Yeah, pretty weak review honestly. He isn't being too annoying about it, but it's just not a well reasoned review. It's like he just picked an album at random to give that score. I always think you need to elaborate more if you're going to go as far as to give an album a 0% - the review he gave could have easily been in the 30s or 40s and nothing would change in the review. You need to have some kind of larger, more grand reason to score an album something so extreme.

Is it just me or are hells_unicorn's reviews getting worse by the day? First he talks about Terrorizer's accomplishments like Repulsion didn't exist years earlier, but now he talks about neo-Protector as a German thrash metal band having been around back in the day when it is in fact a Swedish band who has been playing with Lego bricks and climbing trees when German thrash was around originally?

FACT-CHECKING. IT'S A THING.

Accepted several MetalFRO reviews earlier that were great reads. The guy is longwinded but does it all well; his obligatory "background on the theme/band/scene" introductions actually entertain while consistently proving relevant to the actual body of the review and his musical description is really thorough without ever being clinical or emotionally detached.

Kind of a shame he reviews so much really mundane/uninteresting/Christian metal, but at least the stuff he's covering is mostly marginal stuff that deserves reviewing a million times more than the 253456435th Illud review.

I like reading his stuff too. But I disagree about that little part. Writing "[insert band] needs no introduction", then spending a paragraph or two on exactly that, kind of annoys me. I know there's nothing wrong with it site-standards wise, but when I see it I tend to skip ahead to the actual opinion on the album at hand.

The whole "[X band] needs no introduction" thing annoys me. If we all know them already then don't even bother mentioning it!

Hah, yeah, that is a bit of a pet peeve. Up there with "words can't even describe" or "there's nothing more to say about ______ that hasn't already been said."

But the reviews are otherwise good reads, damnit!

Great Sigh review from Tony. Just a small thing: Bring Back the Dead was in the original press of imaginary soniscape, it was Voices that was originally cut. Bring back the Dead was just rearranged and extended. Other than that, great 100th review.

Oh, maybe I got mixed up! I'll fix that. Thanks for the compliments. I wanted to write more reviews during the holidays (I still have the time...) but I got other things to do like drinking and watching Deep Space Nine...

Easiest way to get me to hate your guts: make a gushing fanboy review where the first four paragraphs are all derived from you reading the negative reviews on the website for the album in question, and responding to them in list format with more tactless snarkiness than a 14-year-old girl.

I really like the new Deafheaven review by bimu. I have read all the elitest-hipsters, like bitterman, writing 0% reviews for that album, it's good to see that he looked beyond the hype and aesthetics of it's release (fanbase and the band's image) and actually reviewed the music, something almost unheard of for releases that are seen as "cool" to hate, . I have still never even listened to the band but that was a great review.

I HATE YOUR GUTS TOO

Calling an album you haven't heard "cool to hate" and other reviewers "elitist-hipsters." What dump do they find you guys in?

Ha, its better than the other one, I'm surprised that guy has even heard of the website.

Ouch! Hold your horses there, pal! I think you have misinterpreted my post, or didn't read it fully. Like I said, I have never even heard Deafheaven's music before. I don't even know what "shoegaze" metal is. I was simply saying that many people have acquired this "aethetic hatred" for that band, based on the hype they receive and their fanbase...I have seen this very much in the metal scene lately (not really much on this site save for that bitterman review) and was simply applauding bimu on writing something that concentrated on the musical aspect rather than something stupid. However, I still don't really see why you are so mad in the first place...interesting to see you call me an "idiot" and then say that "flinging shit only makes you look stupid" .

It's not a mature review though, or even one to be applauded. He concentrates most of the first part of the review on "getting back" at people who were mean to the album...in a very asinine, immature way. He doesn't even make particularly good arguments. As shitty as a lot of the negative reviews are, that one is way worse.

Yeah I stopped reading that review after the first paragraph or two as he was just picking apart the criticisms of other reviewers and as Empyreal said it was quite immature.

i noticed that the review is gone now. Maybe he is editing out all that junk.

No, it's still there.

""Sunbather” delivers what I expect from music in general, hence the perfect score."

So, in other words, meets expectations = 100%.

I listened to the first two songs of that album then lost interest. Pitchfork black metal does nothing for me. I guess we're all too elitist over here

Congratulations to lord_ghengis for the first review of 2014. What a witty title! http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/P ... rd_ghengis

Saying it out loud just makes me think of some sort of hypothetical Incantation-styled Brujeria album.

There were at least a couple other people that shit on Deafheaven pretty thoroughly on this site, and everybody STILL just gets their panties in a bunch over bitterman? What the hell is it about that guy?

His hyperbolic review scores and "metal died after 1993" attitude get people riled up, I guess.

