Like 7 hours or so. Its just pencil, nothing fancy.

No no xlxllxx he's right, they're both pretentious douches.

Says the guy who stated that he wouldn't take my opinions seriously anymore because I gave a negative review to a song he posted on the mini-review game.

Everyone here is a pretentious douche. Even me.

Most definitely not. Pretentious douches here are, for the most part, the exception rather than the rule.

Stop taking everything so seriously.

To be fair, I was correct.

noktorn often had this thing going where when he was being sarcastic or humourous he suddenly refrained from using punctuation or capitalisation see for example the comment section here

I will stop when you take the frowning away from my cold, dead eyebrows!

Correct about what? Judging a person's entire character based on a single statement?

That's..... Really fucking annoying, man.

Yes.

Try explaining it to the other metal sites like MetalMusicArchives.

Wow, speaking of people who spout rushed, baseless crap.....

Butthurt idiots who couldn't keep up with this board's rule enforcement (which was also rather hard for me to get used to in the beginning, I must admit). Enforcement which, by the way, isn't nearly as bad as people say unless you're used to consciously act like a jackass and get away with it.

man, stop talking for a bit. Go outside/kiss a person of your preferred gender/play with your genitalia/just give it a break man, no one will give you as much crap if you're not posting in the ffa every 5 seconds.

You seem to assume I'm angry (which I'm not). Also, so far, only one person has "given me crap" as you say, but yes, I seem to be suffering of excessive boredom tonight.....

*sigh*

Sorry.

*stands on chair to shout over childish bickslappering*

Actually I've never heard Tulimyrsky! I probably should, though! Havitetty is the only Moonsorrow album I've spent any reasonable time with, I think! I'll try looking into more of their catalogue soon! Also, I think this is one of the few times I've noticed our taste in metal actually overlap! Strange but true! Maybe I'm just wrong or something!

Hey everyone, let's listen to some Impious Baptism!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8I4Mi15NlI

I'll have to collect some further data but I think it's almost impossible to average more than 5 posts a day and not seem like a complete spazz.

BastardHead wrote a pretty sweet review of Manilla Road fans.

Calm the fuck down everyone, I'm drunk and y'all loud.

Calm down chief, I'm just fuckin' playin' with ya.

Tony, this is where you pull out your MA mod issue pistol and fire it at the ceiling.

He doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about, though. I mean, yeah they're not too popular in this country, but in certain parts of Europe they're pretty fucking big. They've headlined multiple fests there. They're DEFINITELY not a Metal Archives phenomenon like Timeghoul, though obviously the internet has contributed to their popularity.

Amen. All style, no substance.

I really don't give two fucks about the Manilla Road fanbase, and I can't imagine why he would either. I never actually made it to any music-talk in the review.

There's like, one and a half paragraphs of fanbaiting, the rest is entirely musical description. Granted, I could have made it clearer that their popularity doesn't irritate me, it's the fact that they're (to borrow a phrase) a "manufactured sacred cow" and they're met with seemingly unconditional worship from an extraordinarily vocal, if compact, fanbase. It seems like every complaint I have about the band is handwaved away with a snarky "You just don't get it", like you must obviously be a simpleton if you don't understand the vast beauty of Manilla Road. There are always these esoteric, non-specific qualities of magnificent imagery and moodiness and atmosphere and such that are thrown around whenever a circle jerk starts to form when really everything I've listened to has seemed to me like pretty straightfoward, hard rocking heavy metal. I swear The Road Crew talks up the band with made-up or imagined qualities to make them sound so much more interesting on paper than they actually are in execution.

For what it's worth, I revisited The Deluge finally and it's really, really good. I'm still not a fan of Shelton's voice but at least the vocals have some power behind them on that album.

STYLE OVER SUBSTANCE! LIKE THE BANDS I LIKE!

The first two and a half paragraphs were excruciating to read, so I stopped. Maybe there are some of these fans you've encountered out there but I'm not one of them, and I haven't seen much of it here. I openly welcome criticism of the band because I enjoy dissenting opinions just GET TO IT ALREADY. I actually said in the H/S/P thread upon hearing The Grey God Passes for the first time that I thought the vocals sounded unfinished/rushed, like they were a guide track or something.

Their last two albums are, unquestionably by my personal standards, the weakest they've ever put out. The thing is I don't look to them for perfect albums anymore. I truly believe Spiral Castle was the last one Mark had in him. With that being said he's what, like pushing 60? And still churning out albums I find highly enjoyable (though by no means perfect, or even close). I don't know many other bands whose 13th, 14th, and 15th albums are even LISTENABLE let alone worth spending my money on.

