I haven't read metal reviews from large sites in awhile. There's a lot of people here who can meld their talents at creative writing and love for metal together and I've enough trust for the community to take what they say seriously. I read a handful of metal archive reviews every week to keep myself entertained and informed, the site usually strikes a good balance of both.

I have very little desire to read reviews from places like Blabbermouth or Metal Sucks, mostly because I don't visit those sites often enough for news and I'm not exposed to their stuff in any other way. Today though, I needed to write a report on the media industry and the impact critics have on entertainment for my college course. I decided to check out some reviews for Death Thy Lover by Candlemass because it was an EP I wanted to listen to again soon, me and my friend had a differing opinion on it and I figured I'd kill two birds with one stone. Jesus Christ though, mainstream metal reviews have clearly fallen a long way:

http://www.metalsucks.net/2016/06/01/ep ... andlemass/

http://www.blabbermouth.net/cdreviews/d ... -lover-ep/

The first review is heavy on the filler and spends more time making jokes about hipster shit than describing and commenting on the music, while the second tries to disguise a very shallow opinion with flowery language. I really feel like I made a better assessment of their writing in that one sentence than they did Candlemass' whole EP. I doubt either of these reviews would make it onto the site and I certainly wouldn't proudly show that shit off as an achievement in my writing career, much less a triumph in music journalism.

Why are these reviews so awful? Is it just a bad sample size? Blabbermouth and Metal Sucks are big sites, why do I end up trusting the opinions and writing ability of 16-year-old Brazilians over people who get payed to review music? Feel free to weigh in.

Metal Sucks is a horrific site but in general too many reviews I read are just snark laden, poor excuses for writing.

As a "professional" music reviewer myself (Apparently somebody in a thrash group on Facebook thought I got paid for my Conformicide review?), the biggest metal sites like those listed tend to have mediocre content because they're usually reviewing releases that they "have to do." They may either have their bands they're legitimately passionate about, the ones they'll write about because they know people will have strong opinions about it, and (Most often in the case of MetalSucks specifically) the straight up clickbait. Unless they care or can guarantee that readers will care, they'll phone in what basically amounts to a flowery Wikipedia article.

There's also concerns of promotion as well as conflicts of interest with most of those sites. Since free promos are involved, they tend to not want to bite the hand that feeds with a review that is either unfavorable or "too" honest to an album. That's why so many reviews are so middle of the road bland in opinion unless the fan outcry is too overwhelming to ignore. If I'm not mistaken, Blabbermouth is also affiliated with Roadrunner in some way, which is why their 8/10 review of Dedicated to Chaos exists complete with a preemptively defensive attitude throughout.

As a musician, having my works reviewed on the sites would only satisfy me in the sense that it would reflect some sort of international recognition. But in terms of actual content and criticisms, I take reviews by fans and underground blogs run by a friend or two much more seriously.

These reviews suck because they are written the bands promotional interests in mind. They are rarely impartial.

Why does industry always suck the passion out of everything?
I wish things were more like the film industry. If your film won't be well received critically, you don't pre-screen it. If you know critics will love it, you do. There's plenty of grey area in there too but it helps sort the overall quality of a film. Says a lot as well if a studio is willing to put their film in front of people who could cost them millions. I guess "metal" (music really) is a smaller circle and bad reviews can ruin everything.

I don't even know how to respond to that. That just shouldn't be a thing.

Well, there's my answer I guess. I just know reading that review made Candlemass sound boring as fuck. If I wasn't already a fan, I'd probably avoid them, especially if the reviewer isn't interested enough to talk about their music.

I don't understand the demand for reviews from metal magazines when sites like metal-archives exist. Even the "shitty ones" on this site blows them out of the water, because they are written by someone who has something to say, and not just doing hidden promotion. Bands like Taake like to link to reviews of their newest albums on their Facebook pages, and they're all the same. Sometime it's as if they just copy each others descriptions.

Every single review site that exists now pretty much is paid to play into their publishing. all the sites that used to have reviews i respected everyone gave up on and the websites abandoned since no one really bothers with reviews anymore when they can just sample the entire album illegally or not off youtube. i really loved going to metaljudgement, metalreviews that went into lastrites before they just up the ghost and aversionline. pretty much all are dead in one form or another.

Speaking of flowery Wikipedia articles. Why is it article editors always delete anything about negative fan reception to Load? They can't act like it didn't happen, Load is one of the most hated Metallica albums, and your opinion of those fans "intelligence" is irrelevant, its still something that should be mentioned, particularly since Wikipedia is all about before and afters.

