Well I happened to see your Scorpions one just now, and despite mostly disagreeing with what you say I think you do a very good job of explaining why that album is musically poor as well as how the producers etc messed up. Occasionally it's cool to do a creative review, but most of them just require straightforward logic and, like, words. The Scorpions one is nothing more than that, but it does it well.


Hehe, oops. At least as you get more consistent, the chance of you being scribed rises slowly. If you keep at it, it will probably happen some day.

How important do you guys think conceding is? For instance when I'm wrapping up the review I might put a little paragraph at the end with "ok this part kinda sucks" on a favorable review or vice versa on a negative review. I see a lot of people writing negative reviews that aren't 0s but don't go into detail of why it at least got, e.g. a 30%. I always like to hear why a great album isn't perfect or how a shitty album does a few things right.

It depends on how it is done, I tend to do this for albums that I score between 30 and 85 percent, but I usually try to get that point across either in the middle of the review when hitting descriptive points, or make it a recurring theme throughout the review. Either lavishly praising or lambasting an album and then adding a qualifier or a concession at the very end tends to throw things off for me. If you have a level of nuance in your view of an album, it's usually a good idea to at least hint at that within the first or second paragraph, in my opinion.

Actually I get really annoyed with my writing style in terms of conceding, because my brain wants to do it in every.goddamn.sentence, and I end up feeling that every opinion I express has a "but" at the end of it. Obviously this is more for the albums that are not extremely good or bad; however, since that's most of them, it happens a lot. I'd agree with Hells and say that it's weird if you're only doing that right at the end of the review, like weren't those points relevant to the main description of the album? So if I finished talking about the pretty good riffs, maybe I would point out that one song has a rubbish main riff, just for balance.

Off topic....

Hey hells, how's that Ominous Glory CD coming?

I like to not have to add little negative bits into every positive paragraph, I get bogged down with the "buts" like you were saying and I find that my writing comes off a little confusing. To have a little second to last concession paragraph, or a statement in the conclusion helps me separate the good and bad, and is also probably a vestige of all my teachers wanting essays that way too lolol

How would you organize it if the album was about 50/50 then? The structure makes sense to me if it's "pretty good" or "pretty bad", I'm not sure how you'd use it for an even mix of both.

There was one 6/10 havok review I did with an intro, a negative paragraph, a positive paragraph, and the conclusion. I would def do mixed paragraphs for albums that have a nuanced aspect, I might write that Kirk and Lars were disappointing while James and Rob weren't in a paragraph about performances on a Metallica review. But if a few songs are good and a few are bad I would probably split that into two separate paragraphs.

I simply want to hail Vlad for his tasty Tankist stew, as the hard hitting Estonians had contacted me for a review, but I don't have the heart to tell them...it's simply too extreme for my tastes at this point.

(Ah, the joys of getting old!)

I do it almost all the time. Maybe too often haha. As a matter of fact, this structure:


is most likely the one I use the most, usually with positives and negatives switched, especially whenever the album in question is overall good, but occasionally lacking, as opposed to mediocre, but occasionally surprising. It just comes naturally to me when I'm writing quickly (e.g. challenges), so I'm trying not to get carried away with it in every review. Doing it within single sentences is absolutely fine but yeah, shouldn't be overdone as well, imo.

I don’t agree with Demon Fang’s Sound of Perseverance review but the thought of Control Denied originally supposed to be covering Painkiller instead of Death is legitimately enticing.

It would've been pretty cool. With how much of the Control Denied demo and demo tracks had to be redone as Death tracks, I am willing to believe there would've been at least a slim chance of it originally being meant to be covered by them and not Death, whether with Chuck or Tim on vocals since the Control Denied demo did have Chuck do more traditional vocals (and they kinda sounded like Tim's). The only concrete information I got was Chuck originally wanting it to be a Japan-exclusive track, but Nuclear Blast wanted it released internationally and "on the new disc".

(In a Lumbergh-like voice) Yeah...about that. Uh, we are still planning to put out a CD release, but we're actually going to remaster the album and include a bonus track when we do, to make up for the 3 years of nothing that followed the initial release. Part of the delay was that our vocalist lost his voice for over a year after catching Covid, though most of it had to do with a lot of other personal stuff landing in everybody's lap. So, if you could not be too mad at me...that would be great.

Alright. It's the lack of updates. I thought I was following you guys on either facebook or bandcamp, but no word, you know?

Is that bonus track going to necessitate a second disc? According to MA the current release is exactly 80 minutes.

