Submission process

1. Is your band actually in the target group of what I review?
I accept submissions for reviews of melodic metal, classic heavy metal, progressive rock, progressive metal,  melodic death metal. The important part is that it has to have great melodies beyond the vocal melodies. 
It's not enough to have a synthesizer playing some mood chords in the background!
Singing clean vocals in stead of screaming / growling also isn't enough to be considered melodic!

I'll try to give some examples on well known melodic bands that fit my reviewing requirements:

In classic heavy metal, there are many great bands, like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest and Saxon who all have great melodies. Just listen to 747 Strangers in the Night by Saxon.

One of my all time favourite bands is Blind Guardian. They have at various points been considered speed metal, power metal and progressive metal. I will here use them as an example for melodic metal. They have great instrumentation and powerful melodies both on vocals and guitars, as can be heard on Quest for Tanelorn.

Most progressive rock is very melodic, so here almost anything oldschool goes. There are however some new bands that are mostly progressive in their rhythms, with little melody, and that's really not my thing. My example band here is Pendragon, with Paintbox.

Progressive metal can be quite heavy and still be melodic. A very well known band in the genre is Symphony X, here represented with their song Iconoclast.

Dark Tranquillity was one of the bands that got me into melodic death metal. They have lots of guitar melodies, even on parts where there are vocals. Just check out Punish My Heaven.

Of course, there is much more variation over the theme. And many bands will fall somewhere in between. I'm still interested in hearing them. If they are good, and if they are melodic.

2. Prepare a promo package!
Here you include:

- All tracks to be reviewed labeled with track number and name of the song. The format tracknumber_songname_bandname is a good idea, but not mandatory. If you have more than 9 tracks, you might want to label the first 9 as 01, 02 and so on.

- An EPK. I've written before about EPKs here. However, the quick summary is: write at least when you were founded, who plays what, where you're from and when the tracks to be reviewed will be released. If you have something interesting to say about your band, include that.
Don't write what bands inspired you unless that can be heard in the songs. I know it's tempting, and I wrote a lot of bands up on the inspiration list when I wrote my first press kit. However, that only led to complaints that we didn't sound like this or that band, which of course was impossible when we had written that we were inspired by all the 5 bands I've linked to earlier in this blog post (as well as 30 other bands from power metal to black metal).

- Graphics. Do you have album art, band logo or band photo? Include it in the EPK. I'll need it for the blog post about your music.

3. Contact me!

If you fit the requirements and have your tracks and EPK, contact me! You can contact me on facebook or email. At first contact, it's nice if you can provide a link to a streamable file with your music, like a youtube video or bandcamp page (don't use spotify, tidal or itunes links as then I need to open / download spotify, itunes, tidal or whatever, and I don't want that). This way I can quickly tell if your music is something I might want to review your music or not.

4. Hope for the best

If I don't like your music, I won't review it. I don't want to waste my time listening to something I don't like, and you don't want a bad review of your music.
In the end, a review of the music will either say it's good or bad music, and that will be based on the reviewer liking your music or not. And you don't need bad PR. In stead, find someone to review your music that is into it. Sometimes that will be me, sometimes that will be someone else.

If I like your music, and you submitted it properly, I will review it and post a review on my blog. That will take some time, as this is something I do when I have the time for it. If it's not up after a month, and I've said I'll review it, feel free to remind me to do so.

It will be up to you to share it on social media, although I might share it to promote this blog.