Before suiting up in my new, albeit rather heavy coveralls (as I've had it up to here with shitty belts which fail to keep one's pants up whilst constantly bending over picking boxes and dizzyingly wrapping pallets), I'd like to thank all of MA's exalted writers and contributors for making the Metal Archives such a safe haven whilst trudging the mean streets of Vancouver, homeless (non) style, back in them dark pre Covid days. As of now, I'm too absorbed by work, even if it's part time - I'm burnt out even on off days - and ever-fun and "metal" in its own way console gaming, to properly focus on reviews...especially, having finally secured an elusive ps5* which came with God of War Ragnarok, possibly the most brutal hands-on fighter jaunt known to man, woman or (night) demon. Anyhow, I'd like to write a few more when the time or screams come(s); until then, a big \m/ to fellow scribes!

*PS Upon marveling at its insanely detailed and sharp graphics, consider those of the humble Xbox simply "charming".

Bend at the knees, not at the back.

That's not the problem, as the boxes aren't that heavy, except those containing glass gallons of TJ's cranberry juice. I just find it hard to find a decent frigging belt these days...

(I've decided to return the unused coveralls and exchange them for a Carhart belt and pants combo, which I should've done in the first place. Can you imagine me weighed down all day like a farmer?)

And now, for "metal" speak...

Felix your review of Aamonganr knocked me out…

irony it was number one in chart in Finland.

Lol

Hey, a review I 100 percent agree with!: https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... 968/220668

Morb totally nailed the non essence of Far Beyond Drivel, I mean Driven...except I'll admit I'm a punched sucker for the opening slam-bop riff to "Je Suis Casse". (Also appreciate robotiq's nod to God of War.)

thank you!
Just my perspective on it.
J'adore la réponse française

With regards to the slaughtering you gave FBD in your review Morbert there's a couple of things to look into.
Firstly FBD came out about 6 or 7 months before Korns debut so I'm not sure how Becoming can have a Korn intro.
Secondly I'm presuming you mean "two decades" in that mind-boggling 5 Minutes Alone Lynyrd Skynyrd sentence.

As for the album I personally love it, tho it wasn't instant like the previous 2.
The only thing I'd change would be to remove Good Friends and Planet Caravan. 2 tracks that are totally superfluous to the album.
The other negative being that while the heavy vocals of Phil's were necessary for the aggressive nature of the songs, it unfortunately meant that it was another step in wrecking his once great trad vocals.

Well, simple, especially in retrospect, because the riff just sounds more like Korn than Pantera. And as I'm reviewing it in 2023 releasedates between specific albums are less relevant to me. Bands inspired other bands also with live performances and demos anyway.
Perhaps Korn took some influences from Pantera and eventually they both inspired eachother even more mid/late nineties. All quite possible but to my ears that riff sounds more like Korn than Pantera. So I called and will keep calling it a Korn riff. Also Neidermeyer's Mind was released in october 93. Thought it had no title at the time.
I even dare say, I started calling that specific riff 'the Korn riff' after many friends indicated said riff by that name and we all knew immediately which one it was. It's the song with the Korn riff.



oh, and yes, 2 decades. just a type-o
Mind boggling is fun

Oh my, I just read twist's own "diatribe" on Far Beyond Driven...quite the doozie, there!

Hmmm I guess it's possible, Korn were making quite a name for themselves at the time and you can see why from that live clip. I skipped through that demo too for a comparison (damn I feel bloody dirty now) and yeah Dime may have heard or seen them and been inspired. But you can also hear a progression from Cowboys From Hell (the song), to Walk and then to Becoming too. It's interesting anyway and something I've never picked up on. I guess I was Blind to it.
Right, I'm off to have a shower.

Oh, and agreed on the mind boggling is fun part!

Sweetie, good review on Stryper. Love the band. But come on dude, Stryper were never Glam. The music was always way too heavy and the guys never dressed like women like Poison did.

I'm not surprised fellow acolytes feel somewhat let down by Night Demon's latest, which was also my first (and second) impression...but ultimately, while it's not as great as CoftD and DR, still has its moments, like I said, in a cozy (Re) Load style side pocket. Yet, thank you both, for at least giving Jarvis and crew a passing grade! Then again, if you're not into those, there's not much more I can say, other than maybe I'm biased due to my loyalty to the group as prime instigator of this whole modern day NWOTHM worship.

(Quibbles aside, I agree the single album cover is so much better and cooler.)

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... er/1527769

Please stop to public that !!!!

Yeah, can't agree really but the review is written well, so there's no way we could delete it. Wonder what kind of death metal this guy actually likes, he also said "Nespithe" was bad, but he gave Lorna Shore 82%.

All really shallow critiques - needing music to "evolve" in the most overt, pandering ways, needing no cracks or imperfections, makes sense if you like stuff like Lorna Shore which is really everything wrong with that kinda modern heavy music for me anyways. Parts, pieces, mathematical equations, boring as shit way to look at art...

Funny enough, just turned on Clandestine. Crank that shit up - wonderful.

