If the man deletes all his reviews, it'll be the end of the archives, both quality and quantity-wise...

Let's all pray this never happens. I'm starting now... "Oh God, who/whatever you are, wherever you are, may you never do this shit to us! Thank you in advance."

You may elaborate a bit on what the "shit" exactly is. That's it; keep it simple.

I'm sorry but if someone begin a review like this.....

....I'm not going to give that opinion much thought. I don't think a person can be objective with preconceived notions in their head.

Nationalistic folk themes of... Nightwish?

I'm not sure that he meant "nationalistic" exactly, but given how big Nightwish are in Finland these days, it might be appropriate to say that they've become national music with some folk elements. But, yeah, that was a bit off.

Everyone has preferences, expectations and bugbears. I appreciate reviewers who are honest and roll my eyes when they claim to come from a place of pure objectivity. Of course, a review does involve objective facts--we'd all recognize the wrongness of praising Master of Reality for its blast beats and Glenn Tipton's didgeridoo playing. It's good for a reviewer to be aware of their biases. Often I've found something wasn't as good as initially thought, but just that it exceeded my very low expectations (and vice versa). It's tedious if someone mentions these things in every review, but when approaching a genre you're unfamiliar with or generally dislike, I think that info can provide some reference for where you're coming from. Likewise if you're reviewing an artist you have strong feelings about, whether positive or negative.

That Avantasia review is exactly what I meant a few pages ago by a reviewer attacking an album for what it was clearly going for. He seems to think Tobias made that album intending it to be an old Judas Priest style heavy metal work and instead somehow mistakenly made those pop tunes. It was never supposed to be a 100% metal album, and nor were any of the following ones.

Honestly, if I were to rewrite my review of The Scarecrow, it would get a score closer to what Superchard gave it, but his review is so ham-handed in its arguments that I'm all but embarrassed to share an opinion with him on said album. I may have done this at some point early in my reviewing career, but starting off a review by bitching about the entire sub-genre for a couple sentences is one of the worst ways to start things off. If you're just trashing the band because they have had a record of lousy output, I could defend that, but the whole (this sub-genre sucks because "reasons") is stupid.

I just played it in the car last night and it's held up exactly as well as it did when it first came out. I think it's a great fucking album.

That new Cryptopsy review is just a biography of the band. The author calls metal fans assholes for not giving the band a chance with The Unspoken King.

Must say I got a chuckle out of that review of X Japan's Jealousy. The format probably isn't in the best taste but there are a couple reviews that I could write something like that for.

*calls himself an unbiased reviewer*

*says he only ever expects perfection from the band*

Hein?! I'll have to check out those wonky, turgid reviews for myself, see what all the hubbub is aboote!

Oh, Twist, once again, you hit one of the park (as far as indirectly steering one towards a great, wicked band they'd otherwise unceremoniously pass over) with your Dire Peril write...
Awesome! I'm gleaning the $@#! out of said album right now (as in, streaming off "le tube"!)...

Just read the first paragraph of Superchard's Avantasia review and aside from the aforementioned "nationalist folk themes" remark, I don't see the issue. He says he rarely likes music from the genre, but doesn't completely write it off. I can see why a fan of power metal would disregard his opinion thereafter, but that seems like a benefit of such honesty. As I haven't heard the album, I can't comment on the rest of his review.


Jesus, that guy is more verbose than I. (Checked and his review is 600 words longer than my lengthiest and his is about a four song EP!) It's less informative than a biography, and reads more like a series of gushing blurbs about each band member. If trimmed, it might be okay.


Yep, that was good. It's easy to get in the habit of structuring each review about the same, so it's jarring when one deviates in a strange way and most welcome when it does so in a competent, interesting way.

If you'd heard the album, you would see the issue. It's an acceptable review, sure, not saying it should be deleted. It's just a bad review because he attacks it for being exactly what the creators intended. He appears to misunderstand the intent of the work. So it's just not a terribly helpful or accurate review.