Blabbermouth and MetalSucks are not only awful sites they promote more false metal than anything else. When I go to Blabbermouth and see articles on Korn and Five Finger Death Punch, their credibility goes right out the window. Sites like this is where you will find metal reviews that have honesty and integrity. Avoid sites like those.

Someone finally used the "f" word. "Professional" sites are full of jobbers and shills. They are false. True Metal reviews come from true Metalheads and true Metaldom is a cottage industry.

Let's start a site called "True Brutal Blackened Death Grind Central". All we do is post articles about bedroom black metal bands and how much Metallica suck now.

I fully see and support where you guys are coming from though. These sites are build to appeal to the lowest common denominator, to the point of pushing away metal fans. If you listen to anything other than Killswitch Engaged (who are a guilty pleasure for me right now) or if you just want something well written to read on a band you like, you're going to have to wade through a lot of crap. Metalion would be rolling in his grave, if he were dead that is.

I'm strongly opposed to reviews like the MetalSucks one posted above, because it seems more like an exercise in promotional awareness than a real review of the content. The biggest issue with that is that there are several mentions of the coffee table book, which isn't even really relevant to the Candlemass review, while the writer admits that they've never listened to Candlemass before and seem to have done just enough research to find out the band's year of formation and original line-up. If I were doing this as a job, I would have found out about the band's recent history (in what way 'Death Thy Lover' is a stop-gap I don't know, since the band said they wouldn't release any more studio albums) and had a good listen to at least the last couple of full-lengths so I could compare it to something. Naturally, I fucking love Candlemass so that wouldn't be necessary, but if my website paid me to do the review, I would think that was the least that was expected. That review is really lazy.

On the other hand, I used to be a big reader of Metal Hammer magazine, which is probably the biggest print magazine on metal (in the UK anyway). It's pretty clear that they wanted to keep the big bands sweet, always giving Metallica scores of 8 or 9 and Machine Head claiming album of the year at least once, but the reviews did generally contain comments about musical substance, specific songs, and the band's development, crucially even when they were only 100 words in length. I haven't read the magazine in a while and would probably find some of the main articles boring because I have little interest in Avenged Sevenfold or Five Finger Death Punch, but when I write I still keep in mind the style that their writers used.

Therefore, I suggest that the websites reviewing metal releases are probably concerned more with trends and clickbait and attracting people in general, but you mind find more quality content in magazines, since the readership tends to stay loyal as they can trust that when they open the packaging the writing will be of decent quality.

This comment puzzles me the most out of any I've seen so far.

I'm not going to get into the "false metal" argument because that would probably get the page locked and then MRmehman wouldn't be able to do his assignment, but how does a website publishing articles on Korn and FFDP affect their honesty and integrity? I think we would all agree that Candlemass are definitely not an example of "false metal", yet the reviewers have clearly used no integrity to comment on that release. The reason why the articles are awful is because they don't actually review the content at all, just give very broad comments about the music that could have been guessed without even listening to it, then add in issues that are not relevant to pad out the words and grasp for entertainment value.

I'm pretty sure that if MA let users write reviews on Korn albums (not only for April Fool's Day this time), some of them would be interesting and informative and entirely credible. There are many metal bands I like that are not included on this site and it would not be a stretch for me to imagine that metal buyers and listeners also like some of them; therefore, just because other websites choose to include content about them does not make them any less "metal" than the bands included here, it simply means that there are different sources available for different tastes within our genre.

I would embrace any example of good, honest writing and responsible journalism rather than read only about my favourite bands in the words of some hack who doesn't give a shit.


P.S. Sorry for the double post.

Any publication that tries to pass off FFDP and Korn as metal has no integrity....period.


If the aforementioned sites don't even know what metal is, how is anything they say credible?

If they are not included here, they are not metal. If you think Korn or FFDP is metal then there is no need to take this any further.

Edit: I guess my bias shows through because I don't consider anything -core to be metal at all, including metalcore. So take that as you may.

I guess that's where we differ. I've always thought nu metal (mallcore) and metalcore to be very much metal, likewise with industrial metal stuff. Largely because "core" on its own isn't a genre. I guess these publications take the same view.

However, I insist it's the quality that's important, not the specific choice of bands covered. I mean, we have bands on here like Mortiis and Storm Corrosion that are not even slightly metal.