I guess, and he definitely does try to goad people a little more than people who just write negative reviews when it suits them, but he easily described the contents of the music more and talked wayyyy less about the "scene" and everything surrounding it than bimu did. Am I reading the same reviews here? bitterman actually sounds like the more level-headed of the two in this case, but I might also be a bit biased.

Ha my first reaction after writing it was "wait a minute, does that sound racist somehow?".

I've had so many name pun titles lately, it's getting ridiculous, growing Dad humour it seems. I still think my !TOOH! one is more painful though.

Pestilence riff: Chug twice on the open E-string, then play one note, repeat for a total of three times, then do the same but play the last note one half step higher, then construct a whole song out of that.

Asphyx riff: Put songwriting, passion, contrast, intensity and more passion again into every riff. Never repeat for the whole song, but keep the song going.

Autothrall: Full of shit.

Also, bitterman praises garbage like At the Gates and Immortal, why talk about him at all? If he wants to love his MTV metal then write 0% reviews about other MTV metal, let him be a hypocrite and all is fine.

I've started rating albums in increments of 5%, in other words in an x-out-of-20 point scale. I can't help but feel like I'm pulling arbitrary scores out of my ass when it is on the 100-point scale.

Just out of curiosity I checked that Sunbather album. I can't get the hype. It sounds like a lot of post X bands, it has some of the weakest attempts at black metal shrieks Ive heard and the riffs are very lifeless, boring and deritative. The drumming is quite good but that's about it. I wonder why it made so much fuzz being so mediocre.

I like the vocals actually, not really BM in style but he seems to go pretty full out which enjoy. But yeah, pretty bog standard with good drums, lots of horrible chord progression tremolo stuff which the Cascadian/post scenes tend to enjoy. With that sqid the general energy and drumming actually makes me think they're better than 95% of their contemporaries, which is still like 7/10 at the best haha.

I'm not familiar with the scene, which may explain why I like it so much. I think it's really interesting and the songwriting flows quite well. It has a real mood and atmosphere to it. Really good melodies and what not too. I get that a lot of bands probably do it better, but for now I think this is really great on its own.

To my ears it's really half-baked "Post" "Black" "Metal" that has absolutely nothing of note save the drumming, which doesn't really fit their style at all anyways. It's not really Metal, but then again neither are the legions of other bands that play the exact same thing (often better), so I'm pretty sure the only hatred it's drummed up is because of it's widespread exposure, and more specifically widespread exposure along with it being labeled as some variant of Black Metal.

The hatred is because it's the #1 record of the year in a hundred places, 99 of which have no business reviewing metal.

That said, I resisted it until last week. I like it and I disagree that it's not metal. However, it's not the best record of the year by any means. They succeed where a lot of post BM bands fail - they play both styles at once, so you get the wailing and the BM guitars but if you listen a little deeper you hear a beautiful melodic rhythm underneath. Plenty of bands separate the two just fine but Deafheaven blend the two better than most.

That said, not enough variation on the metal tracks for my tastes. I like it but I still struggle getting through it in one sitting.

It's a good album (although not <i>that</i> good)and everything, but the hipsters jumping on a black metal album that is really more post/shoegaze is obviously going to piss people off. To be honest, I think they're way better at playing the non metal stuff than they are the metal.

I'm in complete agreement. When I heard the album I was digging the melodies and shoegaze side far more than the metal aspects like the harsh vocals. Felt out of place, and moreso than bands that have tried this sound before.

http://www.metal-archives.com/users/Lich%20Coldheart

I can't tell if this guy isn't a native English speaker or just a poor writer, which brings me to the question: Are the standards for accepting a review different for ESL writers than they are for reviewers with English as their primary language? Because while the rules don't speak to such practice it seems to me largely based on which mod reads a given review, with some mods being more lenient with ESL writers than they would be for native English-speakers. I don't necessarily disagree with it in principle but it would be nice to get some word of god on the subject.

From his Kongh review:

You see, what 5 of his maybe? I've rejected way more than that. The majority has to make sense for me to accept it and even then the parts that might be a little off have to be pretty obvious in meaning. The ones I've accepted I thought we're good enough to meet the standards. I think it's mainly ESL with him but many submissions just aren't good on top of that.

The "Vendetta Metal Magazine" reviews being uploaded are coming from more than author. Is that allowed? Also, one of their contributors, Miguel Sanchez, is a below-average writer but when he called thrash "trash" in one of his reviews I just facepalmed.

Edit: Zodijackyl dealt with this and deleted the reviews.

Reviews may only be submitted by their original authors. Editors are NOT allowed to submit reviews written by others. The user has been notified and the reviews removed.