Uh.. what?


What the hell? What a confused sentence.


Unexpected leads soloing on a dark and eerie vibe, okay, that's definitely good for having the new vocalist. That honestly doesn't make any friggin sense either.

A) It has a solid structure, not complicated to understand. Why you picked that part seems redundant to me.

B) Hmm, you're right, that needs to fixed.

Actually, I needed to fix the vocalist part anyways. I just couldn't think of a better way of saying, "The solos are dark and eerie" , rather than using specific notes, scales, modes, since not all readers are educated on musical theory.

But alright, alright. Understood.


Excuse me, sorry for being a knob, thank you for reading.

Probably just me, but that review doesn't look very appealing format-wise: very short paragraphs, not a whole lot of in-depth detail, etc. If it's going to be short, then you better make it pretty descriptive.

The problem with your review is that you seem to randomly line up tidbits of information that have no real connection to each other. Especially that last one, where you talk about the guitar leads, but in the same breath say the EP is good for having the new vocalist, it seems completely random.

Ozzy, what do you think should be added for more detail?

As in, what would make it more detailed?



You have a point, a good one. I think editing out the vocalist bit altogether might make a bit more sense. I'll re-read it, and post my edited review tomorrow or something, thanks for your time.

I've never heard that release, so I don't know what specifically to say. Just put more descriptive words that help me understand what the music sounds like. Words like "melodic," "intense," "harsher," "dark," and their kind of ok, but not very stand alone. A review of that size doesn't gain much from rather dull words like that - you can definitely find better words to pinpoint a specific tone (read: go thesaurus hunting).

See, I just went to the band page and found out that they were death metal. I had no idea what genre they really were if I just read your review.

Well, to get to the review you'd usually have to go through their band page


But I understand where you're coming from, and it's been noted. Thank you for your time.

We don't want or need you to write a novel, but it would probably help if you gave each thought more than three words before moving on to the next one already. The review is written like someone was holding a gun to your head threatening to pull the trigger if you aren't done writing in sixty seconds.

Ok no problem, I'll keep it short and sweet.

The EP was very short, and I usually write whilst listening to the music. It was under ten minutes, so I wrote it in about ten minutes. No excuse, but I thought I should explain myself a little better.

That's something that should be mentioned in the review, for example.

And in general, the review is quite odd in the phrasing:



Seems a little random to me, and that's just one example out of many.
You can generally understand what the review says, I just don't think it would be accepted, on grounds of improper syntax (and a poor formatting, too).

Also:
That's a very bad sentence.

This is also a horrible sentence with a bad typo. It doesn't describe the music much either.

Another thing that's wrong with your review is that the descriptions are way too fucking ambiguous to say anything. Here's an example:
Because consistency can mean a lot of things, especially since you used the word band here (in which case it could refer to a band's consistent quality, style or frequency of putting out releases or, which I assume to be the case, the consistency of the EP in question in some way), the reader, at this point, expects you to clarify it, which you do very half assedly:
I'm assuming this refers to the musical perfomance What was? What do you mean by solid effort? What do you mean by all around? Wait, you were just talking about musical peformance, and now you're using the adjective polished, which is usually used to describe production. Now I'm confused. Which were you talking about?

Your review wouldn't have been accepted under any circumstances. I'm not a master reviewer (in fact my reviews suck so much I will probably remove most of them), but ... did you even read it through once?

No, I did not read it through it all. That's why I was asking for a quick review of people who would read it, and get back to me with the mistakes. This is my first review on here, and since it's a free for all format, (Such as, there aren't devoted sections to post your writings under *Lyrics/Sound/Impression*)

I was a little lost, to be honest.

But I'll re-write it, be a lot more specific, and make the paragraphs longer.


Will post back when finished.

We all start off like crap. Here's my first review as an example:

http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=4071#16199

(edit) I just read through that one. Oh my.

http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=33470

My first review, and still the only one 4 years later.

Empyreal even my first review for this site wasn't that bad, and it's still alive (Hypocrisy's The Fourth Dimension).

Indeed, quite a humble beginning.

It's OK, I make up for it by being better than you in every way in my new reviews.

Speaking of new reviews, I should write some. Before everyone forgets my name on the main site.

