Justice is a higher quality, AND my favorite. Kill 'Em All is number 2 for me.



Then call me an old fart!

Er, does that make me a middle-aged, or an ancient, fart?

They have stated in interviews many times it was called 13 because of the 2013 release date.

Great Basilisk review by autothrall (especially the last paragraph!)...

What's this worrying new trend of reviewing Sloth releases? No music, no review; simple as that.

Anyone been paying attention to this new reviewer Colonel Para Bellum? He does bass/vocals for Russian black metal band Blackdeath. It's clear that English isn't his first language, though he seems to be improving. The bands he covers are definitely lesser known and it's cool to get views from an "insider".

Same reason it was a fad like 10 years ago to review that Napalm Death/Electro Hippies split. It's easy to write a convincing and accurate review without actually listening to anything.

Holy crap, bayern! Love the Prong_Rude Awakening (/Prove You Wrong) review, but you had me frantically reaching for my biggies - i.e. cigarettes - there with the following, mono-extenuated sentence, which surely pleases the likes of Roy Peter Clark (Director of the Pointdexter Institute for Journalism, in addition to avowed wordsmith and fan of ridiculously long phrases):

"I’ve heard some people trying to compare this transformation to the one experienced by Ministry on “Filth Pig” released the same year, but I don’t think these two recordings served the same purpose; for the Al Jurgensen gang the “Pig” was just a way to vent out their passion for early Sabbath by giving those primordial doomy sounds a boosted vociferous industrial edge, an isolated decision that wasn’t surprising having in mind Jurgensen’s chronic unpredictability; in the Prong case this effort is a near-natural evolution towards a more abstract, less metal-prone delivery, not exactly a totally unexpected turn of events for those who were sagacious enough to see which direction all this industrial/groovy parade was heading with one of its founders and champions leading the way..."

"a boosted vociferous industrial edge"...indeed! indeed!

Swell "denouement", as well:

"The truth is that the kings of New York are still a relevant force on the contemporary scene some thirty years after their inception, and their days don’t seem to be numbered… neither hibernations nor gentle or rude awakenings scheduled yet."

That quipped, I've long felt overly ambiguous about this Prong(y) offering...to be sure, I primarily dig "Controller", "Fave Value", "Avenue of the Finest", "Slicing", and "Mansruin", but duly knuckle under with 2012's Carved Into Stone (i.e. "Revenge - Best Served "Froid", & good ole "Path of Least Resistance").

Ahoy!

Nothing much eldritch about And Justice, really, it's much less spooky and weird than the previous two albums. Especially, given its lyrical themes, for the most part.

Great write-up of Touch of Sin there, Acrobat. Energetic pace, great jokes, precise musical description, historical context without getting boring. Excellent stuff my dude, like always. I wanted to write a review of that album too, but every time it descends into terrible ass puns and "It sounds 80's. Really 80's."

I did spot you wrote Energetic Dissembly, though.

@Cat III - stop it. Naughty. No more Sloth-ing.

Can we exclude those releases from the Archives because they don't actually represent music at all?

Cheers, Chairs; or Chairs, Cheers! Well, I've always liked this album, ever since it came out. I don't adore it cause it fluctuates a bit too much stylistically and emotionally for my taste, but I find less and less wrong with it with every other listen. It also took me a while back then to get over the fact that it wasn't a faithful follow-up to "Cleansing", an album I love to the tiniest bits.

Also glad to see you didn't become a llama farmer on your travels. Welcome back!

When I reviewed the Nunslaughter/Sloth split (which I liked) a couple weeks ago I checked their Bandcamp page for the first time and noticed two singles I thought I could get a review out of. I set those aside for later, but Five Nails mentioned wanting to write a Sloth review so I thought it best to get on it lest he nab those from under me (likely as there are only thousands of others to choose from). I had no idea everyone else was going to jump in. I tried to make the reviews informative and interesting. Don't worry, that's more than enough Sloth for me. Maybe in the future I might cover one of their old releases.

Just noticed that Nunslaughter split was the first Sloth review in six months. Maybe I unwittingly unleashed a monster. Wouldn't be the first time.

Also, let's remember that a certain Hades Archer EP has more reviews than Sloth has total just because it has "penis" in the title.


