Thanks fellas! I've put my reorder in a playlist and I think it works well enough, the only real issues being that I just do not like "Sleeping Stars" or "Death and the Healing" at all, and "Sadness and Hate" only has the odd part I enjoy, so I feel like no matter where I put those, I won't be happy. A re-edit would be fun though, I'd be really interested in hearing it if you do such a thing.

Read your Lancer review, BH, thought it was quite good. I'd only heard a few songs (and was, of course, inspired to do so by the album artwork), but the vibe I got from them is just as you describe the album. That last line in the review about all of those qualities from those classics and removing them to make Lancer made me laugh out loud. Hahah

The Carolus Rex review by Napero is one very, very enjoyable read detailing some historical context to the themes. I would have liked to have seen him put a little bit more in the way of musical description on the review but I recommend it for fans wanting to know about Sabaton.

Hehe, thank you. Considering the combination of your username and the rant part of the review, I must say I'm slightly surprised for the kind words. You're quite right about the thinness of the musical description, BTW.

The review assumes you've already heard some Sabaton. If you have, it gives a fairly accurate musical picture of the album.

The review amazed me because it really made me want to hear the album, despite already knowing that I wasn't much of a Sabaton fan. And when I heard it, surprise, I didn't like it all that much. Still, the review does an excellent job of doing what it sets out to do.

http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/S ... 44/Subrick

The first review of the new Suffocation album, written by, of all people, me.

That's annoying, stop self promoting your reviews, it's pretentious as hell.

Yeah, seriously. This thread is for discussing reviews, not pointing at yourself while shouting, "LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!"

Empyreal's review of Mysterium was a good read. I especially enjoyed the descriptive writing in the third paragraph. He doesn't get overtly in-depth when talking about specific songs, but he used enough detail to give me a sense of the song, bearing in mind I'm already familiar with the album. The length was just right, too, and on a more personal note, thank you for divvying up the paragraphs into readable sections; I have terrible eyes and huge chunks can give me headache.

It's a funny story about the paragraph sizes. When I used my old desktop computer on my early reviews, the paragraphs looked right when I crammed a bunch of words and sentences in, and then when I posted them here, they showed up as huge, block-wall texts of paragraphs. But on my laptop they just looked big enough already, and then I'd post the reviews and the paragraphs would be really small. But I like it now.

Thanks for the read! It's a good album and should be checked out.

Ilwhyan's Shining review is a pretty good read. And it was about time someone bashed them bluntly. Nice one mate!

Thanks. There's more to come, for sure!

I'm actually more partial to the recent Liturgy Renihilation review. Like a monstrous parody of Hunter Hunt-Hendrix's ego through an ANUS grinder. After reading that, if someone ever mentions "burst beats" to my face it will take all of my mental strength not to whack him with a tire iron.

That review in a nutshell: we fight pretentiousness with more pretentiousness. Liturgy or whatever sucks, but reviews like that are annoying.

I loved it, personally. I thought it did a great job illustrating just how fucking ridiculous that dude's attitude about his fairly by-the-numbers band is.

He just needed to add "like" every 5 words and it would've been golden.

I thought it was more of a tongue-in-cheek mockery than pretentious myself. I think for me it works because he stays in character throughout.

Then again, I dig reading the weirder reviews out there, for better (in this case) or worse.

We have a winner!

Yeah, that's the point of the whole review; taking the piss out of Liturgy and their douche-to-end-all-douches singer through his own bloated sesquipedalian writing/talking style.

I can't comment on his blog fromthedustreturned, so I'll do it here instead: Big thumbs up to autothrall, who writes the most informative, constantly high quality metal-reviews I've ever read. I enjoy them a lot, even if my opinion differs occasionally from his, but I can always comprehend what makes him rate albums the way he does...

Bwahahahaha! Classic. Thumbs up for bashing that douche-to-end-all-douches to a tiny bloody pile of pulp. I'm sure his douchiness will transcend existence itself.

My thoughts exactly. Really, I even want that Hunter douchebag to send Ilwhyan a response just so he can post it here

Eh, I didn't like it much. Reviews should tell me about the music, not the stupid ideologies of the band members. There's a place for parody and satire, but when it's at the expense of solid description I don't want it.

Thank you all for the feedback and critique. I wrote the review mainly for the purpose of having a good laugh, and hoped that those reading it would find it amusing. The musical analysis suffers from the style I chose, and I consciously decided not to bloat it further with meticulous description of the music. I think the album's nature warranted it - the album is definitely more a concept than a musical piece, so mostly just laughing at how ridiculous the concept is seemed appropriate. I didn't imagine for a second that I was writing an excellent review as such.

