New Vader came out yesterday. Whattaya know a review by autothrall 19 min later. Anyone else just click the back button once they see certain user names?

What the hell's wrong with autothrall? He gives, short, to-the-point summations. Certainly the best of all the prolific reviewers on the site, aside from Noktorn. The tone you're giving off is that you dislike autothrall specifically because he writes a lot of reviews, which is dumb.

i dislike Perplexed_Sjel and there are many grounds but the very reason that i don't like him is fact that he likes Neige's band such as Alcest

autothrall great, but.. i can't imagine why he likes deathspell omega

What a strange post, indeed. As if anyone was forced by some gravity-like force to read reviews by some specific user. Odd.

How about, say, not reading them? I personally like autothrall, especially since he has a damn good taste when it comes to my favourite genres.

Yeah, it's really quite the opposite for me, because I read pretty much every review autothrall and some other good and prolific reviewers write, while normally I don't bother with the less known writers because, a) very often they suck and b) I'm not familiar with their tastes, so the review won't really help me. For example, the Vader review you were talking about, if it was written by some unknown dude, but had the same score and praised the album to the skies, I probably wouldn't bother to check it out, but because it was written by autothrall, a reviewer whose taste and opinions I trust, I'm much more likely to give the album a listen. Though to be fair, in this case I would anyway, because it's Vader.

I'd suggest turning on whatever version of Word you have and start honing your own reviewing skills if this is your attitude. I'd be more than happy to see some new blood start putting their take on albums up on here.



Why do I get the feeling that I just got kicked in the balls with an iron boot? (kidding)

On a serious note, this thread seems a tad bit like jealousy because autothrall is on top more so than anything else, unless the opening poster would like to elucidate on what exactly is wrong with autothrall's reviews. I'll give credit where credit is due, the guy makes a good point and he does it in a nice, concise package, rather than writing a novel.

But I like writing a novel.

As for the topic, I don't really see the point of criticising another reviewer for posting too many reviews. I don't agree with all of authothrall's reviews by a long shot, but they are nearly always well-written and contain sensible argumentation. Even then, you can always just not read the review if you don't want to.

There are certain prolific reviewers that I really don't like, but I won't call them out. As for Autothrall, I like his reviews, but I think if he slowed down they would be even better. For the quantity of reviews he does they are very high quality, but to be honest I would rather quality over quantity. I don't know how he does it. He has so many fucking reviews. There are a few things I disagree with him on (like pretty much any other reviewer) but overall I think Perplexed_Sjel has great taste in black metal.
edit - speaking of perplexed_sjel does anyone know what happened to him? He has only made like 5 reviews since the start of 2011.

Autothrall is one of my favorite reviewers to read. One of his qualities I like besides his description/quality in general is the uniformity in his paragraphs; in almost all the reviews I've read written by him, each paragraph is well-formatted and uniform, which is a good quality to have.

I don't believe the user Spiner202 is that prolific on this website (he currently only has 10 reviews), but you should look into reading some of his reviews. They're very good (for someone you probably will not hear mentioned all-too-much), and our tastes practically mirror one another (which was the reason I started reading his reviews originally).

ConorFynes. All of his reviews are garbage, and he does them in bulk.

Well, I won't speak for him, but he seems to have been in a predominantly non-metal listening phase for quite some time now, which may have something to do with it.

As a staffer, it's generally not meet that I "just click the back button." Do I ever want to? Certainly, but I'm more likely to have that reaction based on whatever band/album is being reviewed, rather than its authorship.

There are many awful review submissions (and a few notable repeat offenders) that make the material that Oven Fodder-mongers like to get histrionic about seem like thesis-quality writing, but as a user, you will never see most of them. I suppose there are a small number of writers that are able to technically avoid express violation of any of the essential requirements for acceptability while still managing to produce decidedly questionable work (I name the example of one SoulSeekJay, a user from the past that one or two of you may recall). If I am to be frank, we tend to eventually just start rejecting most of what these people write, guidelines or no, after a while (I again point to SoulSeekJay as an example).

