Bahahahaha. So much juvenile anger. Consider this, bro: a band intending to sound modern doesn't justify the sound. I can't make an intentionally shitty album and respond to its criticism with "OH YOU PHILISTINE FUCKS, IT'S SUPPOSED TO SOUND THIS BAD!" Artistic intent is lost on subjective perceptions of taste, and rightfully so.

Also, when I read the word "overproduced" used in a review, I know what to expect from the music. You do too. You literally keep demonstrating that you know exactly what the term implies to reviewers every single time you use the "it's not the 80s anymore" strawman to mock it. It's used to note cold, digital, loud and brickwalled production, and again, I know damn well that you know exactly what someone means when they use that term. You're just being stubborn and contrarian for confrontation's sake because the notion of anybody disliking modern-sounding recording techniques conflicts with your own tastes and is subsequently appalling to you.

It's annoying. So please stop.

Well, the uber-raw stuff is mostly the '90s, but most people I've seen raging about any signs of modern production mostly have the '70/'80s rock/metal sound in mind. Let's just say it's both. I'm not really sure I could say cleaner and more accessible, depends I guess. (Also the reviews I've written this far was mostly stuff I had wanted to write for ages, hence the pretty high scores.)

The bolded part is pretty much my point since the very beginning. I'm not really sure if I make the number of people using it higher than it is, but I honestly remember 99% of the cases this word was used, it was used in the way you mentioned. I can't recall any decent reviewer on MA use this word at all. It was always either the "my breakfast sucked so I need to write a <20% review" type here, or some idiots around the internet.


Erm, I'm showing juvenile anger? Man, please put away those pills because you're seeing some interesting stuff.

The same way you can't justify complaining about a modern production in a band whose style is clearly modern in every way possible. We're not talking about badly produced for fuck's sake (YES THIS IS AN ANGRY PHRASE, WATCH OUT). We're talking about whining the production is modern at all no matter how good. It's pretty much the equivalent to complaining that modern skyscrapers aren't based on ancient Greek architecture.

Errr, I enjoy a lot of older albums whose production sounds nothing like modern, and in fact there are quite a few bands who use a rawer-sounding production these days which compliments their music well imo. I honestly don't get where you're getting all this stuff from.


Now, can we end this, as I've explained what I mean approximately 20 times and it's not exactly me who made this turn into a shitstorm?

"The instrumentation is all over the place and absurdly messy. It's what I'd imagine a hardcore record made by Animal from The Muppets in a tornado would sound like."
http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/C ... icnicholai

Brilliant!

"Alia O'Brien definitely seems to be more assertive than the others. And that’s okay, who doesn’t love a bold woman every now and then. Her organ and flute portrayals are quite different from each other. They’re both plentiful and a handful at times. In my opinion, she’s a lot better with a flute in her hand than an organ between two. She’s just a born natural with a flute. In fact, it was her flute playing on Hexvessel’s EP that got me interested in checking out Blood Ceremony in the first place. I love when musicians leave behind the human aspect when recording. In other words, you can hear her gasping for breath and the position of her mouth when she blows into the flute."
http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/B ... onilosophy

Talk about oral sex! Oh... did I just write that?!

I really like Kveldulfr's review of 13, feels cleverly written and very detailed, and points out everything he dislikes without unnecessary rage.

(I need to listen to the album at last, I'm pretty damn curious at this point)

It's not anything to write home about, in fact apart from droneriot I'm surprised that anyone else is being as harsh as Kveldulfr is. It's a poorly produced 70s throwback with some decent guitar solos, not another bizarre ride through the world of pain-inducing musical Dadaism like "Lulu". Then again, it seems that being terrible is preferred to being mediocre in this particular case. Personally I'm still bummed out that Dio never got to make their follow-up to Magica and didn't have a whole lot invested in this album anyway.

Actually the two albums have a lot in common. No riffs, atrocious vocals, songs that never seem to end, dull-beyond-belief drumming, terrible production...

Well, I mean that simply for me that was a very good example of a negative review done right. No "fuck this band and fuck you all" kind of stuff or anything that seems like the author used the review to vent his anger at something (unfortunately a lot of negative reviews feel like this), just simple and detailed description of what he dislikes and what according to him is wrong. Even if I'll find myself enjoying the album a lot more (which is likely since I've noticed I generally tend to be more tolerant than most reviews), I'll still enjoy the review.

This statement was instantly made null and void the moment you said that the album has no riffs.

You're right, I shouldn't have said that about Lulu.

@Subrick: while Lulu is certainly horrible and deserves like 5% at its best, it has something that 13 don't: the band played what their hearts told them to do so. Metallica didn't pick 'Seek and Destroy' and made a 'new' song changing a couple of riffs passing it has THE thrash comeback of the millenia as the Osbourne machinery advertised 13, ignoring completely 2 full decades of Sabbath as unexistant.

If people is complaining about my 'harsh' review, I can't believe what Enigmatech wrote on his 100% review. The DARKEST Sabbath album up to date? I can understand the urge of defending the band, but c'mon that can't be serious. There are tons of stuff to tell about that review, like comparing the debut albums from bands for being critizised and becoming legendary over time and 13, which came too late in their careers that bring absolutely nothing new to the table. It's quite the opposite in fact: Sabbath release a b-side of their first 2 albums with other 'working titles' and 'working riffs'. "to each his own" he said. I agree. I'll give some spins to the S/T album instead this poor copycat album.

I guess the Blabbermouth effect will get into the Archives and we'll see tons of 90-100% reviews to revert the poor average % that 13 is receiving.

There are more reviews of "13" on the way, in fact they're the only ones in the queue, but I can't bring myself to read them.

