lonerider's profile

Slowly getting up there in years, but since I only started listening to metal when I was already 16 or so years old, there's still a lot left to discover. I credit Queen for getting me into heavier music, then it was all AC/DC, then Metallica (starting, of course, with the "black album", collecting dust ever since) and then Iron f***ing Maiden, who really sealed the deal. To this day, I believe metal to be vastly superior to every other genre except maybe classical music.

Looking at my reviews so far, you may be surprised at the generally pretty high ratings I've doled out. No 100 percent ones, though; utter perfection is impossible to achieve, I guess. The reason I haven't been dishing out many low scores is simple: I have a pretty good feeling for which bands might be up my alley and choose very carefully which albums to delve into, so I end up enjoying most of them (exceptions notwithstanding). You also won't see me slam an album I haven't really concerned myself with, only because I despise a particular style or band and really want to stick it to them. Why devote what precious little time you have to stuff you're never going to like anyway, just for the sake of being able to write a bunch of scathing reviews?

By the way, since the new year has only just begun and people expect you to make some kind of new year's resolution, I have decided to tweak my ratings system just a little. From this day forth, my overall album scores will differ by steps of 5 percentage points only, meaning there will be no more scores of, say, 73 or 91 percent. This seems logical since it's kind of preposterous to assume there really is a palpable difference between a score of 73, 74 or 75 percent, for instance.

Oh, and yet another change might be in store: henceforth I will attempt to keep my reviews generally a bit shorter and more concise. Hey, this is the 21st century after all – people's attention spans are getting shorter and particularly those damn kids, what with their social media, their smartphones and other exotic gadgetry, hardly ever read anything longer than a twitter message anymore. Now, that being said, get the hell off my lawn!!!

"If you ain't a metalhead, then you might as well be dead."


Some of my favorite bands include:

Iron f***ing Maiden, Dissection, Carcass, Paradise Lost, Slayer (old), Motörhead, Blind Guardian (old), Amon Amarth (old), Heathen, Sodom, Dark Tranquillity, Manowar (old), Death, Riot, Naglfar, Necrophobic, Desaster, Morbid Angel (old), Katatonia (old), Kampfar, The Crown, Demolition Hammer, Týr


My ratings system:

90 - 99 awesome stuff, mandatory for every metalhead; a classic
80 - 89 very good/great release; this rules!
70 - 79 good, solid metal album with some flaws
60 - 69 partly solid, but way too much filler
40 - 59 shows flashes, but that's about it; mediocre at best
20 - 39 partly listenable, but still pretty bad; not worth your time
00 - 19 abysmally bad, completely worthless junk