So if I can write well can say all bullshit that I want?

For me is one of worst reviews that I read on MA.

The guitar tone suck(stralol)songs are all the same(lol)drummer don’t made enough blast beats(I only can imagine what can write if listen Billy Andrews on Leprosy)and the most comical Lars Goran Petrov voice isn’t good…

I never read in my life so many bullshits(sorry but I can’t lie)

Luckily not. But all his criticisms were backed up with enough description to understand where he's coming from. As Emp said it better, it's a pov that really makes sense when put into the perspective of a very young person which is also primarily a fan of stuff released 30-something years later. Of course none of us agreed with it, but strictly speaking there's nothing we can do about it.

I thought Young People Critiques were weird but a lot of it started making sense when I heard something criticized as a "one genre album" (and that review implies the same thing with the whole "if you listen to death metal and only death metal etc" bit at the end). I recently came across the artist Jasiah, and while listening to his new album, which was primarily aggressive rap with screaming and features from other screamy aggressive rappers like Denzel Curry and Scarlxrd, I was thrown for a complete fucking loop by a handful of completely legit rap-less punk songs scattered in the back half. I think stuff like that is just kinda becoming the norm in popular music and if that's what you're acclimated to/looking for in music then yeah, old school extreme metal is gonna come off as completely one-note since the variations between songs are a hell of a lot less immediate than full on genre switches. And the production complaints are just a product of people either not knowing or not being all that interested in the differences in technology/equipment thirty or forty years ago compared to today.

I find those critiques to be kinda worthless since they're almost by necessity going to originate from outside the culture/context that the albums being looked down on exist within and therefore completely lack the understanding or expertise to analyze them in any meaningful way, but it's just kinda how it is nowadays. Be ready for the days ahead when we're all Grampa Simpsons who can't fathom why kids these days stopped wearing onions on their belts.

Honestly the funniest part of all this is the evergreen forum phenomenon of people suddenly being flabbergasted that we don't police opinions whenever a classic gets a negative review.

Yeah don't get me wrong, I'm not flabbergasted by it or trying to be some Grandpa Simpson "nothing new is good" guy at all. Review was just a sad way to look at music from any age, I thought. Limiting.

I can get behind that sentiment, like the idea of him being younger than 25. Still, the guy does like Napalm Death's debut and In Flames' Clayman too. Personally wouldn't mind his take on techy Cryptopsy (right now, it'd be far too easy for a contrarian take on the first two albums imo).

The problem is also we've come to a point new reviews for classics have become largely unnecessary, with most of these having already been served 25+ times or so. So they sum up to, either, some contrarian point of view for the sake of being contrarian, or some youngster telling me for the billionth time all I already knew about Reign In Blood before he was even born. And, well, I may still prefer the former - sometimes it isn't bad for sacred cows to be bullied a little, as long as it's done with taste (generally speaking, not referring to this particular Left Hand Path review I haven't read anyway).

Don't want to reopen the old 20-reviews-soft-cap can of worms, though.

For me, the amusing part is that Left Hand Path's production is legit really good for a 1990 death metal album. Maybe the style doesn't work for someone for whatever reason, but really are you gonna say that it doesn't sound good? The same guy gave Napalm Death's debut a great score, so I'm not sure where that part comes from.

Maybe I’m drastic but I think that review hurt Metal Archives reputation…

Yes I’m exaggerating but I think that.

I tolerate 50 or 60 but 30%?

Is an insult

I'm glad someone can, because his reasoning seems very muddled to me. I really don't know what he's getting at, and I don't believe it's very well written.

DanielG06's Foregone review: the writing is a little ham-fisted but I agree with the sentiment. Not a return to form at all and hyped up way too much before its release.


For real. With the exception of the guitar sound, it's remarkably clean for the time. Maybe even Heartwork levels of clean on some parts, 3 years before Heartwork.

would you take seriously a reviewer who would give a 3 to Highway 61 revisited or to Revolver?

It’s the same …

Highway 61 Revisited would automatically get points off in my book no matter what simply because of the wretched harmonica blasts.

Ok this is my last word on that infamous review but one that write that” How many death metal bands were out there in the early 90s, especially in Sweden? Not many that I can recount at the top of my head, so this kind of makes more sense to me why it's praised so much”

demonstrates all its ignorance(in its classic meaning of not knowing )about the Swedish underground of the 80s and late 90s, a book or better information was simply enough.

The classic Swedish Death Metal of Daniel Ekeroth can fill some of your gaps…

I tremble at the thought of your exposure instead to the Finnish scene….

Honestly dude if you're this spun around about a 30% review that basically just says "this is kinda mid and its reputation has more to do with being early than anything else" then you should count your blessings that you didn't make your account back in the days of "Deathspell Omega is basically pop music", "King Diamond has deathcore solos", and "Blind Guardian ripped off Sepultura".