Such cases aside, there are very, very few genuinely poor regular reviewers, and even those that there are tend to run into problems more because they insist on reviewing particular types of releases as opposed to something stemming from their writing itself. I will say, however, that it's my personal opinion that the hierarchy of nobility, as decided organically by public opinion, is a bit.........skewed, in many ways. But of course, I suppose that is the nature of an open reviews site; one takes the Ligottis with the Koontzes, as there is not really any better way. Taking that attitude may be beneficial for your impression of the overall quality of this site's reviews.

Gotta admit I'm getting a bit sick of Autothralls's ubiquity -there was a chat on #metal a while ago about whether it was more than one person, who knows? But he's not a bad writer by any means.

The simple thing is though is that the more reviews you write, the easier it gets, so that's just how it goes, I guess. Consider writing more reviews yourself, if you're sick of the writing style of the more prolific people.

Just one person.

On my blog site, there are a handful of other people who occasionally contribute (for example, one guy is currently writing a pile of ISIS reviews), but those that I post here are only mine.

I`m just glad there`s a few people who give up most of their free time to help give at least some idea what an album sounds like. Nothing more frustrating than checking on a new found band to find there`s no reviews (and there`s thousands that need some).

I`ve written a few and find it mentally taxing, it`s helped my grammar though (the mods have helped my grammar I should say). Why not just simply skip a reviewer?

Surprised people complain about too many by one person hope they don`t lose heart because of this.

Good to know that the mods are doing what your school should have done in the first place.

Depends on where he's from, really.

I'm pretty sure that he comes from an English-speaking country.

Would you prefer there be no reviews for the title?

Frankly, the fact that autothrall noticed the CD and gave it a review should be counted as a positive, not a negative. If not for prolific reviewers like him, many of these CDs would go unreviewed entirely.

Careful what you wish for. Personally I don't have the time nor the inclination to review most of this stuff. So if you're waiting for a review from those of us who need to limit our involvement (pesky things like jobs and families getting in the way), you might want to grab a cup of coffee and wait for awhile...

Just saying.

The OP is just a hater. If you don't like someone's review, don't read it. Typically, most big albums have numerous reviews, so you have reviews from less and more common voices- so if you don't like someone's reviews there are other options.

I generally always look forward to reviews by autothrall, Empyreal, caspian, hells_unicorn, and a few others.

OP jus mad cuz he bad

I totally don't get the OP's point here.

Yeah, it seems like he chooses quantity over quality. I especially didn't like his review of Cobalt's Gin. Its one of those albums that you have to let grow on you. The first time I heard it I didn't really like it, but now two years later it is probably my favourite black metal album. He obviously just listened to it once, and I get the feeling he does that with all his reviews. Some albums you need to listen to more than once before reviewing.

This is actually my main gripe with a few of the more active reviewers. Often, reviews will appear days after a leak and before the actual release, meaning that the reviewer hastily formed his opinion after listening to a leaked version a few times. I might be a bit conservative in this, but I generally only want to review stuff I know through and through.

I know for a fact that several of our most productive writers get advance promo copies of albums, possibly months ahead of release dates. So many of them have actually had a chance to listen to an album dozens of times even if it was released yesterday.

It's also a question of productivity. If you write one or even several reviews a day, I highly doubt each release has gotten a fair amount of listening time. Granted, this isn't always necessary, but some albums can truly take ages to get into.

This can't be stressed enough. Often up to three months in advance. For instance, I have several physical and digital promos (from labels and PR guys) for November already. It's been that way as long as I can remember, from doing a physical 'zine briefly in the 90s.

In the case of the specific review the OP mentioned, there are other sites that had their reviews up weeks before mine, well before the physical product released.

