MY CONTEST HAS OFFICIALLY ENDED. IF YOU DID NOT SUBMIT YOUR REVIEW AS OF APRIL 17, 2010, YOU HAVE BEEN DISQUALIFIED.

In the tradition of Caspian's Review Challenge, Muhammadabbadabba presents his First Annual Obscure Album Review Contest. In this contest, I will challenge my fellow users to review obscure Metal albums.

Before you can enter the contest, you first must pass the preliminaries. What are the preliminaries? Just send me a Private Message, and show me what, in your opinion, is your best review. If your style is at least competent, you may enter the contest! Also, you must have a PayPal account in order to enter. I'll get to that under Prizes.

The preliminaries will end once I accept 14 reviewers.

Now, onto the Contest itself
Rules:
You must review ONE of the following albums. They will be offered on a first come, first served basis. Each artist can have a maximum of two different reviewers.
[s]Black Hole - Land of Mystery[/s]
[s]Crystal Knight - Self-titled[/s]
[s]Drakar - Let Draka / Flight of the Dragon[/s]
Lester Maddox - [s]Gothic Lore[/s] or Burning the World (Live)
[s]Penance - Parallel Corners or Alpha & Omega[/s]
[s]Shelder - God of Vikings[/s]
[s]Sorrow - Hatred and Disgust[/s]

The contest ends by April 17th.

Prizes:
As with caspian, you can win in three categories:
Best Review
Best Gimmick Review / Funniest Review
Spirit Award

For the Best Review, you'll win a cash prize of $45
For the Best Gimmick Review / Funniest Review, you'll win $20
And for the Spirit Award, YOU GET NOTHING!! Joking. You'll get $5

Again, the contest ends on April 10th. Good luck to the best of you.

Odin bless!

I call Hatred and Disgust.

The rules were to message me first, but I'll show some leniency...for now. What, in your opinion, is your best review written? Show me your masterpiece.

Cash prizes, eh? Seems that you have no understanding of the concept of creativity (heck, even a christian can do better!) and therefore are the poorest possible choice to judge such a contest.

You ripped my title off, you ripped the categories off, you basically stole the whole concept.. You could've at least waited for mine to end. Nigga damn.

I have re-opened this thread. PhantomOTO was not aware that Muhammadabbadabba had cleared this contest/thread before posting.

If you wish to bitch at Muhammadabbadabba, do so in private message. Otherwise, follow the rules of his post or don't play at all.

Black Hole's Land of Mystery now has two reviewers. As such, it is no longer an option.

To answer a few FAQs about this contest:
How long should my review be? Can I be verbose?
In the 1800s, writers were paid by the word. Now, in the 21st Century, writers are selected based on quality...kind of. Ask yourself, "does my review effectively analyze the album, and, more importantly, does my conclusion follow through from my analysis?" If you type 5 sentences conveying a point that could've been delivered in 1 sentence, or if your review reads like a broken record (IE: you repeat the same point ad nausea), then you will lose points with me. Don't be intimidated; type as long as you like. I appreciate those with high literary standards in a post-literate age. Just say what you want to say in one sentence, back it up with however many sentences necessary, and then move onto the next point.
Can my review be funny?
Absolutely! So long as it doesn't detract from the rest of your content, please, humor me. If you make me laugh heartily, you just might win the Best Gimmick review.

The cash prizes...the stringent rules..the general air of secrecy...are you an eccentric millionaire?

Or an eccentric guy with 70 bucks spare, rather. My contest energy is being channeled into Saint Vitus, I'm taking it as an excellent excuse to pad out their reviews and of course listen to them all the time.

You could say that

Are there any cash prizes for people who were familiar with all the choices prior to their selection?

I do question some of them, though. I mean Shelder? Really?

Nope. Just pick one of the selections which tickle your fancy to write about, and those who can write the most articulate and objective review effectively analyzing the album's output will win the contest.

As shallow as this will sound, I wouldn't have paid much attention to Shelder were it not for its epilepsy inducing cover art and hearing it's female fronted "Doom" Metal. I wouldn't call it Doom, as it reminds me more Traditional Heavy Metal that sounds vaguely like Black Sabbath. Nonetheless, no reviews of this obscure band exist on the archives.

Also, Gothic Lore has been taken. Burning the World (Live) is all that's left to be reviewed from Lester Maddox

Crystal Knight is officially taken by two different reviewers. Seven more reviewers to go. If you're interested, message me now.

Bye bye, Drakar! Let Draka / Flight of the Dragon / Dragon Music from Prague is officially taken. Six more reviewers left.

Sometimes I wonder how you manage to type in your name to log in. I would have gotten tired of that fairly quick and chosen a simpler name.

It becomes second nature after a time.

Funny you should mention that. I toyed with the idea of changing my username, but ultimately thought this one fit fine enough. I'm a competent typist, so it's no hassle to type it at all.

Also...still looking for six good men or women. If you're interested, please let me know.

That's all she wrote for Sorrow's Hatred and Disgust. It's all taken up.

4 more reviewers left.

No more slots for Shelder. Just 3 reviewers left now.

