Yeah, Papsmear have a good sound - anti-Helloween vocals, gritty, lots of double bass, interesting breakdowns - true thrash and one of those bands that doesn't get much recognition. I actually chuckled when I saw the band in the review queue, something I pretty much did when I first saw the band's name on the Speed Metal Hell Vol. 3 compilation.

Now over to reporter cravingforvenom and his Metal Messiah review...

"Metal Messiah were undoubtedly one of UK’s best known thrash metal bands and performed at a lot of shows in their nation."

They'd most likely be left off a 20 band list. And the whole 'undoubtedly' thing?

http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=9609

http://metal-archives.com/review.php?id=2989#154734

i find it hysterical that he simultaneously gets it and doesn't get it
i found myself agreeing with him with certain things but i think it's why it RULES hahah.

"The production is just brutal. It’s unclean, unpolished, and gritty. The bass is much distorted, which irks me a lot. The bass is audible which I find to be a nice aspect, but it’s played in an 80’s punk style where it’s louder than the guitars at some points."

if you remove the statement "which irks me alot" & "but" and add 16 exclamation marks at the end you have my thoughts haha!
anyone a fan of this album will laugh at this review because he makes so many positive points of the album and even mentioned how Scott Carlson "enunciates" but they just happened to be things he hates

i think the guy is some form of accidental troll..yknow the type that do not know they are trolls? at any rate i actually love this review haha! i want to pat him on the head and say "it's ok your dumb, it's not your fault your brain is backwards"

Indeed funny in a way. But it is clear he just doesn't like the entire genre. I wonder why he spend his time reviewing this album.... And will he do World Downfall, Scum, Reek Of P. and Impulse To Destroy as well?!?

It isn't really any dumber than some of the extreme metal trolls who single out a few Power Metal targets for trollination. I personally grew out of this way of reviewing albums after my first 8 months at doing it, and maybe he will too.



He's got a pretty extensive catalog of negative reviews, looks like a lot of them are focused on popular bands, who knows.

I don't mean to be an over opinionated jerk but WTF????



The production is just brutal. It’s unclean, unpolished, and gritty. The bass is much distorted, which irks me a lot. The bass is audible which I find to be a nice aspect, but it’s played in an 80’s punk style where it’s louder than the guitars at some points. It is very hard for me to listen to all the songs, even if the album is under 30 minutes.

This album was a pretty tough listen for me. It annoyed me quite a lot I’m not going to lie. There’s no variety in this album whatsoever, every song is the exact same song only with a different title over it. The shitty production and the annoying vocals are what ruined it the most for me. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe that’s what this genre is supposed to be like. Well if so, then it’s nice to know that grindcore music sucks. That’s really the only good thing that came out if it for me, that and that it was a quick listen.




I Hate stupid opinions ! i mean he goes on to say that there was no influence or it was meaningless , this is a great album , this guy must be kidding!!! now i usually write my opinions in reviews and have definately met other people with different opinions but fact is fact . This band started a whole genre . fucking idiot. fucking idiot., oh and i see 16 beat me too this one. This is the greatest album ever really .

Well, my friend, it is his opinion, and while you stated that you "don't mean to be an over-opinionated jerk" you are indeed being one with this sort of response. You, too, have a very strong opinion by claiming that "this is the greatest album ever", and if you were to write a review in the vein of that post you just gave, I'm afraid you would be mocked in this thread (or the Oven Fodder) perhaps even more than the former.

fully understood , like i said i respect the opinion even though i strongly disagree

actually it IS the greatest piece of recorded music in the history of the known universe.
but i don't get mad when other people don't admit the truth.

i'm with ya hellhippie

I liked this section from hells_unicorn's Giddy Up Gansta review:

I was just going to add H_U's review here. Not because it's good, because it's just the most unbearably redundant review on possible this whole website. Can't the metal community realise that yes, deathcore blows, and move on? I thought out favourite political nutcase man would've had more important things to do, such as reviewing some power metal or something else.

Thank you, I still can't understand what makes people who listen to good bands stoop low enough to give a shit about bad deathcore bands. Just leave them be, god damnit.

It's always pleasurable to review music you hate. It gives you an outlet.

