Metal Archives

[MasterOLightning]

A couple of things here:

Who writes reviews at MA? I plan on starting soon, and I was just curious who here does a lot of them.

Secondly, the lack of a uniform grading system makes it a pretty questionable source for the most part. I mean people give out grades of 100% to stuff like Sons of Northern Darkness. Then Opeth gets half 95% or better, and then a couple of 10-20% scores. I mean, don't you just have to plug in your guitar to get a 10%? The way I plan on grading is giving 50 points for song quality, 30 for musicianship, 10 for production, and 10 for creativity, which would include lyrics, artwork, presentation, and...creativity. I figure it would be tough to give out anything higher than 90%, and very few things would be worse than 40%. I guess in the end it would come close to grading being 90+=A, 89-80=B, 79-70C, 69-60D, and under 60 being failing.

 

[Jean-Pierre]

A couple of things here:

Who writes reviews at MA? I plan on starting soon, and I was just curious who here does a lot of them.

Me, Pyrus, V (as Spawnhorde), and a few other people. Look at Abominatrix and Ghost Of Room 237's reviews for examples of good reviews.

Secondly, the lack of a uniform grading system makes it a pretty questionable source for the most part. I mean people give out grades of 100% to stuff like Sons of Northern Darkness. Then Opeth gets half 95% or better, and then a couple of 10-20% scores. I mean, don't you just have to plug in your guitar to get a 10%? The way I plan on grading is giving 50 points for song quality, 30 for musicianship, 10 for production, and 10 for creativity, which would include lyrics, artwork, presentation, and...creativity. I figure it would be tough to give out anything higher than 90%, and very few things would be worse than 40%. I guess in the end it would come close to grading being 90+=A, 89-80=B, 79-70C, 69-60D, and under 60 being failing.

It all depends on the person reviewing. It's not like you can force someone to give out a certain rating, but if a review is shit, it's deleted.

 

[Cynical]

One thing-
Don't use a school system. 50% should be average, not 75%. Only a very few albums should get 90%. Nothing should get 100%, and only one or two should get 99%.

 

[Hell Mike]

Something PERFECT should get 100% IMO

 

[no country for old wainds]

I write as Sacraphobic, I have about 20 reviews on there. (I'm only happy with about 12)

 

[MasterOLightning]

One thing-
Don't use a school system. 50% should be average, not 75%. Only a very few albums should get 90%. Nothing should get 100%, and only one or two should get 99%.

50% still seems very harsh. I agree that nothing should get 100%, and I can't imagine any scores over 95% the way I'm thinking of grading.

 

[NAD]

One thing-
Don't use a school system. 50% should be average, not 75%. Only a very few albums should get 90%. Nothing should get 100%, and only one or two should get 99%.

I agree with the 50% thing being average, on the 'zine I write for we use a 1 to 10 scale (personally I use no decimals but other writers do, FOOLS! ) and a 5 or 6 / 10 is average. It took me awhile to get away from the school system ranking, but eventually I was tired of giving 6 and 7 / 10 scores to subpar albums.

 

[Slayed Necros]

I occasionally write reviews under Gomorrah.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

I occasionally write reviews under Gomorrah.

I enjoy yours. HowDisgusting is good, too.

Oh and I do too, as mentioned by JP.

 

[5thSeason]

the admins (most of them) over at MA are a bunch of elitist assholes. if you try and give a decent review to an album that they dont like, they WONT accept it. Even if the review was well written, well thought out, and fair if they dont like the album they wont post your review. For example, i sent in a review for the new in flames album a couple months after it came out. Now in flames has been my fav band for many many years... but im not going to give them a score they didnt earn. I gave the album a score of 70-something, which I felt was fair (after all... i liked the album... not great, but not bad). It was a well written review, very fair and balanced, and they deny it and send me an e-mail saying "sorry fanboy, we arent taking any more positive reviews for this album" and they deleted like 200 points from my profile. What the fuck is up with that? A few days later a review poped up for that album that simply said "wow this album is fucking horrible" or something along those lines... and they accepted it with no problem. I still go to the site to discover bands, but I dont contribute to the site anymore because the admins are total douchebags.