Even though i wont participate in the contest, i love this idea. also gives me some new music to look into.

There goes Penance's Parallel Corners. Just two more reviewers left.

By the way, if it wasn't clear, once in, you can start writing the review of your chosen album (provided that you listen to it, of course )

Don't worry, my review will probably be up some time in the next week or so, I've been buried under a mountain of work and have only really had time to throw together a couple of stream of consciousness reviews in the past few days, which isn't an approach that would work in a contest like this.

I should be beginning mine shortly; I plan to have it in before the 17th.

That's why I started this contest; noteworthy bands, be they mindblowingly amazing (Black Hole) or earnest-but-lacking (Shelder), don't deserve neglect.

For awhile, Penance had no reviews in spite of their presence within the 90s American Doom Metal scene. Then I contacted Perplexed_Sjel, whom was kind enough to review their entire discography when I only asked for two; I can't thank him enough. Nonetheless, he can't be the only one reviewing their stuff, so I thought I'd pick their two best albums for options in my contest.

Never cared for Penance (albeit from PA) or anything really from the Maryland scene.

Although limiting to two reviews per album seems to defeat this point a little. Where Caspians lets certain albums or artists get absolutely bombarded with reviews, which would attract more attention than just the two. Oh well, either way more reviews is never a bad thing. I've never heard any of these bands, which is one of the main reasons I haven't tried to get in on this one.

I didn't want one band to have the bulk of reviews, leaving other bands with too few reviews. Equal distribution, in this case, was warranted (ironically, considering my worldview ).

Venturing into unknown territory is part of the fun of reviewing obscure albums. For some people, familiarity is preferable, while others like to quest into the unknown.

If I ever hold one of these contests again, I'll probably do things a little different. It'll focus on a better known band (with merchandise available)...probably Impetigo, although it's tentative. I might actually include a funpack for the Grand Prize, which'll contain 3-5 full lengths (maybe one on vinyl), a t-shirt (if available), and a personal note from me. Best Gimmick/Funniest review winners may win a DVD of their favorite splatterfilm and/or comedy (or horror comedy, who knows?)

Actually, when I think about it now, it does make a lot of sense with the wide spread of bands/albums here. Definitely since there were a couple of releases which were picked up in a couple of days, it would be likely some of them would have gotten pretty much ignored.

Well, I don't know if I'm the first to put up a review for this particular contest, but my Crystal Knight review has been completed. I'm pretty proud of it considering it was a band that I had no experience with before this contest, although it did remind me a bit of some material I'd heard out of a few groups from around that time period.

And a fine job you did. Your insight, as expected, was keen and concise; I had nothing to dispute in terms of accuracy. Indeed, Crystal Knight's self-titled full-length, although decent, came a little too late, as it was obvious their sound was going "out-of-style." Your point about the prominent bass resonated with me; often times, many bands tend to turn down the bass to a point where I sometimes wonder why they even bother having a bassist in their band. Crystal Knight decided wisely to bring John Jones' bass to the forefront.

If there's anything I can suggest, try to sound a little more...attached. While your interest in the album was genuine, I felt there could've been a little more personal experience expressed. For future reviewers, try talking about how you physically felt when listening to it...creepy as it sounds. Was the album just pleasant vibrations in the air? Or did the album's sound give you that wonderful, goosebumpy, spine tingling experience that's oh so satisfying? Did it make you want to break your own neck headbanging?

EDIT: I just noticed one small oversight. They're from Denmark, not Sweden.

Oops, I'll fix that right away. I was going back and forth between their page and Candlemass' and I think I had a little Freudian slip while typing it.

Can I get Alpha & Omega?

I'll give you a chance.

There goes Penance! If anyone would like to review Lester Maddox's Burning the World Live, message me now.

There's a lot of mystery here. Like who's participating. And I can't tell if the other writers in this are being extremely competitive by submitting it just before the deadline or haven't yet put the final touches to their reviews? Looks like mine and hells_unicorn's so far. Though I'm wondering what's going to happen when a bulk of well written reviews are submitted at once. I guess that's why I submitted mine a little early due to the length of it and since it is an "idea" based review.

I guess ol' Muhammadabbadoo will have to break out the ol' reading glasses.

You will be competing with:

Black Hole:
thomash
StryckenFromHistory

Crystal Knight:
hells_unicorn
Malacoda

Drakar:
marktheviktor
Abominatrix

Lester Maddox:
Tepes_the_Unweeping

Penance:
Gutterscream
crazypaean999

Shelder:
Sigillum_Dei_Ameth
zeingard

Sorrow:
ThrashingMad

Interesting, looks like thomash and StryckenFromHistory are paired like they were on Caspian's challenge, and hells_unicorn and Malacoda as well. And hey it's a way for some of the others to get a 'boost' with your challenge to write again from laying dormant, or only awakened when stirred is another way to look at it.

I'm extending the deadline to April 10th, 2010. Coursework, in combination with my laptop having some difficulties, has inconvenienced me.

Works for me. Still haven't begun the intense listening sessions anyfuck.

Yes, this is convenient for all who have not yet started...