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Adam's Blog #3: On Reviewing |
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Vic ![]() Forum Senior Member ![]() ![]() Joined: 02 Mar 2011 Location: Crete, Greece Status: Offline Points: 330 |
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Not over a review but I had a few cases of readers going apeshit over something I wrote. Usually about a sacred cow, like Iron Maiden or Megadeth, there are people who will not tolerate any negative comment, let alone someone who says Maiden hasn't released a masterpiece since 1988 or that Megadeth's true greatness ends roughly with Cryptic Writings. "Congratulations to management in letting that asshole write such filth!"
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adg211288 ![]() Forum Admin Group ![]() ![]() Black Metal, Prog/AG Teams Joined: 05 Nov 2010 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 22366 |
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Rabid fans.
![]() Here's an example (not mine) of a fan attacking a review and a band member actually stepping in and being cool about the less than stellar write-up: http://www.metalmusicarchives.com/review/the-lotus-effect/260618#comments Worst I ever had I guess was the Mayhem fan sent me a death threat once for daring to give De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas an average rating. One other thing semi-related, I don't usually bring up this review as it should be let lie now (which means do not post shouts on it - I'll just delete them) but this is a great example of how not to write a review. http://www.metalmusicarchives.com/review/aquarius/270812
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UMUR ![]() MMA Special Collaborator ![]() ![]() Errors & Omissions Team / Retired Admin Joined: 25 Mar 2010 Location: Denmark Status: Offline Points: 18355 |
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Bosh66 ![]() Forum Admin Group ![]() ![]() Sludge, MC, HC, Post-Metal & Noise Rock Joined: 14 Feb 2013 Location: Bolton, Lancs Status: Offline Points: 26329 |
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Just read this on the train coming home from work. Sorry, had it in my head that you'd written it, which was confusing as it's not your style of writing. Then realised it was our old mate Liam. Did he not like the album? Actually his analogy of Aquarius being like watching ice melt made me chuckle. Quite like the album myself.
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Vim Fuego ![]() Forum Admin Group ![]() ![]() Death, T/S/G, Grind, VA Teams Joined: 05 Jul 2015 Location: Canterbury, NZ Status: Offline Points: 6674 |
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She has other...talents though. She's also a violinist. ![]() |
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Vim Fuego ![]() Forum Admin Group ![]() ![]() Death, T/S/G, Grind, VA Teams Joined: 05 Jul 2015 Location: Canterbury, NZ Status: Offline Points: 6674 |
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Several times on Amazon. Suffocation fans seem to be particularly venomous. ![]() |
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UMUR ![]() MMA Special Collaborator ![]() ![]() Errors & Omissions Team / Retired Admin Joined: 25 Mar 2010 Location: Denmark Status: Offline Points: 18355 |
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UMUR ![]() MMA Special Collaborator ![]() ![]() Errors & Omissions Team / Retired Admin Joined: 25 Mar 2010 Location: Denmark Status: Offline Points: 18355 |
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Grrrrr....yes we are
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adg211288 ![]() Forum Admin Group ![]() ![]() Black Metal, Prog/AG Teams Joined: 05 Nov 2010 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 22366 |
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I'd forgotten about these cases as the reviews were not for music but I have had someone get mad at what I wrote for a both a TV boxset review posted to Amazon and one for a video game review posted to Steam.
