Just wondering who some of the well regarded reviewers are on Metal Archives?

Currently the only reviews I read are by Autothrall but would really like to build up a catalogue of reviewers who know what they're talking about.

Thanks,
Miles.

kluseba, Akerthorpe, LeMiserable (if any are still floating around), Brainded Binky, etc.

Never heard of Brainded Binky before. What's wrong/unusual regarding his reviews?

lol

Alexlovestheredchord

My favorite has always been dawnoftheshred. I love his style. I especially enjoy his stuff because his taste is frighteningly similar to mine but that's not the main reason. He and hells_unicorn were my inspiration for doing reviews of my own.

Napero and Acrobat (despite his hatred for Opeth) are my 2 favorites. For the younger generation, Rape the Dead and MutantClannfear are the best teenagers/young men on the site. BastardHead and Lord Ghengis are also usually very good albeit overly lengthy contributors.

For my favorite genre (doom), there's not a lot of reviewers specialized in it except myself but Caspian always writes good, down to earth reviews.

For black metal, refer to Ilwhyan and iamntbatman (also other genres, he's great).

For effective but a bit too dry for my taste, there's Gunther, dystopia4 (all in all great dude who keeps getting better) and TheStormIride.

For reviewers who don't know what they're talking about, there's Napalm Satan and Kluseba in particular.

lol The funny thing is that I was in contact with him outside of the site after he was Dursted, he and I conversed a bit on YouTube and he seemed like a reasonable fellow, but then one day it all went to shit and he blew up on me. There is something about people who write overly dramatic reviews and being overly dramatic in real life.

ME!! Na, just kidding.

hells_unicorn's Royal Seal of Gayness reviews make me laugh a lot, Felix1666 is also great and both of those two have like three thousand reviews between them. Also seconding Napero, his reviews are always so funny.

And also, because no-one's mentioned it seven replies in, UltraBoris. His reviews range from three short paragraphs to a page and can be wildly inconsistent but his Master of Puppets review is infamous enough to speak for itself.

Autothrall is obviously a much better writer than I'll ever be and incredibly prolific but I'm not all that fussed for his style. It's just so dry and not all that exciting. He just doesn't draw me in the way others do.

EDIT: It's pretty even between whether to troll or actually answer so I've gone with a bit of both.

Forget about UltraBoris.

Check out these reviewers:

hells_unicorn
NausikaDalazBlindaz
Noktorn
Perplexed_Sjel
TheStormIRide
Empyreal
ConorFynes
GuntherTheUndying
oneyoudontknow
Felix 1666
caspian
DawnoftheShred
BastardHead
PorcupineOfDoom
Metantoine
iamntbatman
MikeyC
OlympicSharpshooter
Roffle_the_Thrashard
stainedclass2112
Diamhea
autothrall
Napero


Some of these reviewers might not be that highly regarded but if I ever need to know something about an album I'd rather read one of their reviews.

It's been years since I posted here, so I can't tell for absolutely certain who is and isn't held in the highest possible regard, but I can list my personal favorites who I think write thoughtful, insightful reviews:

• Abominatrix
• Gutterscream
• Nightgaunt
• autothrall
• Tepes_the_Unweeping (RIP)

caspian and NausikaDalazBlindaz I always like to read. dismember.marcin (sp?) as well - not the most classy writer but a writer with nearly unmatched enthusiasm. autothrall was usually a reliable source for good reading, too.

I'd suggest checking out mine. I don't rate myself, but a lot of people have contacted me and said that my stuff is fantastic. If you like black metal, anyway.

Lich you have the strangest taste in memes. Half the time I have not the slightest idea what you're talking about. This is one of those cases. I wanted someone to grill that guy for pimping himself out but that wasn't what I had in mind.

I probably deserve that. Well played.

I didn't want to make it very obvious.

Oh, lol

I'll also mention TheStormIRide because I love his reviews. I remember getting all excited when I saw that he reviewed my much beloved Colma; that made me always check out what he had to say about things. Definitely one of my faves.

Ah now come on, I'm sure there's at least one user more annoying than me on these boards.

