It’s an awful review, but I think he does just enough in that paragraph where he lists comparable bands for it to be acceptable. Do not think of it as actually “acceptable” though, just in the sense that it follows the site rules.

Some time back when I was fresh, I submitted stuff as short as this and as less descriptive as this too. Does this review really hold up?

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... ma/170234/

Is this worth keeping? Out of the seven sentences, only about 2,5 'discuss' the music while the rest are dedicated to either the label and its releases or the lyrical theme.

Actually, I think the description is not too bad, it's just a hugely boring review. We learn what kind of music it is, how the different instruments sound, and a little background. It's scant on detail and shouldn't have genre names capitalized, but it's not awful. Probably good enough.


Seems like a worthless review, which doesn't talk about the music almost at all. I'm not even sure what genre the band play on that album. Needs to go, I think.

It would be really ace if a mod could let people know when a review had been taken down and for what reasons. It's a valuable opportunity to learn something about the standards. I'm personally still waiting for clarification on these:
https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... all/216687
https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... 999/580297

Very good point. That alone should be worth a nuke. I once had a review rejected simply because the genre remained unclear throughout the text and rightly so. Should be a fundamental aspect of a review. (I got it accepted later simply by adding a few lines to make the genre clear but removed it myself years ago. All reviews I ever wrote were mediocre at best.)

This one features almost no musical description, aside from apparently being "groove/thrash" and featuring audible cymbals. It's also pretty badly written in general.

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/Pantera/Reinventing_Hell/32158/BlackenedSally/379681

For compilations especially, we've seen worse.


The review is nearly as bad as the album by the sounds of it...

How are the themes of the lyrics not part of the music?

The review is way too short, but metalheads often have this bizarre idea that lyrics are something ancillary and "bolted on" to the music and not actually a part of the "music" and I do not understand it.

I could deduce as much - and even more - about the music and the lyrics just from looking at the album title and the cover and reading that it's black metal. Don't see why that review would be worth keeping.

Haven't seen much of that mindset. But I think it's safe to say that we likely just don't care much most of the time what the lyrics are telling us, the story of a headless baby zombie pimp that uses his umbilical cord to eat decomposed ass and snort powdered golden penis bones while playing avant-garde epic progressive atmospheric melodic depressive funeral pre-proto-post-power/grungecore at the same time, or a completely precise outlook of what the future will be like if we all keep doing what we're doing and how to change it so the world instantly becomes perfect with Roosevelt Franklin as the first and only Eternal President of the Multiunicornverse and all that shit or something. We often don't even read the lyrics to our metal unless we become interested in them for some reason. Especially if it's extreme metal - like, Nile may offer a nice change from the common death metal themes of gore, violence and Satan, but if I don't like their music, the lyrics won't make me like it any more, especially since I don't understand a word of them.

And if you like lyrics, try listening to this when you've got some free time, or when you've got none, so long as it's right now. All the way through, no other way, else it's not trve kvlt.

If lyrics didn't matter to a band they'd all just put out a bunch of gibberish. Not every band has lyrics worth talking about too much, but occasionally some of them do. I never got why that was so hard to comprehend, that occasionally there were some bands that had lyrics actually worth reading and mentioning.

That's a pretty barebones review, but it's *probably* OK.

As for lyrics. It's perfectly fine writing about the lyrics, but there is a careful line between being relevant and not. It's easy to wax poetic about the context or background of some lyrical subject matter than to focus on the album and what it was trying to convey. That's an easy hole to get caught in, and one which unfortunately tends to derail reviews. That's something to be cognizant and aware of when writing reviews in such a way.

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... eba/238242

Can this one be nerfed for being track-by-track?

He probably focuses a bit too much on individual songs rather than the album as a whole, but I’d judge it as being a case of one too many examples to describe how the release fits into the band’s discography. The paragraph where he talks about the opening couple of tracks seems like the review will just follow track-by-track format, but equally it’s the most sensible place to put that kind of comment. It’s not too bad in terms of track analysis and almost certainly meets the site standards.

You’re not a moderator, are you? Because you seem to offer your point of view on whether a review is acceptable quite a lot.

And posting this is counterproductive to the discussion. Gasmask is approaching 1000 reviews so even if he's not a moderator, I think he knows what's acceptable or not so quit whining.

