24th - 1st of July

NO SINGLES to eliminate lame dudes reviewing every Iron Maiden single or whatever.

THAT IS THE ONLY RULE. Review something no one's done before. What I suggest you all do is keep a simple tally here, as I'll be doing full time teaching and won't be able to process stats that well.

Looking forward to it! Let's keep it relaxed and not too aspergers based. I reckon 100 reviews would be a cool thing to aim for and if/when we beat that let's see where we are at and take it from there.

Cheers!

About time for another one, I'm in.

This was brought up a few months ago by the mods, and I've got to say that the only way I'd be in favor of it is if we just do the straight old school style like Casp is proposing, because that hybrid style we tried last year was a fucking trainwreck.

EDIT: Darn typos making it look like I'm blaming Casspian for things he had nothing to do with

LPs isn't more virgin
because reviewed by Satan!

Sounds good I think, will try to prepare a few albums. What about full-length (as in 1h+) live albums and DVDs btw?

Last time I had midterms so was only able to get 8. Hopefully this time I reach a more impressive number.

Is full lengths only really necessary? I wholeheartedly support a ban on counting singles, but don't see why demos and EPs shouldn't count. Also, what was the "hybrid" style that failed?

I promise I won't do another singles binge like the TL one.

I'm more up for this one. I've had a more consistent reviewing pattern this year than normal and if this is before July 29th then I'm game.

Sounds like I could possibly get in on this.

Honestly I'm good with this. After reading that someone purposed a new challenge, I had convinced myself this wasn't going to happen or I wouldn't be involved. But, if we aren't doing any genre bullshit or quality winners (which, as Bastardhead said, was a disaster) I'll be good to go. Dates work fine too.

I'd be down, although full-lengths only seems a bit restrictive. It's a bit annoying for someone to just review shittons of singles, yeah, but there's some demo-only bands that I've had my eye on for reviewing. Plus, I have absolutely no plans for that week, so I could potentially get pretty insane with the number of reviews I pump out, whereas last time I had class all week.

I'm happy to allow demos and EPs. Let me just re-iterate that I will not be impressed if people review big band promo eps though. I dunno. i've been guilty of it in the past as well, and it's something that I'd like to ensure doesn't happen at all if/when this challenge happens.

So:

24th june- 1st july

full lengths, demos and eps. NO SINGLES. REVIEW YOUR BAD NWOBHM SOME OTHER TIME IF YOURE SO DAMN KEEN ON IT

VIRGINS ONLY, shouldn't need to be said but y'know new people and stuff

no genre themes

no perplexed_sjel

straight numerical contest, although let's all try not to write shit reviews- I was thinking we should all try to go for 20 good ones max, y'know? That's still a fair bit of work, a lot of ticking off. If we do more, that's cool, but yeah.. you guys know what I'm saying right? I don't think people breaking the 100 review mark will be good for the site.

Who's with me?

Sounds good to me.

Just my question again - what about live albums and DVDs?

QUESTION DENIED

nah, go for it. Don't see why not. Been meaning to do a few of those Manowar dvds myself, actually.

Does this include new albums? For instance, the new Autopsy drops sometime along that time frame and like 5 people review it. Do they all get challenge progress from it?

Yep, everyone gets credit for nailing an unreviewed record during the time frame.

For example, if ButtBalls667 and myself review Vomit Sodomy's Barfing Through the Heavens, we both get credit, as long as both were submitted throughout the challenge.

Also, I'm down with the dates and everything else.

*Makes list*

Sounds good, since I'll have solid Internet by then!

See you all then.

Hmm, I'd probably be down for this one. I might have to review a couple of non-virgins before then to get back in the swing of things.

I can prob participate after not being able to join in last years.
I haven't written one of my mediocre reviews in quite a while however.



are you now going abigail on us here in the forums too?
Does this mean you are going to review all the abigail stuff?

That's an EP. Do they count?

I see no reason why not; the consensus seems to think that'll work. I think singles are the only no-go release here.

Hmm, what about short demos? Sometimes big bands have "demos" that are really just singles.

That's an exceedingly rare scenario compared to the number of demos made by underground, no-name bands, and it would be lame to exclude otherwise eligible demos by nobody bands on that basis alone. I think it'd be best to just trust people not to abuse the lack of definitive guidelines for the contest.

I'm in, I wrote a lot of reviews for virgin albums in May though Maybe I'll review 1 or 2 albums too as I have some virgins on my list. I'll be busy with a new job though.

I would also prefer if we would stick to full lengths or at least EPs.

Good thing I didn't call for an exclusion of all demos then, huh? I just think there should be some clarity about what counts and what doesn't, and demos are a bit of grey area because they range from what I was describing, to legitimate (albeit short) demos to things that are essentially full-length albums. I'm not sure if there's any easy way to exclude only certain segments of the demo population from the contest, though.

Hmmm...how about no reviewing demos by bands who have also released full-lengths? That'd eliminate a lot of the label promo stuff you seem to be concerned about.

You keep talking like that, and people are going to think we broke up.



Although this will probably complicate things a bit, this is probably the best way to resolve this issue. Personally, I'm not sure I'm going to contribute anything massive to this contest, I've grown accustomed to reviewing a steady amount of material at my own leisure and might contribute something to the affect of 7-12 full lengths tops, most of them albums I'm slated to do for The Metal Observer anyway.

There's a lot of bands that have full-lengths out but still have demos that are, essentially, EPs or full albums (not infrequently they end up with the demo designation because they're self-financed and thus fairly limited runs rather than because they're demos in the traditional sense). Those releases would cause a problem.

I think this might be an issue that can't easily be given a single rule. Much as I hate the idea, it might be necessary to just hold people to the honour system.

All I can say is that I think everyone kinda liked my idea because of the relative lack of rules, and imma play the libertarian here and say let's keep it that way. If people want to use the loophole then fuck 'em they're dicks. No more rules. Just seems unnecessary really

This.

So, June 24 through July 1....are we making this official? Any problems, issues, complaints, protests, etc.?

Yeah, that would have been really silly if restrictions were placed just because 1 or 2 people might possibly insist on being that lame and exploit a loophole. It's annoying if it happens, but it's hardly the end of the world or a good reason to leave the virginity of demos for bands with full albums intact.

Sounds cool. I'm somewhat out of practice, but who knows what will happen.

Nice, I was just wondering the other day if I'd already missed the summer edition. I'll try my best to participate.

btw, I realized yesterday that not a single Trust release has been reviewed, just throwing that out there.

Hey guys, this starts tomorrow?! I'll do a few reviews and I hope some of you do as well. Low key and free of stress, with us as a group maybe ticking off 100+ virgin albums for the site.. Feels good man.

Liking the vibe here. Next week's just gonna be smooth sailing, breezy summer-day review writing. Prepare the lawn-chairs and stock the cooler boys; I got dogs on the grill and Oxiplegatz on the stereo; chilling.

Whats the record like 90-sumthing? We got this.

I'll probably do just 2-3 or so, but I'll see, maybe I can come up with more.

90 something? No way. Past challenges have had hundreds of reviews. I guess I better start making a list of virgins to review, eh?

97 from me back in 2010 or 11 I believe, yes. Perplexed_sjel was close with 94-ish.