On the mechanisms of Metal Album reviews...

[O Drighes]

Just had a read at this intie on Decibel about the mechanisms of metal album reviews. Interesting read...

Coming from a country that has a problem with straightforward negative criticism, I often deemed the bland praise of bands utterly boring in any publication. Once I've started reading English-written magazines, I found that the reviewers urge to find flaws often overshadowed a lot of what the albums really had to offer. This piece points out quite well why it is so difficult to find balance in reviews...

https://www.decibelmagazine.com/2019/05/31/follow-heart-heavy-meta-part-1/

[Black Shepherd Carnage]

Nice read. As a once-in-a-blue-moon reviewer for MI, the points score annoyed the hell out of me. The last two reviews I did, I wanted to try out just expressing my own subjective listening and considering experience as much as possible, while consciously avoiding any kind of critique whatsoever. Having to peg a score on to the end totally defeated that purpose. But then, it was the easiest place for me to get them published... though if I'd put in a little more effort on that front, they may not have disappeared into the archive ether along with the rest of MI!

And when I read about music now too, I'm less interested than ever in critique, positive or negative; what gets me interested is getting a sense of what a piece of music evoked in the listener/reviewer: anything, good or bad, but strong, to paraphrase Crowley. Music you feel like critiquing to death is music that evoked only the desire to stop listening... leaving little of experiential value to be said.

[Pentagrimes]

Seconding what Chris says - I hated having to award points. I enjoyed writing them for MI more as a creative writing exercise and an excuse to get the odd sneaky promo before release that hadn't leaked (ie stuff like Godflesh or Faith No More) but ultimately I didn't expect anyone would be picking up albums off my recommendation or anything, and I'm certainly not much of a writer - much like Chris, it was the easiest place to get them published and there were very few writers on MI at that stage. I rarely read reviews myself tbh.

I've a lot of respect for people who review consistently purely because as someone who still gets promos in their inbox, you have an enormous amount of shite to wade through. I'd actually thought about doing a few bits for here again over the last week or two but I've so little free time and it seems like such an irrelevant medioum when you can youtube/stream an album anyway and make your own mind up.

Maybe we need a return to Lester Bangs style "review as full length article" writing for the craic

[O Drighes]

I remember overhearing it somewhere in Dublin that most reviews nowadays tell more about the reviewer than the band or album themselves, which was an idea that struck me in a very negative way as I had always seen reviews more or less as the last stage of making art, which are the impression it makes in a given audience (obviously taking into account that the reviewers' opinion will interfere whatever way to the real final audience). I'm sometimes curious about different impressions others had to the same album I've listened to but when faced with brand new material I agree with Pentagrimes, most often I'd rather just stream the music straight away without expectations.

Below is the second part of this series with Barney Greenway... very good points raised here too.

https://www.decibelmagazine.com/2019/06/07/fallow-heart-heavy-meta-part-2/

[Pentagrimes]

pardon the obnoxious hijacking but seeing as we mentioned MI - I've decided I'm going to try and salvage all the interviews I did for the site and am putting them back on line. I've got Dream Death and Torche up so far.
I'm not reposting reviews though

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