Strongly believe I will not make 50 reviews this week, and that has been my bottom line for the last 3 years. Hope that someone else can have a try, MorbidAtheist666 is currently doing very nicely. On the other hand, I've finished most of my review "commitments", including Secret Satan and Metantoine's suggested material, which is satisfying.

Daily Tally for Dec 4 2020
Total Reviews: 75 / 270
Total Virgin Reviews: 66 / 238
Percentage (VIRGINS/TOTAL): 88.0% / 88.1%

Participant List for Dec 4 2020
Total Participants: 25 / 55

Today's Totals per Individual:


Running Totals per Individual:


Other Data for Dec 4 2020

Today's Totals per Release Type:


Today's Virgin Bands:


Compared to the fifth day of the last challenge, participants are down, but virgins are up.

We had 8 new people join us yesterday. Welcome aboard.

Congrats on Edmund Sackbauer and hells_unicorn for being today's leaders with 6 reviews each!

Daily Tally for Dec 5 2020
Total Reviews: 41 / 311
Total Virgin Reviews: 37 / 275
Percentage (VIRGINS/TOTAL): 90.2% / 88.4%

Participant List for Dec 5 2020
Total Participants: 15 / 56

Today's Totals per Individual:


Running Totals per Individual:


Other Data for Dec 5 2020

Today's Totals per Release Type:


Today's Virgin Bands:


Compared to the sixth day of the last challenge, both participants and virgins are down.

We had 1 new person join us yesterday. Welcome aboard.

Congrats on gasmask_colostomy, severzhavnost and WorldEater1126 for being today's leaders with 5 reviews each!

Just one day left!

Bleh, I'm really starting to fall behind now. I was working on a new review but other things in my personal life demanded my attention first. Hopefully I can get that one plus one or two other out before the end of the challenge. I still need to finish Great Cold Emptiness' review too.

I see where the "challenge" part comes into this now!

Seems true for a lot of people. Guess this week just wasn't that great this year, which is odd because in normal years this time of the year is usually the best for challenges.

Yeah, I've been unusually busy this week, and it pretty much came out of nowhere. I'll probably get a few in today and maybe hit 30, but this is among my least prolific challenges in the past few years. I got off to kind of a shoddy start and I basically decided to use this as an opportunity to get caught up on my Sonic Perspectives promos, which calls for me to write reviews that are between 800 and 1000 words, hence the lower output.

I've been finding it hard to write more than 4 a day. We'll see what I can squeeze out for the final stretch here.

Forgot this was a thing until like yesterday. At least, I squeezed one out there. It's not one of my best, but now Viscera Infest has reviews for each release and that's pretty neat.

I snuck one in there for Lowest Creatures - Sacrilegious Pain on the 5th, I honestly couldn't find anything else I had heard, hadn't been reviewed yet and that felt interested in writing about. Late 2014 was the most productive I have been during a challenge, getting 10 reviews done in that time, but I feel a lot of what I listened to then has simply been covered by now. Oh well, still a good and productive week! Hopefully we're all simply more quality over quantity now.

I'm proud of myself for hitting a daily lead yesterday, but I'm not really participating in the competition as such, more just staving away the boredom of being unemployed and having too much time on my hands. I hope you all enjoy my reviews!

And I'm out, 30 reviews is plenty considering the week I just had. I told gasmask he was going to run away with this one, though I did try to make it at least quasi-competitive. lol

Fuck, I'm blanking on getting this last review going. Gonna save it for a feature next year maybe (not necessarily the next virgin challenge).

Was fun times and discovered some cool if not at least interesting stuff.

30 is insane. I got to 25 and doing 6 of those today was definitely pushing it.

Just got my last review up. It's technically Dec 7th over here but oh well, it should still count. If this challenge has taught me anything it's that I need to learn how to condense. I wrote nearly 800 words on a fucking GISM live video for god's sake, no one's going to read through all that.

Covid's changed everything sadly. I'm currently dealing with a couple things that had to be delayed till now, it's likely others are too.

Also god damn, how are some of you writing so many reviews? Tell me your secrets, I'd love to learn how to streamline my writing process.

This is actually one of my weaker showings, my personal record is 93, which I set back in 2009. I had a different work situation back then and I wasn't tied to two different webzines so I had a bit more flexibility in terms of scheduling. We've had 3 users, including the late Diamhea, as well as gasmask and Thumbman break the 100 review mark. The more you do this, the easier it will get. Once you figure out a formula and find a particular type of album that you can write about easily (probably a group of releases that you're lukewarm about), the words tend to flow, or at least that was how it worked for me.

So in the end, I think I might have snuck in 50. Apologies for any formatting errors with my last few, I was submitting them on my phone from a cafe because it’s Monday morning here and I had to teach my class first. I’ll edit them when I get home.

Very happy to see people I’m less familiar with turning in a very healthy quantity of reviews, such as WorldEater, MorbidAtheist, Demon Fang, and Orphy - if you guys are the new breed of MA reviewer, that will be awesome. Come say hi in the main review thread someday.