Fuck, you're telling me I listened to twenty four minutes of "BBBRRRRR" for nothing.

Ha ha, thanks! They never gave me a chance over there... I guess I was too avid a mushroom eater and peyote grazer. They knew they would run out of stock of those within months if I was sticking around indefinitely.

I did befriend a few llamas, though... calm docile animals.

Funny, I used to know their first singer, and he was very fluent - nearly native-level - in English.

The reviews seem like they are written by someone who could carry a conversation. They just have some odd word choice and awkwardly constructed sentences.

Also, it's cool you knew someone in the band. Did you live in Russia?

(I didn't check the comment being quoted at first so thought you were referring to the first singer of Sloth, and were making the most backhanded compliment I'd ever heard.)

Thanks, man, I used to listen to that kind of stuff a lot. I basically wrote that review after a very long week at work, it feels like a long time since I've touched on any straight ahead HM but it's my comfort zone definitely.

That cover is absurd - it might have made sense with coke on it but I've no idea what the frigg happened.

(A National) Acrobat replied, regarding my rash mini-take on Metallica's ...AJfA:

"Nothing much eldritch about And Justice, really, it's much less spooky and weird than the previous two albums. Especially, given its lyrical themes, for the most part."

Agreed, perhaps I meant "antiquated"...you know, Lady Justice, blindfolded and all (kinky). Actually, "Harvester of Sorrow" and "The Shortest Straw" dominantly came to mind when I thought of "eldritch"...the latter, anyhow, is equally...celeritous! [gas, you've created/perpetuated a monster!]

Oh, I relished Desecrator J's latest for Death/f Dealer. Jonquiere, Qc, eh? May have sauntered by (there) at one point in my addled & rattled, Eastern Canadian youth - or was that Ste-Julie? Too many St.s/Ste.s, you dig? (I know for certain I've graced the side-wox of Ste-Mustache, I mean, "Ste-Eustashe"!)

Maybe we could all review one of the old Sloth albums and send a clearer message about the newer stuff. The noise releases can't be anything else but attention and personal gratification.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who refer to Twilight Force by the name they truly deserve.

That Tanuki review is excelent. His closing line had me laughing out loud.

According to bayern's review, Donald Trump is building the wall to keep rexxz out.

Thanks very much!

Yeah; but thanks to Phil Tougas' (the band mainman) timely interference I'll be spared a potential CIA investigation...

At least one of their old albums is on YouTube and the CD is cheap on Discogs. It's mid-period so less sludgy, more weird but not so noisy. Might be something I'll review, but I have a bunch of other things I want to get to first. Obviously Dom finds his current shtick funny, but I think he really is a fan of HNW.


It was quite good and I'm not even familiar with the band. The first paragraph touches on a problem I have with many new bands outside of power metal. Humor has long been a part of metal, but some bands seem so terrified that they might be taken seriously that they go to great lengths to show that they're being ironic. Reek of Putrefaction was hardly dead serious, but they didn't feel the need to nudge and wink at the listener the whole time. I know it's not hip to be a metalhead, but would it be so bad if Vice readers thought you were lame? It doesn't help that most of the humor is dull in its obviousness. What's that Infant Annihilator? Death metal is over the top in its violence. What's that Black Satans? Black metal has a lot of references to snowy forests and satanism. What biting satire, what incisive commentary!

Macabre pulls off tongue in cheek humor well. At least with Impaled Northern Moonforest, I think Seth Putnam genuinely disliked the second wave so the intent was mockery, not "I don't want my love of metal to appear too genuine because that's passé."

Sweet, compendious review, Acrobat, for Grim Reap's See Ya In Hell!...totally dig how you likened the Grim-bot to an airborne pig!

The science fiction writer John Scalzi has a nice article out about the value of negative reviews, herehttps://whatever.scalzi.com/2019/01/12/yes-theres-a-point-to-bad-reviews-in-2019/?fbclid=IwAR3XjmbzpcYgqISoISjDSNsda6BlnZrnVTUhR1QYW7egD6D16q_C0ua9y9s

In the metal context, personally I'm divided between recognizing that there aren't enough critical reviews out there and but I also understand how demotivating it is to listen to bad music.