I haven't written reviews in almost a month now, too, and I know I have plenty of material to write on. Guess this army crap and summer time off is getting to me.

I still like my own reviews.

My first review? Ah...

http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=29181

Actually, I don't think it's that bad. It's a bit sparse, sure, but minus one or two minor typos nothing really stands out as wrong.

I don't know why I reviewed that album, though. I hardly listen to it anymore.

It's rather moot to compare your first review to your current writing when the former isn't even a year old yet.

My first review is gone (pretty sure I took it down myself, but there's a good chance it was nuked for being retarded), but it was a positive review of Inhuman Rampage in which I claimed that Dragonforce really weren't all that cheesy. If I were to rewrite it, I'd probably give it a higher score (pretty sure it was a 77) and cite the overwhelming cheesiness as its standout quality. It had to be about four years old now, as I'm fairly sure the album had only been out a few months when I wrote it.

I think my earliest review that's still here in its original form is the one for Strapping Young Lad's City. I still have an insane kiddish enthusiasm for the record, but that review is abysmal. Most of my stuff prior to May/June of '08 is pretty torturous for me to reread. My Timeless Miracle review it dated sometime in '07 if I'm not mistaken but it was rewritten in late '08/early '09 when my feelings for the album changed and my writing skills improved drastically.

I've just been kind of lazy about it, despite still listening to metal more attentively than ever. Maybe that's it. I just take more time listening to albums than before. I've got a few reviews for Lost Horizon and Tad Morose banging around on my hard drive. Gonna finish those maybe tomorrow I think...and I've got some Dimmu Borgir ones in the process.

But this is neither the time nor the place.

I have a half-finished review for Hypertrace titled "Greatest Ever Speed Metal Pt. 1," which I doubt I'll ever get around to working on again because I find it hard to pin down what it is about Scanner that I love so damn much.

I've also been planning to do a series of Steel Prophet reviews (as they have almost none) titled "Superb Vocalist in a Shitty Band," but I have a feeling they'd get a bit repetitive.

At least you guys haven't taken like, two years off like me.

Someday...

I was told that my review for "Nile - Annihilation of the Wicked" was rejected due to being poorly formatted.

Help or suggestions?

Hey kiddies! Does your music seem to lack a needed edge that gives it replayability? Do you listen to albums once, put them in a drawer and try to forget they exist, and when you remember them again you get the "-core dry-heaves"? Have you found yourself enjoying music less in general since then? Enter Nile, probably the biggest face in tech-death today. Well, the only one worth noticing. (Yes, Necrophagist is over there. Don't stare, it's not polite.) Nile's music always seems to have the edge that most techy bands lack, and probably my favorite thing about them: they seem to know the difference between "genuinely talented" and "Hey look, I can sweep back and forth for four minutes, call it a song, and do it ten more times and make an album!"

To the music we march! We start this album with the instrumental "Dusk Falls Upon The Temple Of The Serpent On The Mount Of Sunrise". (A thing you'll soon notice about this band: they sure do like their long-winded song names. Perhaps lead vocalist Karl Sanders uses it to practice on increasing his lung capacity?) It's a super-short 50 seconds long, so if you're shopping for your instrumental epics here look elsewhere. I'm sure that some people will enjoy this track, probably mostly true musicians, but personally this song didn't arouse much unusual attention from me. It doesn't seem to serve much purpose, other than to clarify that this band's main focus is on Egyptian mythology, which any dumbass could assume from the song names, the album name, or the album art. Oh, well. On to the - HOLY SHIT! Yes, though the first track of this album is a bit of a letdown, Nile quickly picks up the pace with the fastest and overall most brutal song on this album, "Cast Down The Heretic". The main riff is extremely addicting: although it's a simple tremolo, it sticks with the listener for quite a long time. Thankfully, the listener will take joy in knowing that the fast, relentless pace of this song doesn't let up until the 4:30 mark, and even then not until letting a massive guitar solo take place. Now I'll say right here: I do not like guitar solos. If it were up to me, all but, say, three or four extremely noteable solos, all the others would be destroyed from the face of the Earth. Thus, I say with happiness that the guitar solo in this song at least gave me a bit of enjoyment. At the beginning of the solo, it focuses entirely on groove, which is what all guitar solos should focus on, but then it converts to pure wanking. Although I hate it, it mixes the wanking with more groove later by going up a few notes and giving the guitar a creepy, ominous tone; one that makes you wish the whole song was constructed around it, that it lasted forever. After this, however, you can hear the telltale signs that the solo is wrapping up: the feeling that the guitar is slowly rising notes at a time, the solo is repeating what it did at the beginning of the song, and if a different sound was achieved during the solo, it slowly attempts to transition back without anyone noticing. Anyway, after the solo is over, we come to what resembles a form of a slam accompanied by chanting of the song's title over and over. Since the vocals are the main focus of the song here, I might as well cover them. Karl Sander's vocal style is quite...unique. It's a bit like George Fisher's style, but less pathetic and more fear-invoking. I guess the best way to describe it would be a death growl with the raspy, whispering sound of a black metal vocalist. Sometimes, however, during chants, there is a normal voice that sounds like fake shouting, and it sounds TERRIBLE. Imagine, while recording all the chants for your band, a drunken fan who slipped unnoticed into the studio jumps next to you and starts yelling the lyrics into the microphone while swaying side from side about to pass out. That is the best way to describe it. After the slam with the chants, the song picks up its original tone and basically repeats what it did for the first three minutes, before the solo.