Totally understandable, I've been bad about giving updates over the past couple years. I do plan to honor what I said about giving anyone who bought the digital album for $15 a $5 rebait when they purchase the remastered version. And part of the reason for the bonus track is that we are mostly likely going to have to do a double CD release, but also we had been working on this additional song before Rek got sick and weren't sure where to put it at first (initially we were going to make it part of the follow up EP).

Another thing I should mention is that several of the songs I was developing for said EP required a harsh vocalist, and we all got the wind knocked out of us by Ryan Hogan's suicide (I had planned on working with him again as he was a good friend and also one of the best death metal vocalists in our area). I'm currently developing a 5-song cycle in tribute to him that will appear on an Ominous Glory release outside of the Chronicles of Gethron saga at some point, possibly as part of the next release. Things are kind of tentative at the moment, but I do plan on posting a Facebook update in the next few days that further fleshes all of this out.

Oh, if somebody can please update Brazil's Lucifer Priest's page with its new album, Unexpected Presence, I'd be glad to oblige a review...I'd do it myself but simply can't locate an actual album pic anywhere online. (Maybe on Facebouc but I can't seem to log on, as it's been too long!) In other news, I'm just about to wrap up Mass Effect 2 today, having finally rounded up all squad members, including Legion, that cryptic Geth which Tali The Quarian gets into a tiff with at point...only for Commander Shepard aka Space Karen to put her foot down and assert her usual full Renegade authority. (How I love this game!)

Hey Chair that album should be up now for you. Glad youre enjoying mass effect, everyone tells me I should play that series

Awesome! Thank you, I'll surely hit 'er up by tomorrow, as right now I'm in the middle of doing the last ME2 mission. (By the way, the Normandy ship captain Joker is actually named Mr. Moreau, as an added bonus.)
You should definitely play it, and start at the beginning with the first one - thus making the next instalments, especially the second one, that much more enjoyable. You even get XP bonuses and coveted gold trophy for maintaining the same character throughout the three. As my buddy says, the ME series is up there among the top 100 must play video games, and I'm kicking myself for having sat on it for so long.

Quick edit: So, I did it! I beat the Suicide Mission and got the gold No One Left Behind Trophy, where the entire crew survives! (Unfortunately, I failed to adequately romance anyone...maybe next time.)

Good review by Robotiq of Epicus Doomicus Metallicus, you can tell from what he has written and what he has commented here that he is passionate about the drumming of Candlemass, and there are reasons for that. What has surprised me is his opinion in "A Sorcerer's Pledge", for me it is one of the masterpieces of the album, the deepest in emotional charge and in narrative through the music, it seems to me the most important precedent to what they would do in Nightfall.

Really glad to see HeavenDuff reviewing again, I spoke to him not long ago and told him that I liked his reviews and that I wish he could write more, I am very happy to see that he has been encouraged to do so.

Thanks FU... I'm pretty passionate about Candlemass in general as they're one of my favourite bands. I used to love "Sorcerers Pledge" but listening back these days I don't think it holds together all that well, especially compared to other songs on the album. It is still a humungous track but not one of the band's highlights for me.

What a weekend, eh? Not only does Infinite Wealth deliver in spades (although it took about four hours to get through the first chapter, about ten to get past the "demo spot" where you beat up Roman the rogue cop in the dive bar), but killer releases abound, from Mega Colossus to Lucifer...which I'm duly thrilled about, Vlad and Spook! (If anything, Lucifer has long been on my list of bands likely to warrant a perfect score...)

Also, it looks like Traveler's back in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bXzfYWoVeI0

Forever Underground's Warlord review reeks of someone trying to take down a genre "sacred cow". Starting out a review whining about a fan base immediately gives me vibes that it was written in bad faith.

I just finished perusing it and I'm afraid I have to agree, I don't fully fault Forever Underground for the opening paragraph as I've had similar issues with USPM purists in the past as one of this site's earlier defenders of European power metal, this in spite of the fact that I am myself also a huge USPM fan, but I think the review dwells on that point a bit too much. Furthermore, the album in question is by a band that is generally loved by several prime movers in the 2nd wave of power metal movement, particularly and especially Hammerfall. I don't view the review is over fodder per say, but if I were of a mind to give anything put out by an 80s USPM band a negative review, I would have been a bit more meticulous about musical description and limited the sub-genre/cultural critique to a few passing points.