Sure, but bash something else, then. Deathcore's a terrible genre, yes, but there are also so many bad bands within the other metal genres that are just as worthy of people's hate.

I don't disagree, but deathcore's an easy genre for some to bash. It may be easier to find such a band to hate.

Either way, I do like hells_unicorn's review.

Bad deathcore bands should be ignored, so they can just fade away. Shitty bands like Waking the Cadaver have been immortalized because of their extremely low review scores.

But then again, sometimes you hate an album so much, you just have to write about it.

Exactly. Just look at me, I review bad power metal every week or so.

One of the reasons why I like you so much Caspian is because of how easily you get annoyed by peculiarities in an otherwise predictable routine. That review took all of 15 minutes to write, in between a spat of about 15 reviews that took a lot more effort, including a really thought out pair of reviews for Enslaved's early material. I will admit that this review was partially motivated by a desire to get some attention, since I've been reviewing quite a bit of other stuff and not really getting any mention anywhere, sue me. But actually this review was mostly done for the Metal Observer, since Alex wants more underground reviews and I had just read Tepes' review and thought it a good place to look for some material, though I was pretty sure it wouldn't be positive material.



I've been going after a few other bands, albeit a lot of them are groove metal bands. Sure I could go after some Metalcore bands, or I could find some more newer Metallica albums to rip on, but I doubt that would be much better.



They've been more immortalized by their extremely heavy success on Myspace and on mainstream television. Bands like these don't go away until the novelty of their sound wears off.



Yeah, I thought the latest Edguy release was pretty poor also.

You're just mad because I didn't like Ride the Sky.

hehe, you've got a quick wit there. Point taken, I will try to get around to reviewing the latest Human Fortress album at some point to set Caspian's mind at ease. I just find it a little funny that I review a few Deathcore albums and suddenly I'm wasting all of my power metal reviewing time. Maybe I should hit some albums by Wormed and The Berserker just to show people that there are bands that push the ridiculously extreme factor that I actually like. Or maybe I should check out Nadja to get my good ball breaking Aussie friend to roll with my latest gangsta craze.

Eh, it just seems that for a respectable reviewer as yourself, bashing deathcore albums is a waste of time. There's a huge bunch of frothing li'l metalheads already working themselves into a lather about these sort of releases. It's just massively flogging a dead horse, and if deathcore's popularity in australia is anything like it is in the US, then it's not really all that huge, just liked by a small percentage of x-treme teenz.

I'd love to see you break out your mold a bit by giving Wormed/The Bezerker/Nadja a review, particularly the first and the latter of those three. <-- Hell, download yourself the Touched remake, get disgusted by the production or whatever and give it a bashing. Btw, did you check out that Theocracy album yet?

I think the point he's trying to make (or at least, the point I feel I should make) is that you waste your great writing ability and wide range of vocabulary by writings lots of very predictable reviews. I love your writing style but barely ever read your reviews because you never seem to review anything that you have a unique opinion of. I mean, are there any albums that are held in high regard by the 'true' metal scene, but you don't like? Your Transilvanian Hunger and Deathcrush reviews were interesting because of this, but I get bored of reading low rated reviews of Iwrestledabearonce, Giddy Up Gangsta or The Unspoken King because everything you have to say has pretty much already been said (and is usually already a given anyway), sure, you might write it better than others but it still wouldn't be as interesting as a more unique (or more surprising) opinion of yours.

Also, I'm pretty sure that the 'gangsta' imagery/quotes by the aforementioned bands were a joke rather than an actual endorsement of hip hop or whatever.

Completely agree on that, IF deathcore was getting a lot of praise and you - hellsunicorn - thought that needed to be rectified, it would be of some interest to read reviews about it. Since that's not the case, it almost comes off as writing low scoring reviews for the sake of it. Actually you should just try to bring a different perspective about classics or, of course, review obscure bands. It's not highly important whether the reviews are high scoring or not and you really should not feel compelled to write some negative reviews once in a while but when you can offer a completely different way of looking at an album, it makes for very interesting reading.

As much as I loathe giving H_U any kind of credit...

