I'm looking for people who write reviews actually worth reading and which is not all like "blah blah underrated blah blah go buy it". Reviews that are actually worth investing your time in.

well, idk if I am but you could read some of mine and see for yourself?

My personal favorite reviewers are:

BastardHead (some of his reviews are downright hilarious and I like his casual kind of writing style. I've bought Sphynx and Follow the Reaper solely because he praised them highly.)

Empyreal (is able to articulate exactly what the album sounds like, it's hard to explain but he's just a really good reviewer.)

GuntherTheUndying (no definite reason why I enjoy his reviews, i just do.)

Nightgaunt (has only written maybe 6 reviews, but they're very well written and articulate. Many people attempt to try and write in a style similar to this, and few of them succeed.)

Autothrall (his brevity is his strong point, he can describe an album in just a few paragraphs. He also has assloads of reviews)

EDIT: i also enjoy bl00df1red34th simply because he writes almost nothing but negative reviews. They aren't the best stuff around, but he can be pretty entertaining at times.

Tepes_The_Unweeping, StryckenFromHistory, droneriot and Cheeses_Priced are all mega smart. Unfortunately only one of them has uniformly perfect taste.

Check out Droneriot and Tepes_The_Unweeping. Both of them have excellent negative reviews.

Caspian and Noktorn also have some excellent output.

Also, A National Acrobat and Hells unicorn are good ways to find new music, Anything they give 100% to is always worth a listen, and they give out new ones every two weeks or so. Very good, descriptive writers too.

I think this thread has covered just about everyone worthwhile now.

I can't recommend these two reviewers enough. I basically solely depend on Caspian's reviews for anything on the slow side. As for Noktorn, I trust his opinion very much because we seem to have similar tastes, and he has many many reviews, plus most of them are excellently written.

There are a couple others that I'd like to give a mention to, one would certainly be Nightgaunt. His writing ability is stellar, possibly one of the best I've had the pleasure of reading, and that isn't an exaggeration. If only he had more reviews up on the site...

Kruel is also a reviewer that I like reading. He doesn't have a lot of reviews, but all of them are entertaining. Plus, his review of Transilvanian Hunger is brilliant, one of my favorite reviews on the site.

I can always look to Noktorn when I want some good extreme metal, he's introduced me to a ton of good shit through his reviews and just chatting with him outside of the site at times. Good writer, too; always descriptive without being all superfluous and verbose like some people get.

I really like HowDisgusting's reviews, particularly his Anata, Immolation, Defeated Sanity and Portal ones.

I recommend oneyoudontknow for his patience, which does more work than you have to and finds those undetected unknowns to steer you away from the time-muggers lurking in the dark. Failsafeman and Napero are excellent writers even though I don't listen to all of the bands they might review, still worth the time. Gutterscream is an informative and entertaining writer, even if he's left me dangling before with cross-comparisons, he must have had a building metal-rolodex that was about to explode! Drowned used to write on here and tackled a bunch of demos and early work of extreme metal bands and had a good knowledge of the field. Abominatrix for his concise perspective and for some overlooked recommendations; his writing and prose definitely stood out when I first checked out MA. Perplexed_sjel for his in-depth words. Cannibalcorpse for his Greek reviews. Anationalacrobat is also entertaining in his ways and is building himself up to a niche of bands. Stonetotem and Unclemeat for having good recommendations and similar taste in extreme metal. Those are just ones I rattled off. I used to read Vorfeed, Chaossphere, Snxke and other lesser known reviewers when I started on here, the times have definitely changed in writing standards, practices and how many can be humanly written. And I'm impressed when someone is able to file that into one complete portfolio, so there are those I missed.

Apart from the ones mentioned.

Byrgan, not exactly the best known reviewer around mainly because he only reviews once in a while and mostly tackles little known South American bands but his reviews always describe the music pretty well even if you have no idea about the genre of the band. Although his reviews tend to get dry sometimes in terms of humor.

saintinhell, if you are thinking of dissecting a band then he's your man. Always comes up with a particular point that everyone knows of but never ponder upon. Read his Opeth review to get a hang of what I am saying. But again unless you like looking a bit too much into you music, he may not come across as a particularly entertaining reviewer.

I ll agree on gutterscream. His particularly unique style may not go down well with everyone but I personally consider him the best reviewer on the site. Among the more humorous reviewers, ANationalAcrobat takes the cake. His unique style is genuinely funny most of the time.