The next song is "Sacrifice Unto Sebek". This is a good song, but it starts off weak. It's three minutes long, but it spends half a minute of that time repeating a slow, boring riff, and another half minute on a slow, boring outro. Perhaps on one of the two nine-minute epics present on this album, that would have worked, but on this track, the slowest song to incorporate the entire band's music, just no. Also, the vocals don't have the flow and groove that produced an epic like "Cast Down The Heretic". Around 0:58, we get a riff where the vocals are the main focus, and they're quite catchy. This place, right here in the album, was where I realized that this band's main asset was their vocalist's place in the song. Not the blistering instruments, not the lyrical themes, and not the atmosphere the band creates, but the rhythmic headbanging the vocals inspire. Anyway, around 1:30 in this song we reach a primarily guitar-centered riff, and this is the place where the guitars really shined for me. Although it's a really modest riff, the atmosphere it creates is quite vibrant. The rest of the song is just xeroxed material from the first half, and thus nothing else is of notice.

I'll get to the drums at this point in my review. George Kollias is just...wow. He's probably up there on my list of drummers with Behemoth's Inferno and Meshuggah's Tomas Haake. Although I think Inferno's fills are the best out of the three and Tomas is the most technical, George is definitely the fastest of the three. That's not to say that he's not technical; on the next track, "User ~ Maat ~ Re", he is the main focus of the starting beat, which isn't surprising, considering right about here he's hitting every goddamn drum on the kit. But yes, most of the time he's either blasting the snare and cymbal into nonexistence, or streaming away on the bass pedals until they threaten to explode.

Now, the song "User ~ Maat ~ Re". About it: well...it's long (9 minutes 15 seconds to be approximate), and it's slow. It doesn't have much of true notice, except for the guitar riff it has going for it for the last three minutes is pretty cool. Oh, and the instrumental at the beginning is of notice. It's played on the...um...the same instrument on the first track. I'm getting increasingly tired as I write this, and I can't think of the name of it...But yeah. Basically, this song doesn't have much that makes it particularly enjoyable, especially due to the fact you have through 6 minutes of boring shit to get to the only decent part in the song. The next track is one of my favorites, though: "The Burning Pits Of The Duat". The guitar is decent at first, but later it slows down a little bit and focuses a little bit more on rhythm and tone compared to pure technicality. Once again, we have the grooving vocals that give this band its edge over the rest of tech-death bands out there. The end of the song (the last 12 seconds) is one of the catchiest things you'll ever hear in the world of death metal. It literally makes you want to dance. The next song is... *takes deep breath* "Chapter Of Obeisance Before Giving Breath To The Inert One In The Prescence Of The Crescent Shaped Horns"...Well then. Actually, I never paid much attention to this song before, but upon its review, I quite like it. It's got a much darker tone than the bulk of the other songs, and is probably where the guitar reaches its biggest possible potential, drawing a fine line between wankery and tremolo goodness. I'll choose the latter, because I like the guitar in this song. Around the 3:00 mark, the song slows down to a riff resembling a slam. The guitar actually sounds extraterrestrial at this point, but I don't believe it's what they were aiming for. I haven't read the lyrics to this song, but I'm pretty sure Egypt being invaded by aliens would be stretching things a bit. Next, we meet face to face with my favorite song on this album, "Lashed to the Slave Stick". The beginning of this song is almost entirely tremolo with the guitars, and the main riff is a simple sweep that's repeated once a measure, and then another tremolo. It sounds simple, but it's really quite addicting. The vocals are probably the catchiest on this song, especially in the chorus. Unexpectedly, the song changes tempo at 2:15, and it's a change for the better. The tempo change is gone in thirty seconds, and the song slows down, finally picking the original tremolo to settle down on and spin its subtle web of enticement. Ironically, the drums are a bit weak on this particular song, but regardless this is still my favorite song on this album.

