Has anyone here read a review here in the form of flash fiction or even a short story? Or has anyone tried to write something of the sort?

What do you think of this idea? Sometimes the story/review doesn't have to have anything to do with the album being reviewed, but if it evokes the same kinds of feelings/imagery/emotions that the album does - I think I would say it succeeds in reviewing that album.

Thoughts?

I was thinking of writing something like that for a Skepticism review; I was kind of interested as to whether it would work. It wouldn't be a story as much as simply describing the music in very abstract terms.

Napero had once done something like this, and emailed me a rought draft of it. I told him that I thought the gimmick might get lost on a lot of people and feel far too ambiguous or vague to many potential readers, and he scrapped the idea AFAIK.

From the standpoint of MA acceptability, it would have to describe the music concretely for at least part of the review; I doubt sheer abstraction would cut it. As for how much concrete description is necessary, well, that kind of thing would have to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. There are many reviews on the site that are quite abstract, Nightgaunt's Forgotten Woods review being a prime example. Even there, though, he provides plenty of concrete description.

I find reviews like these to be way to gimmicky most of the time, unless they're REALLY well done.

Closest thing I can think of is the Daudi Baldrs poem. Which was more comic gold than anything else. Someone also did one in the form an autopsy report, but it didn't make any sense in the slightest to anyone who didn't know the album, and came over as really pretentious.

Both were Napero.

I seem to remember Metle Angel or something having reviews like this which got a lot of complaints for being far to abstract.

Film critic Roger Ebert sometimes does stuff like this. His review of Wet Hot American Summer was framed as the lyrics to a song and his review of the second Garfield movie was framed as a monologue from Garfield himself.

It's hard to do, but if you can figure out a way to make it work go for it.

Seriously, I do not have any moral right to criticize anyone's gimmick reviews. My moral high ground in that respect was washed away a long time ago...

That's the problem, really. I've tried doing them a few times myself, but I always end up scrapping them. Unless if you're an excellent writer (and I am certainly not one of them) it's basically impossible to pull off.

You should feel pride for the poem, it was easily one of the best things in literary history. It's just the other one which sucked.

Thank you, lord_ghengis. Any publicity is good publicity.

Don't make me comment this.

edit: reviews should be dealing with the issue and not some babbling around. It is quite challenging to keep the reader interested in the written piece, especially those familiar with this piece of art the writer is addressing. When I think of some of Suchlands', for Telepolis, rants/indepth analysis on/of movies, then his works are a hit or miss. While some are pretty interesting others are rather strange and offer too much off topic; they are often entertaining and I really hope to see a bashing of the latest Batman movie, but reading such on a daily basis would be hard to endure though.

I'm half tempted to go for something like this in a Thergothon Review I'm working on right now, although I don't think I could make up enough length for it, or really describe the music in abstract terms in enough detail. Not to mention I'm not confident enough with my writing to try something so gimmicky, stupid lack of artful vocabulary *shakes fist*.

Funeral doom is very open to this sort of thing I believe, although I assume it'd be a lot of very similar short stories

Here is an interesting review where the gimmick actually works.

http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=20247#4115

I was about to point to PGK's review, too. Also, there was an amusing piece by someone on Moonsorrow's Tämä ikuinen talvi demo, with some sort of discussion between fellows in a fortress under siege by musical northern barbarians, but it seems to have been deleted.

The whole gimmick review thing seems to be an opinion-splitter, with the easily amused dudes judging them as pieces of entertainment and forgetting the review aspect, and the more serious folks completely condemning the idea.

I think we should have a spot or two for the occasional comedy pieces, as long as it doesn't become a craze, and nobody starts to build a reviewing career solely upon them. If we hold on to the virtual limit of 25 reviews for each release, I think every tenth or so among them could just as well have one, and no harm would be done.

Yes I've always liked that one. Odd as I'm not all to fond of her regular reviews.

On the other side of things, OzzyApu does tons of these things and all of them are just terribly annoying and nearly impossible to read.

Yeah, this thread reminded me of OzzyApu's "So I was sipping wine with Lord Belial" or whatever it was called.

Pretty much PGK's sole claim to fame these days. It's stood up reasonably well over the years.

That one was particularly silly.

That one was fantastic, i have never read a review like it before.

OzzyApu has another account?

http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=95552#84033

There's a reason for that.

I had at first read the thread title as "Slash fiction as album reviews". That would be decidedly odd.

That said, I bet there is Opeth slash somewhere out there on the Intertron.

I'd hate to seem like I'm touting my own horn here, but I wondered if this review I did a little while ago counted as what the OP was suggesting. It's something I doodled up in basically one surprisingly consistent stream of consciousness during the last review challenge.

http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=68227#29518

someone do a review in slash fiction.

Wow, when I clicked on that link I was expecting it to be something related to slasher film...leave it to the internet to shock and disgust.

I should do a review that reads like the script for a slasher film.

I reckon I could do a Slash Fiction review of one of the last two Machine Head albums, by having Robb and Phil meeting up in passionate embrace after many years of longing

I bet someone could do a slash fiction review of Metallica's whole career, going through the ups and downs of James and Lars' relationship.

I'll do it! (but then I'd have to do a whole 'nother MoP review and buy all of their shit records)

It could be a neat idea, but it would probably get out of hand rather quickly. I actually did try to do this with a review of Mystifier's "Wicca", which I had intended to submit to the site, but I got so wrapped up in telling the story that I felt the review content was negligible in comparison. Seems like a bit of a gimmick, really .. maybe I'll edit it some and post it up eventually. It's cool to be inspired by an album in such a way.

I don't know man. Can it possibly out-gimmick mine?

You should eventually submit it. I can see some perplexed readers, hehe. But what can they do. It's fun to change it up every so often. I was going to do a mock-interview with Tales From the Black Book. But decided with a higher score for a returned album, it wouldn't be taken seriously, and, well, too long in this case.

this thread has inspired me to do a review of A line of Deathless Kings in interview format. Should be, err, "interesting".

Thats a really really weird idea, good luck with that.

haha, well, already I've given up that idea and decided to review something else! I may eventually get around to it, though.

Yeah i can never keep focus on stuff like that either, but it would defintly be a very interesting review style to read.

generally if the review doesn't flow straight away I move onto something else.