Not a great writer per se but DeathRiderDoom has done a great job taking down some pretty good obscure NWOBHM classics. Similarly look into failsafeman and Xeogred's reviews if you like USPM. Noktorn does the same as far as extreme metal goes.

what does 'worth [reading]' mean to you?

are you looking for entertainment, information, opinions, what?

Yes, I also know that a lot of people actually don't like their favourite music taken apart but sorry, that's my style and that's basically the way I listen to music so there's nothing I can do about it. Thanks for the mention anyway.

I have mentioned my favourites before when this topic had come up...here I go again:

Short reviews that tell you all you need: Cheeses_Priced, Empyreal.

In depth analysis: Abominatrix, failsafeman, hells_unicorn, Olympic Sharpshooter and..um, Nightgaunt.

Funny reviews: ANationalAcrobat, Bastardhead, UltraBoris.

And lastly, a take you back to the 80s category Napero, Gutterscream.

Always a good read, even short demos like Metallica's Hit the Lights. Oh, and ANA's review of Agent Orange is a classic.

Personally, OlympicSharpShooter, Napero, and Nightgaunt are probably my favorites. If I see a review by any of those three, I know I'm going to remain interested throughout the duration of reading. I recall Gaunt being described as writing with the rarity and magnitude of an eclipse, and it's basically the best description I've ever heard of anything ever.

Autothrall started as a joke to me since his backlog was so massive and he keeps a consistently high reviewing pace, but damn if the guy isn't great at what he does. His ability to keep things concise yet incredibly informative/descriptive is downright envious.

Other random shoutouts go to Noktorn, Emp, Gutterscream, and ANA for being personal favorites of mine.



[horn tooting]And even though reviews from me have become quite the rarity and my popularity has definitely waned, seeing my name in threads like these still make me beam. Thanks fellas![/gushing]

I like myself, too, thanks for giving my ego the well-needed polishing it deserves. This reminds me, I should really get back into reviewing -- the last thing I wrote was for Saint Vitus... and apparently that was a long time ago. I'm not too keen on this whole laurel-resting business.

Don't read too many reviews these days, but I'll quickly mention a few favorites:

Abominatrix for being as big of a Manilla Road fanboy as I am

ANationalAcrobat for being a British person

DeathRiderDoom for reviewing some really obscure shit even I haven't heard of

Empyreal for being the token Euro-power fan

Gutterscream for continuing to write well into his 70s, until senility and dementia finally stopped him once and for all

Xeogred for not writing reviews anymore, thus cementing my place as USPM expert

Also I like reviews from Byrgan, CheesesPriced, Nightgaunt when he can be bothered (he has more on his computer he's too self-conscious to post!), and probably other people I've forgotten.

I like autothrall. morbert is alright every now and then. And I wish Drowned reviewed more often.

On a related note, alexlovestheredchord is so bad he makes grimdoom look like Nightgaunt in comparison.

BTW. out of boredom I counted mentions in this thread, and ANationalAcrobat wins with Noktorn as a close second. Not a huge fan of either.

I've got no problem with him only posting his best reviews. I'll take 1 really good review over 100 shitty reviews any day of the week.

I rotate between hells_unicorn, Empyreal, DeathRiderDoom, and Perplexed. All four have different styles and pretty different tastes, with hells being the one that got me motivated to write back in 2006 / 2007.

The usual suspects: caspian, hells_unicorn, and Empyreal.

And Zelkiiro. That guy's awesome.

Subtle.

About as subtle as that, really.

Hence the winking emoticon signifying irony.

Nah, I simply refuse to give him that much credit.

i'm gonna go with one who hasn't been mentioned yet, Overkill666. he has a good diversity of genres that are covered in his reviews, and most of them are for underground/obscured bands that generally don't have much attention or any reviews. i enjoy reading them because not only are they in depth regarding the music and overall presentation of the album, but no review is too long or too short. they are critical when need be, and he praises an album when it deserves it. he's not afraid to give a low score, a medium range score, or a high score, and i see each review as an honest representation of what he's heard, no bias at all.

he is able to accurately state what needs to be said in a few good, solid paragraphs, which means you're able to read it all in just a few minutes. i know i get tired of reading those dragging 20 paragraph interviews, despite how good and in depth they may be, they are just too time consuming and it's easy to lose interest. i always look forward to reading new reviews from this guy and even giving him stuff to review for the site. if i was going to start reviewing myself, i'd look at his for some perfect examples.

