Not sure about other people out there, but this site was one of my first discoveries desling with metal in the internet. Somehow i stumbled across it and for the most part, found it usefull in discovering new bands, particularly due to the MP3 samples they had.

As interesting as the reviews were, it wasn't hard to see that there was some obvious "fanboyism" attached to particular bands/albums. Not afraid to admit that i shamefully ignored some albums based on the critique.

I do remember that many reviews seemed to take a psuedo- intellectual route...

Seems all the site is nothing but a political front now.

ANUS had a tremendous catalogue of metal for the time, primarily stuff distributed through Wild Rags in one way or another. Simply publishing blurbs on the best from that store/label was a service to those using the internet at the time, and it was quite early for metal on the internet. The rest of the site's content was of little value.

Very light on substance and operated by a clown. I recall circa 2002 Prozak was big noting himself on FMP about non complimentary letters he was writing to Chuck Schuldiner's family (about Schuldiner's death) whilst at the same time advertising a Sound of Perseverance tour shirt on his trade/sale list. After that there was the time he looked to jump on the white nationalism bandwagon. This ended in embarrassment when a photo of him and his non white college buddies surfaced. Just can't take clowns like that seriously. And yes, a lot of "pseudo-intellectual" rubbish.

It was a long time before I realized the polysyllabic yammering of ANUS reviews was not some weird joke. Jesus, those monacle-adjusting, champagne-sipping, yuppie fucks are insufferable.

Weren't they also the ones who tried to make "metalgate" a thing because some music blog no one's heard of wrote something stupid about metal fans?

Remember that site from years back. Besides the bullshit - I didn't understand much because of the complicated English - I really made some good discoveries through them back in the Burzum teenage years.

ANUS-gazing. I’m not going to check, but are they some alt-right, incel front now? Their highly rated stuff was usually pretty good, though.

They generally had good taste but the overt pretentiousness of the writing was ridiculous and unnecessary.

Much preferred teufels tomb which I'm glad appears to be back via Facebook

ANUS was always mostly pseudo-intellectual garbage, but they did have some interesting band lists from what I can remember.

I googled the site now and I don't see any incel crap? Mostly just the old super cringy nihilism articles really, and they don't have the forum anymore. That forum was absolutely horrible from what I remember. And the whole Summoning debacle as well.... ugh.

Thanks for reminding me of Teufel's Tomb. Most of his archives are on the wayback machine, I might go read them.

Seconded. Used to be a regular reader of said site. Was a good one.

Anus sold out when he stopped using the Goatsie Jesus pic as the banner.

yes.

Back around 96, 97, 98, I visited fairly frequently just to read something about interesting-sounding albums. They were one of the premier underground metal review sites at the time, along with LARM and a few smaller ones.

It didn't take me long to realise the reviews were written by a guy who was probably stoned and editing his stream of consciousness rambles. I did find some of them an amusing read but I started to get botehred because, and I guess this refers to SRP specifically, there were a lot of references to music theory that seemed really off. Granted I'm no music school guy but I did study a bit of theory in my younger years and even passed a bunch of exams, and some of the stuff they were saying was, to put it bluntly, totally bogus. I pretty much stopped reading altogether when in an opinion piece he seemed to literally confuse the nature of jazz and classical performances with one another.

Good music though, yes.

Went on a nostalgia trip via the way back machine a few years ago. I initially gave Circle of Dead Children a shot thanks to their review and for that I am in their dept

Let's not forget the incredibly delicious ANUS hot-take that black metal is modern classical music, or some sort of bullshit argument like that. Literally couldn't be further from the truth.

The only thing I remember about ANUS is their genre page, where IIRC thrash was "speed", crossover was "thrash", and power metal apparently didn't exist.

This, along with the previously mentioned slide into white nationalism, always infuriated me. It's like, I can see the argument you're making, but wouldn't that make it "street metal" the term since that's what the bands were called before the term "thrash" really took hold? Am I going to listen to a guy who wasn't there when all accounts by those who were contradict his claims?

There was a poster at another board I frequent who was all about ANUS. He was outed as a Nazi and disappeared soon after.

Kinda surprised they didn't go with that "flower metal" tag that was so popular around that time.

