I love reading reviews on MA and there is so much of them to read that I usually skip those that are so badly written or so badly described that you can't even figure out how the music sounds. But there's one commonplace which I too often read over here and that makes me want to skip the review from the first lines because it screams bad taste and you know there are chances it's going to be bad:



If it needs no introduction then why the hell do you need to introduce your review by saying it needs no introduction??Isn't there anything better to say about a band or an album? It sounds like "Oh fuck it, I don't know how to start and have nothing interesting to say so I'm going to write this stuff everybody writes in the beginning".

In the same style, here is one of Eaten back to life that I find absolutely useless:

There are those reviews that start by informing us where the reviewer first heard the album. Sometimes that might be an amusing story or somehow relevant to their thoughts on the music, but if it's just to tell us you saw it recommended on Spotify or Reddit, who gives a shit? Not even tangentially interesting.

I feel like people telling me they searched the band on YouTube 20 minutes ago also seriously need to consider how people are going to regard their expertise in talking about that album.

The above mentioned (especially in gas' version as in, how do you think that's going to leave a positive impression?!), plus all variations of 'I don't understand why people like this album' – which usually leads to a review focused almost exclusively on confuting other people's opinions – are my go-to, but there are surely others I can't quite elaborate now.

I'm pretty sure I may have been guilty of the OP one from time to time during the Challenge I hope I disguised it well, if anything...

This one is always a real who cares for me.

And anything that starts with some variation of "well I heard a lot of hype about this and it doesn't live up" - shallow fucking critiques.

Even if considerably longer than 20 minutes ago, that doesn't give me confidence. YouTube is not an optimal way for listening to music. I'd much rather know the reviewer owns the CD or a high quality digital copy (320kpbs MP3 or better), though even that information should be left out of the review itself. Just select the version to appear on the header of the review.

Obligatory disclosure that YouTube compression is not bad enough to ruin an otherwise good song. Some of my reviews of obscure demos and albums were based on rips uploaded to YT. Lots of music isn't readily available anywhere else, and I don't expect people to spend $100s to write a review, but it's reasonable to expect reviewers try to find a high quality version of the thing they're writing about.

While I overall agree with everything that's been written before, let's also admit it's no easy matter to come with a new killer punchline for every single review you write. Like TheBurningOfSodom said, most of us must have been guilty of a few lazy openings more than once.

Furthermore, the way to open a review may differ a lot depending on the kind of band / release reviewed. I mostly review albums with few or even no reviews, often from bands I can safely assume not every reader will be familiar with, so opening with something in the lines of "[band name] is a [genre] band from [location] that blah blah blah...", as bland as it certainly is, somehow serves a purpose – especially considering one can access reviews from the main page or from a user profile, without having gone through the band's own page first. On the other hand, if anyone was to open a, say, Ride the Lightning review with "Metallica is an American thrash metal band..."... no comment.


That one is a tad different, as it isn't that absurd per se - c'mon, we all know about works we think the reputation to be grossly exaggerated. It's just that in 95% of practical cases, this is equivalent to "now I'll bash a classic I don't have any clue about". Oh well.

I guess technically it's fine to start off with, but yeah, that's exactly my problem - a lot of these people just rarely have any substantial critiques after that.

Plus I just find listening to hype to be a faulty way of doing it. It's an internal thing that doesn't really need to be brought up in reviews or outward analyses.

I often feel guilty for reviewing most, if not everything these days, off NWOTHM's tube channel but realize that perhaps this is my best way of giving back to the metal community and the artists as 1) I've bad credit i.e. no credit card and it's real inconvenient, if not frivolous considering primary expenses, for me to order anything online* these days and 2) I paid my dues back in the era of brick and mortar record stores, having already spent a small fortune on CDs and vinyls long lost to misadventure 3) I still adhere, well let's 90% of the time, to autothrall's golden rule of listening to an album at least 3 times before writing.

Although it's very satisfying to actually review a physical copy from time to time, as I did for Extermination Day's Be The Consequence, sent over by Nate Towle in Minneapolis - still my one and only CD!)

*Case in point: Last year, I had a friend with an old paypal account try to order one of MA's ultra cool long sleeve shirts only for it arrive at the old address listed (of all places, Onsite detox in Vancouver, a ways away), but also under another fellow's name's for some dumb reason. Long story short, I even asked Mom to order it for me on her VISA (ah, Moms!) but her being in Spain disallowed it...

Oh, but on the subject, I agree with Cat III (and, retroactively, Metantoine) that opening a review with a quirky or jocose personal anecdote is often the way to go. As well, you can even pay tribute to the band's hometown, in the same vein as Coffehouse Crime's erudite, respectful and diligent Adrian, whom I believe I somehow steered towards MA readership.