Pretty sure there’s a post like this after every challenge, and Hells speaks truth about it. I was participating for a year or two before I ever figured out how to do the challenge properly: the same time Diamhea smashed out 100, I wrote 32 and was just knocked off the “podium” by Thumbman, which seems to be a habit of his. Since then, I got better and this challenge wasn’t my busiest.

To answer the question, I think the first thing to do if you want to write quickly over the week is get plenty of reviews under your belt. Most of the guys who turn in 25+ reviews in a challenge have already published several hundred on the site. They know their own style inside out, and don’t spend long searching for expressions about describing the music. They have fairly good frames of reference within their chosen genres and know when a review is finished. As for musical knowledge, I’m not among the best here, so I focus on descriptive writing, which I know I’m better at. If it’s boring to say simply, I use metaphor instead, or play about with words,, and that keeps reviewing fresh for me.

For the challenge itself, preparation is important too. I’ve got a list of albums and artists I’ve come across during the year that don’t have reviews. In the summer challenge, I didn’t pre-listen very much and spent a long time just listening to the music, but I wasn’t doing much else so was still able to write plenty. This time, I had made notes on at least half the albums I wanted to review, or had listened to them enough that I didn’t really need notes. When me and Thumbman both made 100, I had written notes on at least 80 of those albums prior to the challenge week and just leafed through them from memory. It helped that we were pushing each other, because otherwise I would have taken it easier and finished far less. I expect during that challenge I spent around 50 hours actually writing, and that meant only doing that and necessary things, such as eating, sleeping (less), working (as little as possible), and making sure my wife didn’t kick my ass. This time, probably not much more than about 30 hours writing time.

Oh yeah, and make sure you can type fast.

Hey, thanks! I've been reviewing on this site sporadically over the years, as band life gets stupid busy with work, but obviously that's not the case right now. I wrote 100 reviews on this site in a 16 year period, and then just did a quarter of that in a week. It's been a good way to keep my mind sharp, and as long as I have thoughts on music I'm checking out, I'll likely be blabbing about stuff as long as I can, periods of inactivity be damned.

Also, yeah, taking notes is a HUGE help. I did some notes on 7 albums a week before doing this challenge, and those reviews were really easy to knock out. It's definitely something that you get better at as you go, like with any sort of creative process.

Yeah, I noticed you’ve been here a long time and just recently came back to reviewing. In the last year or so, my time has also been occupied to wildly different degrees, but I like the feel of the challenge week and would always like to come back to see who’s around for that. Hope we see more of each other

Cheers! To be honest, I'm a sucker for reviewing shit of bands I actually know, cause I just want people to check their shit out. I found the bulk of stuff I was reviewing was from friends' bands, so there's plenty of ground to cover there, virgin album or not.

That's a good way to approach it, reviewing bands you love. Funnily enough, almost everyone likes to get a review of their band on the website. I'm friends with medium well-known musician on Facebook and wrote a review for his work elsewhere; he was almost begging me to upload to MA, which of course I did. Even a guy who requested a review of his demo here sent a very happy note after I gave it 9%. You're definitely supporting bands by reviewing their stuff.

Thanks to all the contributors! I really wanted to be part of it again, but damn, I've spent all my time promoting my new music and for work life. Trying to get back to reviewing soon though, since things will settle down eventually.

Also, the new Oceans of Slumber record I'm supposed to review actually killed all vibes, because it's the most boring snoozefest I've heard all year. It literally induced writer's block.

Indeed, a small edition, but it's always a pleasure to participate. Too busy to write a lot, unfortunately. Not that I've ever been that prolific.

That's indeed something I already noticed during the long forgotten days when I was in charge: we've always had to rely on a few "hard-hitters" writing 50+ reviews to reach the goal. If, for whatever good reason, these aren't able to churn out their usual amount, the figures dramatically collapse. My secret wish has always been that every subsequent challenge would draw more and more participants, so that we could beat the magic number even when hells_unicorn looks a bit pale Just imagine, with 200 participants writing an average of only 5 reviews each, we would reach one thousand in no time...

Alas, this never happened, and one decade later it seems like it's never going to happen. Not a reason to give up, though.

Yeah, I definitely hit a mental block this time around. I really need to start taking notes when preparing for these challenges. I usually have a pretty good idea of the bands I want to review but reviewing stuff via my usual process takes a fair amount of time.

sneaked in my own contribution at the last moment wasn't even planning on it. I just started making my aoty 2020 list and realised that the new Bütcher for some reason has no reviews yet even though its top notch.

You've all done so well. I was hoping to churn out a few more reviews, but like the rest of y'all this week ended up a lot more hectic than I expected. It really has been a tumultuous year, and that probably was the biggest factor in this challenge's lower turnout this time around. But as Gasmask noted, it's nice to see new faces and I hope you all decide to continue participating in future challenges. I know that some prolific reviewers have more-or-less retired, but it's also noticeable seeing new fresh blood around, too. My guess is that as Gen Zers (or Zoomers) grow older, we may see many new participants around here.