Which brings me to Erebus Magazine, which was the brainchild of SRP, U Amtey (Brown Jenkins, The Ash Eaters) and Yuri Arkadin (Convivial Hermit Magazine) if I'm not mistaken. Now, Erebus was the shit. The most intellectually-charged online metal magazine I have ever encountered. It was 10 levels beyond my intellectual capabilities. I'm pretty sure before erecting this magnificent project, all 3 above mentioned co-operated, but soon after split their ways, SRP established ANUS and the other two brought us the best online dark music magazine the world has ever seen. Someone please correct me if I'm wrong.

There was another good review site called Satan Stole My Teddybear. Does anyone remember this one?

Nothing to reflect on this.


One of the worst publications, of all-time, not just in music, but the worst publication of all-time.

They never had a fanzine when it mattered 79, 81, 88, 90....etc...pre-internet.

I have no problems telling death metal fans who are in that readership, when i meet them.

That place is such a big fraud, it is probably a satire page making fun of death metal/ elitist posers/ losers/ scumbags.

Very shocked anyone would ever take them serious, to even mention them.

I read this magazine called Snakepit, it is pretty close to the actual heavy metal genre, how the fanzines were back in the early 1980's-era.

I read that place for a good laugh....perfect example of how not to be a journalist in the metal genre....voicesfromthedarkside.de blows that fake metal publication out of the fucking water, with ease since there metallers over there, and not even really sure it is they do over at deathmetal.org / anus................ a place of assholes for assholes called ANUS....ha ha.....

Not one good article over there, or even a coherent sentence. Surprised anyone finds anything of worth over there, since it appears to be a piss take on death metal elitist douchebags....I have told deathmetal.org fans to there face, that Brett Stevens is the worst thing to ever happen to heavy metal, and shame on them for being so gullible and stupid...!!!

Notice how the actual heavy metal press and the actual heavy metal community never talks about them....because it is satire or whatever.....no one is really that stupid, to belive a word they say!!!! Probably making fun of joke publications like Slayer Mag, which is average to below average and garbage at best...!!!!!

ha ha... i remember that loser place called Satan Stole my Teddybear....i remember he reviewed my favorite rock album a 2.75 out of 5, but i looked in his distro and he had 30 copies for sale, i bought all 30 copies...that dude had a statement like, "behind every journalist is a failed musician"....probably talking about himself and everyone who attacks the gold standard of heavy metal, because of popularity and ground-breaking albums!!!!!

What kind of person loser/poser slags a band but is smart enough to carry 30 albums in there distro...!!!

I got into it with the freak, Katherine LaChance, who ran Leather n' Spikes poser/loser.......where is she now... Christian listening to soft indie rock ....ha ha !!!!!

I only remember her, because i bought her collection for pennies one dollar, when she "sold-out", never a metal maniac in the 1st place...everything in mint condition....ha ha!!! I take delight in playing all those over-rated "classics", which were hers, in mint condition knowing she lost thousands of dollars selling that stuff for pennies on the dollar....!!!! glad to see Leather 'n spikes go down the drain, while losing thousands of dollars in running that irrelevant publication.

Oh dam, Deathmetal.org tells everyone "how to play heavy metal the real way"....notice everyone, the artist, who takes there advice always fails with 9th rate stuff, and always has stuff in the bargain, delete bin....ha ha !!!

Anything they promote over there i avoid like the plague, if it is not mentioned in a actual death metal fanzine or webZine...

bruh

Umm... ya sure about that?

Voices is probably the best publication online and has been so for a loooooong time.

I remember they once described the percussion on A Blaze in the Northern Sky with words to the effect of:

"...like legs under skirts, the drums move seductively..."

It's like if Pitchfork catered to metalheads and was run by white nationalists. It's weird.
It did, however, introduce me to some bands I may not have heard of otherwise (like Demoncy). I remember finding them a while back when I was first getting into the extreme side of metal and decided to just search Darkthrone on Google (or maybe it was Yahoo or Ask Jeeves considering how long ago it was).

And that punk is worthless.

