Reviews discussion

 

motW are not a Progressive Metal band so reviewing them from that perspective is bound to be negative, especially if the reviewer has no affinity with (or appreciation/understanding of) Avant Garde Metal, Post Metal or Post Rock. and that is never going to be vanilla Progressive Metal which is why we have them in Experimental/Post Metal and not in Progressive Metal.

 

Geoff spends most his review setting out his CV as an expert on Progressive Metal, (I attended the last ProgPowerUK festival and would have gone to more if they had continued - alas they did not, and I also hover over vendor stalls at these events looking for that special release that I've somehow managed to miss, but none of that makes me an expert, just another fan dressed in black with more Prog and Prog Metal CDs than have room to store), but  he doesn't make any distinction between the whole vista of metal artists that fall under the umbrella of metal bands that are progressive in nature - between the (let's call it Traditional) Progressive Metal of Dream Theatre and Ayreon, the Post Metal of Alcest or Neurosis, or the Extreme Metal of Edge of Sanity or Opeth. Being a self-proclaimed expert on (Traditional) Progressive Metal does not imply expertise in other subgenres however closely related they may be. And that for me negates the whole validity of the two sentences that actually talk about the album being reviewed.

 

The other issue is of course how subjectivity is used, and in this case how relativity is used. It is fine to have an opinion however positive or negative that opinion is, it is another thing to openly question everyone else's subjective opinion in a review and make that out to be the result of some kind of peer pressure, which is really just accusing all the other people who reviewed the album of being disingenuous.

 

Technically this review fails the Prog Archives Review Guidelines, while it does not directly criticise individuals or question genre placement, it does by general implication.

 

 

Even if the album is highly praised by fans of that particular style, if the reviewer simply does not like that style at all he will likely not be able to review it objectively enough (a separate discussion has been going on about objectivity / subjectivity) and he will most likely rate it low by definition.

With a bit of luck he will be clear enough to explain that the main reason he does not like the album is because he just does not like that kind of music, so probably that particular review will not be much different from any review he might do on any other album of that style.

 

I understand that everybody has the right to give his opinion about every album on the site but I wonder what's the value of such reviews. Well yes, they give another point of view and can help some people put things in perspective, but not much more than that.

 

I'm not a fan of Post Rock, from motW l have Bath, Leaving Your Body Map and Part the Second, and this last one is by far my favourite, honestly I don't fancy much Bath nor LYBM but PtS is a very good album.

The best way for me to answer that would be to tell you to read the recent reviews of people who have already been given the title of prog reviewer. From that, you could come up with your own personal decision on what constitutes a good review.