Всё sounds absolutely fine to my ears.

Hey if you want some actually good recent Iranian based music, check out Eternal Candle's latest.

I keep waiting for "Lost Under the Ruins" to launch into perfect production after the first repeats of the intro (Like just a lo-fi intro). The very start of this song is actually not bad.

This is embarrassingly bad. Kudos for listening to the entire thing. I turned it off after a couple of minutes (and I thought I gave it a lot of my time).

Those vocals sure are...something

Hey guys. Apparently It is the roasting season so lets have some metal fun.
So I give some review on the review...
The review starts with 2 random unrelated paragraphs on how he has cooked his last night's dinner and which one is better in soccer. the Manchester or Juventus. After some masturbation he talks about the album for 4.5 genuine paragraphs. (Which I'm thankful)

There exist some contradictions here. While he says the album is "hefty" or basically long (to use the fact it can be boring by default just because it is one hour long) at the same time he is criticizing why it changes its genre and tunes so often and why is there a variety of melodies that he feels inconsistency between individual tracks! It means at the same time he uses the point/fact that it is a long album, he also criticizes its music varies significantly from trash metal to black. Like, dude! How else one hour could be passed better?!
However, as an hour and 27 tracks long album, there isn't a single moment to waste your time for sake of trying to make it longer deliberately. Something which he has not pointed out at all in the review... There exist hours and hours of boring ambient albums just to fill the time... Which this album isn't one of them and every second is used decently.
The reviewer changes his position a couple of times. Throwing "it's low quality" is safe just because it's a home studio record anyway.

There is another hilarious point, he has heard acoustic guitars on this album and he likes it as a compliment lol
"I can appreciate the flirtations with cleaner sounds such as acoustic guitars and piano on occasional songs" This album doesn't have no acoustic guitar and if you listen to it, there is no confusion about that. I asked it some other non-musician friend and they were not confused neither if there exists ac guitar or not on this album.

While he has been personally nice to me to write a review against this album, he tries to undermine metal from the middle east just as a group... "particularly one that comes from a region that, as I touched upon in my Ryth review, isn’t the most conducive to making metal"... He is saying it in fancy words the geographical region is not good to create metal! Wow! How logical!
The mindset doesn't need any further discussion on how narrow-minded, if not racist, it is:
To put the ppl from the middle east in a group of potato bag and decide how are they in general... It's like saying I don't like Americans, for example Dostoevsky and Nelson Mandela... (if you can find any connection between them!)

What kind of review has a side comment about 2 other random bands?! )
Ryth and Rye? Did it come by alphabetical order or because they are from Bahrain and Russia which are geographically neighbors to Iran? Somebody who is calling the masterpiece "amateur"!

His ass has had "leeway" and pity on me from an above situation and I should be thankful for that:
"As such, when I first saw that Najand was from Iran, I felt it necessary to give a lot of leeway to the production" [but then he learns I am now living in Canada]
Keep your pathetic leeway for your nobody-self dude, nobody needs you to have pity on them because they are from any hell.

And anything if it was applied to Iran, is still the same cause I still work in home studio at 3 o clock in the morning anyway.
So yea It is correct that I wont make that boring generic sound that you are looking for. If you wanted to say it on the other side, you would say "wow, how dynamic this album is" and calling it a good thing! Its really hard nearly impossible older ppl get into any new music.

The album is one hour long and Its 27 tracks. And still he says "there is merit to discussing less accomplished music in order to more fully appreciate what the best albums do right" (His intention to review my master-not-piece is to highlight other good pieces of music in the world!! Like in real world anybody would ever notice his nobody-ass judgements in the first place! And the pieces of music that have to be appreciated are things like Guns and Roses and pop rock that he likes! Be happy with that!)

Don't get me wrong, I'm just playing with you back... And everything is fine. Still I'm thankful that you've spent some minutes!
But it is funny some blinded encourager (nikarg dude) which is a staff/moderator of the website gets so influenced by the review coming around saying "This is embarrassingly bad. Kudos for listening to the entire thing. I turned it off after a couple of minutes (and I thought I gave it a lot of my time)"...
No kiddo, beside your worthless time you have got the idea in the wrong way. You were supposed to listen to it all so you know why is it bad or hilarious!! That's the whole point of teasing reviews!
And if you were smart enough you would realize its a game and you should have your own opinion instead of being flatterer to your friend without listening to the "thing" !
Yea obviously it's ok for metalheads to talk so frankly, sincerely, direct and criticize... Because it makes more listeners and interested ppl... But when your admin/staff is so smart to come around just to announce "he has NOT listened to the album" ) what kind of idiot announces that he has not paid the time to listen to the album and still he spits out some shit about it?

