This might be a silly, or subjective question, but i've been wanting to review my music collection, and I just want some advice, about how many times listening to something is good before you write a review for it?

If it is something I dislike I can hear once or twice and then review. If it is something I like then usually at least 4 or 5 times I can listen to it through and I listen to it while reviewing it. I don't do this if I don't like something. Sometimes I can dislike something and not be able to put my finger on or why I just think it is average and it can take a few more listens.

It is entirely subjective though. Once you feel you have a firm grasp on what you want to review then go for it, regardless how many times you have listened to it.

Yea, that's the most important thing. Everyone's different and everyone reaches their opinion at different rates. I usually like to make about eight to ten listens of an album, or at least until I can remember core parts of the release and work from there. That's actually a very good question, Unifying_Disorder.

If the album is bad I usually only listen to it once. If it is generic I might listen to it twice to give it a second chance. If I like it maybe 4 or 5 times. If I think it is really fucking amazing than I will listen to it many times before reviewing.

The requirement is four. Four times. You have to listen to it four times before reviewing. If you listen to it any less, even if you skip a second of silence, it'll be rejected. No questions asked. So four.

Indeed, four. Our mods have been trained to tell if you've heard it fewer times, and they will reject it. No exceptions.

Plenty of answers in the (not-so-)old thread: http://www.metal-archives.com/board/vie ... hp?t=69800

The general rule for me is 5 times, but some albums I've listened to as many as 20 times before reviewing (particularly if it has a score above 85).

Well me personally, am not a negative guy, so I won't review anything that I don't like. And the things I will review are things I really like and don't yet have any reviews, that said, I have already listened to these things numerous times, and am confortable with them. But I'd say 4 or 5 times for something new sounds very reasonable.

I think the main rule - not to hurry with writing. Reviews, that made after two or three listens often are full of emotions. Emotions are not good for objective assessment, also you can miss some interesting details.
One more advice - don't send your review anywhere just after finishing it. Wait one day and read it again. I always find a couple of words to fix. Good luck!

The way I see it, you just have to be fluent with the album. This sounds obvious, but there are a lot of terrible album reviews: DrommerOmDod's review of Success Will Write Apocalypse Across the Sky's The Grand Partition and the Abrogation of Idolatry is a particularly bad review imo, as was a certain review of Cannibal Corpse's Kill that got removed. Any album that has a 0% for a score is usually going to be terribly written or going to fail to make a successful point.

I usually listen to an album one or two times before reviewing it, whether I like it or hate it. Yeah, yeah, I'm not paying enough attention to the music, but it saves time for more reviews, and apart from that I almost never change my opinion on an album after the first spin so it's unnecessary to listen to it more than that.

Then again, my usual routine is to listen to it once while really bored, and then listen to it again while writing the review. So anywhere from one to three times before reviewing.

Depends on the album.

Something like Liege Lord's Master Control I only need to hear two or three times before knowing how to rate, and my opinion generally doesn't change.

However, if I had reviewed Fates Warning's A Pleasant Shade of Gray immediately after hearing it for the first time, I'd have probably given it around a 20%. Several dozen listens later, it's one of my favorite albums - it took well over ten plays to "click," and more than that to really sort out all the lyrical themes into something fully coherent, but once you get it it's an amazing album.

A certain one in particular?

it depends, if it's a unique album (e.g. Drug Honkey, The Dead) it usually takes me just a single listen to write down the draft, and i'll slowly edit it on subsequent listens.

the funny thing though is that genres that i usually am familiar with take a longer time for me to review...

Nah, you just put more thought into it because it's a genre you actually care about and don't want to make snap judgements about. Things you care about less you feel ok with publishing off the cuff remarks about because you don't feel, inside, that it's actually important to invest more significant time and effort into it. Same here.

If you ask me, the main factor is complexity - Something like the aforementioned Fates Warning album is going to take you many more listens to get a good view on it than, let's say, British Steel. This is relative of course - if you can get a sense of the album's merits and flaws quickly, then of course you'll need fewer listens for everything.

Sometimes I listen to an album once, sometimes I have to listen to it 50 times, and it's not really based on any defining details of the album (though there is a tendency for 95+ ratings to take a lot of listens).

haha yes! thats actually one of the reasons why even though my favourite genre is black metal, yet i have more death and thrash metal reviews combined than black metal...

The average for me is about thirty times over the course of several months or even a year or two. I like to give the music a lot of time to sink in. If I really hate an album, it would be less. I could probably, 95% of the time, write an accurate review after five or ten listens, but that feels a little short to me.

It can work the opposite way too. For example, in the bunch of metalcore/deathcore reviews (ok 3, I don't have that many... I'm kind of procrastinating on the 'New Age of Corruption' review just because it's really average and bland so I don't even feel like writing a review to slam it... it's hovering between a 50-65% because there are some nice groovy riffs and a bunch of ok solos) I've listened to every one of those around 30 times in order to be objective rather than going with my emotional gut reflex to just bash it. In the case of 'Shadows Are Security' and the Impending Doom debut, it wasn't bad and they were both enjoyable albums. However after reviewing killswitch engage's 'The End of Heartache' I almost went insane. It didn't help that half the time I would just tune it out and have it become background music which would make me think in the sense of fairness i should listen to it again. I generally agree with the 30 rule for genres I don't review often, though I might be able to cut it to 15 if I know the genre well.

