Metal Reviews

I'd like reviewers to explain their own personal rating system... Thanks!

My fault, this is.

As explained elsewhere, I tend to use under 70s/over 80s as a final, personal mark of how much I liked an album, but most of the time I give each track a mark out of ten, get the average and multiply, with a bump to make sure it fits in with the site guidelines. If I had the choice I wouldn't use ratings at all, so as long as you remember that the words are a better indication of my thoughts than a number which can easily change up or down by perhaps as much as 20 depending on mood etc, you'll do fine. I think most reviewers will agree with all this, apart from the < 70 / >80 nonsense, and the hippie 'numbers are evil!' bit.

Actually, the "how we quote" bit at the bottom of the weekly reviews is very accurate for how I rate albums.

The only difference is that I wouldn't necessarily call 50-59 "fair". I usually think of 60-69 as fair or average. 50-59 is mediocre with a few redeeming qualities.

I've noticed a lot of albums get quoted VERY high scores. Close to 90% isn't unusual, that's 9 out of 10, or "almost a masterpiece". If you really buy a new "almost a masterpiece"-album almost every month then I'm jealous... My point is I think you tend to put a higher score than they actually deserve. A 9 out of 10 is easily an "album of the year" for me.

The rating scale is fine but a lot of albums are definitely over rated. Albums should be more realistically rated.

Just to find an example this week, Austrian Death Machine is an 84 which is 3 points higher than Killing is My Business.

I agree too. The rating system is perfectly fine, it's just that it's only seldom followed with a tendency to higher ratings.

The problem is that while under normal circumstances an album of 70 or 75 would be good or very good, as it happens now it amounts to something slightly better than average or mediocre. I'd say that it's a comparative and collective problem mainly as each reviewer (I'm sure) would say that he's ready to give the occasional 50 or 60 to an album. Thing is that it doesn't often happen. Just compare how many albums around 90 we had 2 years ago and how many we get now. Especially the 85-95 marks are way overused, always according to my opinion.

But in any case, I'm not bitching or complaining hard or anything. I'm more than happy with what I get, good weekly reviews with a rating system that works eventhough I find it slightly faulty or displaced.

Everyone should use the rating system given-just do it.

yeah they'd all need to do it because even though 70 means "very good" or whatever, compared to the sites usual ratings it's below average

I'm used to the scores here so a 70 here looks "below average" to me. But a 7 out of 10 sounds like an album with at least 3 killing songs. Then I mean songs you keep going back to after you've heard them many times.