Poserbashing and x-treme teenz kiddiebashing is an important, and often neglected part of the Metalhead lifestyle. Sometimes you just got to go out and tell them how stupid they are, for their own good, and for our own amusement.

Shouldn't make too much of a habbit out of it, though, as it is something of an "unenviable dead horse... smashed into its tiniest molecules by now".

On an unrelated note, I'm mortally offended that no one ever brings up my work in this thread.

Deathcore bashing would be fine if even a half of one percent of the people doing it could write in out in an evenly mildly articulate way rather than mashing a feces-caked keyboard in misplaced anger.

Bullshit. Stop trolling.

I find writing epic in-depth reviews about deathcore pointless, as the music itself is so one-dimensional that they usually end up as foam-mouthed and very boring rants with too little content. For such a genre, brief reviews work better. Vitriolic, pseudo-humoristic deathcore reviews are a chore to read.

I guess you're still mad at me for comparing the AFMF to a club for metrosexual men. And what's with all the new accounts? Pretty soon you'll have an account here for every day of the week, Luni through Duminica.

Anyway, I don't plan on making a habit of bashing deathcore all the time, in fact my deathcore reviews probably account for less than 1% of my total review count. But I do tend to agree with Noktorn that many reviews that bash deathcore bands are poorly written, yours being an exception.



I tend to discover albums I don't like at random intervals, as I think I've only reviewed 20 albums based on free mp3 promos and I tend to shop very carefully for Cds that I actually like. I tried to bring a new perspective to this review by focusing a bit on the groove metal and melodic death influences at play on the album, which I don't think either of the other two reviews did. I generally don't read other reviews on this site before writing one for an album (with a few exceptions here and there, this being one of them), so if I have common ground with other reviewers, it's usually coincidental.

Having said all of this, I've put up about 20 reviews in the past few months for obscure releases, including one for an unsigned Slovenian thrash band just after doing the Giddy Up Gangsta review, but the problem is nobody talks about these reviews.



I pretty much assumed that, but I think one of the best ways to rip on a joke band is to take them seriously, much in the same way that one of the best ways to be annoying is to constantly answer rhetorical questions.



I have reviews for Darkthrone's "Frostland Tapes", Mayhem's "Freezing Moon" and Enslaved's "Eld" that I'm currently working on that you might be interested in. I can't really do much for having opinions that can be predictable, because I don't try to modify my views in order to either fit in or oppose widely held views on either well respected or obscure albums.

Hmm...it's difficult to say which reviews get attention, usually somebody who's interested in that album or likes it would have to read it before it disappears into the archives. Actually why am I saying all that, you know it better than I do! Personally, I don't really look out for good words when I write a review, if it's something I want to say and it's not been said before, not all of it at least, I will just go ahead and post the review anyway. But then I go on long 'vacations' between reviews so I can only speak for myself. I suppose if you draw motivation from praise for your reviews, then it can get frustrating if nobody talks about it and then you feel like doing something that might get some attention. The problem is, not all attention is good attention either.

I never knew about that. So, thanks for the extra hating H_U fodder, I guess.



I see the logic in that, but I wonder if you've fully thought through the implications. If we refused to write reviews for genres that mostly have childish, poorly writen reviews writen for them, then how in the fuck can we be writing reviews of Metal?

I'm just saying, sometimes it's worth a few minutes of composed Metalhead effort to point out everything that is wrong with nonsense like deathcore/mallcore/etc on the off-chance that some kiddie may read it and walk away even a fraction of an IQ point smarter.

Agreed.... the genre doesn't need to be obliterated by reviews, but every once in a while it's nice to have another little reminder of what the genre is like (in my opinion at least). You never know, someone might be on the verge of buying something, read ANOTHER poor review and decide against it.

That's why well-written bad reviews are necessary. If a bunch of poor written reviews rate a band poorly, how am I to trust their opinion? Maybe I am alone here, but I think well-written reviews carry a heavier weight to them.

Well I don't intentionally seek attention for my reviews beyond what is considered normal on here, but it gets a little frustrating when people complain that I don't review obscure stuff when the only reviews they've read by me are my unobscure reviews and I'm renouned here for being a big time virgin album cherry popper during review challenges. If people genuinely don't like my deathcore reviews, I'm cool with that, but saying that I only review popular albums is an obvious falsehood that a quick perusing of the titles on my review archives will demonstrate.