The next song ("Spawn of Uamenti") is more ambient than instrumental. It seems almost like "easy listening" or "something to listen to when you want something in your ears, but not actual music". Until I can come up with some other possible use for this song's existence, those are my theories. Onto the eight-minute title track. I constantly hear this song hyped, and it seems among Nile fans this is unanimously the "most totally brutal" song they ever created. The song is admittedly great, and it evokes an extremely large atmosphere, but other than better-than-average guitar work, I see nothing that is of extreme commendation. We have the slow songs on this album. (Hell, the next and last song on this album does it better.) We have the great guitar work. (Please refer to the second track on this album.) As a result, this song is just plain redundant. Recycled material. What's even sadder is that this is the title track. When your title track is the weakest thing on your album, there is a big problem. But hey, remember: if this song ever starts to suck to you, just say the words "wake up, wake up, wake up" in a Suicide Silence fashion and this will become the greatest song you've ever heard. And here we come to the final track. "Von Unaussprechlichen Kulten". Like a few other Nile songs, this one takes inspiration from H.P. Lovecraft's stories. I love this song. Even taking it for face value, it's just astounding. You know you've done something right when your main riff composes of a total of SEVEN notes (yes, that's 7, the number between 6 and 8) and it's still addicting as crack cocaine. Later, the song comes to another tremolo, slows down, and takes on a variation of the main riff. The vocals have less of an impact on this song compared to the others, but that isn't to say that removing them wouldn't cause the tower to fall over. At 4 minutes in, the guitars fade to the back and what sounds like a hypnotized, possessed chorus chimes in. At 5 minutes, we get a guitar solo. Remember how I feel about guitar solos? Yeah...this one ain't much better in my book. It stops a minute later, and starts and stops streaming beats continously while Karl Sanders seems to be performing spoken word with the slight added gruffness of a growl. A slow, repeated riff coalesced with death growls herald the album out as subtly as it came in. Thus ends this gem of an album.

This is not, by all, or even any means, a jaw-dropping, innovative, or ground-breaking album. However, it is an astonishing album. At least one of the songs on it will become one of your personal favorites, and if you ever had doubts about the decency of technical death metal as a genre, this album will purify your thoughts and open your mind. All in all, I would recommend this album to any death metal fan. Hell, even a thrash metal fan would appreciate this. That is all. You've heard the verdict; now purchase this album before you kill yourself with guilt for not owning it.

Put some breaks in those monster paragraphs.

Thanks for the advice; I re-submitted and am awaiting submission/rejection.

Yeah, those longer paragraphs would get stretched out to ludicrous lengths in the smaller horizontal space of the posted review. If that wasn't the problem, though, there might be other characters that are causing issues with the formatting once it's published. For example, those strange slanted quote marks that people sometimes use mess things up. Maybe the tildes ("~") don't go through properly?

The weird quote marks may appear when you write the review in Word/OpenOffice Write and save it to .doc or something similar (meaning not .rtf). Both auto-change the standard quote marks for some reason.

I feel compelled to espouse the virtues of notepad here, which never has problems or that nature, or indeed any problems at all!

I have no idea why my review is getting rejected... I keep getting the same reason, being "That it is poorly formatted or annoying to read." I don't think it's that bad, like I have formatted paragraphs with a space in between them, no track-by-track review, etc. I think there are some comma splices or excessive punctuation but nothing major. The paragraphs are a tad long, but there are much longer reviews I've seen that are accepted. Also, try not to rip on my review too hard since it is one of my first music album reviews.


