Igors Metal Blog

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 ...

I'm certain you can find many good resources on how to promote your band. Myself, I've read quite a bit of what Matt Bacon of Dropout Media and Niko from Moshpit Pr write on this topic. So if you want to know what to do to get more attention to your band, go and read what they have to say. That is not the topic of this post.  This post will deal with how not to do it. 1. "The dickpick of the metal world". It basically goes like this: someone adds me as friend on social media (facebook in my case) and asks me to check out their band without any other interaction. Now, why would I want to stop listening to the band I'm already listening to and check out your band in stead? The classic reply is something in the lines of "well, why not?" and "If the song is bad nothing happens, if the song is good you lost your chance". Well, I as everyone else have limited time, and the worst thing that happens is that I spend a minute listening to your subpar ban...

As I've mentioned in the description of this blog, I review melodic bands. That is, I'll take on most 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. So I might make an exception and review a particularly melodic black metal band or something like that. Also, I've reviewed bands that don't fall into these boundaries for Heaps of Metal or The Metal Lab , but that's to support that community, which is a really great community. Now, not every band fit's those subgenres. That doesn't make it worse metal. It's just that I listen to little of that subgenre and will focus on elements that aren't as important for bands in that subgenre or miss elements that are really important in that subgenre. Both make for a poor review. Therefore I'm making a list of other blogs and reviewers for you to contact if your music either ...

Many bands ask for reviews. Which is cool. It's a great way for me, as the reviewer, to discover new music. However, I'm often surprised over how little effort the band is willing to put in presenting their material afterwards. Often, the request for a review goes something like this: "please review our stuff. Here's a link to our spotify/youtube/whatever". That's not good enough. For one, while I don't care if your music has already been released, most other places, particularly magazines, will care, and will not review your music if it's already out. Secondly, while I don't need you to send me a physical disc (although I will admit that it's cool when bands do), you really should send me something I can download, and I should not have to use a medium I need to pay to not be interrupted by adds on to review your music. Remember to add track numbers to the tracks, so they load in the right order in my media player. Finally, you need to ...