So basically they're super trendy for people who are obsessive about the extended careers of members of a band that peaked in popularity 15 years ago.

No, no, you're dead on the spot here I'm clearly more familiar with gothic/doom and death/doom than trad doom, the reason being, I guess, my first exposure to doom was due to My Dying Bride and their fellows of the early 90's British scene. I do enjoy trad doom, though (Black Sabbath is in my Top 10 bands after all); but, as you can see, I won't dig that much into the lesser-known bands.

I'm more of a jack-of-all-trades guy when it comes to reviews, so I don't know if they're really revelatory. Also take into account that my oldest reviews are 15 years old, so my tastes may have evolved a bit since.

Anyway, I'm always ready to discover new bands, and that's the essential.

I can really do without "yeet" entering reviewer lexicons.

Yeah, that Anus_Canis guy is starting to grate on my nerves too. His reviews have a very amateurish air to them, as if he is quite new to metal (probably is, given the age listed in his profile). Not to mention that many of his writings consist of giving near-perfect scores to very well known albums (even Vulgar Display of Power... how anyone can possibly give that one a positive score, let alone a 95, is beyond me).

And giving St Anger, which apparently "surpassed RTL", a 100. That by the way has almost become a cliche of its own at this point.

"Surpassed RTL"? So... lyrical gold like "Shoot me again, I ain't dead yet", "It's my world, you can't have it", "Look out motherfuckers here I come", "Get 'em out my head", "KILL KILL KILL KILL", and a plethora of other lyrical and musical stupidity surpasses the universally recognized thrash classic, Ride the Lightning?

I think I can safely say that thrash and death metal is not this man's primary listening material, as he claims in his profile. And St. Anger is the ONLY Metallica album that got a 100 from him, out of all of them.

Like I said before when that review first dropped, just because the band was having shit times is no excuse at all to make a shit album. If they couldn't produce music to a certain level of quality, then maybe they should have taken a break and sorted things out before they decided to make a new record. St. Anger isn't an "artistic" representation of what the band was going through at the time. It's just a bad album that happened to be made when the band was in no position to make a good one, and that doesn't excuse it at all.

What irks me as well is the whole intention and statement behind the album. It's basically a "fuck you" to their entire base of detractors who wanted a return to form, or at least anything but mallcore, by adding fuel to the massive dumpster fire.

If they really wanted their record to sound so raw and anti-commercial, I personally think they should have gone the route of Testament's Demonic. Granted, it'd still be a heap of garbage.

This, a thousand fucking times. Completely agree. When you make music, the first and often only thing that the listener will care about is how it sounds and what emotions it makes the listener feel. Yes, Metallica had it rough. Yes, harrowing conditions can sometimes facilitate your creativity. But this is not one of those cases, the band was very close to falling apart, Hetfield was in rehab, nothing was done. It was a clusterfuck. At the end of the day, if the result is garbage, then clean up your act and try again. People will only care that it sounds like garbage.

Well, at least Anus_Canis gave a 1% to Agoraphobic Nosebleed, and let's admit that compared to that band, St. Anger indeed sounds like fuckin' RTL.

First review for Therion's latest today. I overall agree that at first listen it doesn't seem to bring anything new (but I'll definitely let it mature before writing my own, it's Therion after all), however the reviewer seems to miss an important point - if Therion no longer brings anything new, it stops being relevant. "For fans of Therion's output between Theli and Gothic Kabbalah" makes little sense, the sound of the band has evolved a lot between these two albums.

*Additional i.e.bonus phobia fun:

https://www.realbuzz.com/articles-inter ... e-phobias/

+

"Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia" = fear of long words (not hippos, as initially surmised!)

Also, I'd like to palm an olive branch to Mercyful T., of late, who's been doing fine job of riding the Pentagram tram...

Here's a nice gutterscream-o one I'd missed, and which I think you'll gobble right up, like a Thanksgiving Day turkey (Or Greg Turley):

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... ream/29772

I love how he managed to reference an ANb album in both his reviews for the first two Pantera albums, those with Terry Glaze at the mic. In a totally unforced way, with a suited comparison, similar genres, without hinting, in the slightest, that he may have reviewed that particular album as well.

Still, there are probably more chances for Frozen Corpse Stuffed with Dope to enter my regular rotation, than for St. Anger, Load, ReLoad and those two combined...

There seems to be an odd conception that an album is somehow extra tragic or compelling if it captures the band in question on the verge of falling apart. It's like the romanticized belief that a mental breakdown will result in fantastic art when in reality, most mental breakdowns result in either active destruction or just being too paralyzed to actually do anything. It may have worked for Alice in Chains' self-titled album but that was an exception, not the rule. St. Anger may be an extraordinarily bad album but it's no exception to the rule. Things falling apart generally sound like... well, things falling apart.

Wait, did that Anthrax review basically just dedicate an entire paragraph (the biggest one, no less) to a statement made by John Bush introducing a song?