The year is 1998, when front man Chuck Schuldiner decided to release his last album under the name of Death. He would continue on with the band Control Denied which sounded even more melodic than Death. The general consensus of all Death albums is that the first few were unadulterated death metal (although one could argue Spiritual Healing was the start of the proggy Death instead of Human) and later albums become much more progressive/ melodic and much less like traditional death metal. It got so melodic that he couldn’t release music under the name of Death as death metal which is why he started Control Denied. The Sound of Perseverance is the midpoint of Chuck Schuldiner’s career in terms of sound, at which if Death sounded any more melodic; it would be no longer considered death metal. The Sound of Perseverance remains a mixed bag amongst Death fans; some criticized the album for being far too “wanky” and some praised the album for being Death’s greatest release. I fall more into the latter category and may be subjected to bias since it was the very first Death album I listened to. I have since listened to Human and Symbolic, which I may review later on. Alright enough blabbing, let’s get into the album.

I’ll first talk about the production. The production is crystal clear and is Death’s best produced album. Everything sounds clear and distinct; you could just admire the production of this album alone rather than the actual music. Each cymbal hit rings out with clarity and just sounds damn good. A great example of where you can take note of the production is around the three minute mark of the opening track of “Scavenger of Human Sorrow”. It is even more obvious if you compare something like Human which sounded kind of murky and somewhat hard to distinguish the individual instruments to The Sound of Perseverance.

Another thing you’d notice about this album is that Chuck Schuldiner’s vocal style has changed considerably. From low guttural growling to an almost black metal like screeching, this alone would cause uproars amongst Death’s fan base. This may be attributed to Chuck’s cancer but I’m not too sure. I for one don’t mind it too much and I think it still fits the style of music well. It also sounds clearer and you can make out the lyrics easier than with his previous style. I’m not saying it supersedes his previous style; it’s just a change that I accept and don’t make a huge deal out of it.

Now the guitar is excellent overall and displays some traditional metal riffs like in “Spirit Crusher” and some great melodic leads like in the chorus of “A Moment of Clarity”. Even to songs that would be considered blasphemy to the death metal genre *ahem* “Voice of the Soul”, which I’ll talk about more in depth later. The solos can be quite short like in “Spirit Crusher” where it lasts around 30 seconds to being around a minute and 30 seconds like in (again) “A Moment of Clarity.” Now for the aforementioned “wanky” elements; there are definitely some that are no doubt “wank” as in “Bite the Pain” where he decides to throw in some random lick that didn’t really need to be in the song. I have to admit some of the solos just seem more sterile and don’t really add to much to the song and are there for simply the sake of it example: “Spirit Crusher”. (I really got to start referencing more tracks). There are around half a dozen types of riffs per song which makes each song interesting and enjoyable to listen to.

On to the drums… and what can I say? Richard Christy is a fucking good drummer. Everyone talks about Hoglan or Reinert but I hardly hear anyone mention Christy. This guy does some extremely complex stuff and there are hardly any beats that sound typical or unoriginal. All his beats typically utilize most of his drum set and are a joy to listen to. I had to watch a few Death drum covers in order to truly understand how good Christy was. Practically every part of his kit is used and he uses every single cymbal and drum head on his kit a few times for each song. Just look at the intro to “Scavenger of Human Sorrow” where he hits at least five different cymbals yet it still sounds great and not out of place. Parts that are mind-blowing and I had to pause for a bit in order to fully take in what I just heard is around the two minute part of “Bite the Pain” where he pulls off some unbelievable stuff. An extremely underrated drummer, Christy raised the bar of how I look at drumming in metal in general.

The bass lines in each song are complex and are definitely not just there for the sake of having a bass. There are many times where the bassist shines and is given his moments of having these interludes placed in songs where you can only hear the bass and maybe with some drum accompaniment. The bass isn’t also buried under layers of other instruments and you can easily hear it for pretty much all of the tracks. One of my favorite bass lines in this album is for “Spirit Crusher” and damn… it sounds very menacing, like this evil being (the Spirit Crusher) is coming and the drums only add to it. Not too much to elaborate on the bass but it just sounds outstanding overall.

