Album Reviews

[Ermz]

Guilty pleasure admission time!

Who here likes to hit up the net every so often to check reviews for albums they've worked on, mostly just to illustrate how little most 'music reviewers' actually know about what they're reviewing?

Seems it's my favourite pastime whenever I hit a stretch of boredom. Not highly professional, perhaps, but man you can really get a kick out of reading some of them!

Some favourite recurring themes include:

-Complimenting the drummer on the CD, even though the drums were entirely programmed.
-Complimenting the performance of the musicians, even though they were recorded chord by chord, edited, then duplicated.
-Talking about 'ProTooling' even though the entire thing was done in Cubase.
-Comparing the band to ones in irrelevant genres, which share virtually no stylistic elements, nor would they intend to.

Got any to add?

 

[RemoWilliams]

I haven't worked on an album or any sort, but can I still post? 'Cause reading reviews that compare anything remotely 'odd timed' even if it isn't to Meshuggah and throwing around 'djent' even if said band sound nothing like it. I think reviews just like to name drop current trends.

 

[egan.]

We once got accused of "playing a cover of tool and cave in at the same time." I didn't really know what to make of that.

 

[DolphinSplatter]

lolol I do this all the time.
reviewers are silly people

 

[HandsOfDespair]

First EP I produced got a ton of comparisons with Opeth's Still Life. Funny thing is that the guy in the band who composed everything hates this Opeth album 0_o.

And another band I did had also this ''guitarists are awesome especially the solo in that song'', when guitars were a PITA to track and especially that goddamn solo which took about 2 hours to track because the guitarist improvised in studio. But I take it positively and take it as a proof I did a good job.

 

[Erik Monsonis]

Guilty pleasure admission time!

Who here likes to hit up the net every so often to check reviews for albums they've worked on, mostly just to illustrate how little most 'music reviewers' actually know about what they're reviewing?

Seems it's my favourite pastime whenever I hit a stretch of boredom. Not highly professional, perhaps, but man you can really get a kick out of reading some of them!

Some favourite recurring themes include:

-Complimenting the drummer on the CD, even though the drums were entirely programmed.
-Complimenting the performance of the musicians, even though they were recorded chord by chord, edited, then duplicated.
-Talking about 'ProTooling' even though the entire thing was done in Cubase.
-Comparing the band to ones in irrelevant genres, which share virtually no stylistic elements, nor would they intend to.

Got any to add?

This is the most common comments the bands I work with get.
In the new Madrid scene (sturgiscore, screamo, etc...) the bands call me half-joking "The Wizard" because they know that if they work with me everything is gonna be quantized and EDITED to fuck to the point it doesn't matter anymore if they can play... Still the reviewers think the bands themselves are awesome.

It's so funny

 

[Trevor Marks]

My all consuming life

 

[26]

with my own album i found out something interesting.
i wrote the text that was sent out with every cd by myself. i wrote it 'journalistic style'.
almost all reviewers pretty much took a good portion of the sentences i wrote , used them one 1:1 and only filled the gaps.
makes sense imo, if you imagine a guy with a hundred cd's to hear trough, laying around.
i have a pretty clear idea how my next stuff for this purpose will be written.

this guy was the exception and wrote a totally crazy (in a good way) one. for him i'll do the shameless self promo.

http://www.rocktimes.de/gesamt/0-9/26/solipsissimus.html (only german unfortunately)

 

[egan.]

Yeah, reviewers are pretty terrible for taking stuff straight off the one sheet or from other reviews. Often it doesn't seem as though they even listened to the record.

 

[Fragle]

Yeah, reviewers are pretty terrible for taking stuff straight off the one sheet or from other reviews. Often it doesn't seem as though they even listened to the record.

exactly.
the same thing happened to me with a live show review. the guy commented on how he especially liked it that we played song XY....too bad we had to cut this one out of the set due to time limits. obviously he just had a pic of the setlist and didn't see us at all lol.

i especially enjoyed one of our album reviews....the guy wrote something along the lines of "great band, but the clean vocals are killing it for me"....too bad that we don't have ONE SINGLE LINE OF CLEAN VOCALS in the whole album (death metal band btw). i seriously lol'ed ^^

 

[jipchen]

Haha yeah. Did a production for a friend of mine, programmed drums. The reviewer was like "I'm glad it was no programmed drums - awesome sounding drumset and great performance by the drummer" .... ORLY?

 

[26]

Yeah, reviewers are pretty terrible for taking stuff straight off the one sheet or from other reviews.

well, if it's the one sheet (you have written), i have to say i see it as a positive thing (since it gives you a little bit of control of what is written).

but yeah, being an inventive writer (reviewer), is another thing

 

[GarethSE]

I read a couple of Slice The Cake reviews. Most of them pretty much summed up what I myself think of the music after a years worth of reflection on it.

As for the whole "protooling" thing. It's not about DAW itself, the terminology is used as a catchall for any album that sounds like the engineer in question couldn't stop fucking hitting buttons and editing the shit out of everything. Even if whatever album was in question was recorded and mixed with Cubase, you wouldn't say "cubasing" would you? ... ... Okay well maybe you would, but I wouldn't >.<

But yeah, I do generally find the whole performance praising pretty funny considering what I have learned over the past few years from visiting here.

 

[EOC]

There is a funny anecdote:
A critic was making an interview to a conductor, so he asked how he begun his carrier.
He said. " I started playing the violin, but since it was so difficult i started playing the french horn. But since that was also difficult i started playing the timpani, then i realized that the easiest thing to do is to conduct, so here i am"
The critic replied trying to make a joke: "And if conducting turns too difficult what are you going to do?!"
I´ll become a critic!" he answered

This is a true story hahahaha!

Most critics know shit.

 

[Ermz]

I did always like the sentiment that even the worst, most worthless subject that crosses a critic's desk still has more artistic merit and integrity than the sum of his life's work.

Heard it in Ratatouille of all places, haha, resonated with me ever since.

 

[Raptor7]

Some review of our past material was simply ridiculous: although we play doom/death we were compared to Lacuna Coil (clean vocals parts) and keyboards a la Within Temptation. I mean, wtf.

 

[Raptor7]

...everything is gonna be quantized and EDITED to fuck to the point it doesn't matter anymore if they can play...

I did the same for a band that can't really play and the record sounds pretty ok, but then I realized I made a bad deed to them, now they are strive to rehearse and perform the songs as they sound on the record and they still sound like a cover band for the one on the record lol..

 

[greyskull]

get stuff like this all the time...

 

[smy1]

The other day I read a review of a festival show we played in the UK. The reviewer said that the Faderhead show was "good but a bit disappointing" since we didn't play enough club hits.

I then posted the setlist under his online-review which included 15 songs. 13 of which were bona fide club hits. And 3 of those 13 were huge world-wide scene floorfillers.

I never got a reply ...