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Tengan
Metal newbie

Joined: Tue May 21, 2013 6:09 am
Posts: 80
Location: Sweden
PostPosted: Mon Sep 02, 2013 9:59 am 
 

I have been around for a while now and I have grown quite curious on how different reviewers value different scores. It seems like some people gives every album they find even the least enjoyable an 80+ score and everything below is deemed utter worthless. I have been unable to find any general scoring guidelines or an old thread about this topic, but if they exist I would gladly be directed there. Now, on the matter, this is how i rate albums:

0-10: Worthless
20-40: Bad (in various degress)
50: Neither bad nor good
60-70: Good
80: Very good
90: Brilliant
100: Masterpiece

Of course, ratings such as good/bad are as subjective as they come, but I am still curious on how you would put an adjective on different scores.

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~Guest 76452
Metal freak

Joined: Mon Jul 31, 2006 8:40 pm
Posts: 4414
PostPosted: Mon Sep 02, 2013 12:30 pm 
 

This is my current rating system. After years of causing myself needless stress, this is the best I could come up with. I don't review anymore (and probably never will), but I still feel the compulsion to rate stuff.

95-100 = Excellent (all-time favorites)
85-94 = Very good (upper tier albums I play a lot)
75-84 = Good (lower tier albums, but still pretty good)
60-74 = Fair (tolerable, but not really good enough to care about - eg, "pleasant, but unmemorable")
40-59 = Mediocre (every good quality is counteracted by an equally bad one - eg, "mechanically solid, but boring")
0-39 = Garbage (not worth the waste of my time)

75 or higher = worth buying (I have the 75-100 bracket split up into 3 tiers, which makes rudimentary grading fairly simple). 60-74 I'll only bother with if I'm a fan of the band (or such albums are good enough to keep on mp3/FLAC only). I may still keep CDs like that if I have sentimental ties to it. Anything lower can die in a fire! :)

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Zodijackyl
63 Axe Handles High

Joined: Wed Apr 30, 2008 5:39 pm
Posts: 7601
Location: United States
PostPosted: Mon Sep 02, 2013 12:41 pm 
 

Everyone scores at their own rate. I am often amused by scoring rubrics in the profiles of people who have written one review, or even none. To me, the score is generally an afterthought, and I have tinkered with scores of past reviews as I see fit to put it in relation to other reviews. I have found that I generally have a few thresholds in my reviewing though.

80+ are albums that I tend to go back and listen to.
70-79 tend to be albums that I might occasionally listen to, usually good stuff with prominent flaws.
Going down from there, there are things that I might occasionally listen to when I'm in a certain mood or feel like I can get past certain flaws - Flames of Hell and Oral are examples of that.
<40 tend to be things that are either laughably bad or generally uninteresting and unable to keep my attention but with some interesting parts.

Once I get into the lower scores, a lot of the time it's really hard to differentiate between a 20% and a 0% because when something is bad, there are potentially redeeming factors that do nothing to redeem. Often, having a redeeming factor in completely unenjoyable music induces the frustration which leads to a 0% review - for example Summoning's LMHSYF, where the band managed to make both sides of the music, the black metal and the ancient synths, work well on albums before and after that one, but that album has sounded like shit to me for years.

I do consider review percentages to be mostly an afterthought - I have a pretty good idea, and before I start writing, I have a pretty good idea of the general range where I'd put it. I don't use percentages/scores on the ezine where I publish either.

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~Guest 226319
President Satan

Joined: Tue Apr 20, 2010 4:41 am
Posts: 6570
PostPosted: Mon Sep 02, 2013 10:40 pm 
 

For those curious, here was the old tepes system.

100 = good to great
0 = bad to terrible

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hakarl
Metel fraek

Joined: Sat Sep 29, 2007 1:41 pm
Posts: 8816
Location: Finland
PostPosted: Tue Sep 03, 2013 7:53 am 
 

I agree with the sentiment that 50 should be a watershed between good and bad. It's impossible to actually make accurate assessments on whether something in that area is more good than bad, obviously, and nobody should go to excessive lengths in trying to figure out the rating for those cases, since it's ultimately nothing but a number. But that ought to be the general guideline in ratings. Especially before, some users used 70% where the album was already quite poor in their opinion. Anything below 80%, in fact, was more or less negative to some reviewers, which is obviously absurd.

I try not to hand out the lowest possible scores too liberally even where an album is quite terrible on the whole. I want to award points even just for some positive elements, even if they don't shine through enough to make the entire listening experience any less painful. 0% should be the utter nadir, not merely something really, really botched (that usually ranges from a bit below 10 to the high 30s with me). 30% would have a lot of good in it, but nothing to save it on the whole.
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Napero
GedankenPanzer

Joined: Sun Jan 02, 2005 4:16 pm
Posts: 8817
Location: Finland
PostPosted: Tue Sep 03, 2013 11:24 am 
 

Scoring is one of my favourite things.

My scoring system:

100: Blind Illusion's The Sane Asylum. No others. Ever.
99: Reserved for future use, but nothing will ever really make it here, either.
98: Absolute classics. See Rigor Mortis or Stone.
97: Almost absolute classics, but not quite as absolute as the absolute ones. Almost there, but, like, on the threshold.
96: Darn good! Almost as close to classic as almost absolute classics, but still kinda standing on the driveway, but closer than the mailbox, though.
95: This is reserved for some special album. Don't know which one yet. Probably a classic.
94: Very, very good. These are the worst albums I'd go down on a ship with, but only if it was like in the middle of a sea with little chance of rescue, and it was frankly easier just to drown and/or there are sharks in the waters.
93: I'd just take a life jacket and dump these, to be honest, but I'd still miss them when a Angolan freight ship would pick me up, unless a shark ate me first.
92: I'd still wrestle a bear for these, but only if it was sleepy and not too heavily into fighting at the moment.
91: Intentionally left blank for want-to-know-only reasons, and you don't really want to know.
90: The final frontier of the bear area. I might attack a brown bear, but not a male grizzly for these, if I was armed with a classic Rambo knife with the compass, and Homer Simpson's home-made bear armor. Still damn good albums, these ones.

