Nice Amorphis reviews, Ozzy. No idea why I haven't hit Circle yet, will get to that soon. I was surprised by autothrall's review since he generally seems to like Amorphis; worse than The Beginning of Times? Weaker vocals? fuck that noise. I don't think it's the best Joutsen album, but it's damned solid and does have some incredible moments.

"There's almost 3000 metal bands in Finland, I'm sure I'm not an asshole to say that Cemetery Fog needs to do a lot to become a caretaker of the metal underground. They need to nourish the earth with a lot of manure and fertilizer and I don't know if they have the necessary shovel. We'll have to wait and see."

Best part of Tony's review for Cemetery Fog's Journey to Hell demo:

, Tony.

This review is really good, I enjoyed reading it. Flows well and gets the point across.

http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/S ... nthony8660

Hey, Zodijackyl, normally I like your reviews, but I have to be entirely honest, your review of Be'lakor's newest album? Couldn't possibly disagree more. I don't understand the constant DT comparisons for one, they don't sound anything alike, and how could you call DT's vocals "emotionally driven", and call Be'lakor's emotionless and empty? As a vocalist myself, I struggle with that. Haha.

When I hear "Starlight Reverie", maybe due to an unfettered horniness while approaching a mid-life crisis combined with past indulgences of hallucinogenics and role playing games in my youth, I can't help but envision a Sabine-voiced winged beauty leading a flock of female pixies to that location pictured on the album's cover sleeve where they can twirl around the pillars and skinny-dip to their heart's content. Yeah, I have problems.

Never really dug Be'Lakor, seemed a little too dry and long-winded for my tastes.

Zodi, how can you praise Insomnium in one sentence and then pan Finnish Melodeath in the next? In any case, Insomnium EToS and Kalmah definitely crack my top 10 Melodeath bands, and they're all from Finland.

stuff

Wow, you had an opportunity to make a pretty good defense here but I think you screwed it up baaaaad.

No one's complaining that you trashed an album in and of itself. I trash albums fairly regularly and no one bats an eye to it. They're complaining about your approach to it - typically, the users here will debate but inevitably accept the presence of a good old-fashioned ideological beatdown review as long as it's written with enough conviction (or self-inflated pretension, based on who you asked). See UltraBoris vs. Metallica, Kruel vs. Deathspell Omega, Noktorn vs. Darkthrone, and so on. What people don't like is Falconsbane types, i.e. people who try to make large sweeping pseudo-philosophical statements but don't have the writing skills to justify the egotistical basis of their writing. And that's pretty much how you come across here.

Telling people not to pont out issues within your reviews as they see fit is pretty silly. "Don't read my reviews"? How about you don't post them pubicly to the website period, then, if you're going to throw such a fit over any criticism? This is the fun part about having the userbase itself concerned with the reviews here, because the freedom that allows you to post your reviews regardless of their opinions is the same freedom that allows us to discuss those reviews once they're posted. Don't like it? Don't place your reviews on a site with a public frum: put them on a blog somewhere and disable commenting. Problem solved, dissent silenced, all is well in the House of Self-Inflation.

:ugh: Wow, you had an opportunity to make a pretty good defense here but I think you screwed it up baaaaad.

The new Soulside Journey review mentions *twice* that the album sounds as though it could've been recorded at Sunlight Studios. Even if you pirated the thing, the very least you could do is actually look the album up on the Archives before reviewing it.

That would be my review, I actually wasn't aware it was recorded there in fact and that would be my factual error but please don't be snarky about it, I tried to be as thorough and I checked the liners(yeah I do own the album) but we can all make mistakes in fact I checked past bands with Sunlight Studios and Darkthrone weren't mentioned. But thanks for pointing out the mistake in any case.

EDIT: Updated and sent back to the queue.

For the sake of public shaming, you also spelled "Darkthrone" wrong! I fixed it and re-accepted the review.