I find those sections of his videos to be the most irrelevant and uninteresting. A short introduction is alright but most of it is unnecessary context IMO. Feels like it's coming off a Wikipedia page.

Bah, it still adds to his charm (lightening the mood for such a sombre yet morbidly fascinating subject) and I'm thrilled to hear from a fellow Coffehouser...sadly, it appears we'll have to wait a day or two for another of his fondly patented crafts. Although I'll admit, a few of his choices are a bit too much, such as that old and hopefully dead Japanese cannibal in France, back in the seventies, who escaped justice...

I didn't mean to imply a physical copy was necessary, and from my limited knowledge many modern vinyl editions pose their own problems in terms of sound quality. A good digital copy works just as well. Even streaming from Bandcamp will likely give better results than streaming from YouTube.

You make a good point, though. Not everyone has the finances to buy albums, even digital downloads, and sometimes you review things you don't want to own. A prolific reviewer like you could rack up quite the bill for what is ultimately a hobby.

On an unrelated note, I have far too many CDs and records I need to get rid of.

Thinking about it, I also really hate those black metal/experimental reviews where the first 2 paragraphs are an excerpt from a dissertation that the author is writing on spiritual essentialism or some other, totally irrelevant shit. I don't need to get into the mood to read your review man.

"What can be said about Metallica that hasn't been said yet? Well, nothing I can think of. Anyway, onto the review..."

"When the howling emptiness and dismal stench of the Chicken Bone Gallows on the Plains of Mediocre Desolation was unleashed upon the unsuspecting world by the unholy rusty lawnmower molester horde that is Satan's Prenuptial Charcuterie from the endless fields of tombs that is Butthill, Alabama, it made tidal waves in the Black Metal Underground, and caused a crescendo of uproar in the Halls of Hell, echoing across all corners of the world through the frozen Tunnels of Doom that they use to visit the different areas of their realms of endless pain and mild discomfort, to spread genital pestilence and TP the houses of the false metal posers..."

"I came to possess the rare Coccyx Crushing Limbo Incident demo by Orangutan the Clockwork through Reinhardt, the bands ex-bassist, who is an acquaintance of Guglielmo Z, an exceptionally good dubstep DJ in the Andalusian scene and a cousin of Wladimir Schlapotznikoff-Schömözenschtözhewitz, whose son Tim was an exchange student for two months with my uncle Joseph's family in Butthill, Alabama. While Tim didn't enjoy working on the cotton fields of Joseph's in-laws instead of going to the high school as he was promised when he submitted his exchange application in Düsseldorff, I certainly did feel cool when I inserted the plain CD-r with trembling hands into my step dad's Phillips DVD player, and pressed play on the remote in the comfort of the old lime-colored sofa in the basement of my grandma, while eating her excellent oatmeal-raisin-cannabis brownies and drinking my seventh Mountain Dew and Diet Coke mix of the day. And boy, was I in for an exceptional and lamentably underrated metalcore treat, right after I found a pair of AAA batteries to replace the dead ones in the said remote..."

What?? Is that actually on the site? We could almost call that an admission to plagiarism.

I did find a close but slightly less ridiculous match.
https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... ard/695774

The last two had me cracking up!

Thanks

Meanwhile... while on my quest for more Roman Metal I stumbled onto that interesting piece of Art, which has almost everything you love:
- "band needs no introduction"
- first paragraph consisting only in one long-winded, hyperbolic metaphor
- black metal, of course

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... oth/277444



I've planned a review for this album as well, but I'm afraid I won't be able to compete.

"I'm not a fan of X (sub)genre in general/at all, and this album is no exception, but I happened to listen to the album (because I randomly bought/checked out it - because of an interesting album cover, for example) and now I've decided to write a negative review about it for some reason."
I think the main problem with a review of this kind is that it tends to be more about what the listener doesn't like about the genre in general rather than describing the details of a particular album.

To me it's much more interesting to read positive reviews of this kind - i.e. where the listener is not a fan of X genre in general, but for some reason(s) he/she likes one particular album in this genre.

This one has everything it needs

This one was published today and it seems the reviewer took our advices into account

I guess that's what you produce when you review two albums in a row on the very day of their release

Anyway, this way of reviewing needs no introduction.

Song 1 - is a fast tempo with great solo, blablabla
Song 2 - wow how great it is, guitars sound amazing
Song 3 - a killer track with great blasts and vocals

Do I really need to read what I can hear in headphones myself?
I'd prefer to read what a reviewer thinks about what I can hear in headphones myself.

^ That's why the track-by-track reviews are forbidden here anyway. Not saying they cannot hold some real muscle, though.

For me, it's the two paragraph openings describing everything that has happened in metal since the 80s that led to this point.