I was basically joking when I said it, it was on the ovenfodder thread when that big debate was going on about your Slough Feg review (which I actually defended). I do get a little bit annoyed with some of the reviews your fellow members in that group put up with regards to Ensiferum and a few others, but I'm well over the concept of ripping on you guys anymore. I'm only an occasional follower of Folk Metal and don't necessarily consider it my absolute bread and butter.



No I agree with you on this. The thing is that I usually spend more time loving the hell out of Power, Thrash and Doom metal and am surprised that everyone is taking notice now that I've decided to sample some of deathcore's offerings. Maybe my reviewing patterns have become so routine that people think that I'm selling out or something by occasionally bashing something not regularly in my repertoire.

Of course, but what about that opening riff in 'The Pestilence'? Listen to 'Ides of March', the NWOBHM influence is still there, albeit it isn't that prevalent on that album. Damn, saint, you came quite close to nailing Pleasure to Kill what with the comments on how mature it is and such... but not quite! Of course adding about 10 points to the score would have helped some, guess that goes without saying.

I didn't say to what extent it cut ties, did I? If we carry that line of argument forward, I could say I hear NWOBHM throwbacks in some of the early Swedish death metal too. No, the point is simply that compared to say Endless Pain, this is much further down the road towards a death metal sound. Beyond that, every statement can be taken to be mean something other than what I did - an inevitable problem of the review process I guess - and I suppose I am inviting that for not giving it a higher 90s score!

And please don't call me Paki, right now calling Pakis and Indians brothers doesn't begin to make sense!

As a Paki myself, I'd agree.

I read that pleasure to kill review and thought it was well written with valid points . That being said I would have scored that in the mid to high 90's and have felt that way about it since the eighties . It was with out a doubt one of the most vicious sounding albums out at that time and cemented kreator as gods in my book , Terrible Certainty and before ruled but THIS is and was their masterpiece . everything after TC just sucked to me . nonetheless great review !

I see the review is still up. I wonder if it wouldn't be better if it were not. The title of the review immediately implies a lot "Grindcore music totally sucks!". Well, one can have that opinion. All my collegues at work think so. They're all 40+ so I forgive them. Write blogs or books about it, share it with your friends in a pub, whatever.
But the point is, if you do not like an entire genre, it's rather unfair to pick out one band, one album and make that specific release 'look bad' because you dislike the genre. Either he should write the same kind of review about every grindcore release out there or none... His arguments could be used for every grindcore release from the '87-'89 period... So he isn't really reviewing this specific album, now is he
But that's what I think.

Thanks. About the score, it's the one thing people can never quite agree on, so I am not too concerned about that, I gave it the rating I thought it deserved and I think it is adequately justified in the review as well.

Well, I was just hoping that some one would have pointed that bit out, after god knows how many reviews I was just hoping it was going to be you! Though maybe you did and it's not an all that important part at all. I just think it's a valid point to make with that album, despite the proto-death sound the NWOBHM is still there. I was just being fussy and picky just to be a bitch.

And of course, I was joking, I am aware of some of the past between those two countries.

Well, I hear at least remote if not distinct throwbacks of NWOBHM even later than PTK, so I really wouldn't have been inclined to point it out. The point where death metal began to draw influences from grind is the cut-off, it was arguably really after that that extreme metal became quite a different beast in comparison to heavy/traditional metal. Not that I mind the nitpicking at all, it is more helpful to have some discourse and dissection of the review; it tells me to be even clever a wordsmith next time to cover my ass comprehensively!



Actually the present and the future of this relationship threaten to eclipse the past in terms of bleakness. I really wouldn't want to talk about it and besides this is - fortunately - not the place for it either.

Ha, fair enough. Anyway, predictably the new Into Glory Ride irked me massively. But this in particular stood out:



Bollocks! Do you think Demaio's ego would allow that? The bass is very prominent on that record and sometimes it over-powers the rhythm guitar. Silly review, anyway.

The kid uses 4chan memes and gives Iced Earth higher ratings than Manowar...hmm...