I evaluate the review was generally a working teasing tool and it is good. Regarding the album being in Farsi language, he couldn't have really much more material in hands to talk about (Except the song titles)
So thank you anyway.

Written by Najand_Hatred on 07.01.2023 at 04:19

Hey guys.

Hello! I did wonder whether you might find this. Thank you for your response, and for your critique of my review; I certainly can't begrudge you the opportunity to do so given the overall picture I've painted of your album. I did notice a couple of points within your comment that I would like to reply to.

"There exist some contradictions here. While he says the album is "hefty" or basically long (to use the fact it can be boring by default just because it is one hour long) at the same time he is criticizing why it changes its genre and tunes so often and why is there a variety of melodies that he feels inconsistency between individual tracks! It means at the same time he uses the point/fact that it is a long album, he also criticizes its music varies significantly from trash metal to black. Like, dude! How else one hour could be passed better?!
However, as an hour and 27 tracks long album, there isn't a single moment to waste your time for sake of trying to make it longer deliberately. Something which he has not pointed out at all in the review... There exist hours and hours of boring ambient albums just to fill the time... Which this album isn't one of them and every second is used decently.
The reviewer changes his position a couple of times. Throwing "it's low quality" is safe just because it's a home studio record anyway."

There is no contradiction here. It's a fairly common opinion to have that if an album length is on the higher end of the range that most albums fall into (35-75 minutes), then the expectations of the contents of the album to justify that length are higher, otherwise such records do have a tendency to drag before they are over. In the case of Battle For Emancipation, 69 minutes is a very long album, so if there are songs within that do not engage the listener, or if the general experience of listening to the album is unpleasant in some way, the experience one is going to have after sitting through 69 minutes of such a record is, for many people, going to be more negative than sitting through a 15-minute EP comprised of a reduced selection of songs from said album.

You seem to be saying here that because there are varied melodies and changes in styles between songs, then it is automatically exciting because there is variety; variety is not automatically a positive, if the content fulfilling said variety is not enjoyable, and in the case here, the 27 songs are almost uniformally unenjoyable. Longer songs is not a question of ambience (there is a plethora of prog bands that write songs close to or exceeding 10 minutes with no ambience), but if you gave me the choice between 3 songs that last for a combined total of 5 minutes, all of which feel underdeveloped and which go nowhere, or a single 5-minute song with satisfying progressions enjoyable riffs, I will choose the latter. You say because the album is so long, there isn't a single moment to waste making it longer deliberately; the ideal thing to do would not to be to make the 27 songs all longer, but to choose the best 8-12 of them and make those songs more enjoyable.

My position never changes - I do not enjoy this album. I do not enjoy it because the mix varies significantly between tracks so that no consistency in sound is created, because the extremely lo-fi nature of it makes it a challenge sometimes to even hear the guitars, let alone enjoy them, because listening to a record with these in-built issues for 69 minutes is an ordeal in and of itself, and because those 69 minutes are made harder by the songs themselves having very few moments that makes one think 'I like this moment'.




"While he has been personally nice to me to write a review against this album, he tries to undermine metal from the middle east just as a group... "particularly one that comes from a region that, as I touched upon in my Ryth review, isn’t the most conducive to making metal"... He is saying it in fancy words the geographical region is not good to create metal! Wow! How logical!
The mindset doesn't need any further discussion on how narrow-minded, if not racist, it is:
To put the ppl from the middle east in a group of potato bag and decide how are they in general... It's like saying I don't like Americans, for example Dostoevsky and Nelson Mandela... (if you can find any connection between them!)"

