I used to think Felix was a decent reviewer. Until her gave Gods of War - At War a 75%. What are you smoking, man?

Don't worry, I still think you're a good reviewer. I now have to question your taste!

I got my first virgin review of an album people actually care about! Maybe.

@ TheStormIRide

Rest assured, my wife questions my taste since decades. Worse still, my children agree with her. What the hell has gone wrong?

By the way, thanks for your kind words and respect for 782 reviews...

Cheers! Keep up the good work man!

Listening to Kiuas right now and that inspired me to read some reviews of theirs. Doing so reminded me just how much I miss Sean16. Most probably know him as the guy who used to keep all the stats for the review challenges, but he really was one of the most underrated reviewers of the golden age here. He may have focused mainly on bands I've never heard of and/or don't care about and I didn't agree with him a lot when he did touch on things I knew, but he was such a damned good writer that I loved him anyway. His review for Symphony X's Paradise Lost is basically the opposite opinion of my own, but he delves into such detail and explains so thoroughly why he sees it as a total failure that it's still one of the best reviews it has.

Hello, sirs! Dark metal band called Signist released debut album one month ago - check out the trailer here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi0oSsL2DxU. If someone interesting in it please follow this link http://narcolepticaprod.bandcamp.com/yum and pm me to get code. Hope you'll like this music.

Wrong thread.

viewtopic.php?f=4&t=3771

stainedclass2112 just exploded over the review queue with his well written buckethead review. great job

I wouldn't go that far. Big job, sure. They're really same-y and proofreading was shoddy. It would have been better if each one was tighter. That would have made them a touch easier to write, and a LOT easier to read a bunch of at a stretch which (and I'm shocked that I'm saying this) I actually wanted to do. I ended up stopping after about six or seven of them and was irritated that the writing style was the only reason I didn't want to keep going. It should have been a breeze and could have been fun! Oh well. Someday sc2112 will find his own voice. I look forward to that day.

That said, it's a decent effort to cover so many releases (prolific obsessors might try harder to be consistent or at least tender their releases more dearly; those scores are all over the place). The series did make me want to listen to at least a couple of those Pikes. However, judging from the descriptions, I'm guessing that I wouldn't be into Buckethead.

More importantly, though, why weren't they uploaded in numerical order?

Yes, those were not good reviews. I knew very well of that much, a decent chunk of them were actually leftover drafts that I decided to patch up. A few of them I put some more effort into but a lot of them were well below my ability.

On the topic of my writing as a whole, I'm having massive difficulty with this whole reviewing thing and I'm kind of on the verge of giving up or at least taking a long break. I really want to be able to express myself in the writing but when I do, the writing comes off as childish. When I go for the more professional style I sound... inexperienced. I enjoy doing this, but I'm not good enough to really make it work. It's quite frustrating, and I'm not sure whether I should stop or if I should just keep going. The only reason I submitted all of those is because I'm considering the former, and I didn't want to just let those drafts rot.




To answer the scores being all over the place, they were meant to be so. I love Buckethead, but the Pike series is riddled with duds. For example, Pike 150 was a masterpiece. Maybe a little minimalist, but it was amazing. The one following it just was really bad. This can be a reoccurring pattern too. He'll have gold one day and some goofy album the next. Also, those Buckethead reviews are meant to be a bit different than my main stuff. I write those like I'm some sort of guide. If you're skimming through the Buckethead discography, reading one of those is only supposed to give a quick insight into the album. I would NOT take the same approach with other band's albums. Really, I'm just having fun with it but I do acknowledge that I have tons of room for improvement and that is where I'm stuck.

I was originally reviewing them in numerical order, but then I decided to just jump around. I've already heard all of them except for maybe 15, so I it's not like I'm taking the initial Pike journey. I journeyed through the Pikes long before I was on here.

Keep it up. Grave Wyrm is being a bit harsh here, maybe because he wants to see you improve. Just find your own voice and don't write just to please others.

http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/T ... ath/392860

Why do 9 out of 10 reviews for this band or other similar ones have to spend most of the whole time justifying why they like it in a defensive manner or bashing those who don't like it? Just talk about why YOU like it. Quit addressing the other reviews and criticisms.

"dimwits who think the choruses are bad" - fuck you, maybe they're good if you've never heard any other rock or metal album in your life.

I'm guessing they're just young and aren't 100% comfortable with liking something others don't.

Yeah it really is a hallmark of immaturity I think. I'd say it says something about the bands they're talking about too, but I know that's a douchey thing to say.

Twilight Force are like Tex Mex food, they're metal for those who want a fake, totally asepticized version of the genre. I'm not surprised that most of the positive reviews aren't very good. Hells did a fine job though.