It's like if I did a review of old Venom going 'this sucks, they can't play their instruments, everything is too primitive and raw. Where's the technical soloing and the variety between songs?!' Just silly really.

To be fair, I see that as a legit reason to dislike Venom. But I guess there's a point where we draw the line between "I don't like it but the musicians were aiming for it anyway" and "no way would anyone want to sound like this". And, actually, who knows about that stuff?

People can dislike music for whatever reason they want, but a review should at least attempt some decent understanding of what an artist was going for - otherwise it's no real help to anyone but the writer alone.

I agree, that's what I try to do too. I mean that sometimes the reviewer thinks they've understood the intention of the release and they happened to be way off. Then they end up attacking the music on grounds that seem irrelevant to the performance (or grounds based on their own preconceptions). Either way, it's a poor review, but one might be intentional and the other merely a wayward judgement call.

Yeah, true enough. I usually find any critiques from the point of view of what the listener wants to be kind of useless, honestly. To me it's better to go in with an open mind and analyze from a point of view of what the artist wanted to do. I pretty much only try to judge things on the strengths or weaknesses of that these days - whether they were successful in intention.

That's why I only defended the first paragraph, which I still think is fine. If he'd stated he hated the genre and would on principle dislike anything within it, that I think would be dumb (an exception could be made for professional critics who don't get to pick and choose what they review). I agree a reviewer should keep in mind what the artist's aims are, so we don't get ridiculous reviews complaining that a doom metal album is really lacking in gravity blasts and demon vomits. I do think it can become an excuse, always claiming that "No, the band meant it to sound like that. You just don't understand." It also leaves out the possibility of liking something for reasons the artist never intended.

Optimally, a review (whether of music, movies, video games, etc) should describe the subject well enough that even if the reader has different tastes, they'll be likely to tell whether it's something they would like. Some of this has to be inferred from reading a number of a critic's reviews to get an idea of what their tastes are and what they look for in a work.

Yeah, it can be an excuse at times I suppose. But in a case like this, attacking an album for being a varied journey through metal, rock, pop and folk influences, changing from song to song, for not being a "true metal" album just seemed like missing the point. I only really mean it in a very basic way, in the most rudimentary sense of sonic qualities - it seemed obvious enough that it was never supposed to be some kind of traditional metal work. But we all have our own pre-conceptions and such.

Well, no, it would be a factually inaccurate reason to dislike Venom. There's plenty of variation on those albums and the musicians really aren't bad, either. The first album was basically a demo and the production picked up sharply after that.

I think hating something for what it is can be a valid sentiment for a review, however, more often than not it tends to be articulated in a ham-handed manner and encourages laziness in argumentation. Maybe I'm just too hung up on describing and unpacking things, but it stands to reason that one could at least be methodical in deconstructing what it is that offends one's ears when scoring an album below the 50 point mark. My principle complaint about Superchard's reviews thus far has been that his tone is more dismissive than critical, it's as if he made his conclusions before even hearing the album and truly assessing all that it has going on.

Is there any "factually inaccurate" way to like or dislike something? I mean, Venom's early stuff isn't terrible (the variation is fine for heavy/extreme metal) but it's a valid way of thinking for someone whose tastes are more into music based on feel rather than attitude.

True enough, yeah. I think it just comes back to how well one articulates their thoughts and how good one is at analyzing music. Your last sentence about "more dismissive than critical" is actually a good way to sum it up and we probably agree more than we disagree on this, in some ways.

I think we're on the same page regarding the style/approach of reviewing that is under discussion here, but maybe not so much the conclusion of the review itself. I've been extremely rough on both Avantasia and Edguy in their post-2002 incarnations, but I've always continued following them because I'm looking to see if they either A) make a jump back to their old style or B) find a way to package their newer sound in a way that agrees with my ears. I don't go to any new releases by either project looking to rip it apart before the fact, but more often than not I don't end up liking what I hear. If I was truly going to be dismissive of either project, I'd stop reviewing all of their latter day releases, and write up a bunch of super-nostalgic screeds on their older material and take a few unsubtle swipes at them for abandoning their older sound.