89: The pitiful things that barely fall short of making it to the 90 Club, usually due to missing that little something. Possibly just one more riff, or maybe cowbell. Or a spectacular wail in that one track that starts with that sample with that screaming by that woman in that one flick with the fellow with the knife in the house.
88: This number can never be given as a rating, because Hitler.
87: One short of a full Hitler, which means that this rating is a bit worse than...
...86: Since 1986 was a spectacular year, with both Challenger and Chernobyl exploding, and the water-tightness of Olof Palme's skin being compromised by that one guy with the ugly moustache who died before confessing, this actually counts as three steps more than it looks like, and therefore it's like seven levels better than 87.
85: This is the end of the truly good era, and everything is downhill from here onwards. Well, sure, it's been that so far, since the numbers are getting smaller, but this like a very good demo I got for free, or an album that I bought without the woman knowing about me spending money, and it's, like, totally good but not a classic.
84: Rather good, and I recommend buying this, if you get it for less than 11 €, or 12.30 € if shipping is included. You can pay more than that if you really like the genre, but then it must be a digipak.
83: The combination of an 8 and a 3 is quite ugly to behold, so I rarely use this rating, unless the album is kinda good, but in an annoying way, in which case, it's suitable to give a pretty good rating, but one that looks butt-ugly.
82: Worth 8.50 €, and a must-buy item only if you buy it directly from the band on a gig.
81: Power metal never scores higher than this, unless it's Iron Savior.
80: About 80% of metal is worse than this, except stuff from South America and German-speaking countries, and any albums that include banjo parts or grind fused with anything but death metal, because we don't really count those. Obviously. Except, well, Somewhere Along the Highway, which has banjo, but it's used in a sensible way, and scores way higher than this.

79: These fall short of the "pretty good but not excellent" category for obvious reasons. Usually it's a case of bad songs, a bad performance, or a bad album, and getting this far or even like seven rungs less is nothing to be ashamed of. Still not, like, that good.
78: Totally one point less than 79!
77: A symmetric number, quite intriguing to look at. If the scale was from 0 to 1000, this would be like 777, and it would get much more use, because I have this one Celtic Frost T-shirt with this number on in on the funky logo with so many things sticking out of it that you could not swallow it, and it would be very uncomfortable to smuggle in your underpants, too. This is a cutoff point in the "good-ish" and "good-esque" albums, obviously.
76: This is the end of the top quarter, and while there still is good stuff below this rating, especially if it's a self-released EP or something, it's sorta the last rating that is cool to get. It's like running a marathon and finishing, but then learning that all the Kenyans, and that one double amputee finished four and a half hours before, and even the guy running in that really heavy ancient diving suit and the idiot on the pogo stick beat you, but you still finished, and only puked like seven times, and your friends have already been to showers and are all like orchid-scented and offer you a shot of Jägermeister, but you still know that while they say otherwise, they think you're a fucking clown. But it's still a good album. Kind of.
75: To quote Pahkasika again, "only mediocrity is failure". This is still not mediocre, but a good album.
74: This is like settling on the seventh most good looking girl on the class. Yeah, there are tits and stuff, but also moles, and even the tits are like eggs, either hard-boiled, which is kinda good, or fried sunny side up, which is not that cool, especially if they are like only stapled to their respective places through the upper edges and make a flapping sound without a bra. Still, Kevin had it worse, his chick had Ugly Betty braces and you could hear the local Christian radio channel if she opened her mouth.
73: Once again, an ugly number, rarely used. Adds injury to insult.
72: Reminds me of a T-72, which gives me memories from 1990 and 1991. A good album, but nothing to write home about, which is a stupid figure of speech, because none of you stupid buggers ever make the effort to write a letter to your mom.
71: The last albums worth buying, and only if found in the bargain bin for like less than 3 €, or just to support the band on a live gig if there was stage diving and/or cheap beer.
70: This is really teetering on the edge above the chasm of mediocrity: one push, and they are gone. It's quite possible, however, that they just managed to climb up from there, and further spins are required, because they might turn up to 76 once you, like, get them. but no more than three spins, or four if it's an EP, and unless it gets considerably better, don't bother.

69: *giggle*
68: One step below 69... *giggle*... Like, 8-something... *giggle*...
67: The last bastion in the descent towards the lower two thirds. From here it's still possible to climb up to the respectable ranges, but get a real producer, and kick out the lead guitarist, because he's a Yngwie-wannabe with as much talent as that one guy in that one movie that counted those matches and then they made a lot of money in the bingo. Also, you need better cover art, like a wolf eating a camel, or maybe an armored dude slaughtering the cardinals with a three-chained war flail.
66: This was the random insta-kill slot in the old Rolemaster critical tables, and therefore counts as a 71, really.
65: The traditional retirement age in the Nordics. The symbolic value is immense. Get it? Durrr...
64: "Will you still love me, will you still shag me, when I'm SIXTY-FOOOUUR!"... The correct answer is, of course, "no". Pervert. Old people are not meant for that.
63: Anything above this is more than this.
62: Not very good any more. Might be good for an occasional spin, or as trade goods if the cover art is fancy. Tell someone it's really good, and maybe you'll get The Unspoken King in trade.
61: It's starting to get painful from here. This might have something salvageable left. Like that one part in the lyrics that was about the guy dressed as glow-in-the-dark skeleton in that old house with the broken windows, and those meddling kids.
60: Not even a cowbell can save this thing. Embarrassing.

