As a long-time lurker to this website, I wish to thank everyone for the time and energy they put into their reviews. My thanks extends to the admin and mods for devoting their time and energy into making this site what it is. It's really something to be proud of.

It's just a shame how the metal-hating troll known as 'bitterman' is able shit on everything he reviews, give scores of 0 and this is not only tolerated, but defended by various people.

I'm aware of the "reviewer guidelines", but I personally would prefer to read poorly-written, but honest reviews from non-english speakers than stumble across the negative, egotistical, agenda-driven crap from people with mental issues. It lowers the site's overall integrity, in my opinion. (If the album ratings don't matter, then why bother to add them up and print the average?)

I can see people are frustrated with this subject. Move on, they say. I'm also aware I'm giving the troll oxygen by posting this. Just know that it will continue to rear it's ugly head while the Metal-Archives continues to publish the flatulence from this ANUS. He is being deliberately provocative and achieving his aim. See, it's all about HIM… Time could be better spent discussing metal instead of discussing this self-confessed metal-hater.

Get rid of him, please… Just imagine if this style caught on and the place became overrun with attention-seeking trolls trying to make a name for themselves by shit-canning every respected band they reviewed? Is that what people want?

Imagine if the reviews discussion forum got overrun by people bitching and moaning about the same guy for months on end. Imagine it!

As shitty as those reviews are and as asinine as his philosophy is, he's really winning if people keep coming and posting self righteous stuff about it.

Yeah, I know! That's why I indicated I wasn't the first and won't be the last person to bitch about him. Add me to the list of "victims". There'll be others. Tiring, isn't it? That's the problem with trolls. They poke people, then kick back and smile at the conflict they cause.

So don't blame me. I'm a stranger to these parts. I only came onto this board to post "WTF?" about bitterman, saw that I was 3 months late and he'd already achieved a level of infamy. Being vaguely aware that many reviews are rejected, I wondered why his were permitted, especially in light of how strictly the message boards are moderated.

How was I being self-righteous? I don't claim to be anything other than an avid, appreciative reader of the MA reviews and the latest victim of a self-aggrandising troll. If he is "winning" because people like me complain about him, then hopefully he is one step closer to "losing" when those charge say "Okay, enough of this bullshit". I'm just voicing my own (small) opinion, for whatever it's worth. Not sure why me posting about this is such a problem. Isn't this the official thread for discussing reviews? Tell me where else I'm supposed to express my views. The 'bitterman' thread was locked.

I'm not even a fanboy of any the bands he bashes. I was a Carcass fan, but that was years ago. Their latest album is okay, decent enough, but nothing special. It doesn't faze me if you or bitterman don't like it. I laughed at his review and his score of zero. Then I saw he'd given a score of 0 to every other band he'd reviewed. I just get irritated by conceited contrarians who think they're more important than the bands they criticise. This guy is on a mission to shit on every band he reviews. Like I said previously, imagine if that caught on and 100 others started doing the same.

His reviews are permitted because they meet our guidelines and whenever they don't, he is very quick to revise them so that they do. That's pretty much the entire story.

The way I see it, and a wise individual pointed this out some time ago regarding bitterman: plenty of people give pointless 100% scores with little/no real justification, so bitterman is just adding a curve to the system and evening things out.

While the bitterman bitching is lame as fuck (Seriously the fucker hasn't done anything of note in months and he's acceptable at any rate), but that defense is terrible. Why do bad reviews need to be evened out with different bad reviews? That's like seeing a serial killer is murdering grandmothers and running off to kill some babies to make sure the population breakdown doesn't get ruined.

Edit: Also:

> Makes big post about bitterman



... You see the problem here?

To me, it seems slightly incongruous that forum discussions are so heavily moderated with warnings dished out and threads frequently locked and yet the reviews section is open slather for people to write whatever they want, as long they pass the basic criteria of good grammar and focusing on the music.

How long do you think a thread would last on the Metal forum if it was titled "Satyr is the Bob Seger of Metal" and then described his band as "Queens of the Stone Age playing When the Saints Go Marching In" ? My guess is not very long and probably a warning to the thread-starter. Surely the "quality control" should be more heavily focused on the band pages and album reviews, which remain pinned up indefinitely in plain view.

