Queue is cleared of everything except newbies reviewing bands with a lot of reviews already that I don't care to read.

I published my first three reviews, covering Ebony Tears' discography. Perhaps worth noting that there had previously been some reviews of the band that other moderators deleted before my time, and I removed the remaining one or two a while ago because they were completely worthless and misleading - bad even for reviews from the early days.

Uh, does anyone else feel that this is poorly written?

http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/A ... 51/Tobbe_L

I've seen this guy's name pop up a lot recently.


I get what he's saying, but that's the best way he could have written it?

Metalcovenant reviews are lousy in general, I have already mentioned my dislike of the most of the writing coming from that site. I skipped over it once then decided to be lenient and gave it three points since it's a new album and it's review challenge week. Tony agreed that it was a very poor review so I decided to remove/reject it.

Well Ozzy, you had to question me being nice when I stopped being a hardass in the review queue. You ruined it for everyone who writes mediocre reviews.

The site's still got standards. Don't let the festivities go to your head!

Sweet, Steve French finally did another review.

And maybe I'll do another one... in another year.

Being a writer for Metalcovenant I feel I have to add to the discussion that none of our present staff is a native English speaker. That of course is no excuse for producing reviews in a bad language, but you also can't expect us to have the same finesse in the writing as someone with English as their native tongue. However, we are all keen to improve so any feedback is appreciated.

Since I started to submit my reviews to MA I have learnt a lot on how to proper review an album, at least in theory . Partly for getting a new tore for a certain review , but mostly for getting nice feedback from some people. Thank you everyone who helped me out so far and I like to think that I have started to improve somewhat.

I picked the perfect week to stop writing reviews Finally getting a PS3 and Demon's Souls probably has something to do with that too.

I'm a little surprised how Twisted_Psychology practically says Queensrÿche's Dedicated to Chaos is a shit album, yet he gives a royal 65%.
http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/Q ... chor148440
I wonder what he thinks is worth 10%.

Good example of what looks like an A-F American school grade system for reviewing.

Speaking of which, I think I asked this before but it might have got lost or something - I've seen in plenty of posts and reviews that people actually consider American Soldier worse than Dedicated to Chaos. Why is that? American Soldier is inconsistent as hell but it still shows some ambitions and some tracks do have an actual atmosphere. Dedicated to Chaos is... I don't know if even Tate himself knows what the fuck this album is.

Try reading through the reviews and you'll probably get a good idea. I haven't reviewed "Dedicated To Chaos" yet but I plan to give it the same score that I gave "American Soldier". They are completely worthless for slightly different reasons, the former is basically fluff, while the latter is just an outright trip through crappy nu-metal land with a lot of boring voice-overs.

Right on. Dedicated to Chaos is an abysmal, genre-hopping douchefest with no substance while American Soldier is Jason Slater's warped fanaticism. Both are horrendous in their own ways.

I'm very happy to see a dissenting view on the newest Ghost album.

Just noticed that Batman's Lustre review is called lackluster . Bro, do you even rift? was pretty damn funny, too.

I heard the lead single off of DtC and decided my time would be better spent listening to nothing at all. I really can't see any worthwhile merits to even stooping so low as to listen to the whole album.

Let me streamline the DtC listening process for you, brother.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akTwO-HB398

That's all you need to know.

This song is by far the most infamous from the whole thing but whenever I think of DtC I just hear the overexcited backing vocals "GOT IT BAD FOR YOOOOU".


Yeah well, that's about the idea I got from the opinions here overall, but American Soldier still definitely has some value and it has The Voice (viewed as a rock album I find it pretty fun to listen to, the worst thing about the album for me is the most extreme abuse of poppy backing vocals ever), while Dedicated to Chaos has two songs I recall being sort of good. Out of sixteen or so.

I still have the crazy plan to re-listen both (American Soldier without much trouble, Dedicated to Chaos is going to be a challenge) and review both, which is going to be entertaining. Personally I'd give AS a bit over 60%, DtC 30% at best.

Oh believe me I want to review both AS and DtC as well. Both are bombs in their own way. I actually find it harder to listen to AS since it's rock music so plagued with good intentions gone awry. Makes it especially uncomfortable since I'm one of those soldiers they're gettin' on about. DtC is just retarded but makes it easier to sit through since it's laughable. I won't be as lenient as you if I reviewed them.



No, I'm scarred. Whenever I think DtC, I think...

and I believe it's the second time I post that pic in this thread.

This is my main problem with American Soldier. This album has all the potential to be fucking awesome. It doesn't have to be metal, but without all the completely unnecessary attempts at being poppy (because as we all know doing a concept album with narration is tested to be the best method of getting mainstream attention and sales...) and the goddamn backing vocals all over the place, and with a more serious take on some songs (The Killer is the worst offender ever in my books in terms of music horribly not fitting the lyrics), it would have the potential to be an excellent concept album. The lyrics for the most part are in my opinion very good. The quotes are mostly well-chosen (but not always well-placed). It has lots of potential. A lot of it is killed by utterly unnecessary and pointless poppiness. A Dead Man's Words and The Voice are perfect glimpses at what this album could have been (and are by far the two best songs).


I still remember hearing of the announcement for that tour and checking my calendar several times if it's really not April 1st.

