I'm not good enough for The Simpsons!

Exactly! Futurama - at its best - can only compete with middling great era Simpsons.

I remember there was a big Twitter argument about which series was better and someone said it was telling that The Simpsons side was citing episodes from decades ago, which is like saying Power Trip is better than Metallica because Load exists. Still mad respect goes to Futurama. Bender and Zoidberg alone make it worthwhile.

On topic, I'd say any reviewer who uses insulting nicknames for bands they don't like is a good contender for someone who doesn't deserve attention. At most these are funny once, but usually just elicit eye-rolls. My favorite example is "BUGGER FOR MY SHITLENTINE" (caps are the writer's, not mine) from this abomination. Took me awhile to figure out who he was referring to, which, I dunno, seems counterintuitive for a review. I'd also like to point out that "shitlentine" is not a word, and even by the standards of the hellscape that is modern portmanteaus, it's fucking awful.

BloodIronBeer. Regardless of his opinion about the Warbringer single he just reviewed, the review is filled with ignorance, petty insults, poor writing, and a general feeling that he doesn't actually know what he's talking about.

I'd like to throw in the latest guy giving primitive BM classics an edgy "0%", as well as all the other touristy reviewers who did the same in this list.

Is this the guy who is giving all of Burzum's releases 0% and all of Mayhem's releases 100%? Pretty transparent.

Orbitball is really disappointing for a reviewer with over 200 write-ups. He doesn't describe the music with much detail (just read his review of the new Pig Destroyer where it sounds like he's writing as he listens for the first time), generally heads for popular albums, and gives very generous scores that almost always follow the crowd. A lot of the reviews also read like adverts, ending with a line like, "Buy it now!"

I came in to mention him.

https://www.metal-archives.com/user-reviews/bitterman

All but one review of his is a 0%.

Bitterman is a joke who sucks. I think that opinion is unanimous. A useful heuristic: if a reviewer has at least a decent amount of reviews (say 30-40) and the scores are mostly, or wholly, high or low, chances are good they're a poor reviewer. Same deal if they have a wider variety of scores, but they're all between 0-20% or 80-100%. Admittedly, average and middling albums are the hardest to write reviews for and people who aren't professionals will be more compelled to voice their opinions about albums that evoke strong feelings, but if you're going to write as many reviews as a paid critic, it's not expecting too much for you to learn how to describe something in moderate terms.

I'm honestly surprised his reviews weren't completely wiped from the site when people started noticing that he was changing all of them to 0% just to get a rise out of people. He was pretty clearly a troll reviewer before (remember that his user bio had some nonsense about how metal died because At the Gates stopped writing stuff that sounded like The Red in the Sky is Ours), but that just confirmed it. Then he got banned, and all his troll reviews are still up.

Let's not perpetuate this rumor, he was never banned, he was just the first guy to figure out the loophole to allow you to "delete" your account before that was an actual feature (by changing his email address but never clicking the new confirmation link). This is DMU's favorite narrative and he's even popped up there to tell them that's not what happened but they don't care.

His reviews were never deleted because his writing was fine (if obnoxious) and we don't really police taste, there's no rule against being a grumpy asshole who hates everything. Though yeah I agree that we probably should've done something once he changed all of his scores to zero. People who weren't around at the time probably don't realize that he had scores as high as 40% but started incrementally lowering everything once he started getting attention until everything was a 0%. That sort of thing is trolling in my eyes, simply hating everything is stupid but not exactly trolling in itself.

His reviews were everything wrong with the old "internet cynical ranting" thing. I feel bad I was ever a part of that stuff. Not every single thing has to be the worst shit ever created.

The Angry Video Game Nerd did inspire legions of insufferable copycats, but at least they try to play up the angle "this is crazy hyperbole for comedic effect". Bitterman, based on the reviews I read, seemed more like the "get off my lawn" type. Reminds me of Armond White, in that I think he could be a talented and interesting reviewer were he not hellbent on proving his superiority.

Lord_Of_Diamonds - just read the one for Coma of Souls and you'll know why. Already discussed in the main thread.

EdmundSackbauer - despite sharing a first name, I can't get behind his overscored but totally generic write-ups for every album.

avoid UltraBoris. he is a feces. I mean he made grand toast of master of puppets and what has he listened to twice in the last week? gosh, it's awful, the hypocrisy of his stance.

(cannot kill the battery!)

I kind of have to second this - although I hate having to actively attack someone. Because he HAS some good reviews. But I do see where some of his bad side lies.

What's worse to me is that he has the gall to go after others in the "Why was this review submitted" post. Which, yes, I get that's the point, but some of the stuff he says really doesn't have a place in that post.

I'm going to third that...

