Hypocrisy

I'll be giving it a look see. Don't really feel like getting in there and commenting much as It seems like the banter that goes on between you and Batlord is probably traumatic enough for you already.

The Batlord

I mean, yeah, we fuck, but that doesn't mean you can't watch.

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Anteater

I find Metal Month an interesting concept, but speaking as a metal fan I think it's a tad hit and miss because you A. aren't focusing on newer and/or older metal albums you are actually interested in reviewing and/or B. Reviewing a lot of metal recommendations from others that you seem to dislike on a fundamental level. Especially the grind, death, etc.

My suggestion would be to either focus on metal that's either come out over the course of the year, go through ten to twenty key metal albums you genuinely enjoyed and review them, or just focus on taking recommendations from others and reviewing them. I think you try to do a bit of all these things at once and I'm sure its overwhelming.

For instance, if I had done Metal Month this year I would have probably picked my twenty favorite 2015 metal albums and then went through them in a review series, or asked around and focused on weekly recommendations from other senior members. Pick one key focus and run with it.

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Anteater's 21 Fav Albums Of 2020

Anteater's Daily Tune Roulette

The Batlord

Yeah, like I said, all of these arbitrary features aren't particularly interesting. Watching you challenge your boundaries, talk about music you actually have something informed to say about, or taking recs from members who will therefore become more invested in your thread, is much more interesting than reviewing twenty albums from a bunch of bands from Syria nobody has ever heard of or will ever care about.

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Trollheart

These are all good suggestions. You have given me much to think about.

I definitely don't want to burn myself out again, and while I tried to make it as all-inclusive a show as it were as possible, it seems that a) some people feel overloaded by the sheer amount of entries and b) much of what I put so much work into (Flanders/Gabriel reviews, Pirate Metal etc) didn't go down well with, or was ignored by everyone. So perhaps a rethink is required.

As for those who don't bother reading all my hard work

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

CoNtrivedNiHilism

I find myself agreeing with Batty for a change.

Personally. I never do anything here for anyone other than myself. Nobody should be concerned with whether or not people will have interest in a project you want to do. Just do it for you. If people show interest and keep it going. Well. Icing on a cake, so to speak.

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The Batlord

One other suggestion I'd make is to keep to one post a day. When you were making two to three entries a day, it made the thread feel kind of like a cluttered deluge, and considering the length of the posts even I couldn't keep up with all of them. I had to pick and choose which ones to read, as opposed to just skimming, since there simply wasn't enough time in the day to read it all.

Might help to focus your entries as well, since you'd be limited to thirty-one.

Yeah, but it's kind of different in a project like this, since it's intended as being kind of a forum event rather than just a self-indulgent project.

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Trollheart

Yeah well that's how my journals usually go, but when you attempt something this massive (and are considering doing so again next year) then you want to know that if you put in all the work, more than a few people are going to benefit. Otherwise it's putting yourself under pressure for essentially no real return.
Yeah definitely did too many a day this year. Will have to cut out a lot of the fat I think, provided I decide to continue with it.
Exactly. I want(ed) to get as many people involved --- talking, arguing, cursing me, sending me death threats, contributing even --- as possible, and if you look at it like an investment, on the face of it, for what I put in I received a pretty poor return. Alan Sugar/Donald Trump I am not!

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

mythsofmetal

I've enjoyed it for the past couple years that I've been aware of and lightly involved with it.

This year I enjoyed reading all of the recs which you had been given from myself and others, as well as the atmospheric black metal recommendations from myself and Grindy.

For the other stuff, I found reading about half of the Judas Priest album reviews fairly interesting to see what you thought of their progressions as a band. The problem is how I'm not very familiar with a significant portion of their material (so I found it difficult to relate sometimes) and don't care for them as a band more than the average metal band which I've found a decent appreciation for/liking in.

Also, the pirate metal stuff was something that I just wasn't into, and I found it hard to gain an interest in reading about bands I both had never heard anything from, and some which didn't seem to have a relatively significant status/acclaim in the metal community.

I guess that I liked reading those others' recs for review which I hadn't heard myself because someone else had picked it for you, as they thought of it as worthwhile. In contrast to (seemingly) randomly picking bands from a country, which I would assume would result in an overall mediocre quality between the different acts in their random inclusion, which made it less attractive and interesting.


I'm hoping that you continue to do metal month, but condensing some of the features may be for the best. When it comes to condensing the amount of stuff within the features, I'm kinda on the fence with that. However, you have put a lot of work into this stuff, so make sure you don't overwork yourself, and I think that even if you did one or two posts a day that that could cover a good amount of stuff and keep people interested throughout its duration, also with the benefit of not overloading them.)

Unknown Soldier

The only issue I have with metal month is its fleeting nature and quickly touching onto various aspects of metal, nothing wrong with that as you can only cover so much. But do you really want to be wasting your time writing about Pirate Metal and metal bands from Syria for example

Personally from your too many journals, the one that you should be spending your time on is the history of progressive rock one, as that really is truly educational and one of the best ever journals on MB.

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Metal Wars

Power Metal

Pounding Decibels- A Hard and Heavy History