What makes a good review?

Russell

__
Jul 15, 2001
11,103
34
48
40
The starry attic
www.russellgarwood.co.uk
In your opinion, what makes a good review? :) What do you like to see in one?

For example do you like or dislike it when a reviewer: goes through each song individually/writes a paragraph on a bands history/lists the good and bad qualities of each instrument/expresses their own opinions very strongly/writes a more factual review etc. etc.?

Well? :)
 
Personally, I like when the reviewer has knowledge of the bands past, or, in some cases, the genre the band is coming from. I don't think this knowledge needs to be explained thoroughly; it should be apparent in the way the reviewer discusses the album in question.

I don't like reviews that tell me everything I already knew about the band or album. The review should try to tell me something insightful. The review should tell me why the album is so great or why it sucks without showing too much personal opinion.
 
Originally posted by npearce
Personally, I like when the reviewer has knowledge of the bands past, or, in some cases, the genre the band is coming from. I don't think this knowledge needs to be explained thoroughly; it should be apparent in the way the reviewer discusses the album in question.

:lol: This is still the Khanate review yeah? :D Dude, I would have given any band who plays similar "music" that review :p And I did give reasons and a run-down of the music, so people can make their own decision :)

I don't like reviews that tell me everything I already knew about the band or album. The review should try to tell me something insightful. The review should tell me why the album is so great or why it sucks without showing too much personal opinion.

Agreed :)
 
Originally posted by Russell
:lol: This is still the Khanate review yeah? :D Dude, I would have given any band who plays similar "music" that review :p And I did give reasons and a run-down of the music, so people can make their own decision :)

:lol: I actually wasn't referring to the Khanate review, but now that you mention it . . .:D

By the way, I just talked to Greg Anderson last night. (He's the owner of Khanate's record label, Southern Lord.) We can expect a new Khanate album sometime next year. I can hardly wait.
 
Originally posted by npearce
:lol: I actually wasn't referring to the Khanate review, but now that you mention it . . .:D

:lol: Ah well, I'll continue to stick by that review anyway :eek:

By the way, I just talked to Greg Anderson last night. (He's the owner of Khanate's record label, Southern Lord.) We can expect a new Khanate album sometime next year. I can hardly wait.

:D Me neither :err: Nearly that entire school of doom bands are signed to Southern Lord or Rise Above, aren't they?

And they all share members as well, I saw a load of the CDs in my local shop (being advertised as "an unholy invocation of crippling, ultragravitational metallic destruction for the dead with tortured vokills and inhuman vocal constructs" or something) and they all had at least 2 members in common with all the others! :)
 
Yes, that's right. A lot of the bands share members.

Are you into Electric Wizard? Have you ever seen them live? They are from England. They're a lot more mid-tempo than Khanate. Extreme Stoner Metal, is what I call them.
 
Originally posted by npearce
Are you into Electric Wizard? Have you ever seen them live? They are from England. They're a lot more mid-tempo than Khanate. Extreme Stoner Metal, is what I call them.

Uuum, no and no.. Heard of them but I've never really had enough money to try them out.. Their CDs are really easy to get here! :eek: But I've just got a new job for my gap year, so maybe I'll bay an album to celebrate my first pay-cheque :)
 
As long as a reviewer can unbiasedly point out the positive and negative aspects of the music, I think it's fine....

They do not need to review EACH song... maybe mention the highlights, or the one or two bad, if any.... Several paragraphs are plenty. One to describe the band, their current state, a little about their past, and who's in it that might be notable... the second paragraph, to describe the album, style, and the production... the third to make specific statemens regarding the best one or two songs and why they're great, and maybe pick apart a song that isn't so great, and give a synopsis on the album as a whole.

That one reviewer obviously was reviewing something he didn't like, and just proceeded to slam it from the onset.

Not very worthy of a review.
 
Make a comparison -- I don't give a shit whether or not the reviewer likes the music, tell me what other bands it sounds like. A bit of the band history/bio is also very cool.

Sometimes the music is original enough to make comparisons difficult, but it's usually not impossible.
 
Well, I could care less if a reviewer likes the music or not... just being subjective rather than state 1001 reasons why he doesn't like it is pretty lame.
 
Originally posted by Insania
Make a comparison, tell me what other bands it sounds like.

Yeah, I agree totally. That's the first thing I tend to look for in reviews. If the band is totally unknown to me, first I want to know if it's anything that I might like. If you don't listen to e.g. black metal, why should you even bother to read it through. You ain't gonna buy that album anyway.

Song by song reviews are quite unnecessary. Review easily becomes too long if every song is reviewed separately. You might want to point out the best songs.

I also think that some kind of summary in the end is good. Is it good or bad/ who might want to buy it...
 
Tell you what peeps - as reviewers on this site, Russell and myself (as well as the other staff) are obviously interested in your opinions on this, as it will help us all to provide reviews that you want to read - so, if you want, why not have a read through some of the more recent reviews and point out examples of particularly good and particularly bad reviews - including what you did and didn't like about them? I'd be particularly interested to hear what people thought of my Killswitch Engage and Isis reviews... :)

Thanks!
 
Originally posted by dill_the_devil
Tell you what peeps - as reviewers on this site, Russell and myself (as well as the other staff) are obviously interested in your opinions on this, as it will help us all to provide reviews that you want to read - so, if you want, why not have a read through some of the more recent reviews and point out examples of particularly good and particularly bad reviews - including what you did and didn't like about them? I'd be particularly interested to hear what people thought of my Killswitch Engage and Isis reviews... :)

Thanks!

:lol: I was going to suggest that until people started saying they didn't like long reviews ;) But yeah it's a great idea, people should :)
 
Well most of the points have been covered but there are a few I personaly like to see. Good knowledge and history of the band, compared to past albums and other bands who play the same style, some times I like to read a bit about each member of the band, although only in some cases, which brings me the most important part of any review in my opinion, the way it is written. You can have every single little detail about a band, like what they eat for breakfast, but if it is written in plain boring text book form, its nothing but useless information that bores the hell outta me and I'm sure many other people. Descriptive writing is what I'm talking about, use of metaphor's and imagination etc, a prime example of what I mean is a writer named Neil Yeomans, a good friend of mine and an excellent reviewer, he writes for SonicDeath and his album reviews are better than any I have ever read or written myself. His use of imagrey is nothing like I have ever read, and many times after reading his reviews he has got me so intrested in the album that i have to hear it for myself and thus for go and buy it, to see if what he writes is true and most of the time it is. In my opinion that is the key to keeping your readers eyes glued to the review reading it from word to word and every time I have ever read one of Neil's reviews, I have read every word of it which is not often I do that because I'm a "skim reader" I read through the paragraphs very fast looking for intresting points, missing a lot of the boring stuff out.
Thats my opinion of a good review any way.
 
I like reviews in which the writer doesn't keep falling back on the old journalistic sawhorses; "apocalyptic vision", "redefine", "anthemic" and so on. I don't like all reviews to be totally objective; two CD's can sound like another well-known one, but if both reviews were simply "this is traditional black metal, reminiscent of Transilvanian Hunger" then there's no differentiation. BUT, what if the review for one said,

"tired, derivative and uninspired angry-wasp-core that tries much too hard to be Transilvanian Hunger"

and t'other said

"a soul-freezing Black Metal onslaught, resplendent in a truly grim, icy production, that invokes the unclean spirit of classic Darkthrone"?

Less is not necessarily more in a CD review, imho.