Fair points made there... my turn now though.
Personally, I feel that having a particular musical 'background' is quite limiting when writing reviews - for instance, glance back over the reviews I've done for this site, and you'll see I've gone from nu-metal (Vacant Stare) to brutal death metal (Sanatorium), black metal (Funeris Nocturnum) to doom-death (My Dying Bride), melodic hardcore (Taken) to psychedelic goth with jazz influences (Sleepless)... and to the best of my knowledge, no-one has seriously disagreed with any of my reviews so far (except the Agathoidaimon one, but that was down to personal opinion rather than any inaccuracy in describing the music).
Russell's Khanate review might not have come from an extreme doom metal background, but it was well written and informative of the band's sound. Even though the general tone of the review was negative, I still felt compelled to check them out because the description of the sound appealed to me. It's fine writing something like 'if you're a fan of Burning Witch, Sunn O))) etc., then you'll love this', but what if the reader themselves has no knowledge of that music? How are they supposed to make an informed decision about whether to buy the album or not?
Also, with the number of writers on the UM staff, it is impossible usually to find a reviewer who will have a solid background knowledge of all the bands to come in. Generally speaking, I stick to extreme metal, Russell does the odd brutal review but mainly alternative/electronic/gothic stuff, Rodrigo handles the progressive side of things and Mark does the trad-metal and hard rock stuff. We ship our CDs around to find an appropriate home for them, so each album is given the best chance.
So, in short, we try our best.
I hadn't noticed 
