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101wildturkey101
Metal newbie

Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2020 2:14 am
Posts: 30
Location: United States
PostPosted: Thu Dec 16, 2021 11:32 pm 
 

Perhaps it is a coincidence, but lately I seem to be repeatedly running into reviews where the author begins the review stating they have never understood the band in question.

Then honestly, why review an album from a band that you have never enjoyed 5 or 10 albums deep?

I did not keep tabs on these reviews, but bands like Ulcerate and Immolation tend to have them more than others because of their dissonant music. For instance, I don't enjoy power metal, but why start a review with saying power metal sucks but I am writing this review anyway just to give a poor score?

It is incredibly understandable that the review system itself is subjective and should be taken with a grain of salt, but this is something I am running into a lot lately.

This is also not to say every review should be positive. However there was one album I saw where several reviewers gave a 95-100% review, which would suggest an album would be stellar. Then there's the ONE person who gives it a 10 because they "never got" the band and listened to it...out of spite?

Anyway, just my observations. Thanks for reading this far

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TheBurningOfSodom
Metalhead

Joined: Sat Jun 27, 2015 9:28 am
Posts: 598
Location: Italy
PostPosted: Fri Dec 17, 2021 8:55 am 
 

It's an issue that pops up every now and then and it's actually a bit more complicated than it seems in my opinion. Given that reviews are open to all users, the logical consequence is that everybody has the right to write about everything. I tend to avoid bands/releases I don't know very much about/don't get, at the very least because I just won't enjoy writing about them (like when I attempted a Gojira review) - someone else doesn't, it's natural. As long as the review is approved, it's (theoretically) fine, but I get it can be very frustrating if you're a fan of those bands.

The main issue I see is that the line between a user giving a honest opinion from a different pov and somebody doing it out of spite can get pretty thin at times. When this case was brought to the table in the main thread last time, the main point I took was 'have confidence in what you have to say' (I believe it was Demon Fang saying that). That's pretty much it. I liked BastardHead's From Mars to Sirius review because his criticisms are backed up by confidence and facts. It also describes perfectly how I feel about Gojira, and I value it way more than all the overwhelmingly positive other reviews. On the other hand, someone who feels the need to start his negative review on the defensive, by saying that he doesn't get the album/band/genre in question right at the beginning, probably isn't very confident in what he's about to say. Usually, reviews like the latter aren't even that good to read.

Again, it sucks hard to see your favourite album's nearly immaculate rating being dragged down by this kind of guy. Yet, it's arguably better than limiting black metal reviews to black metal fans only, thrash to thrashers and so on.

I'll also say that, perhaps, this:

101wildturkey101 wrote:
why review an album from a band that you have never enjoyed 5 or 10 albums deep?

is just a step too far. Not everybody needs to found a fan club to write a review :-P
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BastardHead
Worse than Stalin

Joined: Thu Aug 18, 2005 7:53 pm
Posts: 10857
Location: Oswego, Illinois
PostPosted: Fri Dec 17, 2021 3:23 pm 
 

You can usually pretty easily tell the difference between somebody who constantly trashes the same band over and over, somebody who typically doesn't listen to much of whatever subgenre they're shitting on in the first place, and somebody who just happens to not like how a particular band/scene sound despite having a wide understanding about it. The former two almost always suck, but are actually pretty rare on MA. The third option is much, much more common with the standards we have here. The Ulcerate review that I think you're referring to was written by a guy who has averaged one review per year over six years and has favorably reviewed similarly chaotic death metal bands. Within the text of the review he cites Portal, Gorguts, and Immolation as bands that succeed at doing what he believes Ulcerate fails at. So on one hand you have a small backlog that shows he isn't cruelly shitting on one particular band or scene, the content of that small backlog showing that he does indeed understand extreme metal, and finally the text of the review shows that he perfectly understands the style that Ulcerate is playing but thinks they suck at it. Whether he's right about that is just a difference of opinion, but he's obviously neither a troll nor a bad actor. Those types of doofuses do pop up occasionally but they're usually very obvious and easy to ignore, and nowhere near as pervasive as some people seem to think. The worst I've seen is somebody choosing one album to review as an example of why they hate the band/scene in general. I've seen people negatively review the same band several times but almost never in real time. Usually if that's done it's because there's a greater story or point to make. Speaking for myself, I have multiple negative reviews for Lamb of God and Winds of Plague. The former because they're the tail end of a series that spanned their entire career and adequately showcased how exhausting their drop in quality was. The latter because their second album was easy to make fun of, their third was surprisingly okay and showed an interesting direction, the fourth saw them regress about a billion percent and wasted whatever neat thing they were hinting at, and the sixth because they suddenly reappeared with another interesting new development that wound up tarnished before the album was over, so overall it wound up telling a weird sprawling narrative that never had the same problems twice in a row.