Pardon me but that's my whole point. Those statements might not be a biggie for North American fans but they are for quite a few European ones and were especially considered controversial back in those days. Since it wasn't mentioned in the other reviews, I really felt that I had to point that out.

Oh, I'm not saying I disagree with your point. I'm totally on board with what you said. I just couldn't believe it took up that massive portion of it.

I think what Sweetie is saying politely is that he can't believe it was the only talking point for that album. It takes up more space than the analysis of the songs.

I recognize how Gods of Violence wasn't a fantastic album, but what did Orbitball hear to discern sloppy leads? They are literally the most refined part of it. And I thought Mille stopped playing solos ages ago (for good reason)...

I also was quite confused by the latest Dissection review:




But I see it's the same guy who wrote that review about SotLB, so I'm not surprised.

Weird opinions are a positive change; usually, Orbitball doesn't talk much about the music at all.

ding ding ding!!!!

Also yeah that Gods Of Violence review was wack. I'm a bit biased of course, that was my favorite record of 2017 (at the time, at least).

I'd only give that one points for the comedy value, because the music is completely worthless. But James Hetfield bellowing "SMALL TOWN GIRL" and Lou Reed muttering "spermless like a girl" is some of the mostunintentionally hilarious lyricism since St. Anger.

Lulu is so much better than any Testament or Megadeth in ages. It's actually interesting, creative stuff.

I'll buy Testament, I haven't really liked anything they did since Dark Roots Of Earth (nearly 10 years ago, yikes!). As for Megadeth? Dystopia was incredible, I thought.

That re-written Vulgar Display of Power review made me chortle a little bit.

I really hated Dystopia. I considered reviewing that and giving it a 0% just for being this utterly plastic, generic, featureless product with no real excitement or interesting parts to it - but eh I figured I'd already said enough about other albums like it.

Pantera kicks absolute ass!

Bullshit. 2012 was CLEARLY only three years ago. I'm not getting old! TELL ME I'M NOT GETTING OLD!

Ah, you mean the production was great.

The crystal clear, crunchy sound with nothing else going on - good times with modern mainstream metal.

Yes! Yes! Yes! And it's the shit! Not the shit! THE shit! It is literally THE shit!

(It's shit.)

I mean honestly I totally see your point, that production usually irritates me. But I thought the songs themselves were written well enough to where it was fine.

I love the album. I was 18 when it came out and it spoke to me. Reviewers loved it and they got fans from all over the metal spectrum. Somewhere along the line it became trendy to not like it, like Slaughter of the Soul. But that review is bloody terrible.

To me Lulu is like Sabbath's Forbidden in that it's not a particularly great album but it's so massively overhyped as a huge abomination. I would say about half the songs are decent. Definitely warrants way the fuck more than a 0%, and still a goddamn sight better than St. Anger which has one decent song on it and a whole lot of shit sandwich.

As for the Pantera review, the author states that Vulgar Display of Power was the last album where Dimebag was still credited as Diamond Darrel. I have my copy stored in a box in my closet that I don't want to get out to check, but I could've sworn he was credited as Dimebag Darrel on it and Cowboys From Hell was the last one he was credited as Diamond Darrel on. Can anyone corroborate this?

The big problem is it's front loaded - the first three tracks are some of the best material they've written in 20 years or so, but they far outshine the others. So as you keep listening it just becomes more of a bore, but thankfully the last few tracks are quite short.

Just checked pics on Discogs because my copies are buried away too. He was credited as Diamond Darrel on Vulgar. It was Far Beyond Driven when it changed to Dimebag.

Good to see a non-perfect score for Gorement's The Ending Quest. I mean, it's a good album, but pretty far from flawless. Robotic made some fair points in his review, too.

Hey gaz!

Remember Wolf's sinister church bell chiming "Make Friends With Your Nightmares"?...Well, I believe have just found a token complimentary piece:

https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/B ... ard/919867

(Like that crazed Stalvind lyric, from "At The Graveyard: "Meet me! At The Graveyard!"...)

That Pantera review actually kinda sucks. Not really bad enough to be removed or anything but basically all it says is that it kicks ass over and over again, which isn't really helpful. I grew up with Pantera and have always and still do love them, so I'd really love to see a positive review of VDoP that is actually great, but it just really hasn't happened yet, and I'm not really motivated to attempt it myself since I think it's the worst of their classic era anyway.

At least he accurately pegged Walk as the worst song. I genuinely believe that underground metalloids wouldn't hate Pantera quite so much if their most iconic song wasn't so unbearably shitty. Huge blight on an otherwise really good album.

Fair enough. Pantera were actually able to play way more varied stuff, but you wouldn't guess it based on Walk alone, and it's probably the first song by them that everyone stumbled upon at some point. It's not even their best tough-guy track... I mean, years ago I always used to think of Drag the Waters as a sort of "Walk Part II", but even that's definitely better (may also be because of TGST's sound... but it works a lot better).

Has anyone noticed that there isn't a lot of reviews being accepted today? At this time of the days there would be like 10 new reviews up, but so far there's only 2.

Not complaining or anything, I'm just saying.