Right, if it isn't metal it's fine to me, too. It's just the way they rolled with it. The whole album was a Tate / Slater project and the writing feels unnatural. I'm compelled to agree with you on your choices with good songs from AS, but even something like "The Voice" sounds like droll-radio rock with Tate's god awful vocals. It's got some ominous atmosphere, especially at the beginning of the song, but it goes nowhere after that. Tate's voice is another major reason why I can't appreciate the album. Going for the other song you chose as being good, Tate's eating his way through the song. It kills it for me.

Actually I don't have much problem with Tate's voice on the album, he does nothing impressive mostly, but he's, well, decent. It's obviously far less than he was in the past, but he seems to know his limits on the album and does what he can pretty well. And on some songs he does sound pretty emotional actually, and these two are for me by far the best examples of this - on A Dead Man's Words he really sounds like he's getting into the role he's trying to do, and on The Voice he does actually manage to sound powerful.

The Voice is generally my favourite as this is the only song on the album which I can without hesitation call atmospheric and powerful, and this is what the album should have been like. It's dark but optimistic at the same time (the "don't be afraid" really does get me every time), which seems to have been the intended message of the album. Instead it often drifts off into being either stupidly happy (Sliver, wtf) or melodramatic (If I Were King, and I remember the song having a pretty great solo).

But yeah, it being mostly Tate + Slater instead of the whole band writing is the likely reason it's like this. And returning to the backing vocals again, if Tate considered himself the biggest genius of our time (at least), I'd like to know why didn't he just stick to the lead vocals instead of adding a fuckton of backing vocals to every song. Remember Me is literally murdered by them. They're so out of place it's... argh.

Well I'll let you save some for the review. You've got something there to make me understand your viewpoint, but I felt like the music was too far gone by then.

Well, this could take a while (I still want to do 4 reviews for the challenge, and I have... three days. derp), but I remember the album quite vividly, and the combination of actually having fun and frustration because it just could have been so much better. But still, I'll have way too much free time now, so...

This has been tugging at my head.

MCF, you didn't call it and "engine or something of the sort"; you did call it an engine.

I'm aware of the wording there, I was mostly just trying to be casually chatty right off the bat so it was clear I wasn't doing another pretentious metaphor-based review.

The comments on that video are far and away the best part.

Good review of Silver Veins, iamntbatman. You didn't mention the difference between the first and second half of the album though. That was something I found fairly interesting. I wonder what your thoughts are on that.

Something I disagree with you about regarding the production of Silver Veins is the warmth of the tones. I thought the album pretty much lacked the screaming black metal trebles and was entirely about warm, full tones.

Still trying to get into this album, but I keep getting distracted... It starts out strong and then I seem to forget what I'm listening to or my drive home is over before the album finishes and then I never finish it... Doesn't help that one of my car speakers is blown and my 13 year old 51 disc changer is on it's last leg making CDs skip all over the place

http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/K ... /Metal_Jaw

Reading this guy's reviews is usually a pretty banal experience, but here it's flat out obnoxious. Good god.

I like how he cites the use of melody as a reason it isn't highly regarded, yet their most acclaimed album (along with Pleasure to Kill) is Coma of Souls, almost purely melodic. That makes sense.

That would actually be a decent review if not for the horrid first and last paragraphs. I mean, there's just too much there for me to bear with it...

Oh, I agree that it was really warm, much more so than most black metal albums. I guess I could've emphasized that further but I thought bringing it up at all would be enough. I did think it was trebly enough for the style, though.

Maybe I just have a short attention span or something, but I found that the mood swing from the first half to the second (the first half being darker and more brooding, the second half brighter, faster on average, and more uplifting) was easy to forget about. The second half of the album is stronger and more memorable for me. I thought I tried to describe this in the second to last paragraph.

Right, I think the latter half is considerably better than the first couple of songs, so it's definitely worth it to listen to it in full.

Ah, you did describe it. I just managed to miss it when reading the thing.

Yeah I like the first song (after the intro) then there's a bit too much slowness for a couple songs, but then it gets pretty good. I didn't realize there were 10 songs, still haven't put the time in for a full listen from start to finish. I want to review some other stuff too, but haven't mad much time for multiple album listenings lately.

Looks like that stupid band broke the 'Latest reviews' widget again.

Time to point out another arrangement of words I find awkward to read!

http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/S ... apeTheDead

"man fuck Trifixion"

I can't tell if that's a statement or a request for another dude to fuck Summoning's former drummer.

I thought the exact same thing when I saw that.

I meant it as "I dislike Trifixion", because I thought his drumming was detrimental to the album. I don't really put much thought into my titles so I punctuated it Noktorn-style. (ie. none) I realized the issue at the time, but figured no one would care enough to call me out on it

EDIT: there's a lot of little typos in that review, actually. I probably should have checked it more thoroughly, I misspelled it as Lugurz at one point.

http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/P ... crwflandrs

Is anyone else annoyed with the whole 'Pantera kept Metal alive in the 90s man' thing? I'm sure this has been discussed to death elsewhere, I just haven't heard either counterarguments or more nuanced approaches to any positive benefits Pantera might have had for Metal as a whole.

Well you'd be lying to yourself if you denied that they had a huge hand in keeping heavy music relevant in the mainstream for a long time. Yeah, black metal happened in the mid-90s but nobody outside of a niche audience gave a fuck. Pantera was a massively successful band who reached out to throngs of people and helped keep a style of music in the public eye. No one band ever "kept metal alive", especially since it never really died, but the mid 90s didn't produce a whole lot of visible stuff, and Pantera is one of the exceptions.