Interesting discussion here about reasons to dislike an album. My persoal rule is that I hate Sabaton, Avantasia and many other bands and therefore I will never write a review about their releases. This applies in particular in view of the fact that I don't like the style they play in general. I don't want Edguy fans telling me that Hell Awaits sucks or writing a Review just to lower the average and the same goes vice versa. It's a matter of respect for each other, we all like metal, don't we?

But I feel free to write about shitty albums of bands that once played an acceptable style (Atrocity), ruin classics (SFU) or are absolutely incompetent whiletrying to perform a style I like (Executioner). That's another story, at least from my point of view.

This is generally a good policy to have, though I've found that the more I venture out of my stylistic comfort zone, the more I find stuff that I like in styles that I may have initially been highly skeptical thereof. I used to be fairly hostile to most brutal bands, both the slam variety and the more tech and speed-based ones based on my dislike for bands like Waking The Cadaver, but after listening to stuff by Wormed and Pathology, I've grown to appreciate the style and occasionally find myself taking to a newer band.

Some of us are a bit more eclectic than others, so I don't think one need be limited to a particular niche when reviewing, even though that tends to be how it works out.

Hit the nail on the head. Review what ever the fuck you want, just don't open your review with "Now I don't usually listen to avant-garde flush metal buuuuuuut...", otherwise get ready for idiots frothing at the mouth about how you can't truly appreciate the album because you haven't listen to the thirty-eight albums released by fifty-four bands that defined the genre prior to this particular release.

I have been guilty of the "I hate X and this is no different!" opening and I am deeply regretful.

I hear ya, I know I've used some variation on that intro a couple dozens times when I first started cutting my teeth reviewing black metal between 2008 and 2009. Whenever I go back and read that stuff I cringe, I've redone some of those reviews and would love nothing more than to erase that part of my past as a reviewer completely, but with near 3,000 reviews completed and my current obligations to a couple of webzines, I just don't have the time.

I got a fair bit of those deranged fan boy types years back, mostly for my Pantera and Cryptopsy reviews. Admittedly I was fairly new to brutal death when I did the Cryptopsy reviews (only band I listened to that fell into a similar category was Suffocation), but they were incredibly idiotic in their criticisms of what I wrote, often times resorting to the classic "Fuck you, you probably are still a virgin at age 30" crap that has nothing to do with the band. lol

Ha! (mirthfully sardonic and wry emoj "ici", s.v.p.!) Just love Liquid_Braino's latest, for Burning Witches' not-so-soft sophomore, Hexenhammer...notably this beautifully weird-fangled and oh-so-unexpected but wholly appropriate and conducive denouement:

"While the cover song of choice isn't a step up from the debut, everything else is, and hopefully the group endures, adding a bit more complexity to their rhythms to avoid being deemed a metallic backdrop for Seraina's commanding lunatic ravings towards newts pleading for their continued eyesight."

Priceless, I let ya!

Thanks!
I hadn't written a review in awhile, and honestly my initial plan was to write something blunt, wooden and compact. Sort of an easy way to get back into the groove and hope my creative juices start flowing once again for subsequent reviews. But as I was writing, the instinctive "weirdness" started creeping in here and there and by the end I couldn't control it (including the occasional run-on sentence stuffed with oddball shit). It's just how I am, no point in holding back for better or worse.
I'll probably be tackling the recent Crystal Viper stuff next, although a couple of those all-female J-metal bands are about to release stuff as well. Might save those for the virgin challenge (hardly anyone else reviews those anyway).

Swell as Hell...

Looking forward to that CV write of yours...what is J-Metal exactly? I feel I should already know this...