On a side note (and to throw Forever Underground a bone), as someone who enjoys both USPM and European power metal equally, I really think that some fans in the former camp that are still holding onto this "true metal" BS need to tone it down a bit. There are scores of reviews for otherwise solid 2nd wave albums with ridiculously hyperbolic insults towards the bands, their fans, and correspondingly ridiculously low scores that all result in writeups that are 10 times as cringe as the review under discussion. Okay, stepping off the soapbox now. lol

My criticism towards the USPM (more specifically to a sector of the fans) only occupies the first two lines of the first paragraph and in the same one I already specify that this was an idea about the genre that I had in the past and it no longer fits my current perspective.





The rest of the review focuses solely on the problems I have with the release, from the most banal to the most important and focusing mainly on the performance of each of the members and the production as this is where the release is at its weakest for me. If the call out came because the description of the music is vague I would accept it but to treat it as if it was a review with bad intentions I honestly don't get it.

The only thing I'm willing to admit and remove is the final sentence of the review, it's a bit cheap, but well, my intention was to make a joke with hell because it's a Christian band, but if it's understood as a bad faith attack towards a whole subgenre I guess I'd better remove it. Still, all the focus in my review on complaining about USPM takes up 132 words out of 1046, I don't think I focused too much on that aspect. The intention of the first paragraph is nothing more than to make a set up to say that I don't like the album (and then explain why) and at the same time to have an act of sincerity with the reader, I don't see how it can be confused with a cheap attack on a sacred cow of MA.

It's interesting, I always thought And The Cannons was a live recording (without an audience), taken from the video soundtrack but nope apparently it was recorded at Sutton Place Studios, Van Nuys, California. Engineered by Jamie Sutton and produced by Jamie Sutton, Mark Zonder and Bill Tsamis. Thats straight from an interview for the 2CD reissue with Bill. This info should be added to the release page.

Welp, at least FU likes Bill Tsamis' performance.

Weird. I could've sworn I'd read that it was a live in studio thing.

Playing that album again now - still dig it. I don't really see any of FU's critiques at all to be honest, it's all very good. Lots of character. That's the best way I can say it - dude knew how to write songs; catchy, emotional, varied. I love the vocals. The drums are good too - way more than just simple pop stuff like the review says.

Their production was always kinda lightweight compared to Savatage, Jag Panzer etc but I don't really grade too harshly on that shit.

Keyboards were a bigger part of their sound than just about any other USPM band at the time so I'm not surprised.

I also read your post prior to this one, thanks for the input, if that had been the case I think it would be still legitimate to criticize the performances and the sound as well but I would have had to narrow it down, although I see that is not the case.


Yeah its the best part of the album, he was truly talented on his playing, I might check more of the Warlord catalogue just because of him


Eh, the drums are good at times, sometimes I find them too flat. I can't stand the vocals, I see 0 strength in them, nothing charismatic and no emotion in the performance. And the production is a bit of a turn off for me as opposed to other early USPM bands because they had a more strong and solemn approach you could say, the example of Helstar and their debut comes to mind. Warlord on that album sounds much softer, more preciosist, I don't like that sound with such a weak production.

It could still be a live in studio recording but the interview unfortunately doesn't press Bill for more info. We need Zonder to clarify this, if he hasn't already. As for the production and the songwriting, they wanted to crack into the mainstream and make their millions, gotta get on the radio and MTV to do that so there's a mixture of commercial and heavy stuff. I think there was a make it or break it feeling of desperation building at that time for them too. The whole thing in reality is a promo/demo that they badly wanted to get onto MTV. There's a certain naive, youthful "I'm gonna be a rock 'n' roll star, Gotta groove from night to day" charm to that.

The biggest issue anyone should have with Warlord is not their songs because most are incredibly technical. Having transcribed every song from Deliver Us and the couple new ones from Cannons, I will say even the ones that sound standard like Winter Tears and Lost And Lonely Days are a vicious undertaken on ones picking hand. Aliens has one of the sickest rhythms in Warlord's catalogue and the forearm for the fretting hand will want to press charges on you afterwards.

The reason the drums are so prominent is because Zonder is a producer but, besides, FU wrote that the percussion was simplistic. Maybe it was because of how simplistic the lines are that it took me years to get that damn JAZZ-fused Cowbell pattern in Lucifer's Hammer down.