The only thing I can understand from that review are blasts of puke condemning Kreator for being a delusional Metallica rip-off while the contradiction between the good musicianship (which he does not specify at all) and the drummer is HUGE, what I took from that review is the conception of him about being a solid, fantastic thrash band, which may condemn the "leftish, crust punk" lyrics and talk all about torture, rape, murder, etc... After he mentioned that this is a pure rip-off I start thinking he really didn't listened to Metallica if so... Just trying to draw attention with right-wing ideas? Lord of Diamond is really strange with his review, I don't consider him as a serious writer, just someone who loves us to write about him on this forum...

I guess Anus_Canis is another reviewer to avoid.

He's not the worst reviewer I've seen, but a lot of his opinions are weird. Like, who gives St. Anger a perfect 100 while giving all the other albums 90s? He also used the word "yeet" in one of his review titles, which is pretty cringy. And don't even get me started on those Pantera reviews...

Seconded. The little guy makes me feel quite ashamed of liking Pantera and Metallica.

His review writing style is incredibly cringy but I'm willing to give him a chance. He's obviously very new at the art of writing reviews, and just needs some time to figure out a better way to express his thoughts in writing. I was that way once too. I didn't really have a way nailed down to express my thoughts on music in an intelligent manner, so even my positive reviews from my early days as a reviewer are pretty bad.

Now he's added Lars Ulrich bashing (outside his Metallica reviews no less) to his repertoire, which is very ironic given that he was perfectly willing to overlook a major flaw of St Anger (the drums) to give it a 100.

But... but... St. Anger's drums worked so perfectly because they were a profound artistic representation of all the trouble the band was going through at the time!

And the anus just keeps on leaking.

Yeeeeeaaahhhh I have to agree with some other users regarding Anus_Canis, just pretty poor all around. I get the feeling when reading his reviews that he / she says a lot of things but without actually SAYING anything, if you catch my drift. Even with scoring for some albums that I can somewhat agree with; the actual contents of the reviews come off as poor and super cringey. Not saying my stuff is really good but good god man.

The reasons why this AC dude's reviews are weak apply to a lot of reviews here in general though. Most people are pretty bad at reviewing when they start and take time to learn how to do it right.

AC's writing is amateur and annoying (see the use of "bruh", "yeet", and other vague adjectives), but I say just give him a chance to get good at what he does.

I'm gonna do a review using yeet purely to spite the anti yeet crowd. Old fogies.

Yeah, it's a weird thing to complain about.

Avoid the shit out of my reviews! I haven’t known what the fuck I’ve been doing, and I didn’t realize that until recently when more experienced reviewers reached out to me and told me a multitude of things that I should and should not do when writing reviews. I also didn’t realize that the quality of my reviews is shit until said experienced reviewers reached out to me. So having said that, avoid my past 60 reviews!

criscool623 - some broken English and some consistently wrong word choices (most notably, 'notorious' in place of 'evident'/'blatant'). The fact that he wrote off Agent Orange as 'the lowest point of thrash metal' didn't help getting things better to these eyes. At least this year he seems to be way less active.

Forever Underground - very broken English and problematic sentencing, seeing that he's Spanish (very similar to Italian) I'd say he probably builds sentences in his native language and directly translates them, and they end up being a bit awkward to say the least. A pretty dubious review too, for Dissection's SotLB, which interestingly appeared and disappeared several times (by now, it's in the latter phase).

Hames_Jetfield - my guess would be that his m.o. has to be similar to the above, given that translating his Polish originals with Google gives back very similar results. A pretty annoying use of bold for every single title, but that may be a minor gripe of mine. I'm not really into famous bands' discography reviews only, either.

(seconding, still after 2 years) Edmund Sackbauer - his incredible consistency after all this time it's even more amazing. In this exact moment, out of 894 reviews, 882 are over 85%, 770 over 90%; his absolute lowest score is a 77%. I can't believe metal is that beautiful.

While I was writing (I'm slow as fuck lol) Anus_Canis' comment popped up - mate, there's no need to mortify yourself in this manner, don't worry. You'll have plenty of time to grow up and improve, we're a community and not a professional jury, everyone has got his past reviews which he doesn't see as good as he wished, but nobody will send you to the guillotine

Saying this just to make sure the wrong message isn't spread - you'll soon get over this phase and start cranking out better and better reviews, trust me. Just make sure not to give up because of all this, tough beginnings are part of the game. As you said, you were brave enough to ask for help and got pretty useful advices, make them work for you

Damn, they didn't bite. Not only did I yeet, I also dropped a yolo and a boomer. Disappointed.

The review workshop is your friend. I was p hated when I first started (5 or so years ago now?), took a year or two of people criticizing me until I could actually get a style down that was my own. It's always cool to see a young reviewer grow and hit veteran status. Stick around a bit.

I wish I saw this advice before I deleted my Anus_Canis profile. But now I’m back, and if I receive criticism (even if it is destructive), I won’t take it too personally; instead, I’ll use whatever criticism (particularly if it’s constructive) I receive to improve upon the quality of my reviews.