I'm not sure the name of prominent YouTube reviewer, kid with short black hair and black-rimmed glasses, he reviews all kinds of music, but I was watching his review of Nightmare Logic and he said something along the lines of like, "I'm waiting for them to develop their own style," and I just scratched my head in utter confusion. Their first record was some of the most devastating thrash to be released in like a decade, and Nightmare Logic just expands upon that greatly, and I just don't even understand that critical point. To me, waiting for a band to "develop their own style" signals they don't know what the fuck they're talking about beyond hearing something similar to something else, and knowing not enough to make a critique based on those factors, so a catch-all "develop their own style" is applied as a sort of tepid "I don't like it, but I can't contextualize it within the sound of the record".

Some reviews can be pompous and inconsequential, others can be informative. Reading reviews by people privy to a band or style (or that you trust) can be a good way to get different senses, but nothing really replaces just hearing it and talking to other people about it.

The thing about reviews is that most of the time, the writers of them have no idea what they're doing. I've taken issue with a couple reviews lately on a certain well known review site, where the lack of knowledge and research about the album/artist/genre at hand is painfully obvious. Criticism is a very, very difficult genre to write in. To do it right demands careful attention, thoughtful discourse, and above all, knowledge about what one is fucking writing about. The best reviewers (and I'll use autothrall as an example - even if you find him boring you can't argue with his encyclopedic metal knowledge) are able to make an argument about an album and back it up in their writing. It seems like many reviewers, even on the bigger sites, put very little effort into their work and are just in it to fill content.

Those reviews are generally of low quality, nonetheless there are worse examples than the first of those. Other than official ties, such reviews are usually lacking in the passion typical to the music. MA's culture relies on unwritten rules and so on, so honestly it's not usually any better.

Classifying some bands as metal when they are clearly not (they also throw Tool and Slipknot in there a lot) is just an unfortunate byproduct of their business. It doesn't necessarily means they're idiots. They're trying to get clicks, get pageviews. So they have to write about popular or at least well known bands. Also, bands that are relevant to their audience. Also, releases that you have a fighting chance of actually buying somewhere. Reviewing the latest death/black act from Peru or wherever just ain't gonna do it.

If I had to guess, I'd say that the reviewers themselves are probably pretty reluctant to call some of those bands "metal" too.

I think this is pretty interesting. A separate reviews section on nu-metal, alternative and grunge albums by Korn, Limp Bizkit, Tool, Nirvana and other such non-metal bands would be a great addition to the archives if only to show an outsider's perspective on these releases. It could be the Tavern equivalent of the Metal Archives main metal reviews section. I'd like to know what metalheads think of these records as I'm sure a lot of them listened to these bands somewhere along their musical journey.

For example, someone could write a series of reviews tackling each of the albums of Korn from their debut to their fifth record, Untouchables. The review rules would be that these albums should be evaluated within the standards of the particular non-metal genre and not based on the standards set by the metal/heavy metal genre.

This is basically what every review should be. Evaluating an album within its particular genre or sub-genre is the only way to do it. If I review a Nirvana album and say that it isn't as technical as Metallica, that would be missing the point.

However, it's never going to happen on this site because the metal bands are picked and chosen for their particular credentials, not being metal in a general sense.

As much as I'd love to vomit my opinions on bands like The Doors and Nirvana onto you guys, that'd devalue the site as being an archive of metal. If you host reviews for these albums, you likely need to host the information on them too, pushing us further away from being an archive of metal music. Even if you could solve all the technical and resource issues, I don't think reviews for non-metal albums would add that much to the site.

I'm sorry but what do you mean by metal in a general sense? The bands here are not picked because of any credentials. There is a strict criteria for inclusion here...metal riffs! I actually believe this site has gotten much more lenient when it comes to inclusion because I do not think ANY metalcore should be here....but that is just me. It sounds to me like you think that just because a band has distorted guitars, plays fast and sounds "heavy" they should be included here.

I feel the same way. I think even deathcore, grindcore, post-metal and drone bands shouldn't be on this site.



Fair enough. While I hate nu-metal with a passion, I am sometimes drawn to it the way I sometimes enjoy watching a fucked-up, bad movie like Tommy Wiseau's The Room.

So metal riffs make a band metal, eh? Let's backtrack a moment and look at Black Sabbath's debut, supposedly one of the birthplaces of metal. Most of the songs on that album use fairly typical rock patterns. Compare that to Iron Maiden's early albums or Overkill's most recent. There's not much similarity between those "metal riffs", is there? So who is to say where the line is drawn?