Mark Zonder was a Jazz drummer at first and just like every other instrument, playing Jazz compared to Metal is like building a sprawling plantation mansion compared to a damn tree house. Most metal music is the definition of bare bones, basic and could be done in ones sleep and nowhere is this more obvious than on the drums. As someone who has played drums for over 35 years I assure you that when the drummer is intuitive to Jazz tendencies there will be a lot of free space, which is the opposite of what is expected of metal. The number one rule of Jazz percussion is "You are always one hesitation away from solving all your problems," and Lucifer's Hammer is built upon that. That pattern is quintessential Jazz in how much hesitation is there, which runs counterintuitive to how a drummer would approach metal. Notice how the only time it does the typical double bass 16th note pattern is in the first whole note of the bar before leaving it open to the cowbell and then room to breathe? A metal drummer can play 250 bpm blastbeat death metal 10 songs straight but ask them to play that and you will see them throw their sticks in frustration. FU, not sure if your version of Cannons came with it but listen to those Jazz tendencies on full display with Hands and Feet (Thunder Child Farewell) and tell me the man was a simplistic percussionist.

As I wrote in my review of Deliver Us, the biggest problem Warlord ever was:

"Whatever the explanation is for Jack’s very brief stint in the band - and their inability to hire him back at a later time - he is and always will be THE vocalist for Warlord. ... .Every other singer the band has used have all been incapable of simply placing Jack’s microphone stand in front of him at a gig. These songs will never sound better than here if with a different singer, these were meant for this one mans voice. It is not because he had anything to do with the writing - that according to chief songwriter William Tsamis - but because Damien King 1 had a masterful voice."

Seriously, forgetting the production value - and that awful thin version from 2002 - listen to Jack Rucker's take on Lucifer's Hammer and now listen to Rick Cunningham's version.

It's the same way as Cirith Ungol's debut album, I just don't like those combinations of attempted radio hits mixed with truly stronger metallic songs.


Thanks for the input, actually that version of Lucifer's Hammer feels better with that vocalist. And as for the drumming, although I wrote that at times I did appreciate skilled moments, I should have put that there are times where it FEELS simplistic, even though it's not, and the production doesn't help by making it sound too dry at times.

I think my favorite Warlord album is The Holy Empire. The production is fantastic, the songwriting truly epic.... though I'm not sure how you'll respond to the vocalist considering your disdain for Damien King II. I like Rick Anderson's voice a lot though.

Funny how that works...
all this talk about 'And the Cannons of Destruction Have Begun' made me realise I had not heard the album in at least 30 years so I just listened to it twice in a row.
This is great stuff!

Hi Folks! I've now gotten up to 5 reviews so I figured I'd come here and ask if people have any feedback or suggestions on my reviews to date.

Here are the 5 reviews I've written so far:
Morbid Angel-Altars of Madness
Morbid Angel-Domination
Carcass-Necroticism
Carcass-Heartwork
In Flames-Colony

Liked the Carcass review, my friend expresses similar shrugs for that album. The way you add in comparisons to the other Carcass albums bolsters your credibility. For a bit there I was thinking you were not gonna expand too much on why it was boring, but you did, which is good. Liked that the various versions of the morbid angel album were discussed. Most of your reviews have a whole section about production which I like. The Colony review is probably your best one. Only a couple places had grammar which sounded off, like the end of the Carcass review where you say "maybe this review may get amended". Very promising start but you haven't covered a shitty album yet so I'd like to see how you tackle that.

Thanks man! I'll make sure to proofread a bit more than I've been doing. Fingers crossed Heartwork will grow on me one day, we'll see. Not sure where I'd start with bad albums. Glad you liked the various versions of the Morbid Angel album, I love physical copies, so I try to incorporate that aspect whenever possible. Thanks again for the feedback! It's much appreciated

Thinking I might give Point of Entry a shot as a negative review. Outside of Desert Plains, Headin' Out to the Highway and Hot Rockin'...yikes.

Edit: Just read your October Rust review, that's kinda how I feel about Heartwork! Christmas Mourning is my fave Type O song funnily enough.

What I don't get about your review for Heartwork is when you say you have listened to it hundreds of times and a couple of times a month for years and haven't been able to "get it", I mean if that's true then I gotta ask why?! Coz you're obviously never gonna "get it" at that rate, it shouldn't take that much time and effort to get into something. I just wouldn't spend that time on something I didn't love. It sounds like perhaps you're trying too hard, maybe give it a decent break and then come back to it.
Um and the other thing, Heartwork has never been hard to find as far as I know.
Lastly when you say "the riffs just aren't there", I mean wow, thinking about I don't think you'll ever get it at all. Nevermind.
On a positive note you at least weren't a dickhead and gave it some ridiculously low percentage and you write well.

Edit: accidentally referred to Necrotism initially.