59: We are entering the Twilight Zone here. This is where the best of Uwe Boll movies come to die. The scenery is one of sort of decay, buit not devastation, because like Uwe Boll movies, this can be half-enjoyed when totally drunk, and it certainly makes no difference if you pass out for ten minutes.
58: This kind of stuff is usually only enjoyed by hipsters and Danish people, and hydrocephalics. Usually involves either Gothic crap or blast beats made with free software and sounding like a laser machine gun in a 1966 BBC series on alien invasion of Yorkshire.
57: This cannot be discussed. Sorry.
56: Anything that resembles a sandwich that is sold for fifth of the original price because it was left in the glass case overnight and has tuna in it.
55: This is the stuff that resembles the broken compass that you have when you've been out boozing all day, but you don't get a hangover, but you're not sure if it will arrive later yet, and your stomach feels kinda funky. Usually your clothes smell of cigarette smoke, and you have dog crap on the sole of you left shoe. there might be a half-eaten döner kebab in the left pocket of your trench coat, so check that immediately.
54: Cold War era. Sounds like what the old grainy archive footage films from East Germany look like. Not to be loved, except for reasons of morbid curiosity. You don't want to stay around, either.
53: Mediocre. A dry tuna casserole lunch with overcooked cabbage on the side and no spices.
52: Still mediocre. The casserole was heated in the microwave, and is barely noticeably worse than yesterday.
51: Yet more mediocrity. This is really plain, but still better than silence, so it's like a jet airliner landing somewhere so far away that it's not really offensive or disturbing, but can be safely ignored, unless it's bad speed metal and the vocalist sounds like a 1960's Tupolev.
50: The most mediocre of the mediocre things. This is the King of Mediocre Things, and wears its crown in a mediocre way.

49: Below mediocre. Obviously. Like, this was almost mediocre, and failed that too, so neener-neener-neener! You fail at failing! Lamer!
48: If these guys tried really hard and added cowbell and a cover art of a mech tearing apart a maternity ward in Oklahoma, and had a really good producer that could make Lar$ play on time with all that cutting and pasting stuff, and everybody had like a totally very good day, they could just reach mediocrity. Maybe. Probably not, though.
47: There are reports of someone once having had sex this bad. Wasn't me, though. Probably involved red beets and a cricket bat.
46: Like watching a friend of your whom you really don't like that much trying to explain someone why he threw up in her rose bushes last night, and you kinda wish you were not there, because your mom might hear about it, but you can't go away, either, because that would be cowardice, and that chick with the pigtails from the Starbucks is just walking by. Not to be enjoyed, but perhaps tolerated for a little while to look Tr00.
45: Ur mom, LOL!
44: A religious experience. Probably like an Easter mass that takes 3.5 hours and the priest has trouble pronouncing the letter "t", or maybe getting up on Christmas Day morning at 7 am just to go to church. Religious experiences SUCK, man!
43: Already a bit painful. Like that irritating thing when you swallow too much cold water at one gulp, and it feels like a huge clump going down the throat, even though it's just a liquid, and should not do that. Can anyone explain that? I mean, like, what?
42. The answer to everything. Well, no. Just a bad album. You probably have this, because your friend is in the band. The lyrics are either about Jesus, gay jokes, something stupid like dragons and flowers and stuff, or maybe gore-y stuff about a nail filing accident. Or sunburns, that would be so typical for this kind of crap.
41: A deep fried lard sandwich is better than this, as long as it's decent sunflower oil, and not that crap they use in McDonald's.
40: I'd wrestle a bear not to hear this, but only if it was heavily sedated and the danger was minimal.

39: Can't even make it above the threshold to the category that's below the threshold to the mediocre category? How lame is that? HAH! Loser!
38: If I had to choose between hearing this ten times and a really mild food poisoning, I just might pick the food poisoning, especially if the music is supposed to be industrial metal.
37: I'd wrestle a bear with only medium sedation to avoid hearing this for 24 hours in an elevator stuck between two floors and there's a flatulent person in there as well. But there must be a security fellow with a bear taser available, and it's not to the death, just to draw the first blood.
36: Like skinny-dipping in a school of really voracious man-nibbling Baltic herrings. Not to be enjoyed on any level, unless you're a sicko.
35: Feels like the little cold fountains between the toes if your sneakers get really waterlogged, and there's three miles to walk back home. Also, you have some wet sand in your underpants.
34: The worst thing you were forced to eat in grammar school was about this level. Probably a badly cooked fish with shittons of very tiny bones in it, and with potatoes that are made of starch turned into rubber. The musical equivalent of the average Ethiopian buffet lunch.
33: The lowest third starts here. This is where Volbeat comes to die, and most things trying to copy Burzum end up, because it's all unoriginal derivative crap with machine drums that sound like maracas, and probably has a synth horn section that's supposed to sound like the Battle at Helm's Deep, but ends up sounding like two retards brawling behind the groundskeeper's shack on the school yard while that dude from the fifth grade takes bets with obvious experience as a bookie.
32: Kind of a lame rating. I've never found any use for this. Just useless, signifies nothing special in a sea of processed cheese. Like, duh.
31: Getting close to the insulting ratings. Still recognizable as music, but the genre is probably already difficult to tell, unless it's like Italian power metal, or Spanish power metal, and maybe Argentinian metal in general.
30: One step down, and you're in a pool of raw sewage. Think about it. Think hard. Would it really be that bad to drive that garbage truck for the next four decades instead? Like, seriously?

29: The painful area begins here. This rating signifies being whipped with a bunch of nettles on bare skin, but getting ice on it right after.
28: Riding a bicycle through a bush of nettles wearing only speedos.
27: Falling in the bush of nettles while riding through it wearing only speedos. Your bike is now broken.
26: A good marriage.
25: Here comes the lowest quarter. Pulling a tooth is approximately here.
24: This is equivalent to drinking tea of coffee so hot that the funny-looking thing in the back of your throat gets scalded, too. Usually metalcore, or maybe something Brazilian that KEEPS TEH BALCK FLAME ALIVEEEEEE!
23: You'd wrestle your mother-in-law, dead or alive, to avoid hearing this twice. I'd wrestle a rabid beaver with oozing sores to avoid this, but not my mother-in-law.
22: Syphilis in early tertiary stages, when you start feeling funny in your head, but stil know it's funny and you haven't grown used to it. Burzum's ambient albums, except Dauði Baldrs, of course, are approximately here.
21: Adam Sandler bad. Not quite Ben Affleck yet, of course, but being branded on the left buttock with a 1822 Texan branding iron showing you're property of Cody "Gallon Hat" McClellan of Buttcreek county, and on the left buttock with a running seven digit serial number is mildly less painful than this. Assuming it does not get infected, of course; if it does, seek professional help. A very skilled bricklayer or an accredited accountant are good examples of professionals that can help you with stuff.
20: Getting really bad here. Being shot in the knee with a nail gun is around here. Examples: most reggae, The Glorious Burden, and Vomit Sodomy - Mediocre Blasphemy.