The boxset review was for the first season of the show Legend of the Seeker. It was based on the fantasy book series The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind. Goodkind's books are mature fantasy in the vein of Game of Thrones but where that show (which didn't exist then) is faithful to the tone of the books the producers of Seeker decided to take something that was written strictly for adults and make a family friendly show out of it. And this wasn't even its worst offence. The bigger offence was that they made a 22 episode season out of the first book and only four of that number had anything at all to do with the book's plot. The rest either did their own thing with pointless side stories or went out of their way to do the exact opposite to the book's established canon. It short they completely butchered it and I gave the series a negative review (2/5). Enter the rapid fans who promptly informed me about how wrong I was and that my criticism were basically invalid because the series was only meant to be 'based on' the books (which ironically they think are shit) and not an actual 'adaptation'. I was unaware there was a difference. Apparently there was 'no point' in comparing how faithful the series was to its source in 'ridiculous detail'. I expect these are the same sort of people who complain about Game of Thrones being too full of sex and violence. Anyone's who's extensively read fantasy should know the majority of it is not for the kids. The game review was for Slender: The Arrival which I thought was a pretty good horror experience but a bad video game experience. I can't remember exactly what the comments said now as this review doesn't exist any more as I decided to pull everything I wrote from Steam due to the mentality of the user base but I felt that I gave it a fair write-up based on my experience of the title. Again, enter the rabid fan who was quick to tell me I wasn't qualified to give the game a negative write-up. He seemed most pissed that my review had actually been voted up as the most helpful review as well. Another one was genuinely upset that I had given the game a negative review saying something like 'I don't care if you didn't like it but don't rag on the game and hurt its reputation for the rest of us'. I eventually deleted all my Steam reviews as I couldn't stand the user base any longer. I've since put a new review up to test the waters but found it hasn't changed much. It's a place where throwaway reviews that don't really tell you much get voted up and thought out ones that actually evaluate the game get voted down as unhelpful. My testing the waters review was for a simple point and click game that I found a game breaking bug in that required a complete restart to get by so I based my negative largely on that (while praising the game in general and pointing out that it would be a positive otherwise). Apparently pointing out this serious problem in the game meant the review was 'unhelpful' though. Here's the Slender review. You guys tell me if it describes a game you want to play (the game has actually been updated since this was written but I never played the new version):
Edited by adg211288 - 15 Apr 2016 at 3:33am |
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Vim Fuego ![]() Forum Admin Group ![]() ![]() Death, T/S/G, Grind, VA Teams Joined: 05 Jul 2015 Location: Canterbury, NZ Status: Offline Points: 6674 |
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I would have been proud of that rant myself if it had been more coherent and actually understood the point it was trying to make. ![]() |
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siLLy puPPy ![]() MMA Special Collaborator ![]() ![]() Prog/AG Team Joined: 06 Oct 2013 Location: SF, CA, USA Status: Offline Points: 2742 |
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Those charming Suffocation fans need to sit back take a deep breath and visualize exactly what those other talents of the Great Kat are :) |
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Unitron ![]() MMA Special Collaborator ![]() ![]() Honorary Collaborator Joined: 30 Apr 2014 Location: Cypress Hill Status: Offline Points: 8051 |
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Really good review, it certainly doesn't make me want to play the game. I could go on and on about how many issues I have with the Steam user base, but I'll keep it on topic. I really hate that the "reviews" voted most helpful are just people trying to be funny instead of the real reviews as you said. I wrote a negative review of Star Wars Dark Forces II a few years ago, and while to be fair I've since replaced it as it was pretty badly written review being one of my first reviews, it got many down votes. Although the review I replaced it also needs to be replaced as I didn't go into as much detail as I wanted, and that's one of the unfinished reviews I have saved to my computer. I think the main thing keeping me from reviewing it is that I'm not wanting to go through playing it again.
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If I say fuck two more times that's forty-six fucks in this fucked up rhyme
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adg211288 ![]() Forum Admin Group ![]() ![]() Black Metal, Prog/AG Teams Joined: 05 Nov 2010 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 22366 |
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I think it speaks volumes that Valve felt the need to add a funny option on the review feedback.
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adg211288 ![]() Forum Admin Group ![]() ![]() Black Metal, Prog/AG Teams Joined: 05 Nov 2010 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 22366 |
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Digging up an old post here, but I realised something else that you could say was someone going ape shit over a review: Quite some time ago I gave a negative review to someone and at the time nothing was said about it. I'd forgotten about it until recently when I was expecting a promo for a release I was expecting to review from them. It didn't arrive, which is when I realised I haven't received a damn thing from that label since I gave one of theirs a bad write-up. If being struck off someone's promo list for giving a negative review isn't going age shit, I don't know what is. This was the review in question (rating was lowered from original 2.5 to 2 due to revising my rating system): http://www.metalmusicarchives.com/review/omniscient/297439
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DippoMagoo ![]() MMA Special Collaborator ![]() ![]() Power & Neo, Goth & Symph, Prog/AG Teams Joined: 31 Aug 2014 Location: Canada Status: Offline Points: 3103 |
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I never saw this topic until today, probably because it happened while I was in the hospital and before I had access to my laptop. One thing I can add: I've personally never had negative feedback on my reviews (even in one case where I wrote a terrible 0.5 star review on RYM the band seemed more interested to know why I hated the album than actually offended by it,) but I was involved with a bit of a siutation.