(Right now, I'm head over heels the new Flight song, "Ride On", as it's so freakin' cornily melodic, I can't stop spinning it!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1avAh93sDvo

Ah, nice! I just gleaned the two Haunted_Dayburner 'views, by Cosmic Mystery and gasmask_C, respectively - I enjoyed them tremendously, especially as they compliment each other very well. (In a way, they form, along with mine for the titular debut last year, a cabbalistic triumvirate of saucily slithering, supernatural (sapphic) spookery/sorcery; eh...!).

Now, I know it's unorthodox (that is, wantonly tossing in track links to the 'ol forum discuss), but what the hell, this here likely Latin Dynamite band, with its singular and mysterious "Night of the Beast" 'tube sampler" has me right flummoxed and yearning for more, as well as timely, honorary inclusion to the MA machine...But seeing as their viewable fare is limited to five minutes, it'll be a long shot!). Chairs!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXWRfGP ... rt_radio=1

I'll have a review on that album on Friday when it comes out, I wrote it a few weeks ago but MA doesn't let you submit before release date. Also interviewed them, that will go up today on Indy Metal Vault. One of the best albums of the year if you ask me.

Another note, that Jungle Rot writeup was a great read!

Oh, man, that's indelibly...awesome!

Who'd have thought Norway's amusingly idiosyncratic Flight would slyly turn around with such a killer sophomore, considering the debut had its flaws, however minor....
I'm obviously marking Friday on the ol' rolodex, and in the meantime, am frantically scrambling for a copy of "A Leap Into Matter" (just love the cute, visual title as well!).

I might just order the darn CD, along with the new Blade Killer and Convent Guilt...

All told, this month has been excellent for new releases...

Oooh, I just noticed Pale Divine's (belatedly) titular new release is also due on Friday...Sweet! (their 2001 debut, Thunder, Perfect, Mind is positively fantastic...and deserves a "doom classic" mention/review some time as well...).

I got a lot out of Larry6990's review of the latest Anaal Nathrakh. Definitely woke me up to a band I've been sleeping on for too long. It's also a strong opinion piece that gives a great deal of context, so doesn't come across as pushy.

I appreciate 6Toxic6Beer6 bringing attention to Sabbat's Black Up Your Soul, but his review contains some errors. He lauds the riffing and solo of "Satan's Serenade", but fails to mention that it's a cover of Quartz. He criticizes the timing of Gezol's shrieks, but the higher vocals are handled by Temis Osmond. He says he thinks "Poison Child" starts with acoustic guitars, but it does not. He may be thinking of "Possessed the Room" or "Mion's Hill", though I'm pretty sure the guitar on those is clean, not acoustic.


Like J-pop, the J stands for Japanese. Similarly, it's a catch-all, though it does seem to have connotations of a particular style that leans toward poppy power metal (I don't usually see bands like Abigail, Gorgon, GISM, Sigh, Gotsu Totsu Kotsu labeled as such). I may be wrong on that last part; it's just the way I've noticed it being used.

The Babymetal thing seems far too much a fad to really do more than become another Power Rangers bit that kids could use as a vehicle to get into metal. I loved watching Power Rangers as a little kid, I was even the red ranger for halloween as a four-year-old before I started hating myself too much to dress up again. Would that I could go back I'd be the white power ranger just to joke about the implication of the name, but the screaming guitar behind a monstrosity being murdered over a city and crushing buildings with his corpse after being sliced apart with a laser sword was nothing but epic to my little mind that didn't care much about story but only wanted to see slaughter occur whether putties or populace. The slaughter (or implied slaughter as buildings collapsed) was immense, and I absolutely loved the massive bodycounts joining the ridiculous battles. I never had enough green army men to re-create the battles I envisioned fighting tan and brown soldiers, all in a massive Mexican standoff ready to pull the trigger when I gave the go-ahead. Fact of the matter was, these battles implied more a realistic body count than many modern dramas do, and that implication was enough for me as a little kid who loved his Command and Conquer and his dad's Vietnam era transport truck. My dad instilled in me an understanding of death that I ended up enjoying rather than seeing as a horrid reality. Now I understand it full enough, but as a kid it was an enjoyable nuance to the destruction of foes worth leaving by the wayside. It wasn't until I was in middle school that I really understood just how serious death is as an issue, and even now I still see it as a great release from life, but I understand that it is the most horrible thing to some of the most pious of those in my life.