 

[Jean-Pierre]

the admins (most of them) over at MA are a bunch of elitist assholes. if you try and give a decent review to an album that they dont like, they WONT accept it.

BULLSHIT. I can see the watery shit streaming from your throat right now. The only actual reason that your review didn't get accepted is that it probably blew profuse amounts of asshole, sorry.

I love your use of the term "fair and balanced" as well. If you got a rejection notice that said your review was simply "fanboy ejaculation", that means that the review was a poorly written piece of fanboy garbage.

 

[5thSeason]

call it bullshit all you want, its just my opinion. I have had a few reviews accepted, but most of them are rejected because they simply dont like the album.

 

[Jean-Pierre]

call it bullshit all you want, its just my opinion. I have had a few reviews accepted, but most of them are rejected because they simply dont like the album.

That's entirely not true. Otherwise, Requiem99's reviews would all be instantly deleted. Your reviews were not written well if they were rejected.

 

[5thSeason]

I love your use of the term "fair and balanced" as well. If you got a rejection notice that said your review was simply "fanboy ejaculation", that means that the review was a poorly written piece of fanboy garbage.

when I am posting on forums I just post quickly, I dont worry about spelling or punctuation or anything. When I write reviews however I make sure they are well written. Since high school english has been my best subject. All the english classes I have taken so far in college have been very heavy when it comes to papers and whatnot. I know how to write a damn good paper, and I use that when I write a review. It was not "poorly written" at all, and i am not a fanboy. A fanboy would have given that album a 90% raiting or something just because its "their fav band". I felt a low 70's score for the album was fair seeing as how I liked it to a certain extent... IMO it was decent. My opinion of the album is beside the point... the point is I didnt praise that album at all. I would point out what I liked about it, and what I disliked, what brought it down and how it could be better. I think an avarage score and an objective, well written review is acceptable... they however dont feel the same way.

Now I wouldnt call them elitist assholes if this was an one time thing... many of my reviews have been rejected (some positive, some negative), almost always with the standard message simply saying that an admin has reviewd and rejected your review... however there were a few that were somewhat insulting because the band/album was on the admins personal shitlist. Now hell.. its their site and they can do what they want, I really dont care. I am just sharing my opinion with the guy who started this thread.

 

[Jean-Pierre]

Send an email to the site if you thought a mistake was made then. Whatever, the site doesn't reject reviews based on musical taste.

 

[Hell Mike]

How about posting the famous review here so we can judge for ourselves?

 

[5thSeason]

like i said, i really dont care how they run their site... after all it is their site, not mine. maybe my posts on here sounded very angry, but thats not how I intended for them to sound. its really not a big deal, I was just sharing my personal experiance with the guy who started the thread. Also, I know the site doesnt reject reviews based on taste... but I highly suspect a couple of admins do, which ones i dont know. just to test the theory I am going to submit a review tomorrow. I think you will at least acknowledge that the majority of the admins are very anti-gothenburg to say the least... so I am going to review the new Dark Tranquillity album (which I personally think is fantastic) and see if they accept it. if they dont I will post the review here and you can tell me if you think they rejected it due to it being poorly written, or if it was unfairly rejected.

 

[V.V.V.V.V.]

I think you will at least acknowledge that the majority of the admins are very anti-gothenburg to say the least

Who in the fuck will deny you that? I've seen plenty of Gothenburg/melo-death album reviews be accepted, though, so you can't be correct.

 

[5thSeason]

How about posting the famous review here so we can judge for ourselves?

I would if I still had it. This was quite some time ago, like 2 months ( maybe 3) after the album came out. Once it was rejected I had no reason to save it.


by the way, how the hell did this turn into the "gang up on dan" thread? lol.

 

[ShadowOfDeath]

I'm notorious for writing reviews on MA. I'm far from the best writer though. some of the best reviewers are Boris, GrimAndFrostbitten, Spawnhorde, Vim_Fuego, take note from their reviews.