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Djavul
Mallcore Kid

Joined: Wed Jan 18, 2006 11:28 pm
Posts: 10
Location: United States
PostPosted: Fri Feb 23, 2024 12:15 pm 
 

So, I've written a moderate amount of reviews here before that got accepted, but it has been a long time. The last two attempts have been frustrating.

A while back, I tried to write a review for a 3-track EP, with 3 songs that vary in style and quality. Of course I'm aware you don't like track-by-track reviews, but what am I supposed to do in that case? Under the rule for track-by-track, it literally says, "For albums with short numbers of tracks, this is not a problem." But I just gave up and deleted it.

Now, I just submitted a long review for a new album, that I honestly spent hours on. It got rejected because I talked about the instruments separately for part of the review. Okay? I feel like I've read tons of reviews like that, and didn't see that anywhere as a new rule. In fact, your first 3 rules under "DO write about the following:" list "composition and songwriting, instrumentation, singing, production". After my introduction about the band, that's basically all I wrote about. I.e. the core music is fantastic (good songwriting, variety of riffs, bass and keyboards occasionally add something) while the vocals and drums are sub-par, partly due to production.

What am I supposed to do when there are elements I like and elements I don't like on a CD? That's the very thing that make me want to write a review. I'm not saying I wrote the best review of all time or something, but what is this vague and stringent standard that I am failing to meet here? I had less trouble getting my papers accepted in college. I've wasted like 3 hours writing and revising the review already, for nothing, and now probably another 30 minutes for this post. So I feel like I'm about done trying to contribute here.

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TheBurningOfSodom
Metalhead

Joined: Sat Jun 27, 2015 9:28 am
Posts: 595
Location: Italy
PostPosted: Fri Feb 23, 2024 1:08 pm 
 

With the due premise that I'm not the one who rejected your review, what I did was just ask to remove the separate ratings for each instruments, that felt a bit dated and not very necessary. Honestly I think I'd have accepted your new submission but I didn't catch it before it was rejected again. So I can't really explain it, unless the mod who sent it back for the second time misinterpreted my previous message as asking for something different and thought your edits were too minor to accomplish it (when I asked for just a minor edit anyways). Maybe a stretch? But while reviews already present don't always reflect the site's standards for acceptance, especially if they're very old, yeah some of these reviews are still accepted every once in a while, so I don't see the problem, personally.

Same as your EP review – I don't recall rejecting it but usually, if the release has 5 songs or less, I tend to be more lenient with regards to the track-by-track rule. Don't know if that's the case.
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Djavul
Mallcore Kid

Joined: Wed Jan 18, 2006 11:28 pm
Posts: 10
Location: United States
PostPosted: Fri Feb 23, 2024 1:36 pm 
 

Thanks for the reply, and I don't mind a bit of feedback. I personally thought the number ratings would provide a quick "tl;dr" for someone who didn't want to read my entire review. (I know sometimes I just want quickly scan through when I'm looking at reviews.) But that's fine, I can see how that might seem amateurish or dated. I deleted the ratings and tried to make it flow it more cohesively paragraph to paragraph. I also went back through the whole review, fixed a typo or two, deleted a couple sentences that might have been unnecessary, and added a couple details.

The second rejection called for a more "holistic" approach, asking me to totally redo my description of the instruments and talk more about "Songwriting, atmosphere, production". Again, 1.) I feel like I'm following the explicitly stated rules pretty well. Sure, I could've talked about the atmosphere of the album and how it made me feel more, but that's further down the list of rules, and not really my focus with this album. I can see how someone would prefer that approach more, but that's not really my style. Because again 2.) I mostly wanted to talk about how the guitars are fantastic, while the vocals and drums and not.

As far as songwriting, sure I could've said more, but I feel like I touched on that in the guitar section: how there are heavy thrashy riffs, melodic sections, solos are well placed, etc. I wasn't just talking about the guitar sound and playing, but the overall core of the music. For production, I mentioned how it's an issue in the vocals and drums. The feedback also said to "use specific tracks to point to examples", which I did five times. Any more and I would risk it becoming "track-by-track"!

I'm glad you guys have a high standard, high standards are good, but I don't think I'm being unreasonable here. I'm trying to write good reviews and follow the stated rules. I'll keep the feedback in mind next time, but I don't really want to spend another hour+ rewriting a review I already spent to much time on.

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Napalm_Satan
Ever-Opening Flower

Joined: Sat Apr 18, 2015 4:27 pm
Posts: 3811
Location: United Kingdom
PostPosted: Fri Feb 23, 2024 9:15 pm 
 

Hey man, sorry about this one. What happened was I misread the initial rejection message from TBoS and was under the impression your review was rejected for its structure alongside using the scores like that. I actually thought that was harsh (especially as we accept other reviews that use that structure) but didn't want to get in the way of what I thought was TBoS doing his thing, hence the 2nd rejection.

Why I didn't just go with my own judgement on the matter, I don't know. Again, mea culpa, your review is fine and I already felt as such, as I say. It's been let through.
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Djavul
Mallcore Kid

Joined: Wed Jan 18, 2006 11:28 pm
Posts: 10
Location: United States
PostPosted: Sat Feb 24, 2024 2:13 pm 
 

Okay, thanks guys!

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