The region that I was referring to specifically with 'not the most conducive to making metal' is your country Iran. Perhaps it is a misguided western interpretation of the situation in Iran for such music, but when one hears stories of bands being jailed for being in a metal band, one gets the impression that there might be significant challenges in trying to book a recording studio and going in to record such music. I know with Confess that the alleged blasphemic content of their music probably had influence over the charges they received, but your own music is clearly politically motivated; you describe your lyrics as 'revolutionary and socialism-advocating' on your Bandcamp. I imagine revolutionary lyrics might not be well received by the Iranian government either, given the response to the current protests within the country. That's why I assumed that a move to Canada, a country where numerous metal bands have been able to make metal music without being arrested, might have made the process easier; however, if your move has not had any impact on your music-making accessibility, then you can happily ignore that section of the review.

As for why I would consider giving the 'leeway' that you say I should disregard, I assumed that if one had to make the music you were making in secret to avoid a police crackdown, then you may have had limited places in which one could do it, and that those limited places may have had limited recording capabilities, which could explain the production level on the record; I don't think it's unreasonable to note that most protest media are typically made with less resources than media made by the cultural establishment or supported by the government, hence why documentaries like Winter On Fire and The Square aren't as polished as, say, The Revenant. As you say, you are using a home studio; the music of the band that I'm in so far has been recorded at one of the members' homes, and the sound quality of that music is clearly below what one would get if we went to a professional studio. However, the production on Battle For Emancipation is one of the rawest and muffled that I've heard on any metal album, and it is a pretty huge barrier that gets in the way of enjoying the record.

You have well over a dozen EPs and full-length records on your Bandcamp, so it is very clear that you enjoy making music. If you make the music purely for your own personal enjoyment and satisfaction without any care of how other people receive it, then I fully respect that, although I might question the benefits of sharing it publicly in that case. If you do hope for people that aren't yourself to enjoy it, however, then Battle For Emancipation is not the way to go about it, as I can think of very few records that I've found as few positive things to say about as I have with this one. The production quality is a huge obstacle for anyone except lo-fi fetishists, and if you could find a way to take even minor steps towards something with slightly more clarity, then it could make a huge difference, but the songwriting is also something that I did not enjoy, and from the reactions of most people here (as harsh as they are, which was and is something I am trying to avoid in my review and comments; I do respect the challenges of making music as a solo artist, and I am trying to be respectful while making these comments), I'm not alone with that.



Take what you want from this; at the end of the day, if you don't care what other people think, then that is your prerogative and you can feel free to continue with the same songwriting and producing approach as you currently have, but you might also want to consider not reading what other people think of your music, because I have sincere doubts that the vast majority of opinions will notably deviate from my own. If you do have some interest in seeing people's opinions of your music grow more favourable, the things I've mentioned are things that I believe would be beneficial to take into consideration.

Written by Najand_Hatred on 07.01.2023 at 04:19

Hey guys. Apparently It is the roasting season so lets have some metal fun.

There was no roasting, and what you wrote is not really funny; just an incoherent rant. No one attacked you personally, everything that has been said was about your music. You should be thankful that someone actually took the time to listen and write about an album as bad as this, and also be so kind about it. Because this is a very kind review, and you should take into consideration the points of criticism in it, if you ever want to produce something listenable in the future.

In any case, if you decide to comment here again, make sure you refrain from insulting other people and calling them names.

Spent more time on that comment than he did on the album.

Well, I didnt want to mention it but now it adds to the fun: for the audience knowledge Metal Storm Radio on my 2011 album Complicated Antitheses, was playing the album (which was their generosity) with a terrible technical issue... Back then I yelled at them... That is why I should be roasted on here!

I knew when I reply you, you are gonna throw I've insulted you or something anyway (nikarg) ... While I've mentioned 3 times that everything is cool and I'm just playing with you back, and the review is good enough for what is its intention.
You are burnt because I pointed out ppl dont feel necessity to mention they have NOT listened to the album, and you are a staff, that is a deadly mistake.
So dont use boring predictable cards pls (insult and those childish cards)
Anyway

I came back to mention one thing. Soon (if not already) the AI can make all that generic studio sound that you are looking for. So for later generations THIS (Najand) is gonna be the subject of study which comes from handcraft, NOT that boring generic studio sound that you are praising.
Ofc I dont mean go release something you havent spent enough time to create it. And if you listen to the album it is a serious project. One way to prove it, it is that it doesnt have 12 minutes long repetitive tracks, instead it has 27 tracks that alone shows how much the album has been worked on. Inevitably there is hundred of melodies and you cant be bored, and nothing has been done with shortcut and time-filling techniques... (like Nirvana leaving 20 minutes empty silent track and thinking it is so dark and cool!)
Cheers!