If there's ways to improve the challenge, please let me know. I applied a few changes that - despite the extra addition - ended up streamlining and (ironically) making easier much of my work in tallying. I'm open to including more data as requested. The next challenge will also feature a different supplementary activity instead of the "Secret Satan" which I see has slowly become obsolescent. If there are ways anyone can think of, of attracting people and getting more interest and fun out of this challenge, especially after 26 challenges, feel free to suggest things.

The last day's tally and the final numbers will be posted soon (probably within a couple hours).

EDIT: MRmehman, your G.I.S.M. review will be counted. I saw it was submitted in advance of the closing time, but passed out before I could accept it. That error is on me, not you.

Daily Tally for Dec 6 2020
Total Reviews: 54 / 365
Total Virgin Reviews: 47 / 322
Percentage (VIRGINS/TOTAL): 87.0% / 88.2%

Participant List for Dec 6 2020
Total Participants: 22 / 63

Today's Totals per Individual:


Running Totals per Individual:


Other Data for Dec 6 2020

Today's Totals per Release Type:


Today's Virgin Bands:


Compared to the seventh and last day of the last challenge, both participants and virgins are down.

We had 7 new people join us yesterday. Welcome aboard.

Congrats on gasmask_colostomy for being today's leader with 12 reviews!

And that concludes the 6th Diamhea Memorial Review Challenge!

TOTAL VIRGINS: 322

On average, 88% of all reviews from the week were virgins! This is higher than the last challenge, which was at 87%.

We were down 106 reviews and 24 participants from the last challenge.

In total, 314 unique releases were given reviews, of which 194 (62%) were full-length, 61 (19%) were EPs, 24 (8%) were demos, 14 (4%) were splits, 10 (3%) were singles, 5 (2%) were compilations, 3 (1%) were videos, 2 were boxed sets, and 1 was a live album. No split videos or collaborations were reviewed this time around.

There were a total of 270 bands reviewed, of which 131 (49%) were bands without any previous reviews (ie. virgin bands).

The most reviewed virgin was Majestica's A Christmas Carol with 3 reviews!

The 6th Diamhea Memorial Review Challenge was the first challenge since June 2015 to have fewer than 332 total reviews. No new all-time records were broken. We had about the same number of participants as we usually have had in most challenges in the last few years, though this challenge had many new faces join.

Participant List GRAND TOTALS


Congratulations gasmask_colostomy on 1st place, hells_unicorn on 2nd place, and orphy on 3rd place!

This was gasmask_colostomy's 8th time placing, hells_unicorn's 18th time, and orphy's 1st time.

Individuals who participated for all 7 days:
CHAIRTHROWER
Demon Fang
gasmask_colostomy
hells_unicorn
orphy
PaganiusI

Individuals who participated for 6 days:
robotiq
Slater922

Individuals who participated for 5 days:
WorldEater1126

The Hall of Fame has been updated. That was a good challenge. See you at the next one in June 2021!

Well I didn’t notice this was happening until late Friday, so I feel pretty good at getting 9 reviews in. Will pay closer attention in the future

Dude it's an honor, thank you so much. I'll definitely continue trying to make a meaningful contribution to the site.

I'm satisfied with my four reviews, which is usually what I can manage to turn out anyway during these challenges since I don't really have the free time necessary to pump out more. I did a dumb gimmick with it this time just to keep it fun for myself, but I was hoping to break it over the weekend to get one in for the new Persuader album, but my schedule just never lined up properly. Oh well. Glad to see gas and hells doing their thing and especially all the new faces we had join in this time around!

Thanks for the advice, Gasmask! I'm still finding my footing somewhat when it comes to writing reviews. I wrote a few in the past but it's only been in the last couple months that I really started trying to develop a style. I feel like I'm still feeling things out; sometimes I write more objectively, sometimes I throw a few more joke in there. I've found I write less generic tripe when I'm reviewing a band or release I really enjoyed/hated/had some strong opinions or criticisms of.

The forum might never be as popular as it was back in its heyday but we're still not doing too bad, right? 50+ people getting 314 reviews done in a week ain't too shabby. I don't think something like this could happen anywhere else. Besides, it's all in good fun. This was my first time participating and I had a great time. It was interesting getting so many reviews done in such a short space of time, there wasn't quite as much crunch as when I arbitrarily decided to whack all those Batushka reviews but the deadline certainly affected my approach.

Hell yeah. No Endless Blockades for me!

Also, thanks for the stats Derigin, very interesting and much easier for me to keep track of what's going on generally in the challenge. This wouldn't happen without you!

Hear! Hear! The new set up is definitely an improvement, and I think it will help bring in new blood to upcoming challenges.

You're very welcome.

If anyone has any suggestions for additional stats, please let me know. I'd be happy to check them out and see if they're feasible.

Yes, I like the new stats too. So that I realize I'm the only one to have reviewed a live album for this Challenge. Strange, as I've always thought live albums were easy Challenge targets when time was missing a bit.