almost sounds like painkiller - 95%
Written by jesusatan on November 7th, 2003

i must say, i think that this fucking rules. i am a huge fan of iced earth as well as a moderate fan of post-halford priest, and ripper sounds better on this shit than he ever did with priest. it sounds like he finally nailed that evil constantly high voice that he kept trying to do when priest would play painkiller live. Honestly when i heard the reckoning that was the first thing that came to my mind. ripper is good on this song. so good its fucking scary. the riff definately slays! i am always amazed how many cool gallop riffs jon schaffer is able to pull out of his ass. one thing i dont like so much is that the bass is a little obscured, which is too bad because james macdonough is a damn good bassist.

as for the rest of the songs, i dont feel that they are worse without barlow, just different, and i cant help thinking what they would sound like if he were still the lead singer. all the same, i like all the songs, with valley forge being the second best. i hope ralph santolla tours with them, as he can tear shit up on lead guitar. i cant wait for the album and also to see them live now.

Check out this one:
http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=187055

Just to save you all the reading, the three paragraphs ramble against elitism and how "atmospheric sludge" is metal. The only thing that's somehow on topic off the whole review is the line that speaks about the production.

As a whole, the review is stuffed with way to many similies and high words that only Nightgaunt can understand - those are not a bad thing in most of the cases, but in this case it's apparent the writer was urging to bloat the review as much as possible - to cover up the thing he has very little to say about the album itself.

You could probably copy/paste this post on every Perplexed review, really. Unfortunately they're all generally acceptable.

I always knew you had a soft spot for me.

It's a difficult situation. Ha, this is going to sound bad but ...

If I had not become active on the forum I would not have to argue a case against elitist views on certain genres. A lot of bands are looked down upon due to the genre they're placed in and it's general reputation and some are neglected for simply not being metal, which I find kinda odd. I feel the need to argue the case that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover whenever it's applicable. I don't really think it's a big deal, but it seems others do.

A lot of bands are looked down upon due to the genre they're placed in and it's general reputation and some are neglected for simply not being metal, which I find kinda odd.

I always knew you had a soft spot for me.

It's a difficult situation. Ha, this is going to sound bad but ...

If I had not become active on the forum I would not have to argue a case against elitist views on certain genres. A lot of bands are looked down upon due to the genre they're placed in and it's general reputation and some are neglected for simply not being metal, which I find kinda odd. I feel the need to argue the case that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover whenever it's applicable. I don't really think it's a big deal, but it seems others do.

I'd remove it, if only because he only reviews one song on the album.

It's clear that the nature of the song in question poisoned the listening experience of the album for him because he didn't like it, which is the point he made in his review. The fact that he didn't mention its context in a larger framework of Dream Theatre releases is irrelevent and doesn't necesarilly imply that he isn't aware of that context. He comes off as a Dream Theatre fan in the opening paragraph, so I'm inclined to think he is aware, but didn't feel it was important information for the purposes of expressing his point: that he thought it was terrible.

MetalSupremacy has a points-per-review ratio of less than 5, which I believe says quite a bit.

I had heard quite a few people talking about Grief. Weird thing was, I never heard an explanation of what they sounded like, but just how "wonderful" they were. So I saw this in one of the shops downtown, and I decided to take a chance and see what the fuss was about. Holy shit. Grief are so brutal, but more in that slow, approaching way rather than trying to blast-beat you into the ground. I am a big fan of doom/sludge so this was quite the suprise for me. The guitar tone is just low, so gloriously low, which totally does justice to the vocals. The drumming isn't like MATHxCORE or anything ridiculous like that, but it does it's job. I really enjoy this release and will be searching adamantly for any of their other releases.

That's why I came here: how I see it at least, Zorc is not saying he didn't like it, but that it is a deliberate rehash of older songs that a band so established as Dream Theater shouldn't even think about doing not just once but four times. The Shattered Fortress is, effectively, an "insult" to DT fans. As if Zorc hasn't complained on any of the previous three songs?

The way he expresses this sentiment is "I'm a long-time fan and I have no idea why you're doing this to us! Are you really so drained of ideas that if you were Thomas Edison, the lightbulb would not have been invented until the end of the universe?" That's really what drops his credibility so far into the ground that he's being e-mailed right this moment for the starring role in a remake of The Core. There is a difference between this reaction and how EchoesofImpact and Merquise express this.

It's not so much that there is a wrong fact, but because his whole review is based on this misdirected assumption that even casual Dream Theater fans don't have any excuse for holding. Effectively, the review is one long factual inaccuracy, as compared to simply getting a band member's name wrong which would still be passable.

I was so angry at this that I was going to point out in my own review how much DT is misunderstood today: "When a long-time Dream Theater fan [Zorc] doesn't know a thing about the 12 Steps Saga, in a day and age when the answers are two steps from Google and clues are all over the songs, it's clear that DT is being grossly misunderstood in the Rudess era."

I was looking over Grief (USA)'s page and found a pretty short non-review for their album Come to Grief:



The few descriptions of the album don't provide much information about the actual music; "brutal" hardly constitutes a description. I'd consider axing this one, even if it is the only review of that particular album and one of only four reviews on the Grief page. The band deserves better than that.