Most of those who were/are on my mental list of "the best" have either already been mentioned or no longer write for this site. There is one I feel inclined to mention, however, mainly because I have never seen his name come up before. His handle is Aeturnus65. It is not difficult to tell why he goes overlooked--he doesn't hobnob (or perhaps "hobknob" is more like it) here with the big dogs in the Review yard, and he has no particular gimmick (e.g. mostly negative reviews, a propensity towards series, a joke or a pun every other sentence, etc.) beyond his obvious bent towards power metal and heavy metal, nor an exceptionally flashy style. His fundamentals--particularly in the area of musical description (sans excruciating overuse of musicians' lingo)--are so strong, however, that I have in the past used him as the chief example for novice reviewers looking to get a grasp on the most crucial aspects of reviewing for MA. For that, I think he deserves some recognition, though he's unlikely to notice it.

Cheeses and Drone would be my favourite two reviewers, by a pretty long way. A new review by either of them is always good news.

Noktorn comes across as an arrogant little kid in quite a few of his reviews, but is an excellent writer and extremely easy to read.

FSM's great and one of the few readable thesis-writers here, if not the only one, and Napero's the best gimmick writer on the site.

Muloc also deserves a mention, he does like some really, really awful music but is a terrific writer, and receives my eternal admiration for a few of the negative reviews he's done.

There's a bunch of other dudes that do great reviews (saintinhell, abominatrix) but they're basically never by a band that I'm remotely interested in, so they never get read I'm sure there's a lot of people like that.

I like Nightgaunt's writings but like most of his forum posts I find they're a bit too wordy and dense, always a bit of a slog to get through. To quote "rococo ramblings". He does make some excellent points though, and he needs to stop being a jew and post the others one up already - although in a way it's probably too late now, as a new review would get the entire forum in a NG sucking off contest which I doubt he finds desirable.

Mind linking to one of his? I don't think I've ever run across one (though power and heavy metal aren't the typical thing I click on).

Custard - For My King

As I said before, if you go in expecting to be blown away by something, you'll be disappointed. But if one looks at his whole body of work, it embodies the most crucial aspects of what MA reviewing is supposed to entail--raw content with no frills, touching on the entire package in a very succinct manner. I've never given him 3 points (nor 8, interestingly), and he's one of two still active I can think of for whom that can be said.

Lots of good reviewers on this site but my personal favorites are/were

BastardHead- The guy is informative yet cracks me up
Empyreal- Can't really say why, I just like his reviews
A_Navy_Blue_Vicar- The guy was hilarious!!!! And the funny thing was, if you really paid attention he actually made sense.
Autothrall-Lots of reviews and is concise yet good
Hells_Unicorn-Again, can't really say why, I just like him
Gutterscream- You could actually hear whatever he was reviewing because he described albums so well

Cheeses_priced is an old favorite. Even if I disagree with his opinion it's always a great read. Occasionally I stumble upon a reviewer whose writing is really interesting but they only have a few reviews. I binge read them, then forget about them unfortunately so I can't namedrop them.

Thomash and OzzyApu are a couple ones not mentioned. Good stuff.

Goes against my hating ANUS thing and all, but BM_DM has some good reviews. Thoughtful, with lots of insight into the music itself but succinct enough to be easilly digestible. Got some good recs as well.

How did I forget OzzyApu, he's another consistent one, don't think I've read much of Tomash's though

Thanks for the recognition, ZoZ. The only time I've gotten any is when I reviewed that Krallice album, the Rev Biz debut, and that abysmal Psycroptic full length (admittedly those are some of my worst reviews).

I find Gutterscream to have pretty similar taste to my own. I'll be browsing Rockadrome then find some cool looking release and odds are he's reviewed it! Very convenient.

Droneriot is always reliable. Found quite a few good bands via him (as well as through talking to him).

The only other reviewer I read often is Cheeses due to his ability to tell it how it is whilst injecting a tasteful amount of humor.

Snxke
Vic
Ultraboris

Tee hee!

up up up..

among other, I love radiohater's and Twisted_Psychology's reviews

Autothrall and Cheeses_Priced are probably my favourites, Autothrall for his excellent concise but informative style, and Cheeses_Priced for writing some stuff that I find genuinely amusing, which is quite rare on this site. My least favourite was alexlovestheredchord, though I've just noticed on his profile that he's been banned, so don't have to worry about accidentally wasting time reading anymore of his drivel.