LISTENED ONCE AND THEN MADE CRITICISMS THAT DON'T REALLY APPLY". Geez, if you hate it so much at least put some effort into it.

Needs work. Really.

It's the kind of review that not only do I suspect was written just to dissent from the normal opinion, but also one that really can't be argued about. His review is based pretty much entirely on the basis of "soul" - and to that end, can't really prove any points about the album so much as of the listener's very subjective interpretation. Which is fine; I've done the same thing with albums at times, albeit perhaps not to this extent. He can have his opinion, but I sure don't know what the fuck he was listening to.

I do have to put my foot down at "formulaic songs," though. Hate it all you want, it is a pretty objective fact that there's nothing formulaic about many songs on that album. That's just ridiculous. Because a hard rock song with rapping was so formulaic at the time, or perhaps one like "Crying Days," with its epic quality. Yeah, right.

http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=230#139265

This has probably been mentioned here before, but eh. I remember when this got accepted, I'd read a few reviews beforehand that ripped off UltraBoris' reviewing style to a certain degree, but not this fucking much . That review even takes the same shot at Robb Flynn and apes the diatribe about "metal kids" that were in the MoP review. The entire piece of writing is an oddity.

So basically anything less heavier than your average Sabbath song is a ballad.



No wait. Scorpions = Glam formula?
And having rapped vocals and proto thrash songs in your albums makes you formulaic. To top that, how can someone call UJR's playing formulaic?

I had actually expected it to be a good negative review when I read the first para but oh well...

I don't think it can be done. It's impossible to hate 70s Scorpions for sensible reasons.

The beginning of this review for Convulse's World Without God always amused me.

Scorpions in the 70s were anything but glam, at least pre Taken By Force anyway.

The new Mortification dedicates half a paragraph to moaning about a joke I made about the drums that I made in my review, and it does so in a rather baffling form of "English." Check it out:

Atleast, he got one thing right. No wait he didnt; FLAW REVIEW.

MetalSupremacy's new Iron Maiden review has a few other things I'm going to point out as particularly retarded:



Well, getting some more intelligence on your own part would be a good start.



I didn't know there was a contest...?



Are you serious?



This just isn't funny or good humor in the least.



Yeah, and Priest never had anything resembling a catchy single. This review is so intelligent it's making my brain hurt!



Irrelevant...completely irrelevant.



Okay, what? What kind of drugs is this guy doing? I love some Priest too, but honestly, are you really going to do this? This is asinine. Completely retarded swill. Yes, Defenders of the Faith is a masterpiece, but, um, what the hell is the problem with Powerslave? "Pop metal wannabes"? Someone get this kid out of here, this shit is fucking ridiculous.

Iron Maiden is not
1 Hard Rock
2 Pop Metal
3 Power Metal
4 Flower Metal

Anyone who thinks that they are anything but Heavy Metal can leave the fuckin hall.

And I think MetalSupremacy was successful in his attention whoring attempts. He atleast made it to this thread.

Also why didnt he just go and give Turbo a 100 instead of reviewing Iron Maiden.

The incredible lengths he goes trying to prove his points is what truly baffles me. Such effort and at least decent writing talent, and yet such unbelievable retardation, it's that huge contrast that truly boggles the mind. Yeah, NO cheese and NO poppy tendencies in Night Comes Down and Love Bites - only heavy metal in its purest form, more than Maiden's proggy hard rock stuff "that one can't even headbang to" could ever hope to be! (for the record, I love both Priest songs) The guy obviously has a personal thing against them, or some of their fans. Only thing good thing I can say about the review is that he shares my less common opinion of Piece of Mind being superior to both The Number of the Beast and Powerslave, although it's a pretty minor difference in (ridiculously high) quality.

One hundred facepalms.

From 84 to 88 they were pretty damn close.

Fixed.


On a more serious note, that era may indeed have some elements that most power metal bands that came after them started using but calling it Power metal is like calling Venom black metal.

But to each his own. I still think that associating them with power metal is highly erroneous. I mean how can you call something like '7th son' close to power metal.

No it really isn't at all. Maiden were far closer to a power/prog band in that era than Venom are to legitimate black metal who really share nothing substantial in common with the genre.

Well if you are going to force parallels then almost all of the heavy metal bands from the era can be considered power metal, even the likes of Priest. I dont deny that their were a few elements in Maiden's work at the time that certain PM bands also displayed but I ll repeat that Maiden could in no way be outrightly called power metal.

I ll agree about the presence of prog though. They were indeed more progressive than Venom were black metal.

droneriot really hitting the nail here in his Disharmonic Orchestra - Expositionsprophylaxe review.

Going back to MetalSupremacy's review of Maiden, I don't really have a problem with his opinion. These kinds of Priest fanboys who feel the need to hate on Maiden are plentiful. It's the fact that he turns the review into a blogpost about Priest and Maiden in general and albums aside from the one that should be reviewed. Half of the review is a diatribe against another Maiden album, instead of focusing on the album at hand.

He submitted an Iron Maiden review that made the one you humans have been occasionally discussing look restrained and concise in comparison. He devoted several sizable paragraphs alone to sermonizing on how he would be persecuted and treated as a heretic for his views. It was quite a (revolting) sight. I rejected it, but perhaps he edited out the self-obsessed parts like I told him to and resubmitted. Or, hell, perhaps he just resubmitted it and got lucky with a different staffer on duty.

Maiden, Priest, Venom and other bands of their caliber had the luxury of existing in a decade (decades, in Priest's case) when bands were less reliant on existing securely within a pre-determined genre. The reason for the confusion around their genres is that lesser, more recent groups have simply distilled individual elements of these bands into more genre-specific music, which is reflected back, in hindsight, onto bands who originated the sounds being emulated. For example, power metal band Primal Fear have a habit of ripping off Judas Priest, but that doesn't make Judas Priest themselves strictly power metal.

Ok, I get that someone can think that Heaven and Hell is overrated or don't do any thing for them, but suggest that people shouldn't bother with this album just because you as one single individual don't like it is stupid. Are all the other people who reviewed this album just fucking with the readers when they call it an classic?
I hate when reviewers act like this.

I actually considered posting something about this review. Although there seems to be nothing (sadly) which could disqualify it from being accepted, the tone and point of view of it is moronic.

Also, describing a Black Sabbath chorus as "tight"...ugh. I suppose he thinks the solos are "bangin', bro" or something similiarly repulsive.

Everyone has a view of some classic album or another that would make them a pariah when discussing it. Let's just all accept this reality and never bring it up in conversation out of mutual shame.

It's not about if his views make him an pariah or not, it's his claim that no one but die-hard Sabbath fans should pick up Heaven and Hell. I've seen this type of thing in other reviews as well. It's ok to disagree with positive reviews on albums you don't like, but pretending that they don't exists is retarded. I'm not saying that's what he did, but it feels like it in the way he expressed him self.

That's retarded. When someone says something like "only for die-hard fans" or "buy used" or "download first", it's simply an extension of their subjective opinion put into a real-world context. They're not literally saying "eschew all other opinions but mine and do what I am telling you to do regarding the purchasing of this album right now."

You're arguing semantics.