psychoticnicholai just brought up some interesting issues with a whole load of Vio-Lence material, primarily the debut. It's more or less what I want to say about the album (Killian's erratic vocals, lost focus, one-dimensional) but with a good balance between praise and criticism.

I agree. Came here to pretty much say the same thing.

Edit: I still do love said album, just found the points interesting as well.

I came to say two things:

1) At least psycho reviewed all the Vio-lence albums rather than just give the most popular one a low rating fucking up the overall average (grumble grumble Oceanborn).

2) I looked at all the reviews for the new Ghost and I just noticed SweetLeaf's is a 90's Kiss reference that I'm not sure how I didn't catch until now.

You have no idea how happy I am that somebody caught that.

Found excerpts of that interview that was mentioned in kluseba's recent Manowar review. Lawdy this is some delicious cringe. Good review too.

While I appreciate the attention he's giving Anathema, someone needs to teach this Gothic_Metalhead guy English.

His name is Matthew and he's from the States and yet it reads like EAL stuff. Interesting.

Allow me to quote my answer to the question why I use soccer instead of football.

If I need to use a secondary word to tell the person which sport I'm talking about, they are probably not the one I want to be having that kind of conversation with.

If that Speedclaw review by Felix wasn't enough for me to want to check it out, the album artwork was.

Can't stand his writing style The album/EP is really good though.

Rabidly albeit belatedly, allow me to hail autothrall's grist-millin' Harlot's Grip review...indeed, the yawper (front man) instantly evokes Tank's Algy whilst the meaty, pugnacious production niftily behoves the titular debut EP's raucous as fuck bonhomie...good stuff! (It also compelled me to take a shot at India's nut-bar Falcun...).

I thought his Oppressing the Masses review was a bit "off", and that's what I came in here to post about before I saw you already had mentioned them.

I have no issue with the scores or him not liking Oppressing as much (I know I'm in the minority having a slight preference for it). But his review seems predicated on the notion that it's a simpler, stripped down version of its predecessor, and I just don't hear that at all. he's right that it's less intense in terms of both speed and production, and that's perfectly reasonable grounds on which to like a thrash album less than its competitors, but it can't just be drumming-non-guitarist-me who feels that it's more musically demanding, and the opposite of "streamlined". The songs are longer, there's a lot more tempo variation, the drumming steps up its game considerably, and while there are short sections of basic chugging, I think the guitars are also playing more complex riffs -- certainly the solos have gone up a notch in technicality and involvement. Basically I think the valid criticism is the lack of breakneck speed and intensity, but it's the other stuff I listen to that album for, and I feel like a lot of what he wrote there suggests that the album was a pain in the arse for him to listen to and so he didn't pick up on the actual changes the band had made since the debut.

Dear BastardHead,

Thanks for the ineradicable image of you "sitting buck naked and waiting for a pizza to cook". Thanks especially for the supplementary detail that you are hairy.

I am officially triggered.

Gas

As someone who enjoys the new Skeletonwitch album and found that old "eat beer, drink weed, and smoke pussy" phrase kinda cringy, I can definitely respect BastardHead's take on the new one. That is the proper way to admit that your score will mismatch the content.

My goal in life is to make everybody as uncomfortable as possible.

And thank you, the album seems to have been getting almost universal praise across the internet, so if nothing else I hoped to at least be a voice of dissent to speak for the old fans who feel left out in the cold.

Americans can barely speak American, imagine speaking English as well.

I almost forgot you existed, it's been so long since I've seen you in the forums! In light of that, this is hilarious!

Been too busy with D&D recently!

Regarding those Anathema reviews by Gothic_Metalhead:



Did he come up with that story himself? Certainly it was starting to show that White wasn't suitable for the band's evolving style, but to my knowledge, they actually fired him during the recording of The Silent Enigma. Vincent had to pick up the slack quite spontaneously. Circa Pentecost III, they were still counting on being able to work with White as the musical style was changing.

'Transilvanian Hunger' - 0%. I guess it was only a matter of time.

- 0%

2 paragraphs bitching about the fans, 3 about how everything sounds the same just phrased differnently and talking about his attention deficit and 1 single sentence about vocals and drums.

Euronymous fanboy shittalking the "traitors of Norwegian Black Metal".

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... ack/412152



Who is writing this stuff and actually taking it seriously?

Also from the Number of the Beast review.



He's come to show us the way.

A lot of text for eventually not much information.

How do you know if he takes himself seriously or not?

The Number of the Beast has the same problem that Reign in Blood and Master of Puppets seem to have, where they're hailed as eternal metal classics in the mainstream so you get all manner of kids, nerds, know-it-alls, what-have-you who come out of the woodwork to proudly proclaim their B O L D opinion of "...this is it?" Even if you're not taking the context of where metal was in 1982 when talking about TNotB, you're really not saying anything at all when your biggest point is "it's overrated and too many people like it."

The second and third paragraphs are fine, they're valid criticisms that the album gets a lot, and even though I think it's great and loaded with great songs, I see where people are coming from when they rank Invaders or Gangland lower on the totem pole. It's just as overdone as the "everything except the first and last songs are filler" criticism of RiB but whatever. It's the rest of the review that makes me hate it. "This is it?" is the worst perspective to base a review on and that pompous "think for yourself" horseshit can drown in napalm. As if the only reason somebody would love an iconic album with some of the most well known songs from the most popular metal band in history is because of some dumbass herd mentality or they think they're "supposed" to love it. Fuck outta here with that.

