Where is a good place to find places/webzines to have people review albums, besides MA ?

Metal Observer, I suppose.

Metal Storm

www.metalstorm.net

www.metalcrypt.com

And I have absolutely no personal bias here. Definitely not.

if its ur thing :

www.avantgarde-metal.com

the best in experimental metal....and avoids the nu-cores

Just sent in my application to Metal-Observer. They didn't say on the page, but what is their policy regarding reviews? Do they reserve the rights to them, do they send CDs or download links to reviewers? Is it as casual as MA or is it more intensive?

You can repost your reviews on the Metal Observer here as well, but you need to put a tag at the end of it on here that states it was originally done for the Metal Observer. They send you the promos for download via www.yousendit.com

In terms of the standards, they are not big on deliberately targeting albums not assigned to the reviewer for intentional trashing, and they prefer to have a solid level of content. Alex will probably go through all of this with you if you get the gig.

On the topic of metal observer...that was my favorite site for a good while back in '04 to '07. good reviews, good forum, good contests...so...what the fuck happened over there?...its a fucking ghost town

The owners had to relocate so certain parts of the site have fallen behind a little, there was an issue with a reviewer who leaked a promo and got caught and the site temporarily was not receiving promos from several labels, and apparently a good number of the people there have been occupied with other stuff.

I see. Alex & Val are good people, hopefully they get it going again soon, i miss it.

I've spoken with several people who've written there over the years, and it always seemed to me like they (the site proper, not necessarily the writers) tried a little too hard to ensure that few/no really negative reviews were written/posted. I suppose that's business though, eh?

Kid gloves aside, I do think they tended to do an above-average job in terms of pure content, at least relative to many of their closest (most well-known) competitors.

I liked Alex but there are a lot of really annoying things about TMO. Paying for promo postage and server costs is absolute bullshit, among other things.

This isn't too far from the truth. They've tended to try and slant certain sub-genres towards certain reviewers based on their tastes. I never get grindcore, metalcore, or brutal death metal promos due to my own tastes, and I get a disproportionate amount of instrumental/shred and progressive metal albums because I'm the only person on the site who likes those genres. They allowed me to put up 3 negative reviews of Machine Head albums, but they were not keen on the idea of me trashing an entire band's discography so none of my other reviews for them are going up there.

Yes, they profile you, or that's what I've heard. In one sense I can certainly see the utility of the practice (e.g. target black metal at somebody not into the genre and all you get are constant references to Burzum and Darkthrone and Cradle of Filth), but attempting to tailor things so that sentiments that "aren't constructive (read: nice)" are mostly precluded seems somehow suspect and something of a discredit both to the contributors and to the writing form of reviewing in general.

Of course, most of the people I mentioned were technically ex-contributors to the site at the time, which may perhaps have skewed my impression somewhat.

I wouldn't say that they take it quite that far, but generally they tend to prefer that any negative review on an established band come from someone who has something positive to say about other releases by the band. For instance, I could get away with trashing a number of Pantera's albums because I have a fairly high regard for "Cowboys From Hell", same story with Anthrax's John Bush albums due to my favorable view of the their 80s albums.

They did end up accepting my review of "Master Of Puppets", which is an extremely controversial one outside of this site that I regularly catch hate mail for by readers of that website, along with some who see that review on here.

I personally like allmusic. I usually tend to agree with their writer's reviews, but not always. Another thing about allmusic is that they dont always have the really unknown bands (in whatever way "unknown" applies to you)