Typically I agree, I mean I think Autothrall drops way to many 70's, but his reviews are solid enough, and his scores don't change that. Yeah, the review is much more important than just the number at the top, but I feel that in that particular case the 0% is extremely at odds with the content of the review (At least Ultra Boris's explaination for his MoP review was fitting for a minimum score, even if you disagree). It just feels almost like you're trying to trigger a backlash deliberately on some level. With that said, no the points don't matter, and you have good points as usual in it, but the score was definitely used to attract some extra attention there.

Hand to god, I wasn't looking for attention with the 0%. It just occurred to me that if the album was as artistically bankrupt as I felt it to be, it made sense to receive a 0%. It's not something that I exactly have listed on my profile, but a 0% is reserved for albums that sort of offend me on an artistic level; if you look through the stuff I've rated 0%, that's a constant theme. The Sword was a cash-in on heavy metal revivalism, Dying Fetus cranked out an album of musical mad libs that showed complete disregard for the audience, The Agonist obsessively used an attractive singer and an irrelevant animal rights platform to market terrible music, etc. Like UltraBoris' review, 0% scores from me are designed to indicate something that's artistically bankrupt, manipulative, or utterly fake, regardless of the music's listenability. It cuts the other way, too: a 100% means something that I feel is an artistic triumph beyond a "mere" 90%+ album that transcends boundaries and emotionally impacts me in a significant way.

In brief: not attention seeking (though very easy and sensible to see that way,) ultimately based on a fairly consistent system.

Ah ok, that makes sense, I should give it another read some time with that mindset. I kind of read it before finishing every sentence thinking "And that means that it sounds horrible why?", so it might not irk me so much now.

If it pleases anyone still annoyed by that review: if I were to judge it on the sound alone, not taking into account anything but the music itself, I'd probably give it about a 40%. It's pretty boring, overlong, and structured in a really stilted, halting way, but it's not really offensively bad so much as uninteresting, and there's a riff I like here and there.

Good review, way more in depth then I would even think of going. I generally hate goregrind with a passion, but I actually think that album is really good. The drum machine definitely turns out to be a good thing.

You know, I just read Necroticism89's review of Metallica's St. Anger (the second one from the top to the bottom), and I gotta say that it's a pretty piss poor review. Don't get me wrong, because it's very well written. No, the actual problem lies within the fact that he gives the album a perfect score and then proceeds to basically say "this album would be much better recieved if half of it's content was different and it belonged to some other band". That's just not good reasoning, man.

Who else saw ReaperMan's use of quotation marks around review titles and also wanted to throw up?

Bwahaha he even messed them up on his Machine Head review.

Don't worry, I fixed it.

I don't mean to sound like a douche or anything, but shouldn't we just be allowed to have a comment section on reviews as a whole?

This thread serves that purpose, really. Or you mean the a thread about reviews in general? Fuck that.

True.

http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/M ... xx3kage3xx

Really? More bare bones than a dog bone.

I learned that Mirrorthrone is one of some guy's many projects, its songs aren't too long (which is good if I can't listen to long songs), and it uses an Oboe at one point. OH! And it has Female vocals in it somewhere (that makes it darker).

http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/O ... /philip777

People are getting away with a lot more these days, apparently.

I learned that Old Silver Key is a disappointing collaborative band between (a member each from both?) Alcest and Drudkh, whose label forces these two (men?) to conform to a new gender stereotype, and that they simultaneously set their sights too high and were comfortable with an old songwriting formula. OH! And the production values are rough.


(Honestly this one contains even less musical description than the last)

Thanks for these short summaries, xexyzl.

This is fun, I learn something new every day.

http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/T ... hosphorous

I detest this style of reviewing probably even more than Noktorn's overblown, narcissistic rants of himself.

Spanish Necrokillerskullfuckerers Teitanblood deliver an unholy rotting offering to great lord of darkness Satan with oozing razxorblade guitar destruction and the deathgrunt vokillz of a grim blaspheming necroskullfucker. Prepare for a trip to hell, to watch sinners burn in lakes of fire as this album starts. You will instantly be converted to satanism and start praising the dark lord Satan, because the album's anticosmic antitechnical anti-education death black/sinister metal/grind will enchant you and you won't be able to stop listening to this auditory creeping necrobarrage of destruction for days, because it's a grim and nekroskullfucking offering to the blasphemous necrogods of sonic blasphemy.

I hate press releases, too.

Gone.

Gone.

So after looking through that Killswitch Engage "Holy Diver" pinch harmonic thread, I was in the mood to read some reviews of the single, and I saw Empyreal's at the bottom. So of course I read it first, and I read until this:



So then I

I don't even remember that review.

In the reviewer's defense, it is quite an evil album. "Deathgrunt vokillz of a grim blaspheming necroskullfucker" is a bit much, though, as he's probably a stand-up guy in real life and works at the Spanish equivalent of K-Mart to fund Teitanblood (okay, probably not, but still, it's something to think about...).

The Faceless need more negative reviews. I should remedy this.

"Metalians in my high school were busy sporting erections for Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, and most had very little attention span or funds to explore the thrash genre much deeper. If you encountered a guy or gal with a Testament or Nuclear Assault t-shirt other than yourself, you were blown over by the prospect of a kindred spirit. Meet your new best friend."

I couldn't help but to be blown away by how little things have changed when I read this part from autothrall's Bathory review. That's literally exactly how iis when I see such people today. I've probably missed the acquaintance of knowledgable-about-metal people because the majority of those who wear Big 4 shirts don't know shit about it. I was surprised to even find one person in my entire school who knows who Toxik and Artillery are.

Many people seem to have an aversion to trying to find new bands to listen to. There was a huge gang of people in my old school who basically listened to Fade To Black and almost nothing else.

This exactly. I don't get it at all.

It's good to see Professor RH Zeingard back: http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/A ... 0/zeingard

Gotta stop hanging with normies.

In that case I should hang around this place more I guess

And we metalheads are the closedminded ones, right?

I hate to whine about this sort of stuff, but true that. The fact that WE are the ones labeled as close minded asshats in sweeping generalizations while a much bigger deal of so called "music listeners" enjoy living in fucking cans is something that I can't even BEGIN to comprehend.....

Every group is generalized in that way and it's not true of any of them...

I don't think it's that unagreeable. You do get those days when you want to hear something new, something fresh, but that's outnumbered by the times when you just want to put on some music that you know you'll dig without slogging through crap music for 45 minutes.

What are your guys' thoughts on this?

http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/I ... ll_In_Vain

For its size, it has an adequate amount of description and his writing style is interesting.

But...it's way too short.

It kinda seems like he only copy-pasted in the first quarter of his review. What is there isn't bad though.

But 'Blackwater Park' influence? Whatever you say boss . . .

He's referring to the acoustic passages that are sprinkled all over predominantly metal material. Resonance sounds like complete Opeth anyway.