This is really useful, actually. It made me think about a number of things, not only whether the bulk of "negative reviews" we read are "poor reviews", but also about what kind of reviews we are writing on the Archives. Are they consumer reviews, criticism, or commentary? I'd say mine are somewhere in the midst of those three points, and often not very carefully triangulated.

I am on board 100% with that article though I'm of two points on point 9. As a musician-critic myself, I feel the need to highlight the other artists I admire while also critiquing the ones that I feel are flawed. Some people say that knowing the process makes them more lenient on other artists but I find that it actually makes me even more critical than I was seven or eight years ago. Like seriously, you put thousands of dollars into recording and it turns out like this?! Granted I always come from a constructive angle but you best believe I'll call it out when I hear it.

It also seems like we're at a point in the scene where everybody is so quick to bitch about its problems but can't be bothered to namedrop those they deem responsible for them. That line of thinking lets those responsible skirt by on the basis of plausible deniability and sends otherwise bystanders into frenzied anxiety. If we want things to get better, we gotta start calling people out.

Bad reviews are fun to write when you're tackling something that's so bafflingly, confusingly awful that it's intriguing and humorous to write some barbs about - it's a creative exercise you don't get from writing a 55% review, for example. Some things really are just transfixingly horrific.

There's a difference between that and unnecessarily shitting on the artist to the point of 'this guy should kill himself' or whatever. And some reviewers, in my view, tend to hone in on small parts of a work and go over the top. Other times they will go off "expectations" or "hype," which is always a bad way to review anything, and also any review that's just about what they want the genre to be is pretty useless.

There are right and wrong ways to do it and really, artists just gotta expect it to happen... with the internet, for better or for worse, shit's just out there all the time and everyone's got a take.

It's something I really want to do again, but I'm really careful about wanting to do it right nowadays. To quickly explain the reasons for that, The Last Jedi was the very first Star Wars movie I thought really flat out sucked, and I'm the kind of guy who watched The Phantom Menace six times. And Discovery is the very first Star Trek show I thought really flat out sucked, and I'm the kind of guy who watched the episode where Captain Janeway and Tom Paris have kids after they turned into lizards for flying too fast in a shuttle like eight times. So I recently turned to YouTube to watch some reviews on The Last Jedi and Star Trek: Discovery to try to wrap my head around hating something from franchises I'm so intensely loyal and forgiving to. And holy fuck the amount of cringe one finds in - actually very popular - negative reviews for that stuff. Like watching the thousandth clone of James Rolfe the Angry Video Game Nerd blather on in feigned outrage really sucks your soul dry, and if that doesn't do it, the hordes of Milo Yiannopoulos-imitators raging about the evils of feminism certainly will erase whatever faith in humanity you may have. I did find some really great, really helpful negative reviews on both The Last Jedi and Star Trek: Discovery but subjected myself to hours worth of "how not to do a negative review"-showcases in the process. I really do want to get into soe negative reviewing again some time, but I certainly will double-check everything to not subject any potential readers to such cruel and unusual punishment.

That feel when you watch the wrong video about The Last Jedi and suddenly your recommended list is full of MRA alt right bullshit never to be clean again.

The simple solution is to just realize that you're wrong and The Last Jedi is actually pretty dope.

Well if I had a need for that brand of trolling I don't need YouTube, I can read kluseba's In Flames reviews right here, maybe top it off with Zodijackyl reviewing Illud.

We_hope_you_die, nice reviews for Dawn and Dissection. Any plans to review Vinterland sometime?

Definitely agree that those were well written, although I don't really understand how Dissection is "radio friendly"...

There's a difference between the United States (your location) and Europe (we hope you die's location) in how "friendly" metal is considered. Some metal performs really well over here in mainstream album charts, especially if it has cheesy lead guitars.

Damn, that's kinda nice. Wish our "radio friendly" was like that.

Yo Marco, I'd heard of the KIT (Keep It True) Fest, but only "sposmadically", as in, in passing I guess, but thanks for outlining it "comme il faut" in your Sabire review (suffice to say, enthralled by that as well today). I'll certainly have to look into this event...(as well as Professor Black, ho-hum!).