Hang on everyone, since the quote in question is MINE, I need to clarify what I meant.
I have nothing against free speech. I am an advocate of 4chan, reddit, all that shit--MA included.
My BEEF with the dorks who flock to MA though is that they are massive dorks who try to intellectualize metal and imply that everything else sucks. They think they're a member of some high elite for only liking Silencer and Demolition Hammer, but they probably are insecure, socially poor, fat, and/or all of the above plus jobless.
This doesn't apply to everyone who writes there, but indeed a nice chunk of those who do--and here is how you know if you've spotted one of these MA dorks:
Step one: The internet is srs bizz.
http://www.metal-archives.com/userreviews.php?id=147&nickname=UltraBoris
What normal human being in their right mind has the time to write this many reviews? I've written for decently well-known (but nothing super duper major though) print zines and webzines when I was in highschool and let me tell you, I never wrote near that many reviews. If I had as much time on my hands as this dork has to churn out rants on why Nevermore is "mallcore" or how Faith No More's "Angel Dust" album is "R&B influenced," I probably could've have flown around the world... twice.
But no, Grimthrockh the metal overlord has to have his voice heard and dammit, he will get it heard. There's obviously something important to be said that hasn't ever been said before here for these albums, all 350 of them. You're a true internet warrior my friend, keep up the good fight and keep posting those reviews. MA is not merely a catalog of your musical criticism canonography, but rather it a locus for your authorial voice--your literary soul. It is the seat on which you can allow your psuedo-self-importance ring out, loud and proud. Thus, you not only satisfy your inner urge to uncage your critical muse and review until your fingers fall off, but surely...somewhere...someone must be reading these and could...someday...potentially...take your heed. And it is these moments that act as compensation for your hard-earned effort. "Oh wow, he's so totally right. Dead Heart In a Dead World really is overrated because this guy I don't know, nor will I ever know, told me it was. I guess I won't buy it now"
SUCCESS!!!
Step two: Over intellectualizing metal while making other forms of music out to be inferior. Nothing screams "I'm a virgin" harder and louder than when you use the phrase "sophisticated black metal art" unless you're actually in Emperor and coined the phrase to help sell your record and/or are already with lady friends. You on the other hand, sound like a massive dork for using it.
"None of the above, of course, really does much to speak to the persistent, though very far from flagrant, quality of oddness which characterizes the album. The most obvious aspect of this, I suppose, would be the solos that adorn nearly every track--a far cry from malignantly keening guitar ululations, they quite literally rock, hearkening back to the metal of a much earlier time....or even farther, in some cases. The bass, as aforementioned, is rather animated as well, occasionally spitting out brief-but-colorful bluesy licks to punctuate and subtly color the rowdy stomp of a riff, or even taking the lead in a memorable passage in "Sacrifice." It's these small but potent bits of swagger, juxtaposed with the other elements of the music--such as Thomas Andresen's nasal snarl, which remains persistently joyless throughout the album's assorted tales of witchcraft, suicide, and lethal cold snaps--that give the album its particular charm and character; a redolence as reminiscent of a forest fire as of a crematorium. This is perhaps most succinctly encapsulated by the interludium "Autumn Void", a simple acoustic strum underwritten by jocular electric picking and doleful bass embellished by more of that bluesy soloing; essentially, a dirge that paradoxically sounds rather jaunty. "
What the hell does this even mean? Prose should sue your ass for sexual harassment and get a restraining order against you, because you raped it.
Step 3: anything that the reviewer does not understand is automatically not metal.
Lacking metal is derogatory for guys like these. If it's not metal, it's not worth listening to. "I don't get what Faith No More is doing... so I'm going to call it 'alternative metal.'" or "I don't get what Amorphis is doing, so I'm going to say they sound like pop rock-- maybe compare them to Guns & Roses to effectively underscore my distaste for things that don't meet my specific musical criteria." It's one thing to say a band isn't metal because you have a valid argument for it not being metal, but if you acknowledge that it has metal riffs, metal elements, etc on your own accord and refuse to call it metal, you're only doing so because you're a dork. You're already outcast from society and have no friends, so of course, the styles of music your "enemies" listen to must be systematically separated from what you listen to -- the truest of art. If I don't like it, it's THEIR music, not mine.
But if you're not THAT big of a dork, you might try to justify yourself by saying you listen to "electronic music" or "jazz" so that you can pretend to be eclectic. Except that only listening to Miles Davis or some obscure house DJ that played the bar across the street does not mean you "listen to jazz" or "electronic music." You're still a metal dork, and a massive loser.
I could go on. But my point isn't that these guys should shut up and stop posting, it's that they're hilarious and I don't take anything they say with any seriousness at all and that was the original context of my quote. I love MA though as a whole. It's a really great tool if you want to see who's in what band, how many CDs a band has put out, etc. I think I'd be seriously lost without it. But with that said, the guys that post there are beyond laughable.
Oh and have fun sigging THAT Angrarules.
