A Review of the Best and the Worst Heavy Metal Websites

Heavy Metal Album Reviews and so Much More

When it comes down to it, many Heavy Metal fans will never even have even heard a single note from their albums before purchasing them. Word of mouth has become an essential, and all-encompassing part of the Heavy Metal Movement. The question that must be asked, then, is who do you trust most when it comes to metal reviews? Who produces the clearest, and most accurate reviews of albums?

We'll start off with the worst of the websites that I've found in my searching. That distinguished honor goes to Metal Review (www.metalreview.com). This waste of space is the worst for two main reasons: first, the site is more dedicated to hardcore and heavy-punk music than it is to heavy metal. Second, after reading a full review by one of their writers, you're still going to be wondering what the band sounds like when you're done. Rarely, if ever, will they say what genre the band plays in, who they compare to, and most of the time, the ranking you see at the top of the page is no indication of what you'll find the reviewer saying about the album. I've seen some albums get 5 out of six in all three categories while the reviewer talks about how bad the album is. The Lash feature is nice, but it gets so full of spam and nonsense that it isn't worthwhile after a day or two.

Metal Archives (www.metal-archives.com) is a pretty good site, with very accurate and in-depth website dedicated to chronicling every single bit of information on metal history. They are so detailed, in fact, that you'll find no less than 3 bands named Valhalla, or x bands named Mayhem. The problem with this is exactly that: it's so detailed, and so huge of a site, that you'll be on there forever trying to find the information that you're looking for. Also consider that the vast majority of bands listed on this site only have demos listed in their discography, if one exists at all! Not to mention, they have just about the worst server I have ever seen. Their site is inaccessible over half of the time i try to connect.

Metal-Rules (www.metal-rules.com) is pretty good as far as news and interviews go, but their album reviews only update once a month. Not a good way to be, as far as I'm concerned.