Over the course of my ten or so years here, I've reviewed a few albums - I reckon it must come close to in the region of 2,000, between threads and journals - but most if not all of them are now buried so deep in the forum that you'd need a strong bathosphere and a good supply of oxygen, plus a lot of time on your hands to even find them. My journals, in addition to being submerged in the lower levels now of the system, are like old, dilapidated houses left to rack and ruin. Broken video and image links, hundreds of pages of material just waiting to be read but never likely to be.
It's a lot of work, and represents really almost a sixth of the time I've been on this planet, and though I loved doing the reviews back then, I've moved on now and with a few exceptions - my Prince journal, my Iron Maiden thing, and of course the
History of Prog Rock - I no longer write album reviews, nor do I intend or want to. But it seems a shame that all that work should go to waste, as it were: lost, hidden away, unread by human eyes, so I've decided to start salvaging it.
Here I'll be collating all my album reviews, from journals and threads I no longer update. My tastes are not as eclectic as some - and there are those who would and will say they're downright boring, and maybe they're right, but after all it's in the eye (or in this case, the ear) of the beholder - but in my time I reviewed everything from prog rock to... prog metal.
No, seriously: my journals were the only place where someone once said (think it was me, but however) you could find a review of an album by Pixie Lott followed by one on Black Sabbath. A prog and metal head from the start, I was turned on to other music by people here, and accordingly reviewed a lot of it, so you will find pop, metal, prog, country, folk, even classical in my reviews. I even tackled the odd musical. So with a bit of luck there should be something here, at some point, to interest everyone.
I never only reviewed albums I liked (or hated), but tried to give a decent flavour of my record collection, and very often I would review an album I had not heard at the same time as I was listening to it for the first time, so some of my comments are interesting to say the least, as I listened to and learned about an album, with no idea as to whether I would like it or hate it. I did, however, always try to give every album a chance, and seldom rejected anything out of hand.
You'll find different styles and formats surfacing here, as I'll be taking reviews from everything from
The Playlist of Life (my original and main music journal) and
Trollheart's Listening List to
Love or Hate? and
Trollheart Listens to Every Album on Wiki's List from 2017, from
Classic Albums I Have Never Heard to
Trollheart Reviews the Music You Hate. Anyone who knows my work may recognise these reviews - none are new and many were written as long as ten years ago - so this may not be of interest to you (or it may), but I hope to provide these writings for those who have not yet read them, or know of them, and perhaps give them new life of a sort.
Anyway, enjoy. If there's an album you want me to post, and I have it and have reviewed it, I'll do so, but unless you can really convince me why I should, I don't intend to write reviews of any albums I either have and have not written about, or new ones I don't have.
Comments as always welcome, and Batty, this is not a rec (recommendations) thread - cue Batty with twenty outlandish recs! Right then!