Also, how about the admin implementing an "ignore" list for the reviews section, much like the "foes" function on the message board? So if anyone comes across prolific reviewers they have no respect for, they can make all of their reviews invisible and the album rating is also adjusted.

Just a thought...

While I disagree with you about bitterman's reviews, I will admit that this is an extremely good point. I guess one could argue that the difference lies in that nobody can directly engage bitterman in a debate regarding his reviews, and personally I'd rather the forums be lightened up than the review section restricted; but nevertheless, this is an interesting take on the matter that I hadn't considered.

If someone posted a bitterman-esque review on the forum in its own thread, for the sole purpose of ranting about some music and inciting heated discussion with hyperbole, it wouldn't indeed last long. But that's because the forum is not really the place for that.

However, if there's typical forum-like discussion of Satyricon's new album, and someone mentioned those things, he would be ridiculed and probably ignored by many, but obviously there wouldn't be any disciplinary acts. The moderators only intervene when the discussion descends to personal insults between users. I'm not a moderator, but I believe that excessive personal insults in a review would be grounds for rejection as well (that is, shameless, vulgar slander against some musician involved), just as it would cause the posted to be warned on the forum.

I don't think there's any incongruity whatsoever.

I continue to love how people act insulted for a band and state that they need to defend their honor.

For months I've been sitting here in this exact same thread making the exact same post about bitterman. I could cut open my forum activity and see months' worth of facepalming like rings in a fucking tree stump.

There seems to be this perspective that the mods are just willingly letting him review stuff without question. That's certainly not the case on my end, as I've eyed his reviews like a hawk and even rejected some, because they'd been overloaded with insulting crap and rhetoric. The one that most vividly sticks out was a review for the latest Napalm Death album, in which he'd submitted three paragraphs of calling the group leftist liberal faggots who'd rather hug a tree than listen to Darkthrone's demos. He tried to sneak by a few sentences about the actual musical description, and I honestly believe that in any other case it would've been fine, but I rejected it anyway, telling him he violated the rules and he should probably stop trying so hard, with specific instructions to not resubmit unless he'd changed his attitude. So that happened.

Would I mind tweaking the rules a bit so that we lay off the insults or philosophical rhetoric? No problem on my end. To be honest though, the foremost quality of a review has always been the music, and if that's been met, then I see no issue stating your own personal reflections on a piece of work. As long as it doesn't override the reviewer's rating or musical description, that is.

Finally:


This. For real, it's the fucking internet and it doesn't matter. I'm baffled beyond words why people get so offended when their precious favorite band gets a negative review. Lyrics about gore, rape, necrophilia, occultism, Satanism, anti-religion, war, death, suicide, misogyny, racism, depression, substance abuse, torture, Hell, horror, and hatred . . . . those are okay, but negative reviews? That's where we draw the line!

Grow some thicker skin and dipshits like bitterman cease to exist. Hell, just grow some thicker skin in general.

I wasn't reacting to his criticism of any particular band. It's his close-minded, militant negativity about everything which provoked my (over)reaction. It appears he doesn't have anything positive to write about metal. He dismisses the previous two decades of metal as worthless. So why is he reviewing newly-released albums for The Metal Archives? What actual purpose does he serve other than to provoke these types of responses from people?

That's the whole point. We're not discussing people's complaints about the bad reviews Lord Genghis gave to Agalloch or Altar of Plagues. That's because he is balanced. For every negative review he writes, he is equally likely to write a positive or indifferent review. His intention is to inform people rather than simply be negative.

It's a distinct possibility that "bitterman" is merely the alter-ego of a prolific reviewer who wishes to skewer albums he thinks are overrated and remain anonymous in order to spare himself the inevitable hate mail. It could even be a cabal of reviewers using a shared account and amusing themselves. A "shit review of the month" club. I tend to favour the idea of a mythical metal-fundamentalist character who listens to the same Darkthrone demo over and over than believe such a twat really exists.

You're wasting way too much time worrying about this.