So, I'm glad many of you enjoyed it, but I doubt I'll be writing anything like that soon. Liturgy is a bit of a special case.

One of the best reviews I've read in a while: http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/S ... 74/Ilwhyan

The first two paragraphs are a comprehensive summary with enough musical reference to point out exactly what I remember. The detailing is insightful, hitting the nail on the head on every point about the band's unfortunate tendencies and how they fail to play out the theme they're going for in an enjoyable way. I am impressed because it's more or less what I thought about the album/band, and the writing points out a lot of things that I didn't even think of. Bravo!

---

This one lacked substance, but one thing stood out: http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/H ... /Metal_Jaw

My main gripe with this album is that the songs themselves don't stick they way they should. It's basically just thrashing for thrash's sake and sometimes the band gets lost in themselves. The result: unmemorable songs.

The review is laden with lame thrash-speak, praising it while saying very little about the music itself or the album/songs. This sentence tells me that it's a thrash fan who loves everything thrash and has very little to offer beyond talking about how an album thrashes, much like the stereotypical prog fan can talk purely about prog elements. It's tough to take much away from an overwhelmingly positive 85% review when there's this little caveat that the songs are unmemorable, with a suggestion that it's pretty aimless. What's the point of a review if it's going to gloss over a critical point?

---

This one's a noodle-scratcher: http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/W ... etal_Grail

Back then there was lots of repeat too, but an emotional thunderbolt gave that one a momentum that goes begging this time around. Remember, I’m comparing Jari to Jari here. Any other band and this would be outdoing themselves. Jari can do better.
“Darkness and Frost” is a genuine first. An almost Jari filler. I said almost. You can tell by the desperate sampling. But “Time” is redemption time. Because remember what I just said about the emotional thunderbolt missing this time around? Well it’s back. And the interchange of clean and growl and choirs have never sounded so piercing and powerful. This is a whole sky of storm clouds.
To me it just sounds like a jamming speed hump until the anguished chorus blast beats things back into the kind of beautiful misery only genius knows.

It's a lame track-by-track that makes a lot of nonsensical analogies and has way too many sentence fragments. The entire review is just worshipping the guy and mentioning his name every few words, yet it says very little about the music.

http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/H ... windir2245



There could not possibly be a more ill-fitting way to open a review for this album than this

http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/Chaos_Synopsis/Art_of_Killing/362169/Indoomstrial_metle

Hate to be a whiner, but does anyone else hate it as much as do when people start reviews like these?



No shit? Is that what these things are?

This is priceless.

Yeah, his reviews are 3 pointers at best, they're really bad. Not sure I would approve a similar review. He's comparing his opinion with the the ones of the other reviewers and the musical description is quite low.

Evidently the band requested quite a few reviews for that album. Even I have gotten one (which I'll be doing very soon), and I'm hardly an experienced reviewer.

That was a hard one to accept, admittedly. I mean, it's bad, but I guess it fulfills the criteria. Though my favorite line is actually



Even stupid people can fumble their way to acceptability sometimes

Reviewers that only stumble their way to acceptability could do themselves some good by getting feedback on their writing.

There are actually some mistakes in this new Chaos Synopsis review. Here comes the biggest one: "Son of Light" is not about Jesus or about religion but about the Brazilian serial killer Febrônio Ferreira de Mattos. His killings were inspired by a religious vision he had but this is a fact and not meant to criticize christianity or Jesus Christ at all. A small look on the lyrics would have helped before writing down that review.

They even provide a digital booklet along with the music ...

That's minor compared to your calling it a death metal album. Really? I don't actually even think it qualifies as death/thrash.

I don't have any particular (approved...) review in mind, but a few stupid and worn expressions are getting tedious, especially when it comes to reviewing black metal: using the word "horde" when discussing a band, "ritual" as a replacement word for song, etc.

Pretentious bullcrap is getting old. Your heroes do not live in a crypt in a castle and sleep among the corpses, they eat a Big Mac once a week and fart loudly for comedic purposes while watching Die Hard on DVD and drinking beer.

Black metal bands' pages are full of that stuff. Horna's site, for example... Temple (homepage), craft (bio), rituals (live shows), spells (disco), icons (band), script (mail).

'Quintessence' sounds nothing like Celtic Frost, dammit!

Yeah, Triumphant Gleam and Beholding the Throne of Might are the To Mega Therion worshiping songs off Panzerfaust, not Quintessence.

I'd like to give props to Empyreal for his excellent review of Stratovarius's Nemesis. This album has completely exceeded my modest expectations. I've been hard on Strato in the past, but Nemesis is just excellent and the fanfare is completely deserved. I'm seriously starting to think it's the best thing they've ever done.