I enjoyed this review, it seems to describe the album and its allure quite well.
http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/M ... nmetalhead

BH's official opinion on 13 since I have no plans to review it: it's not BAD, but it's really dull. It's basically just a rehash of songs they'd already written forty years ago, and in a way it's insulting, but in another way it's kind of endearing. It shows that Sabbath knows what they're good at, but at the same time it shows they're well out of ideas. The best track is probably "Zeitgeist", and that's just "Planet Caravan: Live from The Retirement Home". I'd give it something in the forties or fifties probably.

Keep in mind I also thought The Devil You Know was boring as shit apart from three or four songs, so there's that.

10-15 minutes from submission to acceptance, hot damn you guys work fast tonight. Maybe because it wasn't a "13" review

It wasn't in the queue when I started work on it, sometimes you get lucky, DON'T GET COCKY YOU DURN MEATBALL!

I will concur with you that the production is horrible (for different reasons than Lulu) the songs are a bit drawn out (not nearly as bad as the 2nd half of Lulu), and the drumming is pretty damned dull, but I think Iommi's guitar work is largely in tact, though his songwriting has deteriorated pretty significantly next to what he did on "The Devil You Know". I can't hate it nearly as much as Lulu, chalk it up to me needing an excuse to hate Metallica more than anyone else, but that's how both albums hit me.

I pity the mods at the moment so man 13 reviews to go through and the law of averages will definitely come into play sure enough there will be some atrocious 13 reviews. I haven't gotten around to listening to it nor will I probably, interesting reaction to the record though form people.

Wow. That most recent 100% on the new Sabbath album stinks. Just a really poorly written track-by-track. I now see what Gunther was talking about when he said most of the fanboy reviews of this album were quite bad in their writing.

Kind of curious how the latest three fanboy reviews are by users I have never seen before.

That's how it is for most reviews on the site, though. Unless people get somewhat "into" reviewing culture, they usually just churn out a handful of shitty 95-100% reviews for their all-time favorites/local bands/the newest release by some big band that they haven't given time to sink in and call it a day. This is why MA is geared so heavily towards >90% averages and why anything below an 85% is seen as somehow being incompetent: because idiots rush in on the day of release for a lot of new albums and just spew a bunch of mindless, overzealous BS that probably took them all of 20 minutes to write.

Some people feel the urge to defend their idols, even if it's pretty dumb to do so.

I guess there are too many people worried about the average % shown on the band's Page.

A certain distro posted on Facebook something like: if you don't like the new Sabbath you're a poser. Go figure.

Those last 3 reviews are depressing.

13 has 13 reviews, and an average of 69%

Clearly this is destiny, I'm not going to accept any more.

Guys... Even if you dislike it it's not forbidden to enjoy 13.

Well, then, it's a good thing no one ever said that the reviews were shitty merely because of the opinions they held, right?

This absolutely doesn't throw all positive reviews into the "crap" bin.

Also, don't even try baiting me into a childish flame war this time.

That's got absolutely nothing to do with what MC said. But hey I know you got to whine, play to your strengths and all.

Dude stop complaining about problems that bassically don't exist.

The positive reviews threw themselves into the crap bin, man. If you like the album then great, good on you for liking things! It's just that, on the day of release for any hyped album, there's always going to be those kinds of fucks rushing in to submit their drool-coated fluff reviews full of mindless and hollow praise, blissfully unaware that they're not bringing anything new to the table. I don't want to read reviews by the kinds of people who knew they were giving 13 a 100% the instant they heard news that Black Sabbath were recording a new album.

Clannfear's basically right, if people actually sat down and listened to these albums for a while, really digested them instead of going off the hype, we'd have way better, more informed reviews. I'm not saying people wouldn't still like the new Sabbath, but come on, their best in 42 years? Their darkest album ever? I've made statements like those about other things, and usually, except for once in a very long while, those statements end up fading away with time. They're not good reviewing statements because they're just not true. It's 99% blind fanaticism and excitement of a new release...which is fine, except when you're putting it out there as a review among other reviews that actually had thought and rationale put into them.

Really, most of the reviews of the new Sabbath, positive or negative, fall into this kind of thinking anyway though.

I'll just say that there's a reason that I skipped over reviews of "13" and handled every review in the queue that wasn't for that album.

I could say pretty much the same about the very low score reviews, saying they got disappointed and instantly did a low score review without giving it time to grow. I know some of these reviews are not really good, but just saying that it feels kind of one-sided.


Who?

Drone can't fairly say that 13 is the worst comeback ever until he listens to Running Wild's Shadowmaker.

I think you assume wrongly if you think he hasn't heard that album. I'm not sure what his opinion is on it (he probably didn't like it) but the fact that he didn't review it doesn't mean he hasn't heard it, especially considering his fanboy love of "Gates To Purgatory".

A note to the reviewing community on this site:

Since you have been so active in both submitting and discussing reviews lately, I have put in some extra effort, beyond the amount I would normally read, to make sure that reviews were approved rather quickly. I have read some great things from newer reviewers and sparsely writing veterans lately. Anyway, all of your reviews in the queue have been approved right now if they are not for 13, Super Collider, Halo of Blood, or vague ramblings about Jesus.

Keep up the good work folks!

Thanks Zod

I really enjoy reading Twisted_Psychology's voyage through Queensrÿche's discography. Will he have covered Dedicated to Chaos in time before the new album release?

Thanks Zodijackyl.

I'll write some more reviews, mainly less mainstream stuff and/or worthy albums without reviews here. Maybe tomorrow I'll do one.

Two submitted, I've started a third, hopefully to have it done by tonight. I'm taking a nap right now because I worked all goddamn day and I'm tired as fuck. I'll hammer out the review queue when I awaken and continue as planned.

Yeah I did two already also. I normally only get like four done, but I'm gonna try to contribute more this year. I'll screw with the queue after work and then try to get another one done before bed.