It's purely reacting to hype and reputation. Most of the review tends to describe the music well enough so it's whatever, but the overall vibe and message of the review seems to solely be against the album's huge reputation, which I think is the wrong way to review anything.

I actually like NOTB better now than I used to. Fucking great, short blast of Maiden at their most energized. You should review something based on what it is, not on what you heard about it before.

Absolutely. Which is a big reason why I will give an "masses overrated classic" like Number of the Beast or Rust In Peace or Under The Sign of The Black Mark a high score. It actually is that good.

I'll admit the first time I came out of listening to Reign In Blood many, many years ago, having a very similar "this is it?" opinion. Not so much unimpressed with the project as a whole, but more of the fact that I had already heard Angel of Death and Raining Blood, was wowed by them, but there wasn't that deep cut that blew me further away. My respect for it has obviously grown over the years, but I still can't honestly put it above Darkness Descends or Pleasure To Kill in terms of the sheer heaviness factor. But even with my "overrated" review of it, I still have it ranked pretty high by my standards.

So you give them higher scores instead of reasonable scores just because it's popular? That's pretty much the opposite what he did, but equally wrong

I think maybe you misunderstood me. My point is if I love an album that the masses also happen to love, I'm not going to penalize the album in points for being loved by the masses. But I'm also not necessarily going to give it extra points because it's popular.

Ok, I think I got that wrong in your last sentence. Sorry

Great review of United Abominations! Kinda took me back to the late 2000s when there was that whole debacle of Megadeth coming back and nobody really being sure if they were gonna stick around or not. I know the 80s-90s nostalgia is where it is for most but that era was "my" Megadeth, even if it was inconsistent as all hell.

I did notice the comment about Ellefson coming back but it's actually James Lomenzo who'd debuted on this album. Ellefson didn't actually rejoin until Thirt3en.

Wait, really? .... I'll fix that. But that's funny because I get the same thing with the next album. Endgame was the "new one" when I first got into Megadeth.

Edit: I'll be damned, I don't know why I thought it was that one, but you're right! My mistake.

You know, I originally had no interest in checking out the new Skeletonwitch record, but after Ih8law's review of it, I think I'm gonna try it. The review itself was actually kinda eh, but the emphasis on how different it is made me want to try it. Plus, since it appears to be another album that draws that mindset that I hate, where everyone has the same damn opinion for no real reason beyond a tag or "boundary", it makes me more curious.

Maybe this is just my narcissism talking, but I really feel like that review was a reaction to mine specifically (there are at least a few spots that indicate as such), and if that's the case then he kinda missed my point. The issue I have with DRL isn't that it's different (Forever Abomination and The Apothic Gloom also had giant heaps of black metal influence as well and sounded quite different from Beyond the Permafrost and I loved both of those), it's that they changed into something that's no longer recognizably unique. Adam's voice works well for this style but it also worked well for the previous EP, which was something different for the band but didn't abandon the strengths they'd spent the previous decade honing. On the surface the album is totally fine, but once you take the context of the band's history into account it's just a bummer that they went from carving out their own niche and owning it to hopping over to an already established niche and being serviceable at it.

Also I mean, I've seen way more people/reviews impressed with and seemingly giving the album invisible bonus points simply for the change in style than I have penalize it solely for the change, so the first three paragraphs complaining about elitists really seems like swinging at ghosts to me.

Yeah, I didn't read many of the others, I was honestly going based off of that one. Although I did just check yours out and I see what you mean. I never use the word "elitist" because that's just stupid, but I do tend to notice common opinions about weird things, which is what drew me in. After listening myself and reading yours though, I'm not entirely on board with the dude anymore. Admittedly some parts of my Megadeth reviews were in response to Mailman's, but only certain points here and there.

That all said I couldn't find anywhere to play the full album, but of the few songs on Youtube, I did rather enjoy them.

That review of Far Beyond Driven seemed fair but struck a nerve with calling "5 Minutes Alone" one of the worst songs ever written. Guess it isn't for everyone. On the other hand, that Helloween review was absolutely perfect!

Also surprisingly, Mailman's Deicide review wasn't terrible and actually made me want to re-visit Serpents Of The Light after many years, but his style is still somewhat irritating. At least the descriptions were accurate, though.

from that Hunger review:



nerd.

I've never been a fan of Far Beyond Driven, and I always get 5 Minutes Alone and I'm Broken confused since they were the two hits of the album (aside from the Planet Caravan cover). Due to your comment here, I revisited 5 Minutes Alone and it suffers from one very poor riff, the one that starts off each verse. Actually for the first couple lines it doesn't seem bad, and even kind of cool, but it very quickly wears out it's welcome. All the other riffs in the song are pretty cool though. The same thing can be said for I'm Broken. One absolutely garbage riff that sounded like they were trying to recapture Walk (the worst Pantera song, imo), but the rest of the riffs in the song range from pretty decent to downright excellent. I actually want to revisit the whole album now.