I don't think it's particularly insightful because it seems to be written by a kid who just isn't much a fan of classic styles, but it isn't "infamous" by any metric and is lightyears away from Ye Olde Tepes saying Slough Feg had never written a single metal riff.

This one was only like 2 years ago, wasn't it? Good times.

Perhaps Lee_Harrison just isn't aware we're on a website where a once celebrated reviewer gave a 0% to Master of Puppets. No offense.

More or less, indeed. I immediately knew history was being made in that exact moment

People legitimately argued those? Man, old MA reviews really were on a whole nother level of stupidity...

And so?

Too many shitty reviews =don’t make bad blood with one?

I try to contribute to discussion with arguments,no with offense or other things…

I repeated vary times for me who gave 0(too any shitty album)must be banned

Are only opinions..

Are any of these direct quotes from TrooperEd? The last one sounds a lot like him lol, and occasionally he hit the spot with a wild comparison. Not the Nightwish/Motörhead one though.

And the author of the middle one has posted recently in this thread

On this - yes, that is very much the case. It's honestly a reflection of the way people listen to and consume music and by extension form their tastes. The rise of the internet has, more than ever, led to increased genre cross-pollination and broken down genre and scene boundaries. People now just float between various styles one day to the next, listening as they please, because it's all right there at your finger tips. Algorithms recommend similar artists that put their own spins on things, eventually taking you to new places entirely, they recommend totally different things that happen to share somewhat of a same fan base as what you like, people will be talking about and recommending all sorts of different albums based on general descriptions of what you're after. All music is mingling in this big pool with a billion other things and all sorts of weird niches are being met as a result. And with the ease of making and releasing music now, people can make music to meet their own needs, even. Cross-pollination and diverse tastes absolutely are not unique to this era but they're being amplified and promoted more than ever. You need only look at a lot of modern fest lineups to see this - I'm forever taken aback by that one fest which had both Machine Girl and Hoobastank on the same day.

All of this is to say, albums that blend or clash tons of styles are very much becoming the norm - it's a logical progression from the above cultural shift. We've already seen artists who, across their discographies, are trying out more new things than ever. Versatility is increasingly favoured and rewarded. Doing this on an album scale as opposed to an album-to-album scale is seen as even more artistically fulfilling now. I also think part of this is a reaction to what we got in the past, where artists stuck a lot more passionately to their specific sound(s) because things were a lot more walled-off in their day, or in the styles and scenes they happen to inhabit. And this carried on well into the present (not as if it's stopped or anything), it was even amplified by the streaming age as various artists started putting out these samey, redundant, 20+ track hour+ long albums just to rack up more streams and thus more revenue. People now, certainly proper music fans (the kind most into listening to whole albums) just find that kind of boring - this is a general statement of course but that is increasingly the case. Artists that either fuse styles seamlessly or as is more common, crashes several together turn way more heads.

I also feel like metal - certainly in the underground - is probably the genre that is most at odds with this change - I can't think of a genre more accepting of the 'one song for 45 minutes' norm than metal. Metal fest lineups also tend to be amongst the most uniform (often even sticking to their own specific subgenres of metal.) I say this with no condescension btw - I think the art of making a batch of songs in the same style and still keeping it interesting and subtly varied across the entire running time is a valid one, and I also think 'being beaten over the head with the same song 8 times' is an underrated pleasure. As well, crafting a consistent atmosphere across an album is obviously a whole lot easier to do when the songs sound similar. I also think metal has one of the most passionate and dedicated fan bases of any genre, so honestly this is totally to be expected and I by no means think this is bad thing; it's just something to note.

I also don't want to make it sound like artists from back in the day were narrow, unenlightened cavemen that only knew their one thing; absolutely not. We would not have gotten the musical progression seen in metal, never mind across music, over the past 40-50 years without the fusion of sounds, the introduction of new ideas, the retooling of ideas in a new context, etc. etc. - that is often how innovation takes place. The Stockholm scene, to bring it back to this discussion, took previous innovations in the genre and built upon them with progressions of ideas and introducing new ones. I guess just now, we're seeing even more of this in a more obvious and I suppose 'aggressive' fashion. It's gone from a natural thing that sort of happened in the background to a thing that's now actively focused on, celebrated and promoted, across the music spectrum.

Glad to see Lorna Shore getting what it deserves. Good God, what an overrated, overhyped band. Oh well, what can you expect from a band who only broke out of the deathcore niche and became widely known elsewhere because their vocals turned into a meme.

I still remember when Pain Remains first dropped and I heard it, and thought it was the best deathcore album in a long while. Now when I hear it, it's like "Well, it is certainly an album, alright." It's pretty much one of those albums that you can only listen to once and never again, as its novelty only runs off quickly for anymore listens.

Yeah I mean I don't think this kind of thing is really any detriment, even objectively... it's all about the stylistic choices of the artists and that can often be in subtle variations in the riffs and melodies with everything in the same mode. It's not even exclusive to old artists or even metal. Most of the newer artists I can think of, including many softer, more palatable sounds, are pretty consistent stylistically within each album, not sure it's a generational divide.