I work in an old folks home that specializes in Alzheimers and dementia. Death is a godsend in music to me and in reality to too many of those folks. My grandmother's last days were spent with a routine of me asking her what I could do for her and her saying she wanted to die, but that isn't the hippocratic oath, that isn't how this world is run. In a perfect world, I've have smothered her with a pillow the first time she lost her spirit and put her away from the horror that was her last day which now is only eight days from its anniversary. This system, one in heathcare not the homecare that I flew through by the seat of my pants, makes people who have far outlived their brains live in a hell of another's design. No disgusting music I've ever heard can contend with what I saw with my grandmother go through at home before she died (a year ago in eight days) let alone see at work. Some of these folks would be better off gone but must live solely for paychecks abound and decorum unfound without any ability left to exact their own demise. Horror exists, it's simply not as soundtracked and closed up as movies make it seem. It's sad and terrible and melancholic music does make the mood glisten sometimes when I get home. Most times it's quiet and the immensity of the suffering matters not to someone who has turned himself off to anything more that a few choking coughs from the dozen people in a dining room or to a crunchy riff at home.

Still, I'm a douche for death tolls in music and news and that still stands today. I love seeing the stupid count go up after every freeze and I especially like how many drivers are off the road after each storm. It makes me feel safer knowing I'm free to navigate away from retardation. I can also see how Babymetal doesn't do metal any justice, but it does have its impact on the mainstream. A world left to ruin by Altar of Betelgeuze won't hit on a radar compared to the screams of a small someone that Cannibal Corpse tortures, that's a given. The riffing at least follows through compared to plenty of gimmicks but it seems the fad is very here-today-gone-tomorrow. The music sucks, mainly because of those obnoxiously girlish vocals but I wouldn't be surprised if in a decade or two that's what all metal would boil down to in some Yakuza circles so long as asses shake and tits show. At the end of the day if you wan't your music represented poorly, it'll be either in a movie or in the news. If there was an article about Babymetal being the newest trend, like glam, it would totally miss the mark but who the fuck are we? We're a tiny bunch who never can bring an album to top a chart here. We're a tiny bunch of big-headed folk who have highfalutin ideas about albums that few have heard in too many cases.

We have our outlet. So be it. We're not special, some of us see others as not special, it doesn't mean that those other folks don't deserve the success they've gained by doing some great marketing when, at the end of the day, plenty of us listen to music marketed to an unmarketable audience. That's what makes the tastes here. If some of these newer bands were popular we'd be on the cutting edge, instead we're doing our thing and the underground is still a vibrant place filled with the colors of musicians and genres that, even without industry accolades, still make a damn difference.

Fact of the matter is I'm in a good enough position where I'm glad to be able to keep plugging away at what albums I'm working on reviewing, will take seriously, and will write about well. Isn't that a good justice worth a reviewer rather than complaining about what the "mainstream" is acknowledging at this moment? The mainstream was into disco decades back, the Village People topped the charts. I really doubt that anyone knowing that should really pay it much mind when they should busy themselves with their own metallurgical pursuits and only see the mainstream as a litmus test for what the general movement of the time is at any given moment. Plus, now you can buy views for pennies, it's as bought to many a song now as popular as radio play used to be. Audience reach is the reality of things today, and if anything it's become not only tougher to gauge but also more meaningful now that the net is taking over.

Ask questions, learn about something new, but that idea of the 'new thing' is becoming as fleeting as the threat of global thermonuclear war became in 1991. Still, how many bands still see that as a major possibility in a song?