(I'm a douche and so are you, Empy. Embrace your inner douche)

And yet, I did talk about why I liked it so much, even referencing my love for classical music. Which may even transmit the idea that I think this is on the level of a classical piece. It fucking isn't obviously. Most of the review is focused on what I think of it, and only on one paragraph do I mention other's people reviews. Is that forbidden? If so, I'll stop immediately, otherwise, I don't see what's so wrong. If anything, it reinforces the idea that I think they're great.

But yet, I do feel like I got a bit defensive there, it's because people tend to miss the point of Twilight Force and think they're trying to do "good" power metal, this shit is almost not metal. It's like when people say the last Sabaton is power metal, it0s just incorrect.

I'm a big fan of your reviews btw.

Yeah I'm with D here, you're totally fine. You already have a good voice anyway and all that's left to do is really refine it I think.

I'd concur with the notion that this is youthful indiscretion territory, and as I've been reworking some of my oldest reviews which were nuked for being in the track-by-track format (hey, it was 2005, cut me some slack), I've noticed that I did this with a lot of those albums, namely attacking other reviewers (though not by name). In my defense, most of the negative reviews that inspired those parts of my own material were already doing the same, and most of said negative reviews have also been removed from the site for being short on content and long on the author either attacking fans of the band or being impressed with themselves.

Anyhow, I'd like to think that I've mended my ways and am proceeding to rework some of my older reviews, and probably going to stick with this more nostalgic take on them that I brought to my Twilight Force review.



lol Thanks for the vote of confidence, and to be fair, I'm a bit of a douche myself, albeit one that goes for sweet, power metal wine in a box rather than wholesome, vintage doom metal spirits.

I've done it in my reviews for Age of the Joker and Pariah's Child in a way, though I made a point of never addressing specific reviewers or wasting too much time sounding butthurt - it was more just general commentary on how fans see the bands. But if I had to go back and do those ones again I'd probably remove those paragraphs. I feel like some newer and bad reviewers spend way too much time getting really defensive ("It's cheesy power metal, so if you hate that style, you'll hate it, and songwriting quality never matters" sort of stuff) or mentioning other reviewers' criticisms in every paragraph. It's just bad form. I obviously didn't mean you hells, you usually don't come off that way at all.

It's cool, I know you weren't referring to me. I've spent the last couple years making a conscious effort to avoid doing what we're discussing, it came up primarily because I have been rewriting my old reviews (about 35 of them were recently purged due to their format, again, it was 2005 and early 2006 and I was a shit reviewer at the time lol) and I noticed that more than half of them had some unnecessary attack on either black or death metal fans, mostly due to people who primarily reviewed those styles picking token power metal albums to shit on that happened to correspond with my favorites at the time. It looks particularly bad since most of the reviews that I was reacting to were purged long ago. lol

Yeah, unicorn's is by far the best positive review for that album. I mean, I hate the fucking thing, so I'm a bit biased, but goddamn, most people seem incapable of just sticking to why they like it, instead going out of their way to address almost every single tiny criticism ever thrown at the band, like that somehow made their music any better. It's dumb and lame and a poor way of presenting a case in its favour.

Exactly. Although, to be honest, I was feeling more ambivalent than catty.


In that case, I'm wondering why you submitted them. You had a really good opportunity for a reasonably unique idea. I really like series reviews like that. Why did you submit something you knew was sub-standard? Take pride in your work. Ignore the peer pressure to produce mediocre product just to get your numbers up. That's total bullshit.



The scores being all over the place was a comment on the quality of the music, not your reivews being wildly erratic. I actually think your scoring is pretty reliable. I get irritated by prolific artists that have an inconsistent body of work. I don't see why they release crap. I'll never understand that.

Just to be clear, I'm glad you took the time to write all those reviews. I wanted to see them as more of a coherent set, which you have the talent to do, you just didn't do it. Why not? You're spending too much time thinking about the wrong things. I don't think you should give up. Just take your time, make them into art pieces. Practice. Ask for help. Apply yourself and your creativity to something you clearly find a lot of intrinsic value in. Be inspired, but don't be a follower. And don't give up just because you're not good yet at something you just started doing.

That said, if you're considering stopping, and in the meantime are going to be intentionally submitting shit you barely even like, I'm not going to lift a finger to stop you.

Every time I read your posts, Grave_Wyrm, my reaction is always "shit, he's right." I've taken note of what you and Dia said, and I won't be stopping. I'm going to take it more slowly and carefully from now on so I can chisel this brain into something I can work with. Thank you for your words.

You're welcome! Thanks for wanting to improve for your own reasons, not just hiding in an avoidant bubble. I look forward to helping you.