19: Painful, but not yet beyond words. Explicitly forbidden by Geneve Conventions #1 and #3, and used to torture Catholic priests and pregnant nuns in the Spanish Civil War.
18: If you're not used to metal, this makes you puke and crap your pants at the same time. A seasoned metalhead probably just bleeds a bit from the ears and might break some wind with blood in it.
17: Being drawn and quartered, with that sedation that that semi-hot French chick gave Mel Gibson before they did the naughty thing in the cell.
16: The audio equivalent of being run over by a semi after being stung 17 times by a Japanese fighting spider.
15: Can no longer be recognized as music, except by experts and the artist's friends. Gulf War veterans get flashbacks, migratory patterns of seagulls are disturbed, and Jesus starts dropping chunks of burning sulfur from the Heavens.
14: Having your genitals BBQed after they have been cleavered off by the Swedish Chef.
13: Being waterboarded and then shown nude pics of Cher. You might survive, if you're a tr00 metalhead.
12: Darwin dreamed of this in his weakest moments, and the last one of those dreams actually killed him.
11: Guantanamo 4th grade treatment, including force-feeding three pints of broken glass and then laxatives, and attaching a toilet brush to a battery drill and cleaning your ears. The latter might be a release of this colossal turd of audial torture.
10: Sawing your own leg off to get out of the room where you're being held handcuffed to a radiator, then noticing it was the wrong leg, which sometimes happens in amputations, and having to saw the other one off, too.

9: The above, but you need to walk a mile on the stumps to get help.
8: Being shaken so hard that your kidneys fall out of your butt and remain hanging on their connecting tubes, then being made to sit on a beach.
7: Having all of your fingers and toes snipped off one joint at a time by a sadistic Mongolian special forces officer with family issues, using rusty wire cutters and piano wire.
6: Being really carefully flayed so that you remain alive, then having the inside of the skin salted and reattached, and then being kicked off a Tibetan mountain monastery stairs in a non-sand papered oak barrel used to hold fermented flatfish.
5: Marginally better than Dauði Baldrs, sort of like listening to Dauði Baldrs at minimum volume with ear muffs on.
4: Being fed to a wood chipper feet first, and pausing for two hours every 2 inches. Someone reads you post-modern poetry when you wait for the treatment to continue.
3: Dauði Baldrs.
2: Being crucified upside down over a BBQ grill with your intestines hanging out and occasionally touching both your face and the grill, and being unable to die of pass out because you're so high on some amphetamine derivative.
1: The above, but with severe diarrhea after competitive eating of 12 pounds of TexMex made by Typhus Pablo in that corner store.
0: Need I really go here? Sure. Dauði Baldrs 45 rpm vinyl version played on 33.3 rpm player forever while you claw the inside of your coffin lid and the oxygen is just about to run all the time but barely doesn't. Actually, not that much worse than just hearing the album, but I had to come up with something.

That's it. Not that complex, really.
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Wilytank
Not a Flying Toy

Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2009 7:21 am
Posts: 5861
Location: 717
PostPosted: Tue Sep 03, 2013 11:39 am 
 

Holy bitch, Napero.

I've brought this up before, but what happens if the person's scoring system really clashes with the generally accepted system? Like someone writes a review that sounds like he'd score it in the 80s, but only gives it a 46%. Rejection?
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Napero
GedankenPanzer

Joined: Sun Jan 02, 2005 4:16 pm
Posts: 8817
Location: Finland
PostPosted: Tue Sep 03, 2013 11:42 am 
 

Yeah. There must be a correlation between the contents and the rating.
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Terri23
Veteran

Joined: Thu Sep 30, 2010 3:53 am
Posts: 3177
PostPosted: Tue Sep 03, 2013 11:48 am 
 

Wilytank wrote:
I've brought this up before, but what happens if the person's scoring system really clashes with the generally accepted system? Like someone writes a review that sounds like he'd score it in the 80s, but only gives it a 46%. Rejection?


I'd like to see an example of this.
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Wilytank
Not a Flying Toy

Joined: Thu Jul 30, 2009 7:21 am
Posts: 5861
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PostPosted: Tue Sep 03, 2013 12:02 pm 
 

Terri23 wrote:
Wilytank wrote:
I've brought this up before, but what happens if the person's scoring system really clashes with the generally accepted system? Like someone writes a review that sounds like he'd score it in the 80s, but only gives it a 46%. Rejection?


I'd like to see an example of this.


RateYourMusic has a lot of them. http://rateyourmusic.com/list/Revolutio ... _systems_/

"my 2.0-5.0 are positive ratings...and the 1.0 is reserved for average to bad albums..."
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RapeTheDead
Stoned Jesus

Joined: Tue Mar 16, 2010 10:48 pm
Posts: 846
Location: Canada
PostPosted: Wed Sep 04, 2013 2:05 pm 
 

I guess I'll just repost what I have on my profile, which is my rating scale summed up as simply as possible:

90-100%: Love it.
70-89%: Good shit.
50-69%: Not a big fan but I can see why others like it
30-49%: bad, has some redeeming factors.
<30%: Shit. Avoid it.