Yeah, OK, I didn't really mind the musical description in your review and all, but come on; just because you don't see the band the same way as others (and while using the 'I don't really hate them" thing as a defense), doesn't mean everyone else is just making shit up now.

Of course not, I even say that established fans can probably peel apart more layers than I can and can probably take more away from any given album than I can, since I can't for the life of me hear these vague things intangibles that the fans can. But what do you want from me, to not review it from my own perspective? This is how I see it, this is how I hear it and interpret it, I don't hear the grandiose superlatives. Take that last sentence in my original quote as a jab, but the first sentence I stand by 100%.

FUCK yes. Still waiting with baited breath for the full length album... also the roses are in the mail Starmere

I better be invited to the wedding.

I wish I could sig this.

So apparently a year from now I'm gonna be teaching kids as a career. Whodathunk it, I certainly didn't?

I wouldn't trust filth like you teaching my children mate.

Not at all. Plenty of musical description, and the fan thing was pretty accurate too. A good review all round

I pretty much see eye to eye with BH when it comes to Manilla Road, I think a good way of seeing it would be to look at something like Wintersun's newest. It's fucking horrible no doubt, but when people like it and talk about the majesty and epic nature of it, I can recognise that they're stupid and think that the pathetic synthphonic bullshit is something of artistic worth. I disagree, but I can see what they are seeing. With Manilla Road, I hear a very straight ahead, stomping riffs and galloping genuine balls out heavy metal band, where the love for them gets a little bit annoying is how for the life of me I can't recognise any of the impressive aspects that they always get praised for, whether it's the ridiculously specific atmospheres and imagery people speak of, or just more esoteric claims of moodiness or a mysterious nature. If people simply spoke of them as a band they love because of big stomping riffs and hooks, I could get that, I wouldn't agree, but at least I'd be able to identify what they're hearing, but with Manilla Road it's never that simple.

Man nobody gives a shit that you don't like Manilla Road, really. They're a niche band, you're not special for not liking them. The thing that has cheesed people off about the review is the fact that you're 1) talking out of your ass about a band whose career you fully admit to only being passingly familiar with, and 2) seem to get perverse glee out of directly insulting "The Road Crew". Gargoyle bore the shit out of me too, but you don't see me getting pissy about their niche popularity and taking potshots at you and Crick and their other fans. Different strokes and all that. I can acknowledge that there's something in their music that really really appeals to some people that I'm just never going to appreciate, without calling them liars for saying it's there.

Basically, unless you actually know what you're talking about, keep it about the music.

The review is about the music, the score is based on the music, there's just also a related diatribe that relates to the band's fanbase. I'm only passingly familiar with the band's career as a whole, fair enough. Perhaps my snipes at the fans over the years have been uncalled for, but the review features me scratching a huge itch I have that is, in the end, relatable to an overarching theme within the review. The non-musical aspects of my review are used to show the perspective I'm coming from and to give a little history from the seemingly rare reviewer who doesn't worship the ground the band walks on. I'm not so arrogant to claim my review is perfect and everybody who doesn't like it is just a butthurt little fanboy, because I'm really not as much of a cock as I seem to be at times, but I do have enough of an ego to say that spending 15% of the review explaining the background of the band and my views on said background and the accepted perception of the band and its confusing supporters fits perfectly with the rest of it.

Your bullet points are completely valid, but my only rebuttals to them are A) Hearing five albums out of sixteen doesn't seem like much, but it's pretty widely accepted that the albums I heard are from distinctly different periods of the band, I've heard the major aspects I need to hear in order to understand, and B) Yeah I'm a bit of a dick when it comes to taking shots at incredibly loyal fans, not much I can say to defend that other than "deal with it".

Haha review struck a nerve. I didn't understand much of what the "atmosphere" and "mysticism" tags had to do with Manilla Road until "The Fires of Mars" clicked with me really fuckin hard out of nowhere, and I guess I've had no problem accepting it since then. Sucks that BH doesn't get it but maybe someday he will?

he just doesn't get it maaaaan.

That argument genuinely pisses me off. Blaming the listener for not understanding some intangible bullshit instead of the musician for making less than compelling music will ALWAYS make you seem like an utter moron.

I am a pretty big moron, if you're responding to me.