Had to check this out because of the interesting comment thread. Not going to comment on the actual music here, but I really don't understand the production. You could literally do better with a smartphone and audacity without any mixing at all except aligning the instrument tracks and setting the volumes for them.

I love this thread, please go on

Najand_Hatred has got to be a troll account. I can't imagine the actual musician creating an account calling himself that just to rant worse than a Karen about a bad review given. And if it's actually him he's completely delusional.

Written by Nejde on 11.01.2023 at 14:44

Najand_Hatred has got to be a troll account. I can't imagine the actual musician creating an account calling himself that just to rant worse than a Karen about a bad review given. And if it's actually him he's completely delusional.

I doubt it's a troll account, and I think we can afford to offer some slack; I didn't exactly shower praise in my review, and I have no issues with an artist retorting to such a strongly negative article as mine. I'm reassured that most people share my opinion on the record, and I either don't understand (I have no idea about anything related to Metal Storm Radio and it did nothing to influence me listening to or reviewing this record) or am fundamentally misaligned (the whole production topic) on the points Najand is raising, but I'm hoping we can all remain civil in this thread

Honestly I've never heard of Metal Storm Radio and I've been a member since 2010. And as a musician, if you release your music to the public, you just have to be able to accept a bad review, being compared to other bands and getting negative critique. Otherwise keep your music to yourself.

Thank you for this review for starting what proved to be an interesting conversation.

I don't think it's the worst music I've ever heard, but I also don't think it's good. The first thing it reminded me of was the Children of Bodom demo "Implosion Of Heaven" that they released under the band name Inearthed. That record was similarly difficult for me to sit through, but it was mercifully much shorter.

The different genres and different sound mixing on each track that Musclassica pointed out is not enjoyable to me either. I think would prefer a more consistent black metal sound from a raw record like this.

The comments from the Najand_Hatred account are bizarre.

You ruined the album on the first week it was launched. Your nonsense underrating post/score would come up on the google in the first week, which was a bummer.
It is not the musicians fault that you are bored of your favourite genre. If you listen to the album with fresh ears, it is over-qualified which makes it too heavy to swallow.

It's difficult to believe your post and score were just an honest act of ignorance, a nobody trying to get attention with no effort. When you lack sufficient judgement, the good things, the innovations, the golden remarks actually shock you and you refer to them as downgrading points. For example giving you 1 hour of heavily worked music, and you downgrade it for the same reason!

We clearly know that when a random person comes across this crappy page, regardless of the music, they will struggle to think independently and have the courage to stand up and say it is actually great stuff to listen to and you have underrated it.

I dont know if you have ever been into the genre of one man blackmetal bands in the first place. It is like I try to cook pasta, and you underrate it because it is not hamburger! You should move on from the genre! You have never spent years listening to Burzum, Xasthur, Judas Iscariot, I Shalt Become... and dozens of other one man blackmetal bands. You can be happy with your Guns N Roses, and stop playing baseball with basketball players. Doesnt matter how good your vocabulary and literature are in your mother tongue.

Again I repeat, if you are tired of your favourite metal genre, dont blame it on the musicians. If you want to write a proper review or score something professionally, you should listen to it with fresh ears. So fresh that a blackmetal riff could give you goosebumps like when you were 16.

A professional judge doesnt judge based on how his mood is, how many other songs he has listened to on the same day, how tired his ears are... If you listen to 3 albums in a row, it is impossible to enjoy the third one and judge it properly. Therefore if you cant judge professionally and your own circumstances affect your judgement, then you can close your mouth instead of pooping on such a masterpiece that was too heavy and overqualified for you to swallow.

Dont get me wrong. I like challenging and criticising at the right time. But not two days after the album's release and its first appearance in online searches! With a nonsense amateur critic who gives side comments about 2 other random bands that he doesnt like while reviewing this album!

Written by Najand_Hatred on 06.02.2023 at 23:15

comment

I'd been trying to give the benefit of the doubt to your previous comments; this was a harsh review and in the immediate aftermath of reading it I understood why you would be upset. However, it's been a month now, if this is still how you're acting, I'm not going to have the same patience for it.