Examples:
http://www.angrymetalguy.com/vader-welc ... ch-review/ (August 1st)
http://www.sonicabuse.com/2011/07/vader ... um-review/ (July 20th)
http://www.extremeresponses.com/2011/07 ... me-to.html (July 31st)

I generally get promos 2-3 months before the actual release via The Metal Observer, primarily in digital form though in about 65% of cases I can later procure a physical promo from them after the fact.

Well there's nothing wrong with Neige or anything he's done so that's pretty stupid.

Some reviewers I dislike but I will just not read their review. It is very easy to skip over reviews by reviewers you dislike here, so I do not get how the OP has a problem with some reviewers. How can you dislike a reviewer based solely on the quantity? Autothrall is one of the better writers on this site. He is very good at articulating his thoughts into fairly concise reviews and makes it easy to read without trying to be overly-intellectual sounding like some reviewers here. The reviews I shy away from reading are the ones that are long and I have to read slowly as they utilize quite an intellectual vocabulary.

I don't think I would describe autothrall as one of the best reviewers on this site. I would say that he is (maybe by far) the best writer out of the small group of heavily prolific reviewers, but there are much better writers, for my tastes, that do not post as frequently. Granted, this also depends on what you look to get out of from a review. I generally look to myspace to tell me whether or not I want to buy something, and I look to reviews if I want to expand my insight on a particular release. My reviews are in no way intended to be of the "buy or die" type of silliness. Rather, I try to extrapolate meaning and understanding from a work and try to explicate its intricacies while placing it within a broader spectrum of meaning. So if you're just looking to figure out whether or not you want to check out an album while putting in minimal 'intellectual' energy into it, then you probably would be shying away from my reviews.

Yes, I agree with this. In my reviews, I also intend to expand a bit on the concepts behind the music. I thought this turned out rather well in my Peste Noire review at least. This is why I won't often write a recommendation in the sense of '(don't) buy/download this album', and it's also why I'm generally uncomfortable with giving out scores. Analysing stuff from this angle makes it difficult to attach a simple number to a release.

Yeah, I've recently taken to doling out scores only in 5 point increments. It's almost as though the 100 point scale is too specific.

As a reviewer on this site, I can't really say I dislike any reviewers because they are nice enough to site down and write something out but I do choose certain ones over others. With that said, I have a feeling that mine get skipped over a ton. Haha

He's bad, but not that bad. I'd take many, many other reviewers over him, but reading his stuff isn't like pulling teeth, sometimes, anyway. Reading thirty reviews in a row of his, because he submits them in bulk like you said, is a major pain the ass, however.

I get what the OP means. But I don't share the hate or anything.
Certain reviewers I just don’t read because I either disagree a lot with ‘em or I just don’t like their style. There are a few reviewers I indeed skip for either one of even both these reasons. When discussing autothrall I have to admit he’s omnipresent at the moment and when I disagree with him on certain releases his reviews get on my nerves since the arguments he often uses to discard things are quite often precisely the reason I love somethin. Making it more obvious there is no such thing as an objective review.
However the releases on which we agree, he reviews it so eloquently I actually like reading them. He surely is one of the best here i.m.o.

I barely wrote 3 accepted reviews so far, and just those 3 took me forever to get done. In fact, I'm working on about 6 more reviews that I'm mostly fixing the organization of, and all of this has been taking me the past 3 months (and it'll probably take another 2 more months now that I'm busy). So, considering Autothrall is a fucking legend at insta-submitting those wonderfully written reviews, I would actually appreciate his talents rather than get pissed at it. :S

Autothrall's reviews are great mostly because like hells_unicorn, he reviews across all subgenres and seems to understand the nuances and individual aspects of the style of metal he is reviewing.

Except for deathcore, which he seems to universally trash even when it's a masterpiece.

Write more, morbert! I think it's nigh time I eked out a new review.

As for the OP, the only mass reviewer worth a damn is autothrall. The rest should stop.