While I never liked Kluseba's reviews, this is fine. He's highlighting some (not all of them) tracks to describe the album. That's... what we want.

Also important to keep in mind that I think the general consensus seems to be that we're way stricter on track-by-trackers than we actually are. Yes, we do highly discourage checklist style reviews of any stripe (instrument-by-instrument is really common too) but there's a big difference between mentioning every track and reviewing every track. My account may be from 2005 but I'd been browsing and using the site since a year or so before then, neck deep in the p2p era of Napster/Kazaa/Limewire when people would just pirate individual tracks, and as such it was very common to see reviews where each track would get its own two sentence paragraph with an individual 1-10 rating. That is the shit we insta-reject. Running through every track is super amateurish and almost always mega boring to read, and usually rejectable, but there's more grey area than you may realize. Use your best judgment.

You're observant. The reason I comment here a lot is because the mods don't reply that often to the posts in this thread. A lot of people send review links because they want clarification on why the review is acceptable. I can't make the bad shit disappear, but I can explain why the mediocre stuff sticks around.

It's almost like no one can discuss the worth of a review and maybe put it through a little thing called "review" before de-facto canning something that just pops up on this thread according to that thought. There are judges on this site, that's a given, it doesn't mean anyone else can't try to argue some merits here and there on something called a 'forum': "a place, meeting, or medium where ideas and views on a particular issue can be exchanged."

I know this review is track-by-track, maybe it should be canned for it, but it's also one of few reviews for Akercocke's 'Words that Go Unspoken, Deeds That Go Undone', and as much as I found this review while doing a little bit of work on my own review for that album, I think it should still stick around since it was written back in 2005 and predates the purges that have happened since. https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... tion/16415 If it's gone, let it go, but at least I said my piece on it in consideration of its age, though all three of that reviewer's reviews would be unacceptable nowadays.

At least Lord_Of_Diamonds isn't raving about "propaganda" in a review, railing at how opinions can't be allowed in opinion pieces. I already wrote plenty on that to that other douche months back, but the review this guy has in question obviously highlights and describes rather than runs down every track. Kluseba makes the review enough of a journey with enough exposition to keep it involved.

The fact of the matter is there are plenty of albums where you can gracefully incorporate every song into a review, some concept albums necessitate such exposition, but a rundown that goes the whole way through isn't what this site is looking for when it comes to quality reviews. With that album it seems more that the reviewer was showing some range and trying to highlight its heights rather than simply throwing the entire album into a thesaurus blender, and I should know because I do that far too often.

Where the review does lack is in syntax and editing. That should be the argument, not in the tracking or even the flow for which kluseba's going. This review is easily one that can be brought back to the editing page and reworked with better punctuation and diction, but overall it's not totally unacceptable. To me, it's simply lazy writing to pump up numbers.

Also, Lord_Of_Diamonds (just because I'm getting sick of seeing this kind of vitriol in just about every thread in the review forum) how about you try to improve yourself rather than try to bring others down? It doesn't make you shine like gold when all you do is revel in shit! Work on yourself, don't try to take others down just to make yourself seem a little above them. You're taking time away from your own improvement when you try to tank others. That's why I didn't want to review your music in the first place. Your toxic personae on these forums and the main site combined with the "joke band" you tried to get some attention for just showed how little you really care about the crafts anyone here may be trying to work at. It's pathetic, you should know better, and I know you'll feel a victim now that I'm finally losing it on your ass because of this seemingly "out of the blue" ranting but the reality is that you have so little to say that you want to make others seem worse than you rather than hone your own skills.

Rethink your priorities and come back with something worthwhile or just take a break and grow as a person. It will do you a world of good to show a little mindfulness rather than mouthiness.