First off, don't misunderstand my motivations in reviewing for this website. "a nobody trying to get attention with no effort" - I freely admit that I am a small fish in a big ocean of metal media, amateur and professional, and I am fine with that; if I wanted a wider audience, I would try to get a position writing for Angry Metal Guy, and I'm confident in my writing abilities that I could possibly be accepted to do so (side note, if Battle For Emancipation was reviewed on AMG, I guarantee whoever wrote it would be far harsher than I've been with my review). I write for Metal Storm a) because I have the freedom to review what I want, when I want, and b) there's a small dedicated userbase here that I like trying to introduced hidden gems to. I certainly don't habitual 'slam' records to try and get kudos as an edgy reviewer, and certainly if I was trying to get attention, I wouldn't waste time with albums as underground as yours; I know from experience that writing a negative review of Nightwish, or even positive but not adulatory reviews of Dream Theater and Helloween are far more reliable ways to kick up a stir.

Second, I think it's arrogance on your part to think that I have reacted negatively to Battle For Emancipation due to reasons of my own making (listener fatigue, mood) rather than the innate (lack of) quality of your album. Additionally, while I appreciate that you place so much value into the power of my words to say that the other negative responses here are due to my review rather than, again, the quality of your album, I assure you that everyone here is entirely capable of independently recognize the glaring, endless flaws that there are with this album, because it does not take any great stretch to uncover them; they are immediately recognizable to anyone with any experience of listening to metal.

I'd also like to address the contradictory claims of me either being 'bored of my favourite genre' or me approaching one-man black metal as a hamburger/Guns N' Roses enthusiast. As to whether I like (one-man) black metal; I reviewed an album from a one-man black metal band only a couple of weeks before Najand, Salqiu's خ​م​ا​س​ي​ن ا​ل​و​ب​ا​ء. I reviewed that album very positively, because it is a very good album. I also only yesterday reviewed an album that was from what once was a one-man black metal band, and was again very complimentary of it. I've reviewed a few other albums from one-man black metal bands, so I think I'm entirely capable of recognizing good music by such artists. At the same time, I by no means listen exclusively to this category of music; of the 26 categories in our current awards, I reviewed at least one of the nominees in 20 of them, again mostly positively, so I can recognize a full range of styles. My opinions on Battle For Emancipation had nothing to do with burnout or inexperience, they had everything to do with this being a bad album, and I'm sorry, but it is.

I don't really see why I'm bothering to further engage with you, because you seem impervious to both any form of criticism and to any kind of lateral thinking, as you once again continue with the rambling about "2 other random bands that he doesnt like while reviewing this album". 1) I like both albums - if you literally made one click on the URL to the Ryth review I wrote that I linked, you'll see that I gave it a very positive review. 2) There are clear reasons why I mentioned both Rye and Ryth; for Rye, I directly alluded to a review another writer on the site wrote of their latest album, in which they said that the production of their latest album (and they are a one-man black metal-adjacent act) was a slight hindrance; I compared it to your album, where the production was a herculean hindrance. For Ryth, I referenced the fact that Iran isn't necessarily the easiest place to make metal unimpeded, which is why I was willing to appreciate why the production of your album might have been so flawed, but you misinterpreted that as a racist dig, rather than me referecing a well-known case of a metal band fleeing Iran after being imprisond and sentenced to lashes for blasphemy charges relating to being in a metal band, not to mention there being ongoing anti-government protests that could have interfered with your album production if you were still situated in Iran. However, despite this being fairly apparent from the context of my comments, I'm sure you will once again overlook it, even as I explicitly explain it right here and now.



In my previous reply to you, I acknowledged that if you didn't care about people's opinions of your music, then you could completely disregard my review and go about doing what you're doing, but if you do care, you should really try to take some points on board from my review and subsequent reply. That you have again returned here and accused me of ruining your album suggests that you do wish to have positive feedback on your music, in which case I really think you should take these points on board:

- There are a lot of projects, particularly one-man bands, that pump out releases at a rate of 1-2 per year even if they don't have the ideas to make them interesting. I've not heard much from your previous albums, although I have skimmed through a couple of them, but based purely on the ideas that made it onto Battle For Emancipation, I reckon it's quite possible that you should slow down releases and consolidate your ideas, because this is a stylistically incoherent, sorely underdeveloped album in terms of songwriting ideas. That's my opinion, it's the opinion of other commenters here, and if my review is capable of ruining your album, then it's probably most other people's thoughts too, as plenty of other albums get by with one negative review alongside a number of more positive ones, so my one review shouldn't be sufficient to ruin your album.