I always listen a minimum of 5 times as well as while I'm reviewing, and have it play over and over again until the review is finished, but sometimes don't review an album until I've heard it 20 or more times. Even albums that I don't like or absolutely hate I try to listen to at least 5 times attentively, to really notice things and understand it rather than going on the emotional response, as someone mentioned.

That point about never changing your opinion about a review, say that to the prolific reviewers here who have been reviewing for years.

The last thing this site needs is more redundant reviewers dude. Also if you get a reputation as a bad reviewer, you won't be taken seriously. Take the extra time to listen to the music and formulate your review that way.

With albums that I hate, I don't tend to listen to them too much just because I hate them so much. But for everything else I've been getting really good at letting them sink in with time before reviewing. Although this had the effect of making it so I barely ever review anymore, as I am always playing albums at least 15 times or something before I finally pen one down. The only exception is when someone gives me a promo or something to review, in which case I get a review out faster to let people know faster.

The guy spent the entire review ranting about the album title and cover, about how it wasn't as brutal. It had to be the most pointless piece of shit I've ever read.

That review was written by J_S himself.

^ I'm not going to lie, I laughed at the irony.

Impossible to answer, really.
Ex.
The first 5 times you listen to an album it's the greatest thing ever. After that you realize its flaws and that it's going to get old quickly. After 2 years you listen to it again and start to love it again.

All in all you could write three different reviews with three completely different opinions depending on which "state of mind" you write it.

This is very true, and why you just have to take reviews at face value. You can't trust them as some kind of gospel, or as some kind of mirror of the reviewer's overall taste. Sometimes peoples' tastes are just inconsistent.

I would say probably 20+ times for me. I'm a casual reviewer, though, so I buy the music and after enjoying it (or hating it and burning it) for quite some time I feel i can adequately convey my opinions on the album. But I digest music at an incredibly slow rate compared to the professional reviewers/bloggers on here so that depends on the person.

I think a minimum number is really stupid, honestly. I had a Dagon review that got lost before it was posted, and I listened to the album no more than two or three times before writing it. Frankly, that was plenty enough to get everything out of it that I was going to. If I had to torture myself enough to listen to it thirty fucking times I'd shoot myself. Maybe it's because I've always been a more conversational reviewer than a clinical or analytical reviewer, but the notion of listening to each album some absurd amount of times is unfathomable to me. If I really like an album, I might listen to it twice a day for a few days, but I have this thing where I have to listen to at least a different album every once in a while or I'd go insane. No way y'all listen to everything thirty goddamn times.

I've probably run through my all time favorite albums a hundred times or so, but by comparison, let's look at an album I've rated very highly. Let's say, Unearthly Affinity by Impurity. I listened to that probably seven or eight times before writing it, and it wasn't because I was preparing a review. I listened to it seven or eight times across six or seven days and wondered "Hey, I have a bit to say about this album, I wonder if I could crank out a review for it?", and so I did. I've listened to it since, and my opinion and general thoughts haven't changed. Did I need to listen to it twenty more times? Fuck no.

I don't think that it's the number of times that you listen to the album, it's how much attention you're giving to those listens. I could listen to an album twenty times, letting it go in one ear and out the other, and still have nothing to say in a review- however, if I were to listen to the same album maybe three times, paying careful attention to it and trying to understand all its nuances and what they mean, I could probably hammer out a review in twenty minutes.

That being said, I think nine times out of ten it's impossible to judge all of the characteristics of an album properly after only one listen, no matter how thorough. So three's generally the bare minimum for me.

I haven't really been writing reviews, even though I intended to. I have two, but really, I don't think I'm all that good at describing how things sound. I know that it takes time, but I'm not sure if I'll ever get the quality that some legendary reviewers here have, so I haven't been reviewing things.

In all honesty I don't think that anyone who posts here is really an amazingly naturally talented writer, but the big names have done it a LOT and know how to write metal reviews very well at this point. It just takes time and practice.

Tell me about it...

I just think that you "feel" when you are ready to write a review. It's either because you played an album once and it blew your mind, or you only finished listening to it to tell the world how an awful experience that was.

You might want to listen to it again while writing the review, just to see if you haven't missed anything important to say, like which songs are better and stuff like that.

A year.

I guess magazines should review albums a year after release then huh?

It would be interesting to read occasional follow-ups for select releases. Besides, are zine writers immune to opinion changes?

There's no real standard as it really, really depends on the album. Generally speaking, though, I think about 7-10 listens should be sufficient to grasp an album's core, sometimes less, sometimes more. Darkthrone albums, for example, usually take a while to get into for me, while something like Kawir is easier to grasp from the go.

pretty sure I've done some reviews on my first listen, btw 8) Generally crappy eps when I'm really bored. I did one review by a (now deleted) Drone band, in 8 minutes! I was only halfway through the second song