Otherwise I'm just gonna stick to my old axiom of "Nobody ever complains that a review they agree with isn't objective enough". "Objective" is a completely meaningless and irrelevant term once you dip into the realm of critiquing art. You can get facts wrong ("Dragonforce is black metal") but when it comes to the actual meat, aiming for some weird standard of "objectivity" becomes utterly soulless because there's no way to solidify whether "Dragonforce is good" is an objective statement or not. A perfectly objective review would be a droning list of key signatures and tempo shifts. A review is, by its very nature, predicated on having an opinion about something, and sometimes peoples' opinions will go against the grain, even in ways that completely mystify us.
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101wildturkey101
Metal newbie

Joined: Thu Nov 26, 2020 2:14 am
Posts: 30
Location: United States
PostPosted: Mon Dec 20, 2021 3:00 am 
 

TheBurningOfSodom wrote:

I'll also say that, perhaps, this:

101wildturkey101 wrote:
why review an album from a band that you have never enjoyed 5 or 10 albums deep?

is just a step too far. Not everybody needs to found a fan club to write a review :-P


You make a lot of good points, but I will specifically respond to this one. No, you don't HAVE to be a fan of a band to review their work, but what is to be gained from A) writing a review for a band you have never liked or B) us reading said review? Especially those that essentially say "I have never liked this band, not even one album, but I listened to this and feel obligated to review it. It sounds to my ears like the rest of their work so naturally I hate it." I don't see that as productive for the author, the band, or the fans.

BastardHead wrote:
Otherwise I'm just gonna stick to my old axiom of "Nobody ever complains that a review they agree with isn't objective enough". "Objective" is a completely meaningless and irrelevant term once you dip into the realm of critiquing art. You can get facts wrong ("Dragonforce is black metal") but when it comes to the actual meat, aiming for some weird standard of "objectivity" becomes utterly soulless because there's no way to solidify whether "Dragonforce is good" is an objective statement or not. A perfectly objective review would be a droning list of key signatures and tempo shifts. A review is, by its very nature, predicated on having an opinion about something, and sometimes peoples' opinions will go against the grain, even in ways that completely mystify us.


As a critic, shouldn't objectivity equate to the realm in which the review exists, ie an open-mind? It wouldn't be the same as being, let's say, an arbitrator who needs to view things fairly, but in my humble opinion, the second a reviewer's bias takes over, then it isn't of much value to me. One could also argue this very website uses a degree of objectivity when judging reviews, because some are rejected for not being GOOD.

As for the Ulcerate review, that was one, yes. I recently had covid and did a ton of reading in my down time, which is why my attention was drawn to the topic at all. There are many reviews I disagree with, as most of us surely do, but that is mainly due to a difference in opinion on an album, not the quality of the writing. For instance, in my mind it should be nearly impossible for an album to receive a 0 score, but that is my opinion.

I think honest reviews are a good thing, regardless of the outcome, and I don't even believe there is a solution for the point I am making, other than a reddit style upvote system, but that raises all sorts of questions.

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TheBurningOfSodom
Metalhead

Joined: Sat Jun 27, 2015 9:28 am
Posts: 598
Location: Italy
PostPosted: Mon Dec 20, 2021 9:02 am 
 

101wildturkey101 wrote:
You make a lot of good points, but I will specifically respond to this one. No, you don't HAVE to be a fan of a band to review their work, but what is to be gained from A) writing a review for a band you have never liked or B) us reading said review? Especially those that essentially say "I have never liked this band, not even one album, but I listened to this and feel obligated to review it. It sounds to my ears like the rest of their work so naturally I hate it." I don't see that as productive for the author, the band, or the fans.

Okay, reading back I somehow managed to misinterpret your comment so yeah, we're on the same wavelength. I too wouldn't write a review with those premises, and we agree on the fact that they're usually a terrible read. It's just that good examples of review from non-fans exist, and should be allowed, even if that means inevitably keeping the doors open to clueless writings like the one you (we) hate. As you said, there really isn't an easy solution for it.
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A very promising new reviewer wrote:
Big, juicy, veiny, throbbing hard riffs. Big heavy knuckle dragging, cock swaddling compositions for those in fear of soap/bathing. Listen at your own risk. No signs of intelligent life.

It's the dawn of descending...

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Ex El Ex El Ex
Metal newbie

Joined: Sun Oct 10, 2021 8:53 pm
Posts: 328
Location: Argentina
PostPosted: Wed Dec 22, 2021 2:08 pm 
 

101wildturkey101 wrote:
BastardHead wrote:
Otherwise I'm just gonna stick to my old axiom of "Nobody ever complains that a review they agree with isn't objective enough". "Objective" is a completely meaningless and irrelevant term once you dip into the realm of critiquing art. You can get facts wrong ("Dragonforce is black metal") but when it comes to the actual meat, aiming for some weird standard of "objectivity" becomes utterly soulless because there's no way to solidify whether "Dragonforce is good" is an objective statement or not. A perfectly objective review would be a droning list of key signatures and tempo shifts. A review is, by its very nature, predicated on having an opinion about something, and sometimes peoples' opinions will go against the grain, even in ways that completely mystify us.


As a critic, shouldn't objectivity equate to the realm in which the review exists, ie an open-mind? It wouldn't be the same as being, let's say, an arbitrator who needs to view things fairly, but in my humble opinion, the second a reviewer's bias takes over, then it isn't of much value to me.

That's the thing though. Reviews are, by their very definition as opinion pieces, exercises in bias. There can be no such thing as an unbiased review. Whether that contributes to a review positively or negatively is an entirely different argument, but people's opinions are always going to be inclined one way or another.

With that said, I understand the frustration with reviewers who have chips on their shoulders about specific genres. Personally, I don't give a shit about intepretive dance, so why should anyone care about my opinions on it? I don't understand the appeal, so any insight I might have will at best be surface level and innocuous, and at worst offensive to people who actually comprehend what I'm trying to critique. Personally speaking, I find it much more interesting when an outsider is trying to give something they generally avoid a fair shake, or when big proponents of a style just viciously hate an example of said style and can eloquently explain why. That stuff is always a lot more interesting than "I hate this stupid genre and this album in particular will be my scapegoat as to why".
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