- There's something that I find genuinely lazy about your reaction to the review and comments here, and it's your steadfast refusal to appreciate that, just because black metal is historically linked with lo-fi production, that it's not just ok to produce an album badly and act as if it's immune to criticism due to the style that it's in. Black metal is mostly made with harsher production than, say, power metal, but there is a whole range of different ways in which black metal can be produced, and a lot of it comes down to the specifics of what black metal it is. Let's take a few different examples here of black metal songs with varying degrees of lo-fi production and see how they contrast with one another:

--- Darkthrone - Transilvanian Hunger - arguably the quintessential example of pure black metal; it's effectively 2 separate simplistic riff passages with incessant blasting for an entire 6 minutes. The pure simplicity of this song is enhanced by the very lo-fi production that makes it sound incredibly quiet and muffled, as if recorded at the bottom of a well; it offers a charm to the song.

--- Xasthur - Prison Of Mirrors - perhaps the greatest song ever released by a one-man black metal band. This song is far more sophisticated than Transilvanian Hunger, with waves of melancholic tremolo washing over listeners alongside Xasthur's pained distorted screams. This song is clearer than Transilvanian Hunger on a production front, coming out more full-bodied, but still with a harshness that amplifies the pain of the vocals and the sharpness of the guitars. It's a perfect production for a perfect song, and it still allows the dynamic contrasts of the song's ebbs and flows to come through, as well as the intricacies of the subtle melodies of the song.

--- Kryatjurr Of Desert Ahd - Devastating Losses Of Ecological Doom - this is a new underground project with already a couple of EPs and an album under its belt, the latter of which we nominated in the ambient/drone/noise category of our most recent awards. This is black metal, but it's an ambient form of black metal that also incorporates a lot of noise; to this end, Kryatjurr produce their music in such a stark manner that the black metal tremolo and blasting almost disintegrates into ambient noise. It's a really unique way of doing things, but it works because they have a clear vision for their music.

All of these releases, and so many others within the genre, have a clear vision of what they're trying to accomplish with the production, and said production works beneficially towards those goals. How does the way that you've produced Battle For Emancipation benefit the album or its songs? The production fluctuates substantially between tracks, affording it no sonic consistency, something that the vast majority of metal enjoyers will recognize as detrimental. Additionally, for a song like Lost Under The Ruins, which isn't really black metal if you overlook the vocals but more of a Southern rock/stoner track, what benefit does the muffled lo-fi production give to it? Most southern rock/stoner rock is produced with big guitar fuzz and a lot of swagger to allow the grooves to shine. I do not see a way in which the production of Battle For Emancipation works in its favour; that is why I was so critical of it in my review, and I think I pointed that out fairly clearly

---

Be as upset as you want with me being critical of your album, I don't really care; in the end, the only one who'll benefit from you working on how you make music is you. But I want to make it fervently clear, because I will not engage with you any further: I did not exercise laziness when reviewing your album. As a metal musician, a music writer, and a passionate metal fan who ceaselessly trawls for the best music in the style, I recognize the effect my words can have on the musicians who read them, which is why, on the relatively rare occasions I write a negative review, I try to be sensitive in doing so, but I'm not going to mince words. I found your album to be severely flawed, and I was careful in how I expressed that, but I stand steadfastly behind that opinion, and I believe outside of your inner circle of friends, it is very much going to be the overwhelming prevailing opinion about Battle For Emancipation. There's plenty of reviews I've written where someone could come and ask me if I could do better, and, even though it's entirely beside the point whether a critic can make a better album than the one they're critiquing in order to justify their opinion, normally my answer would be 'probably not', but with your record, I'm genuinely confident that the music I have created so far in my band is better thought out, better recorded, and better written than this album. I almost feel that in some ways I've put more thought into aspects of your album than you have, particularly on the production front and how the album's production comes across. I've written this already, but I'll reiterate it one last time: if you don't care about external opinions, then my review does not matter and you can freely ignore it, but if you actually want people to engage positively with it, the way you're making it on Battle For Emancipation is not the best way to go about it.