I'm not saying that any band that has "distorted guitars, plays fast and sounds "heavy"" is metal (I'd question "plays fast" as a criterion anyway), just that the supposedly clear definition you are talking about doesn't exist. There are metalcore bands (not all) playing tons of metal riffs that come from melodeath or death metal, though elements of their songs like breakdowns don't really qualify as heavy metal in a traditional sense. Likewise, I'd be interested to know what kind of riffs you think a band like Korn or Slipknot are playing - if they aren't metal, what would you classify them as? Maybe their aesthetic doesn't seem metal, but this isn't about their image: this is the Metal Archives, not the Heavy Metal Archives or the True Metal Archives. I'm genuinely interested to hear more about this.

Gasmask, you do have some valid points. While your question was not addressed to me, I want to offer my own two cents on the matter. There is a very thin line differentiating metal and non-metal riffs. Maybe a mere 10% difference; I don't want to sound like these arrogant thrash elitists or tech death elitists who says their opinion are the end all be all (authority) of what is considered "pure metal". But I do believe that true metal/heavy metal is a real authentic genre with several branches/subgenres. It is an artform that has solidified its identity and therefore those who wish to practice or use it as a medium of expression should at least adhere to a few basic rules or follow certain standards that were set by the masters or pioneers, so to speak.

One of the defining characteristics of true metal are the riffs but they have to be of a certain quality to be qualified as genuine "metal riffs" as opposed to a "core" riff or "djent" riff. I think what qualifies a riff as a metal riff is the way its played. Tremolo picking and palm mutes are very prevalent in thrash, death or black metal. Also, guitar solos are a staple of true metal. Technical shredding, sometimes with a neo-classical bent as opposed to just ordinary pentatonic soloing that could be found in garden variety hard rock like Kiss or ACDC is a distinct characteristic of real metal. The drumming and the vocals are also prime factors in determining and measuring the "metalness" of a song.

On nu-metal riffs or songs, I think the most noticeable traits are the downtuned guitars, lack of guitar solos and integration of hip hop elements such as rapping and beats as well as incorporating hardcore punk traits such as breakdowns. Also, the inclusion of funk, reggae or techno is very rampant in nu-metal which makes it a fusion genre and not a metal subgenre.

Also, metal sprung from the traditional metal movement/NWOBHM of the late 70s while nu-metal traces its roots to 80s hardcore punk and the indie scene spearheaded by the Subpop, Washington DC and Seattle scenes of the late 80s and early 90s.

Gasmask, if you really think that Slipknot and Korn's non riffing chugs and breakdowns sound anything like the riffs of Sabbath, Priest, Maiden, etc. then you clearly have no understanding of music and I am no longer going to derail this thread any longer.

My main point was that sites like Blabbermouth, Metalsucks, and Metal Injection like to label clearly non metal bands as metal and, therefore, have no credibility. That said, any review on those sites are done by people who clearly have no idea what metal is. I can not take any reviewer seriously if he/she writes a review for a Korn album and calls it metal!

I think the second quoted paragraph is the part I'm closest to agreeing with. I can absolutely see that the lineage of Korn is not from any of the traditional metal bands and does come from other areas of rock. However, that gets confused when we look at other bands in the genre such as Slipknot, who have always used harsh vocals and (looking back to the first two albums) seem to be influenced more by death metal than anything from Sub Pop or hip-hop. Also, while I kind of accept the definition of nu metal as a "fusion genre", it does lead to the question of whether it should be treated the same way as metalcore - another supposed fusion genre - and bands who are more "metal" than "nu" would be classified as metal bands. That would arguably mean welcoming Slipknot, Mudvayne, and Coal Chamber as metal, but dismissing Korn, Limp Bizkit, and Deftones as more influenced by other genres.

I'm still wary of saying that guitar solos make heavy metal because we all know some bands on this site that don't use them (a whole slew of black metal bands for starters), as well as the differences in style by bands on the thrash side of things and the doom side, which tend towards technical and pentatonic respectively. If we really go back to the question of heavy metal, the initial distinction was in the "heaviness" of the music, meaning the qualities of sound, atmosphere, and themes that made the music of a greater density and gravity to rock music. Compare comments from the early '70s about "heavy" lyrical subjects in Black Sabbath (war, drugs, the supernatural) to some of those in AC/DC and Kiss, which were more about "light" subjects such as parties, girls, and having fun.

It's a complex distinction, no doubt.

I think that nu metal chugs sound closer to Black Sabbath than a Burzum album does.

In any case, I think we can conclude from our debate that some metal sites think like you do and some think like I do. Just don't read the reviews you don't care about and scorn Blabbermouth with your rejection!