Basically, back at the first site I was doing promos for, one of the reviewers made a forum post explaining he was working on a promo but hated the album so much he couldn't get through a single listen, and asked if people thought he should go through with the review anyway. He did, despite me and another person saying it wasn't a good idea, and long story short, I discovered one of my best friends on RYM loved the band in question, so I pointed him to the review and shortly after I heard from the person who ran the site that he had recieved an email blasting that review, and I knew it was my friend who did it, because he told me he had. I too thought the review was terribly written, so I did what I thought was the best thing to do at the time: I checked the album for myself and got to work on my own review. Well, surprise surprise, I loved the album but because I was a bit immature as a reviewer back then, my review looked like a blatant counter to the other review, and so I recieved a bit of negative feedback from the site before it got posted (we had a place where we worked on reviews and the admins of the site could see what the staff was working on before it was submitted,) leading to a heavily edited version being posted. A slightly revised version of the original review still exists on RYM, though I won't directly link it because even though I made some good points in it, I also made some of the most obvious mistakes a reviewer shouldn't make, the most obvious being that you should never write a review specifically to counter someone and make them look bad, which is essentially what I did. Yes, writing a detailed positive review can help when the only other review on the site for that album is negative, but directly mentioning other reviews in any way is an obvious no-no and back then I didn't know better. So basically, that whole situation was handled quite terribly by just about everyone involved. (For those curious, the album in question was http://www.metalmusicarchives.com/album/andromeda/manifest-tyranny, though I'd never post that review here for the reasons I already mentioned.) Thankfully, since then I haven't had any similar situations. I have gotten a decent amount of positive feedback for my reviews over the years, though. In fact, I've gotten shout outs from the makers of my two favorite albums of all time (one of them was even for a review I specifically wrote for MMA recently) so that's pretty awesome. My experiences are different from Adam's though, because I'm part of a team so I don't have to worry about encountering some of the challenges he faces. I pretty much get to pick and choose what I cover and know new albums from the labels will always show up for me. I do occasionally experience burnouts, but even then it's usually more struggling to come up with opening paragraphs for a review than it is not being motivated to listen to my promos. I did enjoy reading Adam's write up though, and can agree that a lot of the things he brought up on both sides would be problems.
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adg211288 ![]() Forum Admin Group ![]() ![]() Black Metal, Prog/AG Teams Joined: 05 Nov 2010 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 22366 |
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^ Great contribution Travis.
The act of a counter review is tricky ground. On one hand if a review you disagree with motivates you to write your own that much you should go for it, but you've got to be subtle about it and make sure that your review can stand on its own without your reader having to go read the other review first. I'm sure many reviewers have fallen into that trap and really this also goes for referencing any other review even if you are agreeing with it: that review may not always be there after all. The reviewer may change it or pull it completely at any time.
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UMUR ![]() MMA Special Collaborator ![]() ![]() Errors & Omissions Team / Retired Admin Joined: 25 Mar 2010 Location: Denmark Status: Offline Points: 18355 |
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^Yeah definitely never mention other reviews or reviewers in your own reviews. It´s also pretty annoying to people who don´t know the original reviewer.
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DippoMagoo ![]() MMA Special Collaborator ![]() ![]() Power & Neo, Goth & Symph, Prog/AG Teams Joined: 31 Aug 2014 Location: Canada Status: Offline Points: 3103 |
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Yeah, counter reviews can definitely be helpful if handled right. The problem is, in the situation I described, both reviews were poorly written, so that's not going to help anyone. It was clear I wrote that review only because I thought the other review was outright wrong and wanted to prove it, which was obviously an immature thing for a reivewer to do. Ideally, you would have a well written negative review and an equally well written positive review, so that way readers unfamilar with the band can get an idea of what the release is like and decide if they' like to check it out or not.
I generally don't reference other reviews at this point, because that usually leads to trouble and is generally lazy to do (in fact a friend of mine got someone's review on RYM taken down recently for blatantly calling me out and criticizing my tastes,) but I will occasionally throw in small references. For example, my Timeless Miracle review had a couple, but I used them a lot more carefully than I did in the past, so they seemed like general observations.
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adg211288 ![]() Forum Admin Group ![]() ![]() Black Metal, Prog/AG Teams Joined: 05 Nov 2010 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 22366 |
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I think a general reference to no one person/review in particular is okay. Used the right way it can give context to why you wrote something, though I'd personally only do that if I felt it was absolutely necessary. Generally I try to write with the assumption that my review is going to be read by someone who has never heard of the artist but is at least somewhat familiar with the genre of music (I can'r explain exactly what power metal or black metal sounds like in its base form in every review after all).
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Vim Fuego ![]() Forum Admin Group ![]() ![]() Death, T/S/G, Grind, VA Teams Joined: 05 Jul 2015 Location: Canterbury, NZ Status: Offline Points: 6674 |
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This is all about writing to your audience. The reviews I submitted to the paper were very different to those I post here. In a newspaper, you never know who will read your review, so you need to cater to people who know very little about music. My Grandmother used to read mine, just because I'd written them! (As a godfearing Christian, I often wonder what she made of my Deicide review in the paper...) I have since rewritten some of them and posted them here, where there is definitely more scope for description, and no annoying fucking word count limit! |
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