Not Bitterman again Can we focus on something else? Like DRD's return with this excellent review http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/S ... our/34383/

I've been reflecting on this over the past few weeks...honestly, maybe he's a troll, or maybe he's a serious 'elitist'...it doesn't matter! Either way, the guy is clearly an idiot, who is not a serious listener of this music or member of the metal community, and thus his opinion on anything to do with metal, is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if he "hates everything", or is the alias of a troll or ex-member of this site...it isn't offensive or even remotely annoying. If anything, I pity him , because it either says he has no fun in his life whatsoever, or it says he has the sense of humor of a 13-year old 4chan user.

I preferred his Blackmayne review, it still has the same style but it's a bit more concise. His style is sort of like listening to a righteous drunken hooligan where you think "God damn he's right!" for the first few breaths but your attention trails off after roughly the length of this review or a bit shorter.
http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/B ... hRiderDoom

I hope I'm not the only one getting his/her undergarments in a bunch over this, but here it is: the word is spelled "because". Unless you're quoting some lyrics, or clearly writing in a conversational persona for effect, things like "cos" and "cuz" do not exist. I pretty much ignore a review once I see that shit passing itself off as real English.

This is something that many reviewers, myself included, do all the time. DRD is definitely just doing that - writing "because" wouldn't have the same effect.

It is real English, you arse.

Funniest part, scores are eminently reasonable and metal did die after 1993 (pretty much).

Edit: Whoa, missed the extra scrutiny post up there, thats way funnier. DONT YOU DARE SAY METAL DIED IN 1993 MY FAV. BAND OF ALL TIME (Insert gigantic nerd rant about how x shitty band is actually gold, how y doesnt appreciate it and how z can go FUCK ITSELF.... douchenozzle). All I read.

This fiasco needs to stop.

That's what I said! Of course you can tell apart writing in tone, from ignorantly embedding slang forms within regular language as if it belongs. PS I wasn't criticizing DRD, as I haven't read his recent stuff, so there was no need to rise to his defence

ANationalAcrobat: It's real English in the same way "gotta" and "gonna" are real English. Would you hire someone whose cover letter stated "I wanna join your company cos..."?

Get down from your high horse, man. Formal and informal English are two very different things, as they should be. This isn't (ain't) the same thing as writing a covering letter. Both are equally valid, it's just that you use them in different situations.

you are an enemy of your own language

For a job reviewing metal in a zine, I'd sure as hell do it if they knew their shit and got the point across. While my own writing is proper and dry, I prefer reviews that are casually written when it's easy to read. Unless the writer really has a profound insight and vast knowledge of a certain band and album, I'd rather the average review feel like a quick chat where you get the point across effectively, and I like a style that feels relaxed, it feels easier to read through.

This is all I've been saying the whole time! In a part of a review where you're putting on a voice, for humour or emotional impact or whatever, informal is fine. But if written as part of a straight-faced descriptive statement, these linguistic halfasseries are out of place and undermine the respectability of the writing.

Edit: the covering letter thing was a poor example, you got me there.

i like 'cause

it's casual, but (unlike "cuz") doesn't make you seem like a halfwit who'd also spell "you are" as "u r"

A

It's completely arbitrary, of course.

I take it that this dude's never heard Godflesh. Admittedly, Uncanny's tribute to Godflesh does suck (as do Godflesh themselves), but c'mon, a new Morbid Angel comparison?!

Yeah, I have never heard Godflesh. In fact, I really pretty much hate industrial music (and electronic music as a whole) on principle (I used to like some Velvet Acid Christ when I was 14 but those days are long past). When I compared it to "Illud...", I was just trying to explain that it sounds like a mix of death and industrial, and that album was the only proper comparison I could think of. I didn't even mean that as an insult, I actually like "Illud". However, this didn't come across in the review.

1993 is a pretty good bar I think. Pretty sudden drop in number of quality albums after that. Not to say there arent (even bitterman doesnt say that), but most of the good stuff was either done by 93 and released in 94 or released by 93. Absolutely not arbitrary.

Wow.

Nope, it's arbitrary and you are wrong as usual.

B

He's obviously trolling. Poke around ANUS, his homeland, for a bit and then tell me anything he says can be taken seriously.

C

Thanks for the lecture, Dr. Phil.