Perhaps I was hasty in calling it "track by track". Consider it a demand for clarification instead, because now I'm that much closer to knowing what this site defines as track-by-track. As to the rest, I find it laughable that your problem seems to have stemmed from a genuine concern I had that someone was mini-modding, but I'll get to your main point, which is that I can't criticize people until I improve myself. Just because some consider me to be a bad writer does not mean that I can't recognize bad writing when I see it. Just like the fact that I can recognize, say, a poorly-played guitar solo despite not being able to play a solo to save my life. And I HAVE been trying to improve myself. I've been making efforts to sound more intelligent when I write, instead of the "shouty YouTuber" stuff that I used to do. I don't feel victimized at all by your comments here. I just take them as a flowery re-wording of a tired shutdown. Perhaps I made a mistake when I decided to visit the reviews forum for the first time after a certain user PM'd me and demanded that I "explain myself", but the fact is that all the negative feedback I've received is influencing me - true to something about negative feedback that I put in my profile notes and maybe also that "easily manipulated" characteristic that someone suggested I had.

It doesn't mean that I'll do a complete 180, though. If I see something that I have a problem with, or hear music that I have a problem with, I'll react with as much blunt force as is necessary. What I'm trying to say is that I'll attempt to make myself believeable when I say it.

As to the "joke band" comment, I think I've finally found my musical calling after experimenting for so long. I'm going to create music as a parody/commentary on all the musical things I don't like (such as slam metal). Explode the Commode was the first experiment in that path.

ugh, can you not derail the thread into talking about yourself, snore_of_diamonds? I'm no mod, but it's annoying.

dafuq guys LoD's last post was a perfectly fine explanation of himself in refutation to one of FN's patented rambling essay responses. I'm not a fan of his reviews either but y'all're kinda transparently dogpiling on him at this point.

a rambling essay in refutation to one of FN's patented rambling essay responses, fixed that for you

I don't really get why he's so maligned on here outside of his reviews, but even if it's perfectly fine, that particular post sort of ticked me off. Especially in this sort of thread.

Back on track, I think this review is pretty bad. The comparison's pretty nice and accurate all right, but I'm really not sure if this little info is still acceptable.

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... ethe/13026

This one was pretty painful to read, a lot of errors and only minor musical description.

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... ius/415745

This review is, like, not *awful*, but's filled with a lot of grammar/spelling errors and the musical description is really lacking. It feels like a review you would have seen in the early 2000's on this site.

Both now dealt with.

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/Death_Angel/Act_III/1171/UltraBoris/147

I hope the exception for UltraBoris reviews has been removed. This one and probably many others of his are shit. I would know nothing about the album from this other than the titles of some good and bad songs, and that the riffs can be inconsistent. Better reviews have been rejected.

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... oss/57998/

So short and non-descriptive.

Immature and uninformative. Grammar/word choice not up to standard either.
http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/N ... ght/26517/

Wow, that definitely doesn't belong here. Nuked.

Not sure if this My Dying Bride review deserves to stay. Track-by-track for most of it, and with some annoying capitalization and line breaks.

^ That was painful to read.

http://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/S ... imes/1996/

Expression can't get weaker than this.

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... ill67/8829

Another review where the reviewer just states how much he likes it without actually saying what it sounds like.

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... inion/2473

Hate to say it, but... I have a hard time really reading this as a review. It's like a short appraisal for the album.

Not to say I don't agree with the praise. But there's absolutely no substance to this thing.
(Might just be it feels way too short. It has elements of a good review but they're not really elaborated on. Which kinda sucks, because I like descriptive reviews.)

“The songs are all memorable and chalk full of riffs and solos”

Oh dear...

That one was pretty bad, but the other two look acceptable. Still disappointing reviews, but I’d say they meet the site standards.

Do we still let Akerthorpe's non-descriptive banality slip through the net?

Can we call this review of Terria by Devin Townsend ( https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... kroke/2636 ) one subject for removal? It really doesn't say a whole lot for the contents of the record - just talks about how mindblowing it is.

https://www.metal-archives.com/reviews/ ... Meh/339203
Barely any musical description in this one.

Because I think TheMeh is probably going to come back to this page (having posted right above), I'd like to say I agree. Even if you're trashing a release for being redundant or self-serving or sell-out, it needs somehow to be based on the musical credit of the release in question. If you're finding fault with Ghost's philosophy or conduct, that's okay, but the review still needs enough comment on the music to make it clear what style they play or how the songs themselves are involved. This review mentions the title, music video, and (I'm not sure, because I haven't listened to it) the lyrics. For a music website such as this one, the reviews need to have at least some focus on the actual music.