In more depth: anything below 10% is the absolute nadir and completely worthless, very few, if any moments at all I wasn't twitching in revulsion while listening. Below 20% is something I didn't outright hate and didn't really mind too much when on, but no redeeming factors either way- below 30% is something that probably could have been good, but got lost along the way and just ended up being really shitty. 40% and down is something that may have had some parts I enjoyed or maybe a good song, but the majority of the album was still pretty terribad. anything below 50% is something I would rather not listen to again but was never actively offended by when on. 50-60% is similar to that, with the difference that there was more good/decent stuff on the album than mediocre stuff and I'll probably keep it in my iTunes but rarely listen to it. 60-70% is not bad. I don't like it per se, but it's not something one wouldn't enjoy if they're a fan of the genre. 70-80 is some good shit. Not a classic, just something I like and listen to every now and again, I'd buy it if I saw a good deal on it. 80% and up is really good stuff; recommended for fans of the genre and worth buying for most metalheads, usually. Anything I rep to any extent is at least an 80%er. The Almighty Nineties are reserved for my personal classics; low 90s are albums that have to some extent have had a significant emotional impact on me and helped influence my listening tastes, and anything above 95 is my odd favorites, things that perhaps seriously touched me, helped me get through a shit time or just plain wowed me with how fucking awesome they were. I haven't given an 100% yet, and there are only two albums that I would bestow that rating upon, but I'm not ready to review those yet, nor am I ready to describe the extent of what it takes for an album to get an 100 in my mind. Someday...
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MutantClannfear
Blank Czech

Joined: Thu May 27, 2010 12:12 am
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 04, 2013 6:17 pm 
 

100%: good - in fact so good that its mere existence will often have a dramatic impact on my life as a music fan. I could listen to this album every day for three months straight and not get bored of it. Represents everything that music should strive to be in whatever subgenre the band happen to be playing.

90-99%: extremely great - low 90s tend to be consistently masterful albums with an unbelievably precise refinement throughout their sound. High 90s are more likely to be albums that had the potential to be 100s but have small idiosyncrasies that have to be worked around to appreciate the album unconditionally. Anything from a 95% and up might as well be a 100% for all intents and purposes half of the time I'm listening to it. In any case, albums in this tier will usually make me find myself grinning by accident as I listen to them because they just make me... happy.

80-89%: still in fanboy territory but a bit more obviously flawed and flawed in ways that can draw a bit more away from the music. Might also be a band that tries something crazy and new but can't realize it entirely properly. Invariably, I can still listen to these albums without being distracted by the errors therein, and any band in this grade or above is something I will sing the praises of relatively often.

70-79%: decent, and still enjoyable to listen to, but I'm much less likely to listen to these of my own volition. They tend to be good but unremarkably so, in which case I usually listen to them like thrice a year and forget about them otherwise. Might also be something that tries an experiment which doesn't entirely work but is still relatively worthwhile.

60-69%: this is an odd level of the rating system for me, because I see 60s as being above mediocrity but still below what I'd actually consciously choose to listen to. These tend to be things that aren't really offensive in any way, and are pretty cool if you've been deprived on music for weeks, but they've got problems that are really hard to ignore. Might also be a band who are perfectly technically capable, but capture a mood that I'm hardly ever in the mood to and sounds like shit to me 99% of the time (so Defeated Sanity, Gorguts, Summoning, and so on). I wouldn't purchase any album in this category or any of the categories below it.

50-59%: mediocre. I listen to something that sounds like this by choice maybe once or twice a year, and usually only because I'm burnt out on all my 80%+ material. These albums tend to be really frustrating because they're not outright bad, they just have some really big and inescapable flaw that seeps through every aspect of the music and is impossible to escape while actively listening to it.

40-49%: I don't give scores in this range that often, but basically this is like super-mediocrity. Albums in this range start to become actively irritating to listen to, which is strange because this tier is easily the most boring out of all of them.

30-39%: pretty indisputably bad. I frown when seeing people assign praise to an album of this tier. There's no veil of mediocrity here, the band involved here is channeling pretty unabated levels of suck into their music at this point. Falls below mediocrity and into rather indisputable levels of incompetence.

20-29%: baaaaaaad holy shit this is bad. Listening to this will make me legitimately angry. Attempting to relate to the notes and melodies thereof is like trying to have a conversation with your retarded half-brother while he's drunk and high on painkillers because holy hell it is frustrating. If I were a manager at a convenience store, and two people - a suspected murderer and a member of a band who made this album - filed applications for one job opening, then George Zimmerman would be bagging your groceries from then on.

10-19%: I hate anything in this range with every fiber of my being. I will be able to talk about how much this sucks with just as much passion, if not more so, than I usually use to talk about my pet bands like N.K.V.D. and Lykathea Aflame. Simply listening to it instantly makes whatever day you listened to it one of the worst you've had all year. Talking about how incompetent this is at delivering anything worthwhile is futile, as the only way to truly process just how fucking terrible something on this level is would be to look at my face while I listen to it and stare into my eyes. My cold, dead, despondent eyes. Most things on this level either tend to be made in a bedroom, or are progressive deathcore. There isn't really much variation beyond that.

0-9%: See, this is where it starts to lighten up, because while some albums on this level are even worse than the 10-19% tier and listening to them quite literally simulates the emotionally dead feeling of depression - like, you could literally shut down my ability to function by playing me an album like this on a semi-regular basis - this tier also includes things that are so horrible that they finally warp back around and become rather funny to listen to. I can giggle at a handful of these at the artist's expense, at which point they cease to piss me off and just become a source of cheap amusement for me. I never listen to them even if they are hilariously bad, but listening to an album that manages to be this humorously incompetent is about on par with listening to a 65% album or so in terms of enjoyment.
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zeingard
Metalhead

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PostPosted: Fri Sep 06, 2013 8:36 pm 
 

Christ, you're a verbose lot. It doesn't get much more complicated than this.

>50% = Listen to it.
50% = Meh, up to you.
<50% = Don't listen to it.

