Haha, yeah, but that's just common for reviewers who start out here I think. I know I did that a lot when I was like 17.

Having not been active here like I used to, I have read things in the past revolving around N_S and he seems like a guy who was doing reviews purely for the attention, good or bad. Not to mention that cringeworthy thread he made.

Looking in the queue right now, I just want to say that almost no phrase bothers me more than than "palm muted riffs". Like, no fucking shit? A metal album is using a lot of palm muting? Might as well point out the guitars are distorted. Fuck.

The review that sparked this also confuses an octave with a key signature. I don't expect everybody to properly understand music terminology but my god that made my eye twitch.

"I really like this album. The artists have written a lot of music, and they've put some words along with it, and about halfway through each song, they throw in a solo to tie everything together! I really love how there are drums and a bass involved, too. 10/10." - The average AllMusic reviewer

For me it is the term 'metallers', (i.e. "These black/death metallers guy are sick"). Ironically, most reviewers who overuse this term suck, so there's that.

Say-so doesn't enter into it. You can just offer an opinion. The problems are that A) it sometimes DOES sound like BS (that said, he's gotten significantly better at taking criticism than he used to be and seems to be writing from an increasingly authentic point of view these days .. not surprising, seeing as that tends to come with experience), and B) it's perfectly reasonable to just flat not like something. It won't do to say "I'll take X over irrelevant-to-the-topic Y." It's fine to not like his reviews. I don't like them yet, but they're obviously getting better. His analysis isn't bad, but his wordy, semi-forced style is laid on too thick. Getting tired of it is pretty easy.

MetalMuxxer, your review still contained a total of 15 errors (mostly punctuation-related), and I gave you a one-time benefit of the doubt here and fixed them for you since you made a seemingly earnest attempt to improve it; and if anything to give you a template to work from in the future should you decide to continue writing reviews. These revisions aside, the review is a redundant bore of a read that comes off more like a middle school homework assignment than anything. Revise your approach going forward, because I have exercised more patience with you than anybody else ever in my history of working for MA.

Yeah, no kidding, MetalMuxxer. Really quite vague and general for a review that goes on that long - you mostly seem to be repeating very basic, surface-level things about the album without really going in depth. And...



Don't do this. Why should I read any of your review if you're just going to tell me to listen to the album? Try and come up with a way to describe it, or don't review it.

I'm really digging qJukeZach's reviews. They leave one with a new perspective of classic albums. Check 'im out!

http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/D ... ach/380031

Sure, Symbolic has too many reviews but this one can slide.

Even worse, if he's talking about the Battle Beast track, it's not even that fast or epic of a song--it's only just above mid-paced and it doesn't have a huge scope to it. The reason "Kingdom" is awesome is because it's a bombastic little anthem that delivers infectious hooks and some show-stopping vocals.

Oddly enough, this is the review that sparked my minor rant about shitty description and completely misnaming musical terms, plus it was accepted as a borderline track by track by Dia after I decided to let it sit because I couldn't decide between a 3 pointer and a polite rejection. It also goes as a stream of consciousness track-by-track for Symbolic, an extremely well known and iconic metal release, and somehow manages to skip two tracks, "Empty Words" (one of my personal favorites) and fucking "Crystal Mountain" (ya know, Death's most well known post-Human song). That's like doing a track by track of And Justice for All and totally skipping "One". It even compares the intro of "Sacred Serenity" to "Sadistic Magician" by Municipal Waste, a song that came out 12 years later, in a completely different genre, with a completely different feel, that has ostensibly zero in common with the Death song other than the fact that they both have a bass intro.

Basically this review is awful and while it isn't exactly flat out rejectable, it's definitely bad, and I give the opposite endorsement of Roffle.

I'm with you. It's surprisingly confusing, considering how linear it is. The musical description is only intermittently substantial.

Here's my edit of it: took like thirty seconds four minutes.



It's still not very good, but that's basically all that's left once you take out all the play-by-play.

I feel like every single Stained Class review just says the same thing these days. We get it, it's a classic.

Oh, well, I'm definitely not guilty of that!

Also, how the heck does one give an album a 100% less than a day after its release? And ending the review saying that it'll be hard to top?

You must be new here

To be fair it's for Vektor, not any random bands but yeah, maybe listen to the 73 minutes album more than twice before reviewing it haha.

I wonder how many Vektor reviews we'll get this weekend, just approved 2 new ones (100% and 90%).

If i had to trust only the scores, A Hill To Die Upon would be one of the most killer bands in the world

Yeaaaahhhh, that's a lie! Their newest album is actually pretty cool and I like it enough but their other stuff is just kinda boring.

I only heard it once and I would definitely not be ready to review it yet, much less award it a 100%.

Some of these folks reviewing the album probably received advanced copies, heard it weeks or even months ago, and have already reviewed it on their blogs/webzines, etc.

This morning I got an email responding to my review for Жизнь в темноте by Nefas Terra. The message said "awesome review - thank you ". I had rated the album at 25%

Sometimes bands like constructive criticism. I had the same thing happen for a review I wrote and gave around a 40 or 50%.

I'm not at all afraid of trashing bands to shit, unless they somehow contact me or I know for a fact they read it, then I get all skittish and repentant. Like, I ripped Starblind to shreds, completely tore them apart over being a really terrible Iron Maiden clone and the vocals being god awful and even implied the guy had no business singing and was probably just a friend of the band who owed the bassist a favor or something. Then the vocalist commented on the review on Facebook, thanking me for a great review and said he really appreciated it. I instantly felt like such a turd.