Am I the only one who really hates the reviewers in Decibel magazine? It seems like they try too hard to be funny & show off their metal knowledge that they barely spend any time on the music. If your average review has 5 or 6 paragraphs, there might be 1 or maybe 2 which actually goes into detail about the music.

I agree, and I find it really frustrating that even the better reviews here often have horrible cringey moments where the author can't think of a way to properly express his actual sentiment so instead reaches for tired metal lyric metaphors--battles, warriors, swords, blood, blah blah blah. You're writing a review, not marketing copy. Enthusiasm is no substitute for knowledge or analysis.

As for the arguing about what makes a band metal, I would suggest that the primary thing that makes a band metal is its relation to/descent from other metal music. Metal isn't a set of fixed traits, it's more like a clade; metal bands share common descent from a set of late '60s/early '70s ancestors. A band that reproduces formal musical characteristics of metal without any involvement in or attachment to the ongoing history of metal isn't going to produce convincing metal music. Droney, atmospheric black metal bands may have very little surface elements in common with Black Sabbath, but there is a clear line of descent from Black Sabbath through Judas Priest through the NWOBHM, early European extreme metal (I think no meaningful distinction can really be drawn between black metal and death metal before the late 1980s at the earliest), through to Mayhem and the second wave. Korn's family tree starts somewhere in the vicinity of The Velvet Underground and descends through punk, college rock, grunge, and '90s alternative; therefore Korn are mostly not metal.

That metalsucks review slays me. Metalsucks is a big site, is it not? Surely they have some staff who are familiar with Candlemass's body of work. Why hand the review off to someone who admits they don't know what they're talking about? It's not as if Candlemass is some obscure band that doesn't merit any investigation into their catalog before writing off their EP as a "stopgap".

I did like that they mentioned that the lineup isn't the same as the debut. Who knew? Thanks for that timely update!

Personally, when I want a review of an album, I'll look at http://www.angrymetalguy.com first. Not only is their community tightly-knit, their opinions on the site are pretty clearly their own and I've learned about a lot of music from them since they try to balance the big releases with the smaller stuff. They've even been embargoed by labels before for being critical about certain albums. I don't look at reviews from bigger sites anymore, but I used to notice how pandering to the labels they appear to be...

deathmetal.org is the only website that posts good reviews regularly

Blabbermouth etc at least specialise in heavy guitar music: what I'd like to see is some good reviews of metal albums in the more general music media. It's amazing how whenever an Iron Maiden album comes out it's just "oh it'll please fans".

The way the most general music pundits seemingly can't tell Master of Puppets, Load and St Anger apart is mindboggling. I mean St Anger has objectively bad songs, but the pundits didn't seem to realise this and said it was a "return to form". Shows how much they're obsessed with image and hype.

Not a fan of their reviews. Prozak could turn a phrase back in the day (the phrase "rhythmically similar to a police beating" has stuck with me), which is what made the DLA reviews interesting, but both he and subsequent writers at anus/dm.org have never really been able to explain what is so dire about the bands they don't like and what actually differentiates the ones they do. I mean, it's hard to argue there is actually any consistency when the writers have spent ages saying rock music is anathema to metal but then turn around and invent made up genre terms for the recent, heavily rock influenced, Nokturnal Mortum and Graveland albums in order to justify liking them. It's just silly.

Without prozak's creative writing skills, sense of humor, and broad knowledge of the (then contemporary) metal scene, dm.org reviews are just conservative culture war slogans (and increasingly internet memes) applied to random metal albums. Add to that the teenage "I'm a genius in a world of sheep" attitude. Doesn't make for insightful metal reviews.

One thing I like about reviews on MA, and even un-moderated crap on amazon and the like, is that the people writing them are generally genuinely interested in talking about the music and not using a metal review as a platform to vent about their own demons, or shill for whatever woke or redpilled worldview is trendy on their favorite websites this week.

Nah, but there is a lot of crap out there.

Back in the day, I immensely enjoyed Prozak's writing. He's like the H.P. Lovecraft of metal reviews; but he obviously couldn't distinguish between what is metal and what's not (He considers ACDC as heavy metal). His website is also a watering hole for neo-Nazis and other psychologically challenged individuals.



They're not always reliable. Troll reviews for example are a plague on both sites; an unpleasant fact but a reality.

Troll reviews, if really identified as such, don't last very long here.

Funny, this is the exact site I was disparaging in my earlier comment. I think with that site there are some reviews which are of good quality, which leads people to assume that every writer on the site knows what they're doing. They don't, and they'll ban you for pointing it out. That is why 98% of the comments are little more than ball-washing.