Also I guess I should bring up the obligatory "Score is irrelevant, just reading the fucking review" point.
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HeySharpshooter
Metalhead

Joined: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:12 am
Posts: 447
Location: United States
PostPosted: Thu Sep 12, 2013 11:04 pm 
 

A few points:
I only review new albums
100% is not perfect
I grade on a scale of 5 percent.(or on my blog, 0.5)

100-90%: Highly recommended. The very best material of the year, and should be sought out by any fan of Extreme Metal
85-80%: Recommended, but not essential. Fans of the particular genre should give it a whirl, but non-fans may be dissappointed
75-70%: Worth checking out by hardcore fans of a particular genre or sound, but has a limited appeal.
65-60%: Good ideas, but lacking in either creativity, appropriate production or appropriate technical proficiency.
55-50%: Buried beneath layers of bad ideas are nuggets of quality, but too few to be a worthwhile listen.
45-40%: A complete lack of anything worthwhile, though not really offensive to the ear
35-30%: Grating, ugly(in a bad way), moving into the territory of offensive to the ear and the intellect of the listener
25-20%: Shit. A waste of money or hard-drive space
15-10%: Garbage. Usually the most lame, limp-wristed worship or utterly stupid non-sense around
5-0%: Doesn't have a reason to exist

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Empyreal
The Final Frontier

Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2006 6:58 pm
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Location: Where the dead rule the night
PostPosted: Fri Sep 13, 2013 12:07 am 
 

100% = An album I love and would listen to any time, that I can go back to years later and still discover new things about. It doesn't matter if there's a filler song or two, or if some aspect is weaker. If I like it that much and if it had an effect on me, I'd give it a 100%.

Below that is varying degrees of goodness, with a more professional reviewing mindset. Less subjective.

0% is, well, what you'd expect.
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Thumbman
Big Cube

Joined: Mon Nov 16, 2009 6:47 pm
Posts: 4473
Location: Canada
PostPosted: Sat Sep 14, 2013 2:05 pm 
 

I think putting generic rating scales on profiles is rather useless, as they are mostly all the same and I don't know about you guys, but I could give two albums the same score for two completely different reasons. Not every album with a 60% will be "alright, but nothing special". Maybe the album is great instrumentally but the vocals kind of suck ect.

I've noticed that I'm a lot harsher with scoring than I was when I began reviewing. I guess the more you hear, the more you realize how unremarkable most bands are. I've been getting promos for a little bit, and while the occasional gem does sift in, most bands are meh or bad.
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caspian
Old Man Yells at Car Park

Joined: Tue Dec 07, 2004 11:29 pm
Posts: 6414
Location: Australia
PostPosted: Sun Sep 15, 2013 8:55 am 
 

yeah dystopia, I find myself handing out way more scores in the 40-60% range than I ever used to, especially this year as I've gotten sorta more active again. Maybe i just give stuff less of a chance these days, but I can't really be arsed listening to a generic doom album 100 times in the hope it clicks.
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lord_ghengis
Still Standing After 38 Beers... hic

Joined: Mon Dec 04, 2006 8:31 pm
Posts: 5953
Location: Australia
PostPosted: Sun Sep 15, 2013 9:06 am 
 

My scores have gotten much lower for stuff I don't think much of, but I think that's more to do with my getting bored with reviewing mediocre albums and only reviewing stuff I feel pretty passionately towards now. Although looking back over my stuff I'd probably like to knock 10-20% off almost everything I reviewed pre-2011.
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Alsandair
Metalhead

Joined: Thu Mar 01, 2007 2:00 pm
Posts: 668
Location: United States of America
PostPosted: Fri Sep 20, 2013 8:48 pm 
 

I have wondered if using either thumbs down, two thumbs down, thumbs up, or two thumbs up would be better than using numbered scores. That way you know at least some of the degree to which they love or hate it, but have to read the review all the way and then decide if their opinion is worth valuing. Also it stops people giving unrealistic 0's or 100's to drag an album's average rating closer to their minority opinion.

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Empyreal
The Final Frontier

Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2006 6:58 pm
Posts: 35177
Location: Where the dead rule the night
PostPosted: Sat Sep 21, 2013 11:04 am 
 

Alsandair wrote:
I have wondered if using either thumbs down, two thumbs down, thumbs up, or two thumbs up would be better than using numbered scores. That way you know at least some of the degree to which they love or hate it, but have to read the review all the way and then decide if their opinion is worth valuing. Also it stops people giving unrealistic 0's or 100's to drag an album's average rating closer to their minority opinion.


Most people still wouldn't actually read the review if they wouldn't have done so with our current scale. It's a moot point to focus on those people. And "unrealistic" 0s and 100s is purely subjective - thus we can't make a moratorium on such.
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TheLiberation
Metalhead

Joined: Wed Apr 13, 2011 12:56 pm
Posts: 615
Location: Poland
PostPosted: Sat Sep 21, 2013 9:56 pm 
 

I think the % score system is the best for the simple reason is that you can do whatever the hell you want with it. You can be uber-precise with each percent or basically just use a 1-5 rating scale if you like.
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~Guest 292988
Metal newbie

Joined: Thu May 17, 2012 8:22 am
Posts: 312
PostPosted: Thu Oct 10, 2013 11:28 am 
 

O


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Metantoine
Slave to Santa

Joined: Sat Jun 21, 2008 5:00 pm
Posts: 12030
Location: Montréal
PostPosted: Thu Oct 10, 2013 11:47 am 
 

Why do you even bother with this scoring table? You wrote exactly 0 reviews...
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PhilosophicalFrog
The Hypercube

Joined: Thu May 04, 2006 7:08 pm
Posts: 7631
Location: United States
PostPosted: Fri Oct 11, 2013 6:18 pm 
 

100 - "fuckin classic"
90s - "classic"
80s - "fuckin great"
70s - "great"
60s - "fuckin alright! albeit with fuckin' flaws"
50s - "fuckin alright. albeit with fuckin' flaws"
40s - "fuckin boring"
30s- "fucking" boring
20s - "fuckin hell"
10s - "dude what the fuck"

yup.
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caspian
Old Man Yells at Car Park

