is there any rules for making reviews? i don't know about music writing much so there would be no mention of and chords and notes and stuff like that. it would be just from listening and my thought on the quality and such.

While your review doesn't have to be heavy on music theory (or even intelligently presented, frankly - certainly lots of morons have had their thoughts posted here as reviews), ideally your review will be able to paint a picture of the album for the reader. I.e., if I have never heard an album you review, your review should be able to give me a general idea of what it sounds like. Like any run-of-the-mill essay, tell your audience the main point of your writing - i.e. your thoughts on the album as a whole, whether you like the music or not - and then elaborate on why you like or dislike it... or, more realistically, what you do and don't like about the individual elements of the music (assuming you don't plan to give something a perfect/flat-out worthless score).

In addition to MalignantThrone's advice, I recommend you ask for some feedback here: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=16487&start=1800

Reviewing is all about communicating your thoughts to the reader, and it is always important to try to improve and better direct your writing. I recommend seeking feedback on everything you write as you get started, I did that and it helped me adjust my writing and observations to be understandable to others.

[quote="High On Metal420"it would be just from listening and my thought on the quality and such.[/quote]

The essence of good music reviewing, to me, is not to primarily evaluate quality, but to make observations about what is going on and what makes the music what it is. For example, some important things to take note of in reviews would be Death's tendency to have all instruments follow somewhat melodic guitar hooks, Suffocation's percussive pummeling from the drummer hitting everything on every beat paired with the guitar and bass, or Confessor's ability to have a lot going on both rhythmically and melodically while leaving a feeling of space in the production. Some albums might defy your favored terms - black metal tends to be like this where the atmosphere and feel are difficult to describe with words, and even a great description to some might seem alien to others. You don't need to be technical, but you should spend a lot of time thinking about what makes music what it is, both good and bad.

Check the workshop or submit it and I'll see if it's acceptable or not. Also, read the reviews we accept on the site, it would give you a pretty good idea of what we want.

Sigh... really?
http://www.metal-archives.com/content/rules#tab_reviews

Also... click on any review form (e.g. this http://www.metal-archives.com/review/wr ... aseId/3776) and, I dunno, read the instructions?

There should be a 3,000 word minimum. That would entirely eviscerate all the pre-teen fanboys that have never learned to properly analyze something. I'm really fed up with seeing things titled "BRUTAL!!@ 100% by Johnny Bassdrop" with two paragraphs to follow it up.

Edit: Actually, I see this to be a better idea: 3,000 words for 100% and 0% and then for 50% there will be a 1,000 word requirement, with values in between varying inversely. If something really blew your tits off to the max, you should have no trouble pulling out a few pages about how that went down.

My longest reviews don't even break 3000 (I'm almost sure my longest (for Sigh's newest) is roughly ~2955). And that's an extraordinarily rambling and pretentious review. Yeah, it's nice to get real analysis past the minimum (which I see far too frequently) but let's not set the bar too crazily high.

Most of my reviews fall between 800 and 1200 words, so there'd need to be considerable padding to reach a 3000 word minimum.

I'll write a 5000 words review of my favorite Immortal album for Nhor.

Ridiculous!

Are you being deliberately obtuse? By the way, I also want to add that reviews that will greater effect the average album rating (say someone put 100% and the next guy puts a 0, the average is skewed by 50pts) should have more requirements for that review to go through.

While I agree with your general sentiment (that glowing or abysmal scores should warrant a larger amount of elaboration), to suggest making it *mandatory* is absurd. Good reviews are welcomed here, of course, but the Metal Archives isn't trying to make some elite club of top-class reviewers. I'm pretty sure the system is intentionally designed so that any average neanderthal can vomit a few hundred words of their thoughts here in a semi-intelligent fashion and have it accepted as a review. Forcing people to exhibit excellence to participate will simply discourage those below excellence from striving for it.

I definitely concur with BastardHead on this, I think I wrote one review that even came close to 5000 words way back in 2006 for Iced Earth's "The Glorious Burden" (somewhere in the neighborhood of 4,500 I believe) and it mostly consisted of pontificating on my disagreements with Jon Schaffer's depictions of Civil War history during the interviews he gave on the album, and the barely 1000 words of actual musical description were formatted in an overlong, overly descriptive track by track approach. I found myself cringing at it about 2 years after having put it up because I realized that almost no one would spend that much time reading a review for an album that they don't already own.

Sounds like another "angry because favourite album score was lowered" case. It's the complete opposite, and it should stay that way. Metal-archives review average isn't supposed to be treated as a metacritic score.

I think you mean "angry because averages are misleading and requirements are too low."

Ex. Little Johnny averages two baths a day. This is because he took zero baths Monday through Sunday for one week, zero bath Monday through Saturday the next week, and fourteen baths the following Sunday.

Here's a quick workaround to such an issue: just read the reviews.

PUT ME IN COACH I'M READY

Not to nitpick, but that averages one bath a day.

Averages are misleading, oh boy. They don't represent the proper opinion on albums, or what?

Fifteen mindless sheep like a Woods of Ypres album. One person capable of critical thinking reviews the album and gives in the rating in deserves. There's another case of "misleading" average. Damn you're thick.

Not to mention, number of words is not remotely close to being an indicator of quality. I prefer concise and to-the-point reviews over meandering, rambling garbage myself. Suggesting a 3000-word minimum is inanely stupid.

Anyway, the OP got his answer and this thread has outlived its usefulness.