St. Georgius, the VirginSlayer?

Congrats to all who participated, and here's to 666 more great review challenges. ...or just as many as we can muster.

Hells, how do you think I feel? I only got 12 virgins.

Well, I got 2 in...bettered my last record of one. So next time, I should get 3 done.

I wanted to write more reviews, as there were plenty of virgins I could've written for, but I struggled to find what to say about them, to be honest. Some albums can click easily, while others I can't seem to find the right words. This is why I'll never, ever become a hells_unicorn or Noktorn.

I'll aim for 15 next time.

I think I may aim for at least 10.

This week was a busy week (papers, and such), so I was limited in what I could do. But I have to say, I'm happy that I even got three out. Ah, as so happens with procrastination.

Now to get some of the unfinished reviews finished for the holiday season!

I'm going for at least 20 next time, although I always say I want to at least double what I did last time.. it worked this challenge mostly, with 9. If the server hadn't been down and during Thanksgiving break I would have gotten a shitload more in. Oh well, still good challenge new record!

Shit yes son.

Kiuas. I haven't even heard of any of the other bands you reviewed. I probably would have given it about 85, despite the body of the review being pretty much the same. They've lost a lot of their inventiveness and originality, but I find the choruses very catchy, and I like the fact that they've pretty much stopped doing those pantera chug riffs which made basically all of the not great songs on the first album really unpleasant. Considerably better than the shitty Reformation to my ears.

By the way, what made you think I'd like some Gothic metal band, what have I ever said that's lead you to think I'd like that stuff. Just wondering.

It's just Poisonblack is a moderately known band, so you could have heard of them and, for instance, given them a negative review if you don't like their stuff. But anyway, I was pretty sure you were talking about Kiuas.

Man, I knew I should have done two more reviews before I went to the beach. Oh well! The waves were great, and we also smashed the old challenge record. Cheers to all!

I can't really see myself topping my effort on this one; while I was happy enough with my reviews cranking out roughly 6 a day was not a great deal of fun.

Wow, I'm the only one with 13 virgins... strange. Anyway, I'm aiming for doubling the number next time, no less!

Thanks to everybody involved, making the Challenge a whole lotta fun.

Don't martyr's get 72 virgins?

Caspian, do you have review Mad Libs?

"(Insert band name here) really has put out a sensational album. (Insert album name here) is the best recording since their debut album."

1) quite a few of mine were negative
2) not a lot were really gushing
3) some of them were formulaic, quite a few weren't

Not really sure where you're getting that idea, my reviews certainly weren't any less repetitive then, say, H_U's, with the exception of the Black Days vols. that i did.

Dude, it was a joke.

You can also have a negative review mad lib for albums you didn't like.

"Enter album title here" really let me down. "Enter band name here" has really regressed since "Enter last liked album here".

I'm thinking of attempting a 24 reviews in 24 hours challenge. Anyone in for that?

shame I couldn't do any, it's the end of my school session.

Now that would be a challenge and I'd love to challenge myself with that, but I have two weeks left this semester and too much cramming/work to be done. After that sure..

Yeah man, I would be into doing this but I am afraid that it would probably cause the death of me or something.

I'm on holidays and finally have an internet connection so I might be up for it. Sounds like an interesting challenge.

that would be tough!

Jack Bauer could do it, with his hands behind his back.

[egging-on mode]I think Mr. SepticTomb is pulling your nut hairs a little. There's no way that could be done.[/egging-on mode]

I'd be tempted to try it, although I'd need to pick a day where I have nothing else to do, which might be right after Christmas depending on how well business goes this season.

I think I did 19 reviewed in one day last Sunday during the regular review challenge, so it is possible, although probably really difficult.

24 pieces could easily be written on ZBT in 24h ... no problem.

I think it's perfectly doable, though much easier if you have a stock of demos rather than trying to do full-lengths.

yeah it would be difficult to review 24 full lengths but if your doing four and five song demos and grindcore splits, you should be alright.

Splits for me take more time than any type of review.

I've actually found singles and DVDs to be the easiest things to review, splits are pretty tricky and full lengths are the toughest.

That 24 reviews in 24 hours sounds like a perfect idea, I'd be totally up for that.

Also, I didn't realize you guys were doing competitions on reviewing the most virgin albums. I'll be sure to enter the next one.

Splits are difficult simply due to having to explore multiple bands each with their own sound; you have to do at least twice as much work.

Hmm. The idea of the challenge is to improve the archives, not to make it a biggest review-list contest - which would hardly be good for the quality anyway.

The quality of the reviews that popped up during the last contest were good and alot came in. Who's to say that the 24 in 24 challenge couldn't be the same way?

Out of curiosity Septic Tomb, if we were to do this 24 reviews in 24 hours challenge, would it only be for virgins or could it be for albums that already have reviews as well?

Of course I can't speak for SepticTomb, but since it's such a demanding task, I'm going to reccomend it to be any album whatsoever.

I'd probably be one of the people who rattle off about 6-8 fairly quickly, but then procrastinate and wind up with no more.

Great idea though.

Honestly I think this kind of 24-challenge is pretty masturbatory, I agree with Corimingul. You can't tell me if you restrict yourselves to starting and completing all 24 reviews in a 24 period that many of them would be any good. Now if you went back and edited them soon after, it would of course be fine; but as the end goal of any challenge of this sort is the bettering of MA's review pool, I would much rather see you guys go for quality rather than sheer quantity for arbitrary (and most likely ego-feeding) reasons.

As good as some of you are, I would be very surprised if that 24th review written in the 24th hour were worth a crap. Why not just write a single review in a 24 hour period and see who can come up with the best one instead? I'd much rather see our best reviewers struggling to really improve themselves rather than having a pointless race.

Any. I don't think it would be that difficult to make decent reviews. During the virgin challenges I generally just go through all the stuff that's too mediocre for me to spend a lot of time on anyway.

In essence, you have an hour to write each review ... One could quite easily make each review quality in that time provided that tiredness and such doesn't become a factor. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work given the quality that most reviewers produce in this day and age on this site. Personally, I don't think I'd be able to manage it.

This actually sounds like a brilliant idea, I'd love to see the site's reviewing heavy weights (particularly Abominatrix and OSS) pull out some massive reviews. Heck, maybe we'll even see Kruel's Altars review rear its head and maybe, just maybe, we could coax Nightgaunt into writing a review.

I think if it's an album/band that you've listened to a lot and know the album very well, then you should be able to write a decent review in an hour, given you are to be given an hour for each review. I doubt I'd be able to accomplish this task, but who knows.