This review by stefan86 for Dark Tranquillity's Damage Done: http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=1264#21281

I got to say, this review sucks. The only descriptions were for the vocals, and the rest is him talking about how he used to be a big fan and would have given it a higher score had he reviewed it earlier. He says songwriting lacks, but doesn't go into any detail on that at all (like we'll just take his word for it) and comments how how it has "surprisingly little faggotry."

Compared to the other reviews, it's quite bad. In fact, a lot of those reviews on that page look questionable, especially the overtly short ones. Mods may want to give that whole page a Queer Eye for the Straight Mod review page makeover or something.

Found this one for Nile, too (the first review by Skyklad): http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=654#96

It's a clustered, one paragraph fan-jerk with barely any detail beyond how brutal it is. Hardly contributed anything and serves only to show how desperate the site was in the early days for reviews. It has no purpose in this new decade where the standards have increased dramatically.

All right, here's another one from a reviewer who can do much better - Gutterscream's review of Running Wild's EP: http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=4717

This doesn't tell me jack shit. I was confused as hell reading it, with the "Walpurgis Night" making the only lick of sense in regards to song descriptions. "Satan" has a little mention in that anecdote, but other than that the review is quite odd and horrible. I'll be reviewing it shortly, but that one definitely needs to go. Doesn't do much describing the music.

FUCK THAT LOOK AT THE ONE ABOVE IT! http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=6718#832


This was put through a god damn translator and is embarrassing as hell to read. What mod let this one through? It was years ago, yeah, but god damn is it horrible. So hard to read and has so many errors it's just pathetic. This should have ended up in the rejected reviews thread.

I still love how skinfected's review starts off with the exact same words as the oldest review on there.

...once again, approximately 85% of this review is reviewing the (lack of) artwork!!!

There's something really itchy about autothrall's review on this one:
http://www.metal-archives.com/review.php?id=201852#192699
The descriptions are very brief and feel like some great portions of the review were forgotten to be included. Autothrall gives this album a 55 but doesn't really explain why. Given the fact there are several reviews already - there's no reason to keep that one really.

Yes, it really looks like a paragraph is missing between the second and last. The one where he says what's not good about them. Instead of deleting, it, why not email him to put it back in instead?

MetalSupremacy has a points-per-review ratio of less than 5, which I believe says quite a bit.

Most reviewers have a point to review ratio slightly lower than five for the simple reason that most people never get eight points, but do have a three pointer or two.

Oh Uriburu, Uriburu, Uriburu! What you’ve released here is borderline torture to sit through! To be able to call this music would be doing a serious injustice to the underground Noise scene. I think perhaps the definition of the word “music” in the dictionary needs to be revised ASAP, for “Enki’s Age Approaches” has near-nigh tarnished the definition of the word, and the fact that this is the second demo by this band gives me grave cause for concern. Surely after their first attempt they’d have realised that something was seriously wrong with the music they were writing? Obviously not.

The mixing on this demo is dire. The drums are far too high in the mix to the extent that Uriburu might as well have just recorded some drum tracks and released them instead of even bothering to record guitars and vocals. Ironically they went some way to doing this with the fifth track as that was just a drum recording, for all of 15 seconds. And please don’t get me started on the guitars, it’s as if it’s just one continuous note being played over a whole track at a time, making for tracks that get on your nerves, get on your nerves, get on your nerves.

To be able to draw a single positive from this demo is proving extremely difficult, though by clutching at some very distant straws it could be said that a positive is that the only way is up from here on out! I can’t really see music getting much worse at all, even if I strained my mind to come up with something. It might have been better if they just didn’t record anything and stayed in the rehearsal room until their playing wasn’t causing the dog to pine.

As a final bit and byte, it might have been a better idea to have named this demo “My Death Approaches”, because I feel like I’ve just stuck one foot in my own grave. I’m off to listen to some music that might dig me out of this horrible mess.

Smell The Stench, looks like you’ve got a band that needs signing.

Oh Tzelmoth! What you’ve released here is borderline torture to sit through! To be able to call this music would be doing a serious injustice to the underground Noise scene. I think perhaps the definition of the word “music” in the dictionary needs to be revised ASAP, for “Enki’s Age Approaches” has near-nigh tarnished the definition of the word, and the fact that this is the first demo by this South American band gives me grave cause for concern. Surely after their first attempt they’d have realised that something was seriously wrong with the music they were writing? Obviously not.

The mixing on this demo is dire. The drums are far too high in the mix to the extent that Tzelmoth might as well have just recorded some drum tracks and released them instead of even bothering to record guitars and vocals. Ironically they went some way to doing this with the fifth track as that was just a drum recording, for all of 15 seconds. And please don’t get me started on the guitars, it’s as if it’s just one continuous note being played over a whole track at a time, making for tracks that get on your nerves, get on your nerves, get on your nerves.

To be able to draw a single positive from this demo is proving extremely difficult, though by clutching at some very distant straws it could be said that a positive is that the only way is up from here on out! I can’t really see music getting much worse at all, even if I strained my mind to come up with something. It might have been better if they just didn’t record anything and stayed in the rehearsal room until their playing wasn’t causing the dog to pine.

As a final bit and byte, it might have been a better idea to have named this demo “My Death Approaches”, because I feel like I’ve just stuck one foot in my own grave. I’m off to listen to some music that might dig me out of this horrible mess.

Smell The Stench, looks like you’ve got a band that needs signing.

Agreed. It's when the average is less 4 that you know there's a problem.