The lyrics, of course, are extremely well written and it is one of the many high standards of Chuck Schuldiner that consistently holds. However (get ready to flame the shit out of me), some of them border the line on almost mallcore like. Don’t get me wrong; Death (especially on Human and songs like “Crystal Mountain”) have very philosophical and deep lyrics. This is me just being pretty nitpicky. I just noticed that quite a few songs like “Scavenger of Sorrow” (example: “If you doubt what I say/ I will make you believe”) seem to have this sort of “I hate you” attitude that is typical of that genre. Some of them are pretty cringe worthy like the beginning of “Flesh and the Power It Holds” (“I told you once/ But I’ll say it again”). Perhaps there is a much deeper meaning to these lyrics? A very nitpicky thing I have about Death lyrics are that they don’t take too long to interpret, as in they’re not very cryptic or have many hidden meanings to them. This is a very small complaint as they still make you think about certain things in perspectives you never would’ve imagined. Again, this is purely my opinion and I’m sure that many, many other people would be glad to contradict me.

The song lengths are easily Death’s longest overall with only 2 under the 6 minute mark. However, I don’t really mind the song length because they are well structured and continue to hold your interest throughout each song. Although, some of the parts in each song are repeated quite a few times which may put some people off. Each part is complex and you probably won’t fully appreciate each part if they weren’t repeated that often. The track that would stick out the most to Death fans is easily “Voice of the Soul” where it is an instrumental that would be the last thing categorized as death metal because there is an acoustic guitar coupled with an electric guitar soloing over it sans drums, bass and of course vocals. It is a very solemn track where I often become contemplative and introspective when I listen to it. The album ends on a cover of Judas Priest’s “Painkiller” which I have a sort of “meh” feel about it. It’s not the best way to the end the album, but it doesn’t feel too out of place and (like many people have said before me) Schuldiner pushes his voice to the limits on the track and you can truly behold what he is capable of doing vocally. Another interesting thing I noticed about this album is that each song sort of leads into each other or sounds similar to other songs on the album, like around 3 minutes through “Scavenger of Human Sorrow” it resembles “Spirit Crusher”. The same can be said for a few other tracks on the album.

In conclusion, I think it is not best to look at this as a death metal album but more of a melodic progressive album which many find it as a hard pill to swallow considering Death essentially created death metal and their name is “Death” after all. Just look at Symbolic; it is hard to consider it as pure death metal especially with a drum intro like “Zero Tolerance” yet it was extremely innovative. Everything about this album is admirable and Schuldiner poured quite a bit of work into it to make such an album. Maybe it wouldn’t receive so much criticism if Schuldiner released this under Control Denied’s name. Ironically, Death’s last and most complex and progressive album got me into Death which is probably why I give it this much praise. This is one of the albums that you have to listen to quite a few times in order to appreciate it (I know I did; I listened to the album four or five times and a few tracks around 25-30 times) so I don’t blame you if you didn’t like it at first.

Favorite tracks: “Bite the Pain”, “Spirit Crusher”, “A Moment of Clarity”, and “Voice of the Soul”.

This was the biggest problem I saw, if I had to pick one. There's way too much "what I see this as" in that paragraph. Not that it's forbidden, but I believe that if you have personal opinion in your review, the moderators want it to be concise, not spread out into half a paragraph as you did.

It's the quotes. Those angled ones mess up the formatting when you try to post it. Replace them all with the standard " quotes and it should be fine, I think.



I like Wordpad. It's a little more feature-rich than Notepad but is still bare-bones enough to know that what you've got there is what will appear in the review when it gets submitted.

Oh yeah, I always just think of wordpad as notepad being the same thing (though really it's a less bloated and more useful version of Word). EditPad is very nifty too, has some really useful features for specific things you might want to do to manipulate text but keeps the mimimal size constraints and streamlined design intact. I actually have all three on my desktop! Word too. That's probobly enough word processors.

Thank you very much for the quick feedback!

No prob, I hope our efforts help guide you to making thoughtful decisions regarding your future word processor needs.

Good post. I appreciate it!



__________________
Watch Devil Online Free

This is what solved my problem. Thanks a lot!

No problem!

Any feedback for any of my newest 5 reviews on the front page? I want to know if I still have it in me. I feel really out of practice reviewing metal these days. What do you guys think?