Bullshit. This is the mindset that I don't understand, and it doesn't apply exclusively to Noktorn.

10000% positive that he's goofing around with that line. I agree with everything else he said though. As a writer, Noktorn was fantastic and he has a huge body of work that people seem to like crapping on because of the handful of outliers.

Noktorn's Morbid Angel reviews are some of my favorites on the site. He was definitely a very good reviewer if nothing else.

i like noktorn so much i co-opted his sense of humor

Incidentally, even at his most pedantic, his reviews never really descended into the sophistic navel-gazing that you tend to see on dmu these days.

Yeah, most of us did. I have a hard time reading my reviews when I first joined this site (early '05 - ones that I haven't since at least rewritten a little bit anyway). I mean, since I'd been outta touch for about eight years, not only was I way outta practice, but I'd underestimated how knowledgeable many people had gotten of underground metal during this time in so far that I instinctively found myself delving into unnecessary details and/or track-by-track description usually reserved for writing to neophytes. I'd also underestimated how much the scene had grown.

My really early stuff circa. '87 is horrendous.

Despite being a pretentious, pompous try-hard, often having questionable taste, being consistently self-congratulatory as well as a drug-addicted proto-Blake Judd, Noktorn was definitely the best reviewer in the history of the site.

Forgive my ignorance, but did Varg actually play bass on De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas?

Mayhem's latest review

Yes he did. He went under the pseudonym 'Count Grishnackh'.

There's a statement in the album's additional notes that clarifies that:

Oh, fuck. I should've noticed that... yeah, I should've noticed it...


Yeah... I feel a bit ashamed right now for asking.

It's a learning process, no worries dude.

Yeah, I totally agree. No one matched him on a regular basis.

Incidentally, re: the Blake Judd-ish shenanigans he engaged in, well, he paid me back a year or two what he owed me, and it was a significant sum. Seems like he got into the army and cleaned up. I like to think that he's done the same in terms of paying other people back too. Always liked the guy.

An irritating trend I've noticed with today's writers is this need to add rambling, self-referential "prologues" to nearly all of their reviews. So many submissions are unnecessarily bloated by one, sometimes two full paragraphs of this stuff.

No offence (and I agree) but haven't you said this already?

Apparently, the reviewers in question did not get it from the first time.

Fair enough!

Probably.

He probably has but it's important to remind BastardHead that not every review needs to start with a paragraph about his 'career' as a reviewer.

10/10

I'm a self referential narcissist and I take full responsibility for young reviewers adopting this habit of mine.

So if you're the Meshuggah of MA, shouldn't we ban all those new reviewers even if they're inspired by you?

HeySharpShooter's recent review of Le dernier crépuscule is borderline oven fodder. He spends slightly more than one paragraph actually describing the music. The rest reads more like an angry old metalhead's diatribe. "Get off my metal you damn kids!"

http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/C ... oter/81385

By extension would that make UltraBoris (ironically enough) the Metallica of MA reviewers?

Funny thing is, I am pretty much the opposite of a grandpa metalhead. My cynicism is far less trve.

More than metalfag

Also, I feel I got the point across pretty clearly. Its a deeply cynical review for a deeply cynical album

If there's anything wrong with it, it's that the description of the album itself is pretty low and mostly just says it sounds like other bands, but it's still totally fine. I get the point he's making and generally agree with it 95% of the time. I don't know why, but for some reason, Chthe'ilist just seems to work for me. Most Demilich wannabes go in one ear and out the other, and I absolutely don't disagree that they're essentially trying to sound like every Finnish DM band ever, but the songwriting is solid enough for me to not care for once. *shrug*

Diamhea's drawing close to the remarkable number of 666 written reviews.

FOAD Napalm Satan. Try hard English wanker!!!

I think he only listened to it once today and wrote the review off that.

Garbage review either way though. Utterly surface level analysis of the music. Comparing it to a funeral doom album like Ahab's debut (apples and oranges, honestly) and then going on about how there's not enough progression and variety in the songwriting, as if there has to be a speed metal song and a power ballad to be good...I dunno, really not good, man.

The best part is that Monotheist actually has its own version of those archetypes with "Ain Elohim" being the fast paced crusher and "Obscured" being the emotional gothic ballad. Both are big highlights of that album.

Yeah, that's true too. The riffs may be simple but Tom and the guys knew how to construct a good album.

If you don't mind me asking, what are some 8-point reviews? Studying some of those wouldn't hurt at all.

I have one or two; apparently this is the best one: http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/V ... yan/125948

It isn't particularly well written, but there's a fuckload of description. That usually works.

Thanks. I'll be reading it carefully.

Droneriot In League with (Napalm) Satan.
http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/C ... riot/16199

Man, Monotheist is taking such a bashing recently. A lot of what attracted me to metal in the first place is that the guitars sounded really cool, and a decently written/constructed album that sounds awesome is absolutely what I want to hear. Sure it's 'superficial', but I don't want to listen to Onwards to Golgotha played on a fucking tuba or something. Also, there's clearly no point to ambient music since it doesn't have sick riffs. /hyperbole

But know know, opinions and whatever.

also lol@ NS - "Triptykon, that shitty goth band that Tom started"

Eh, wouldn't agree with drone's review either but at least he's actually talking from some place of knowledge and has clearly actually analyzed what he hates about it in a better manner.

Napalm Satan's take on Monotheist is the perfect example of the kind of tossed-off, first-listen-race-to-keyboard kind of bullshit review that is killing this archive. I don't usually take umbrage at reviews I totally disagree with if they are thoughtfully written and well-executed, closer to droneriot's review, which I also disagree with but he crafts better points.

After making music better than Sloth and having political views better than Donald Trump, the next goal was to write better reviews than Napalm_Satan. Second worst for life!