Oh I was just teasing, you didn't do anything annoying. If anything, I don't know what an eagle has to do with your post haha

Strange, there shouldn't have been an eagle there... I don't know what the hell happened. Oh well, next time I'll use Imgur.

Man, the use of meme is rarely allowed here especially and you fucked up by posting a pic you didn't want to post? Come the fuck on, Lich.

I couldn't tell whether he meant to post that eagle or if it was some dumb shit meme that teenagers nowadays use. I don't know if that says worse about me or him.

I did not post a wrong one. It's just the link displays another picture right now.

Isn't that... called posting the wrong one? Admit it Lich! You have been rekt!!

I can't win this.
However, this is what my link should've displayed:


I don't know if it's better than the eagle though.

EDIT: I've derailed this thread more than I wanted, so I'll just second Nightgaunt as one of the greatest reviewers MA had.

One guy I hold in high regard is Left Hand Ov Dog. His attitude of "if you don't like this you must be a pretentious tool" was off-putting at first, but I'll be damned if everything else didn't outright bleed passion that can make even the most jaded asshole admire his love for the music (i.e his Children of Bodom reviews).

I've been seeing his name pop up more often these days, and I've liked what I've seen well enough.

Honestly, I don't find autothrall a "good reading" writer so much as a person with reasonably sober opinions. He has his bias, obviously, and I tend to think his scores are too low, but if there is a thicket of reviews for an album, I'll gravitate toward his to set a fairly reliable context. He's not the final word, obviously, but he's organized and straightforward, so that makes it a lot easier to read.



Does there have to be a next time?

Only if the situation requires.

I'm not buying you any beer next time I come to Montreal.

Seriously though, I think I've gotten a lot better at that, although looking back at my older reviews I can definitely see how it was a problem. My girlfriend actually read one of my reviews the other day and said something like this "did you just describe a band as "tight as fuck"? What the hell, clam. I've seen your university papers and you can write so much better than this", haha.

For me I'd put the top reviewers as Noktorn, Caspian and Napero. Really like rapethedead's stuff, but he doesn't review nearly as often as he should.

Hey! I said "(all in all great dude who keeps getting better)" and you willingly left out this part of my comment!

Hopefully next time you'll come, I'll pay the beer. We can each buy necroticism 1 pint because he only needs like 2 to be drunk.

Haha, I bet we could get Chandy drunk off one pint if it is a strong beer!

I have to give a nod to Spiner and I'll second hells_unicorn and Emp (even though we disagree on almost everything in regards to power metal).

Great choice and IMO what a thread like this should be about, not reiterating the same dozen-or-so names that get dropped endlessly and perpetuate the circle jerk because people oftentimes don't put much thought into their decisions.

Someone's just cranky because they didn't get a mention.

I mean, if somebody asks who the highly regarded reviewers are the exact thing that should be expected is everybody listing off the same handful of names. Otherwise we're talking about "best" or "underrated" reviewers.

I'm not arguing that, I'm tiring of threads like this altogether. I'm not the only person who has denounced the cliquey nature of the review subforum but hey it has to be done sometimes.

Acrobat: I don't want people mentioning me. The less people know about my casual listening habits the better! Thankfully nobody has ever heard of 95% of the stuff I review so they never even get clicked

That Diamhea guy. I think he's pretty highly regarded.

I don't actually disagree with that but I'd argue that it's actually better than it used to be since now there are a few distinct cliques now. There's the obvious Noob Crew (SC, NS, Razz, LC), the Old Guard that's been doing this for 8-10 years (Acrobat, Hells, casp, Emp, myself, Z when he feels like chiming in), and the ones in between who are obviously more experienced listeners but either aren't as prolific (like RapeTheDead) or where just late to the party when the "golden age" was going on (Metantoine, Dystopia, Liquid Braino, you). Granted those last two groups tend to blur together a bit but I feel like that's just the "us vs. them" nature of metal folks to draw some sort of line between them and the newbies.

Basically it's natural for social circles to form in this kind of environment so the whole thing feels less like a clique to me and more of a "big happy family" type of thing. Though I do agree that this type of thread pops up every few months and it does get boring really quickly.

Great post