I wish all this American politics bs would stay far away from the music, be it ANUS or this site here (which also was way more relaxed once). All this censorship and peddling of "muh/da truth" by adolescent, or those who forever want to be, is annoying. Nobody cares about your Clinton/Trump and other shit issues, or rather, there are political boards for that kind of thing, just stop invading us and make some decent metal, ok!

Yeah, I remember that site. It had a good amount of bands that were interesting to check out and some of the interviews with artists such as Ildjarn were interesting (although the interviewer was pretentious half the time of course), but otherwise like others have already noted the site was a bunch of pretentious crap with the way the reviews and articles were written. I remember all the time the site went out of its way to tell everyone how only the "true extreme metal artists" mattered and that everything else was fake and "killed the meaning of metal" or some other nonsense... So basically anything after about 1996 was "not true metal" and that metal was dead because it "lost its value" or some other nonsense. I remember they wrote stuff like: "nowadays black metal is just rock n' roll music that even grandma can listen to. Gone is the true nihilistic spirit and meaning created by visionaries like Burzum and Darkthrone who had the pioneering vision of nihilism bla bla bla." Such nonsense!

ANUS may be lame, but Satan Stole My Teddybear is absolutely despicable. For example, they say that Coal Chamber's guitarist is "a genius" and that Mayhem's "Wolf's Lair Abyss" "isn't Black Metal". And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

You nitpick. That site had some great, knowledgeable reviews of many quality albums. Giving a couple of bad examples out of a sea of quality reviews, is not wise and not fair.
And indeed, Wolf's Lair Abyss is not black metal, it's garbage.

That's fucking poetic. I bet none of you could come up with such a brilliant simile...

It might have well-done reviews, but it still had an unnaceptable amount of downright terrible reviews. Want more examples? They say Kittie's first album is as good as System Of A Down. They say that Marilyn Manson's "Antichrist Superstar" "has no music". And many times they just outright lie. As for "Wolf's Lair Abyss", they say it is Thrash Metal, but that people call it Black Metal just because it's from Norway...

It's not THEY, it's HIM; it was a one-man-project. I of course read all the stuff that was relevant to my liking, and via SSMTB I discovered and enjoyed reading reviews for Esoteric's albums, I have discovered the existence of Controlled Bleeding (pre-Skin Chamber) and many a left-fild, esoteric, avantgarde and out-there albums by obscure bands I later became a fan of. Why even waste time on reading Kittie, Maryling Manson or System of a Down reviews, for the life of me I would not understand. And saying about an opinion that it's nothing more than a lie, no less, is an invalid argument because reviews are nothing more than, well, opinions...

First of all, it was not a one-man-project, John Chedsey wasn't the only reviewer there. Second, I spent a lot of time reading reviews of all types of artists out of curiosity (and I like Marilyn Manson, BTW). And I should have been more specific when I said that they lied - I'll give you two examples right off the top of my head: they say that Marduk's "Opus Nocturne" sounds all the same and that on Mayhem's "Mediolanum Capta Est" live album you couldn't hear the audience at all until Manic says "God is Dead". If you listen to the album you'll know that's an outright lie. They many times were just biased.

Why would they 'lie'? Is there a hidden agenda? Your examples don't make any sense, and if they did, would you care whether one thinks some songs sound similar on a given album (an opinion as valid as any) or whether or not one hears the audience on a live album, or otherwise? Is that even important in a (good) review? That's coming close to being absurd...

Anyways, I was way more immersed in the works of Erebus and LARM than in SSMTB or ANUS, so that's that.

Made some cool discoveries through their site; but like everyone else has said, much of the website was indeed of little value. He took metal elitism to an extreme that made me wonder if there was actually anything interesting going on in his life aside from sitting in front of a computer and smearing shit all over MA with 54 0% reviews out of 55 (the last one being a 50% review).

Dude, all I'm saying is that there are plenty of examples on reviews on that site that are just downright false and misleading, that's all.

You could say that about any review-oriented website on the Internet...

Haha do you have a source? I'd like to read some of those reviews.

Also, SSMT was a huge source for helping me get into metal during my teenage years (before I discovered metal archives, of course). I still like to go back and check the site out just for the sake of nostalgia.

https://www.metal-archives.com/users/bitterman

Be prepared for the hottest of hot takes.