Written by musclassia on 07.02.2023 at 11:58

Written by Najand_Hatred on 06.02.2023 at 23:15
his comment

your comment

I really don't think you need to waste your energy responding to someone who produced this s-tier album and namedrops Burzum, Xasthur, Judas Iscariot, and I Shalt Become as if these things are comparable in any way outside of them being solo projects. Delusions of grandeur, as it were.

Written by Najand_Hatred on 06.02.2023 at 23:15
...

Hey dude, have you ever listened to Aurinko? you should check them out!

Written by Najand_Hatred on 06.02.2023 at 23:15

Comment

Tbh I listened to this when it released before this review was posted and just read the review now, so it had no effect on my opinion of this album. I don’t think his low rating in the review is having any effect of other people's rating. The song lengths and number of tracks here is more reminiscent of punk bands that have lots of short songs and an album lasts about 30 minutes. 27 songs is a lot, especially when you consider the production value here, it’s very grating after awhile. This wasn’t good, but it doesn’t mean your next won’t be if you take feedback and criticism and work on it.

Written by musclassia on 07.02.2023 at 11:58

I compared it to your album, where the production was a herculean hindrance

Oh my! Was this foreshadowing the arrival of King Hercules all along?!

On a serious note, I finally got around to listening to this album, reading your review again, and reading this long comment thread in its entirety. And I would like to congratulate you, musclassia, on how you handled this situation so excellently. I don't know if I would've or could've remained cool and professional when faced with such attacks by Najand. Most likely, I would have curled up into a ball or lashed out recklessly. You remained calm, fair, and articulate while Najand ranted and threw insults at you, calling you a racist among many other terrible things. You have my respect.

Written by F3ynman on 20.08.2023 at 11:24


On a serious note, I finally got around to listening to this album, reading your review again, and reading this long comment thread in its entirety. And I would like to congratulate you, musclassia, on how you handled this situation so excellently. I don't know if I would've or could've remained cool and professional when faced with such attacks by Najand. Most likely, I would have curled up into a ball or lashed out recklessly. You remained calm, fair, and articulate while Najand ranted and threw insults at you, calling you a racist among many other terrible things. You have my respect.

Thanks F3ynman! Honestly, this and the Hercules review threads have been unfortunate - I tried to keep the tone of each review as respectful as possible while also stating my clear opinion, since I knew a one-man band reading a negative review like this would probably find it unpleasant reading, but both reviews instigated the exact reaction that I feared. I want to try and keep less positive reviews coming since otherwise flat 7+ scores on every front page review makes the scores even more meaningless than they already are, but it's the negative reviews that more reliably get empassioned responses!

Written by musclassia on 20.08.2023 at 21:07

I want to try and keep less positive reviews coming since otherwise flat 7+ scores on every front page review makes the scores even more meaningless than they already are, but it's the negative reviews that more reliably get empassioned responses!

I remember reading in a thread here somewhere (although I'm sorry that I don't exactly recall who wrote it) that writing a negative review is in many ways more difficult than a positive review. One needs to organize one's arguments and force oneself to engage with music that one finds unappealing to determine what exactly the reason for the unappeal is.

I had fun praising some of my favorite albums with my first reviews. And I remember that you once suggested that I try my hand at being more critical. Over time I've now tried to embrace that (for example, my reviews on Acid King, Dawn Ray'd, Kommodus, and Agriculture) and have enjoyed the challenging experience of portraying my dislike of an album in a reasonable manner.

There is definitely value in presenting why some albums just don't work. Otherwise, the truly great albums won't be able to stand out of the crowd.

There was a phase(on MS) where musicians use to react very affirmatively on reviewers positions on the records. I've read ample of musicians posts here behaving in such an classy way to the reactions and quite open for the suggestions. Those musicians have done incredibly well(like Sleestak).

The height of intolerance and being crusty now musicians bring forth upon for their work as if they have pounded blood, sweat and fucking moderate songwriting once and for all is exasperating.

Though musclassia have handled the reaction quite beautifully, but even if it didn't, you can see the height of fucking intolerance. I'm afraid these musicians wouldn't be able to sustain into metal scene carrying the low-wit charisma.

Are these folks don't listen to their peers? Don't they do fucking research? Don't they listen to the final blueprint of the record before releasing the damn thing on the internet?

Pat my back for gone through this record, but this is absolutely, uncompromising belligerently pile of fucking turd.