Metal Reviews

What are IYO the best and worst metal review websites?

Also, links would be much appreciated.

www.metalreviews.com - is of course the best website ever on the whole wide internet, but that should go without saying.

www.metalreview.com - they trash us on Facebook, the berks, but they do have some good writers. They tend to focus on modern Death/Grind/Doom, ie the more popular sorts of Relapse Metal, and their power and black metal knowledge is pretty pathetic, but it's usually worth a read. It's an official fact (not) that 60% of their traffic is from people trying to get here but forgetting the 's'.

www.metal-reviews.com - rather out of date now (last updated 2008) but for Power Metal it's a decent summary of stuff. It's an official fact (not) that 80% of their traffic is from people trying to get here but for some reason sticking a '-' where it's not needed.

www.metalcdratings.com - a pretty good site looking at Power Metal (and other, lighter genres of metal) exclusively. They have the annoying habit of writing one-sentence reviews for a good portion of the albums on the site, which I regard as cheating, but what reviews are there are good.

www.anus.com - Run by (arguably) neo-fascist lunatics and near-obsessed with the most underground extreme metal, but well worth a read for entertainment if nothing else.

www.metal-archives.com - Great all-round database of metal with about 50% great reviews and 50% nonsense. A vital tool, whoever you are.

www.rym.com - Limited underground Metal knowledge, but interesting all-round music site with generally decent, short reviews.

www.blabbermouth.net - Better known as (IMO) a reprehensible sub-tabloid news site with its tongue firmly up Dave Mustaine's proverbial, but they do have a surprising range of reviews that tends towards the underground.

www.metalunderground.com/reviews - An annoying website that takes a few mins to master, but decent quality reviews with a fairly broad and underground viewpoint.

www.globaldomination.se - Hilarious for ten minutes, deeply annoying after that. They think they're amazing, but reviews range from good to infantile shit-slinging. Lots of swearing. Underground to the core, though.

Not sure if this counts as a review site, but Aesop from Ludicra/Agalloch's blog is the best. Or at least his writing is fun to read and he's really good at making me want to hear obscure black metal shit I wouldn't otherwise care about.

http://cosmichearse.blogspot.com/

http://autothrall.blogspot.com/ has some excellent reviews, but tends to focus more on the darker side of metal - lots of death, black, and doom is reviewed here. Discographies are currently being reviewed there, and they're quite entertaining reads. For the lighter side of metal, metalcdratings is probably my favorite - though as Zad said, the one-sentence reviews are annoying.

Isn't one of our posters from MetalCDRatings?

Anyway, what are some of the worst review sites?

Trooper of Steel is from there, I believe.

As for worst review sites: http://www.corezine.net/

The name says it all.

I like it a lot. I've already got about 5 albums coming my way off the first 2 pages of reviews alone. =)

Yeah, posers like you will love it.

WINK!

I personally like The Metal Observer, they've got a lot of reviews and they're usually pretty decent, been reading them since my early metal listening days.

http://www.metal-observer.com/

Auto is one of the few reviewers from MA with substance, he can be a bit too brief at times IMO. I honestly don't visit many other review sites other than here; and Anus.com is way off league on some of their stuff as well.

Clint is from MetalCDRatings, too. Although, when he posts here, it's often to promote the site's recent reviews.

I also really like www.metal-rules.com. It can be a little elitist sometimes, and their Top 100 Metal Albums Of All Time list was pretty lame. But otherwise, they have some pretty good stuff.

http://www.chroniclesofchaos.com/ - Pretty good site that has a bit of everything. Slow updates though.

http://www.imhotep.no/ - Good for the more extreme side of things. Some reviews are plain shit however.

http://www.archaic-magazine.com/ - Very good site. Frequent updates and they cover pretty much all extreme metal albums released.

http://www.myrrthronth.de/ - The best site for underground black metal. They review so much stuff no one ever heard of it's ridiculous. Sadly, most of them are in German. Still, I do check them out for the ratings, and they are usually spot on.

Yeah, I like UMR also. I used to read BM until they stopped reviewing anything relevant and they stopped objectively reviewing albums.

I really wish this site would stop reviewing albums for the sole purpose of writing a bad review, which is decided before they even heard the album. Seriously, if you can't be objective find someone who can, or don't bother.

Examples of this, please?

Yeah what a stupid comment... seriously are you on crack or something, Adveser?

So a negative review is always not objective? Means there aren't any bad albums?

-.-''

metal-crypt

is suppose to be good

Obviously, Adveser is talking about Blabbermouth and not Metal Reviews. He might have put it in an akward way though.. Funny to see you getting all worked up about it either way.

Oh. Well, think of it as proof of our commitment to customer service.

tbh this is really the only Metal reviewing site I frequent. The way I see it, everything else would just be a step down.

RYM is a great source for music of any kind, though.