I'm all bark

I've actually been thanked by bands for negative reviews. They said they liked the criticism and that in two cases they actually said that it made them think about their weaknesses. However, I don't think I was particularly dickish in those reviews. I'd actually think it would be quite hilarious to get some hatemail.

Hmmm I hadn't thought it might be a genuine thank-you. It makes sense, seeing that I do make a point of mentioning the positives, even in an album that I'm dumping on as a whole.

Yeesh. That would get old fast. However, if you do, remember to please let me read it.

Didn't Diamhea get some half assed beefcake death threats for rejecting bands .. or was it just reviews? haha it takes a special kind of loser to become murderously irate over something that petty.

This one time many years ago I made a comment on Dark Tranquillity's Tranquillity demo about the quality and I made an assumption on what their recording conditions were / the disparity between the material on early demos. DT was one of my favorite bands at the time (this was like 2006-2007) and PhantomOTO, a former mod, actually contacted DT about it. Niklas Sundin, my favorite member of the band, commented that there was no intended difference and he cleared up what I had assumed, saying something to the effect of "whoever wrote that review is wrong".

That made me feel like a stupid teenage asshole writing about things he has no knowledge of.

Man I used to get a decent amount of hatemail when I was writing for some crappy webzines and really active on here. Like one every two months or so. Initially it's quite amusing, but it tends to get old- just the same old shit, you're a kid, these guys are great, you don't know shit, etc etc.

Not sure I can make any sense of that Absurd review.

Damn, Akerthorpe gave a 100% to a Unspeakable Axe Records release, what a surprise!

Does he think labels will start just outright paying them if he does that? Even his negative reviews have positive scores and mention the bands having potential and how he can't wait for the next album regardless. Truly nothing more than a shill.

I'm reading a couple of this guy's reviews, which I've traditionally avoided because anybody that doles out 100s like candy is an automatic no-read in my book. What the hell is this? Dude completely trashes the band and gives them a 50%, presumably because they still managed to drive to the recording studio without crashing and they apparently worked their day jobs long enough to afford instruments. This motherfucker reviews shit like he's the members' grandma.

Sounds like I'll have to check out Nucleus - I love most of the name dropped bands, but I mostly came here to say nice Futurama quote BH!

It's all cool now, we have a review that doesn't suck for said album. Nice work as always BH.

Yeah the album is pretty stellar especially if you like that vibe BH was talking about. It's even better live by the way.

I have this review :

Sometimes in music you may find the most interesting piece of melodies and atmosphere in a totally flat, and sometimes dull, genre. The word to death metal a genre which from an outsider's view may not be the best place for innovation or a melody. And here comes Pyrrhon with this particular release to prove us wrong.

So what is the best thing about Pyrrhion? Well, it is the fact that they are dead serious to anything that they are doing. From their music and their lyrics to the astonishing and disturbing cover arts of their records. And their peak for me is this album.

To start of the album kicks in with an approximately one and a half minute song which sounds like a gigantic jam session. One second later the first actual song begins with a rather surprising doom metal riff which changes the whole atmosphere. Pyrrhon make the first step to uniqueness by doing things the other way around. And then suddenly the song takes an actual form. A death metal style influenced a lot by bands such as Gorguts and Deathspell Omega-though it doesn't loses itself neither for the sake of imitation to the previous mentioned artists nor to the lack of an actual form. The result is a massive wave of multi-structured guitars. On the other hand, you have the drums and the percussion who sound more like an army of tanks striking multiple times on the ears of the listener while staying on the right tone and time; not many drummers and bands can do that. Another great standing point of this record is the bass, a piece of their music that can be appreciated without the listener being an actual bass player! In the song "White Flag" It created it's own atmosphere not only alone but with the escort of the drums.

On the other hand, if you stare at the songs as a whole composition you don't have the standard verse, chorus, repeat, bridge and that is all. Most of the songs are really long and have a difficult structure for the untrained ears. But they do earn their honor due to the amazing pieces of melodies and breakdowns that make them. Also the big thing is that almost every song builds it's intensity slowly and patiently with a couple of doom and melodic riffs on the beginning the complete destruction of our sound system at the middle and the final collapse in the end. That way the songs sound completed and show us a cycle of feelings which merge, expands and finally fade.

My only objections with this record are two. First of all I find the lyrics to be a little too much on some songs,for example in "Sleeper Agent" and on another, the completely childish;a god example would be "The Oracle of Nassau". The other thing is that most of the tracks while having the advantaged mentioned above lack some sort of memorable melody or part. It is of course easy to admire the musical innovation and work put in this record but it is not too easy on the other hand to actually have an idea of which song is.

Of course, even those two little things that this album fails to deliver are not strong enough to deny the fact that this record is a perfect example of innovation and emotion. The band follows the steps of bands like Gorguts and Converge and pushes the standards of technical death metal played the right way: Brutal technical and emotional.

The first time i had to remove the "-" from the songs.The second time he said that i had too many grammar mistakes.If i remove them will it be able to be published?

Use the Workshop, please. viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16487

Many thanks to MetalMuxxer and dismember_marcin for firmly establishing the bottom of the barrel.

Literary mastery.

Not good, not good at all.