Joined: Tue Dec 07, 2004 11:29 pm
Posts: 6414
Location: Australia
PostPosted: Mon Oct 14, 2013 8:37 am 
 

to paraphrase philofrog's rating style, mine basically amounts to saying "bro" with about 10 different inflections as the ratings drop.
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EvinJelin
Mallcore Kid

Joined: Sun Oct 20, 2013 10:43 am
Posts: 2
Location: France
PostPosted: Tue Oct 22, 2013 10:11 am 
 

90-100: Perfect, awesome, all of that
76-89: Very, very good
70-75: Nice
60-69: OK, but there is better
55-59: Could do better, but there is some potential
40-54: Not good
10-39: Bad. The difference with "not good" is that there are things who are not interesting, and there are some who are hard to tolerate
0: I can't tolerate that there are people in this world who played this. This has the potential to destroy all of your sanity and will to live. Avoid, or listen to it only if you are really ready...
Even though I won't rate a lot of 10-69 and will just put scores above 70 for what I've liked, and a big 0 for what I've hated. I'll only talk about what I think deserves 10 or 69 when I have the time and the patience

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DreamOfDarkness
Metal newbie

Joined: Wed Apr 25, 2012 4:09 pm
Posts: 271
Location: Germany
PostPosted: Tue Oct 22, 2013 4:54 pm 
 

My personal scale would be (as in my profile, though I haven't written very many reviews):

100-95% -- perfection, truly inspiring music
94-85% -- well executed and recommended
84-70% -- nothing special, for fans of the genre
69-50% -- some good ideas, but flawed
49-20% -- meh, not worth a listen
19-0% -- insult to music

To me the percentage sums up the ration of the parts I like and the parts I don't. If I like half of the album's content, which makes it pretty lame already, I'll give it a 50%. This isn't exact of course, but there will (almost) always be something I don't like and (almost) always something I like. Considering the albums I heard in the past years, there are only very few albums I'd give less than 10-20% because most "bad" albums still have some enjoying elements in them.
But when I write a review I write it first and then give it a rating based on what I wrote. It already happened that I thought I'd give an album something around 65% but the review ended up being more positive than I expected, so I gave that album (I think it was Voidbound by Manipulator) 78%.

I find it a little ridiculous that some people or trolls like bitterman (who compared Crimson by Edge of Sanity to Korn... dafuq) give almost every album a 0% if they don't like it. To me there is a difference between a bad album I don't like and an album so utterly atrocious that I don't like anything at all about it. Some seem to forget that if they rate an album 0% they can't possibly give another album a lower rating (same goes the other way round for 100% ratings).

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lord_ghengis
Still Standing After 38 Beers... hic

Joined: Mon Dec 04, 2006 8:31 pm
Posts: 5953
Location: Australia
PostPosted: Wed Oct 23, 2013 4:19 am 
 

Giving 0% to stuff you dislike and find an insult to your chosen genre is far more acceptable to me than calling a 84% Nothing special.
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Empyreal
The Final Frontier

Joined: Thu Nov 30, 2006 6:58 pm
Posts: 35177
Location: Where the dead rule the night
PostPosted: Wed Oct 23, 2013 6:48 pm 
 

The whole "0% should only be for the worst things ever, like (x underground black metal album with no production job)" argument is flawed; a 0% like any rating can be for whatever standard the writer has. I have given 0% to some very "listenable" albums by most other people's standards. Personally, also, I don't really see merit in the argument that an absolute shit album with one or two so-called redeeming elements would get a 10% or 20%. If I liked anything about it genuinely, I'd give it above a 60.
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MutantClannfear
Blank Czech

Joined: Thu May 27, 2010 12:12 am
Posts: 3624
Location: United States
PostPosted: Wed Oct 23, 2013 7:09 pm 
 

DreamOfDarkness wrote:
Some seem to forget that if they rate an album 0% they can't possibly give another album a lower rating (same goes the other way round for 100% ratings).

Nobody who isn't retarded or autistic believes this. I think 100% scores should be assigned to any album that fulfills its maximum potential and leaves nothing to be desired - there is no committee who came to the consensus that assigning the maximum or minimum score implies something must be better or worse, respectively, than every other album on Earth. It's logic like this that leads to uneducated trad-metal fans giving 0% scores to goregrind albums because they're disappointed by the lack of falsetto vocals or guitar solos. It's okay to have a general idea of how your reviewing scale works in relation to all your reviews, but more importantly it should function as a personal reflection of the individual album's merits. This, in addition, prevents awkward situations where you want to assign unnecessarily high or low scores to something for abnormal reasons (e.g. if you have an album that you know is objectively shit, but is amusing to listen to anyways, you can give it a rating that's much higher than it objectively deserves because you're grading it in relation to itself, not anything else).
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Grave_Wyrm
Metal Sloth

Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2012 5:55 pm
Posts: 3928
PostPosted: Fri Oct 25, 2013 4:27 pm 
 

I've written exactly two reviews, but will definitely write more once I get my shit together. This is mine, and is unlikely to change much:

Axiom: Atmosphere > tech.

100 : Masters
90s : Champion elite
80s : Agile and strong, highly durable
70s: Physically capable.
51-60s: ambulatory with dulled senses
50: barely passed the APGAR.
1 - 49 : shows feeble signs of life/prepare for the worst
0 : stillborn
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Diamhea
Eats and Spits Corpses

Joined: Wed Feb 14, 2007 7:46 pm
Posts: 9275
Location: At the Heat of Winter
PostPosted: Fri Oct 25, 2013 4:49 pm 
 

Oh cmon Napero, the French chick in Braveheart was more than semi-hot.