This review is painfully idiotic: http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/S ... ote/156569

There's barely any musical description, and what little there is of it is undermined by constant rants about the band's supposed "lack of soul". According to this guy, pretty much anything that isn't artistically transcendental is automatically the pits, which is complete bunk as an argument in this case anyway because guess what? You're talking about a really influential fucking album. The riffs don't lead anywhere? Mofucka, you even heard Catch Your Train? The solos don't matter? The music is full of "holes"? What even are these complaints?

This seriously reads like some stupid kid trying to make a grandstanding statement about the band and failing utterly at it.

I always think "the music doesn't go anywhere" is just one of those complete non-critiques that means absolutely nothing. If they elaborate on it and say the songs are too long and directionless or are composed of too many disjointed parts, then fine - but a ton of the time it's just a weird vague complaint that can mean anything really. Mostly it just means "I don't like it but can't articulate why."

A 3% for an album that just came out? Come on buddy...

It reads like a kid hearing Wind of Change for the first time, and based all his "knowledge" about the band on that, and just pretending to have heard the Virgin Killer album, let alone anything else by the band.

He even called Rock You Like a Hurricane a ballad. Like any hard rock song that came out in the 80s was a ballad.

I fucking hate that review, but it just might be my biased opinion that Virgin Killer is one of my favorite albums. I really hate what that review does to the album's overall score on MA.

While the review made me want to kill a baby seal with a club, it's perfectly fine to write a negative review of an album just after its release like it's perfectly fine to write a 92% like I did (wrote mine 3 days after I got the promo but I heard the album like 15 times during those days!)

He also constantly misspelled Fredrik Åkesson's name, how fucking hard is to check his name before writing it.

The review triggered me but it triggered me less than those 100% Akerthorpe review. I hope Unspeakable Axe sends him their CDs. Fuckwit.

hahahaha true. I just listened to the album a little bit and I actually quite like it, but it's easy to see why someone would hate it. But even then, a 3%? A score like that comes across as a little edgy to me.

@DoomMetalAlchemist; I don't really care about the score one way or another. It's the sheer thick-headed idiocy permeating the review that irks me. As Emp said, it's an example of someone that's totally inept at articulating his dislike for the record grasping at whatever straws he can find to throw shit at it. It's the worst kind of review there is, because it's complete shit yet still acceptable by the site's standards.

I just wanted to pop in and say BastardHead's review of Twilight Force's new album is fantastic. I didn't read any reviews of that album before today and I'm baffled by the high ratings.

That Twilight Force isn't that bad if you take it for it is. It's like bashing Abrahadabra due to expecting it to be anything else than an accessible type of symphonic metal.

I don't think it was mixed well and their first album was simply better. Luca Turilli took a similar approach (cinematic and such) with his last album, but the songs were actually good.

The mix is quite annoying, indeed. The album is quite overlong, too. But, in my opinion, that's pretty much it. To be honest, I think people are sometimes excessively harsh with power metal and that's why I think hells_unicorn's ratings are the best guide for me in terms of power metal, though I don't really always agree with him.

I don't think we've spoken on here before, but you should know that I mostly listen to power metal (a lot of it). I agree with you about people being harsh on PM though. I often see reviews by people that don't listen to the genre and they constantly like to take jabs at it.

^ I know you listen to PM a lot because even though I don't post much I do follow the NP thread. ^_^

Power metal is a great genre, it just needs a less serious approach because its sugary and all but that's why I think it actually works after listening to some harsh stuff as death or black metal.

I really have to disagree. I don't see why its sometimes lighter nature would mean it has to be any one mood - I think there's good stuff on the lighter, more fun side and also on the dark and serious side, as with any other genre.

And your critique of "it isn't bad if you take it like it is" is also not a good way to see it. I find it very poor on all levels and I listen to tons of PM. While I don't usually like that specific niche, I like enough similar bands (Dark Moor, Dragonland, Power Quest, etc) that I think my opinion was valid enough to do a review. I just hate the idea that we have to take something a certain way or else suddenly it's our fault for not "getting it" or something. That isn't a good way to critique stuff.

+1.

How does "take it for what it is" help if what it is to begin with is unoriginal, poorly mixed, and flaccid power metal? Is this album an herculean effort taken on by third graders who lost their hands in farming accidents? If not, then the album inexcusably sucks.

Using "it's not shit if you just see that it was never intended to be good" is: a) difficult to justify outside of satire, and b) smells like a fresh coat of paint over "I actually kind of like it, but I'm not comfortable admitting that." More importantly, it sounds like the implied claim that power metal in general isn't supposed to be/is wrong to be taken seriously is an attempt to excuse (or make room for) the shittiness of the album.

I'd still give that the exact same score and review I gave the real Twilight Force album, though.