For me 50% represents complete indifference. Equal amount of good and bad. Like to keep it simple that way.
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~Guest 292988
Metal newbie

Joined: Thu May 17, 2012 8:22 am
Posts: 312
PostPosted: Fri Oct 25, 2013 9:11 pm 
 

6


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MutantClannfear
Blank Czech

Joined: Thu May 27, 2010 12:12 am
Posts: 3624
Location: United States
PostPosted: Fri Oct 25, 2013 9:24 pm 
 

Nebster173 wrote:
I've never thought of it that way. I can see how bands of certain genres or sounds would deserve a %100 based on their quality, but how would you honestly grade the best and most complete pornogrind album(for example) a %100? Not everything's maximum potential is equal.

If a pornogrind album sounded truly amazing to me for every second of its running time, then sure, I'd give it a 100%. Even if something sounds competent and I can't point out any immediate issues with it, if it doesn't inspire a truly heartfelt reaction in me then I'd say it hasn't reached its maximum potential in my eyes. And I suppose that means that, to an extent, any genre I'm not particularly versed in is less likely to have 100%-worthy albums, but I guess that's just where one can say that personal tastes come into the equation. Why would you give a flawless score to something that didn't strike you with the passion and emotion you tend to associate with your favorite albums?
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~Guest 292988
Metal newbie

Joined: Thu May 17, 2012 8:22 am
Posts: 312
PostPosted: Fri Oct 25, 2013 11:38 pm 
 

-


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MutantClannfear
Blank Czech

Joined: Thu May 27, 2010 12:12 am
Posts: 3624
Location: United States
PostPosted: Fri Oct 25, 2013 11:45 pm 
 

By embodying every good quality about the genre in my eyes? I dunno man, I didn't necessarily mean that the album in question had to revolutionize the way the genre functions. Honestly, I feel like sometimes you look way too far into my posts. :lol: I hardly ever mean significantly more than what I've plainly written.
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Grave_Wyrm
Metal Sloth

Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2012 5:55 pm
Posts: 3928
PostPosted: Sat Oct 26, 2013 12:51 am 
 

MutantClannfear wrote:
Why would you give a flawless score to something that didn't strike you with the passion and emotion you tend to associate with your favorite albums?

Yeah who knows. I'm basically with you. Things gradually become more relative with experience, and often easier to put into words, but that doesn't make it any less personal, just more educated. You might give an album 100% for different and perhaps more well delineated reasons in reviews written five years apart, but no album is going to get a perfect score if it doesn't meet your highest standards for excellence regardless of when you write it.

An album doesn't have to necessarily epitomize a genre in order to get a perfect score. Not many people have the body of experience to be able to make that call, and neither is that level of experience a prerequisite. To get a perfect score, the only requirement seems to be that the writer can't (or refuses to) find anything substantially wrong with it. Just depends on the writer's response, experience, and standards and not much else.
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lord_ghengis
Still Standing After 38 Beers... hic

Joined: Mon Dec 04, 2006 8:31 pm
Posts: 5953
Location: Australia
PostPosted: Sat Oct 26, 2013 7:02 am 
 

Well I'm super bored and have been drinking, so I may well do one of these stupid things, as pointless as they are. Obviously, anything high means I like it, and anything low means I dislike it. Specific scores don't mean specific sentences and specific reasonings, because that doesn't make sense. I can give later Ea a low 60 for being derivative and generic, but I can also give something like Demolition Hammer a low 60, who are anything but derivative and generic because I find them not to my taste, so saying specific score ranges are for specific issues is just a bit wrong. Anyway...

100-95: This is (Obviously) my high end, I won't give out anything this high without being very familiar with the music, and listening for a very long time, this is the stuff which sticks with me and I'll blather like a fanboy about. There isn't too many of them around, for instance I'd only call six albums released this decade worthy of fitting this teir so far.

94-85: This the second teir of stuff I like a lot, not of a "top 100 ever" sort of like, but definitely stuff I'll listen to with some level of frequency. Usually this sort of rank will have one or two major (Shitty vocals, shitty production etc) or several nitpicky issues (The third riff on track 7 is doofy etc), which I can largely ignore due to the stuff I like, such as Acephalix, where boring, overdone OSDM gloom n doom is overwhelmed by OMG D-BEATS SO FUN.

84-65: Generally stuff I can appreciate when I listen to, but lacks any real major upsides to keep me coming back often. Or it can be a straight mediocre album with a couple of awesome songs, like the last Primordial.

64-40: Varying shades of mediocre, obviously straight apathy sits at 50, slight lapses into genuine boredom pop up under there, sometimes a sub 40 album with one major saving grace.

39-0: Actively annoys or irritates me. Can be from being ridiculously boring, but generally these sort of scores need some kind of actively horrid element to make my experience and actively painful or angry one.

So yeah, pretty generic there, oh well, it killed 5 minutes, not putting that shit on my profile though.
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Grave_Wyrm
Metal Sloth

Joined: Sun Mar 04, 2012 5:55 pm
Posts: 3928
PostPosted: Mon Oct 28, 2013 5:48 pm 
 

Slight Lapses into Genuine Boredom: A Mod's Memoire
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fallot
I'm not sexist, I have binders full of women friends!

Joined: Thu Oct 24, 2013 5:46 pm
Posts: 92
PostPosted: Wed Oct 30, 2013 10:59 pm 
 

I dont write reviews but I do get tired of seeing the whole if-you-gave-it-0%-nothing-could-possibly-be-worse argument. That implies that your approach to reviewing metal is that of some kind of alien outside observer who is merely cataloguing metal music for archival purposes. When I read the reviews on this website I expect them to come from people who listen to and enjoy metal first and are librarians second. I completely sympathize with the approach of someone like say, bitterman or UltraBoris. If an album does nothing for metal, or even goes so far as to be bad metal, bringing down the genre in terms of mean quality and adding to nothing except landfill mass, what should it get except a 0%? It is worthless as metal, so it gets a worthless rating, makes sense to me. No one likes to see a big fat zero on their favourite album, you just cant escape that intrinsic defensive reaction. Nor should you try to pretend you are aloof and above such a thing (most people who do this are just passive aggressive). It is natural to feel strongly about something you care about.

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