Dear Friends of the Weird Sides of Metal,

this week we celebrate the 1ST BIRTHDAY OF AGM.COM. We'd like to use this opportunity to ask you about your opinion on AGM.COM:

- What additional features would you like to have on our site?
- What important bands / acts / artists are you still missing?
- What avant-garde metal classics still should be added to our review list?
- What do you (dis)like most on our site?

Any thoughts are warmly welcome!
Looking forward to your comments
Chrystof

This is one of the most interesting and intelligent forums I have participated in. I have learned about so many different bands, both old and new, that my music collection has grown in leaps and bounds, and my appreciation for them respectively.

I also enjoy chatting with like-minded metal-heads without the usual knuckle-dragging macho closed-minded attitudes that usually prevail in the metal world.

I am sure this forum has been a positive influence on my own music (and promotion of ... ) and provides me with the assurance that I am not the only freak out there.

High Praises to all. Happy Birthday to us all.

Now, ... what features would a like?

Perhaps an article (series of articles??) or thread focusing on one-man bands and the various innovative techniques they have developed to create and record/distribute their unique forms of music. Shop-talk, perhaps, which I believe is usually unique to each artist, and is what often shapes their music more than they realize.

Dislikes? Not sure I have any. It's been such a positive experience, as I said above, truly the best of all the forums I've participated.

I'll try to add some actual comments and suggestions as time provides.

ThanX.

Hi guys. Happy birthday to junior! (it two weeks I am also celebrating...)

I have to say that pages and forums are great. One of the best and most relevant I've ever seen, no fear to link here anyone interested in good reading. I like how sort of people are interested in and that it's not 'any other non-neccessary metal zin' which is internet full of.

From personal experiences I know that critisc are needed. But there is nearly nothing what I would be changing on AGM.

My personal wishes leads to more reading about also other avant arts, but while it´s not coresponding with the server name, I won´t be demanding it. But thanks for nonmetal reviews, I appreciate a lot that Beyond section and I would like to see there more and more material.

I love the site, and it definitely has it's own niche in the interweb. The only criticism I can think of now is that reviews are generally too positive.

This reminds me of Matt Howarth's Sonic Curiosity review site. When I spoke to him, he said that he really only wrote about bands and music that he liked. He felt that instead of "reviewing" the music, he would merely try to "describe" what it sounded like and let you decide if it's good or bad.

On one hand, I agree - we often stick to what we "stylistically" like, and "rag" on styles we don't like. Hence the severe ripping of Cryptopsy's latest. We rag on it because it sounds like "deathcore"? Well, maybe it's a crappy brutal death metal album, but it is very good and innovative compared to most "deathcore" bands. Maybe?

The bands reviewed here tend to be ones we would listen to anyway because they are Avant Garde Metal and tend to be very good at what they do. It's hard to criticize what we like.

But perhaps we should try to find "room for improvement" even in that which we most enjoy? Hard to say.

Sorry if I went on a bit, ...

When writters can choose from avaiable material to write about, they will write mostly only positive reviews, I guess. Regarding what Dimaension wrote about comparing - for me as a reader is also important to trust reviewer´s opinion and how I could start to trust him? Easily - to learn about his sensitivity to find also weaker points, describe them and form finall decision if album worths listening or not.

Right, Dimaension X and flames. The point is, in the year AGM existed we tried to build a base of reviews for the important agm-albums. That obviously required us to search in our own CD-collection, and those CD´s are there because - of course - we like them. So yeah, I too like to think of my reviews as "suggestions" to listen to something I deem important to AGM rather than a real review, but as AGM grows and more and more promos come in, there might be more critical reviews in the pipelines than before. As happened to me with TRINACRIA - I do not really like it because of it´s downsides, but it IS AGM, so there you go. Stuff like this might happen more in the future, as we have not only our own collection to chose from but promos from labels as well, and when the classics will already have been reviewed.

Thanks for the advices guys, I'll take note. If I for instance take the Beyond section for which I write more and more: I'm still in the beginning you know, trying to cover as many genres as possible. But in order to do that, I can't really come up with records I think are crappy and shouldn't be listened to. I mean of course I could, but that's not really interesting to me, and it wouldn't be to you either... Plus the music I think sucks sometimes is a jewel for someone else so I better let him/her do the review part. I try to instead come up with really original and out there bands/artists that I think are worth it and should be presented to AGM fans because most of you probably have a wide range of musical tastes. Moreover, I also try to come up with bands/artists who are less known and more like buried underground. And then I choose bands/artists who will hopefully surprise and shock you. Now you may think some of my choices suck, and that's fine by me! I just wanted to tell you why most of my reviews are "positive" ones. I also don't think that being critical necessarily means being negative, but that's another story.

But as Tentakel said... more and more promos are coming in so one day or another I'll maybe have to review something I think is shitty. But for now let's concentrate on the good stuff out there, there are so many genuine artists working their asses off to compose, record and release music. The main idea, I think, is to publicly present music which wouldn't find its place on any other metal webzine.

Hey Friends,

thanks a lot for the roses and valuable comments.

Concerning the "too positive reviews":
We had some hard discussions about this topic among the crew several months ago. The proposal came that we should publish more negative reviews. But we concluded that this doesn't make any sense. We see our task to pick out the very pearls of innovative metal and don't care about the rest.

There are still so many great albums and acts that we didn't write about yet mostly because of a lack of time. So why should we waste a part of our limited resources to write about albums that are not avant-garde?

We get dozens of Promos each month. Unfortunately most of them aren't avan-garde at all. So we strictly sort these out. Only around 10% of promos get a review. Of course, if a band doesn't seem very avant-garde to us, but labels itself like avant-garde, experimental, progressive etc. we try our very best and give it a review. But if they just call themselves Death, Black or Doom Metal in their infos, then we don't feature it.

So the review section can be seen as BEST OF INNOVATIVE METAL

Word!

Can't do anything but second that. It's just not as catchy as "Avantgarde Metal".

But we have had not-only-positive reviews; take for example my thoughts on Ephel Duath - The Painter's Palette, Diablo Swing Orchestra's and Nascent's albums. Not too positive, but hopefully constructive to those who might enjoy the albums (as I know a lot of people do). But I think you make a good point, the reviews should stay sane and unbiased by our exuberant love for the albums we review, and take notice of the spots of the suns of our record collections... ah, you catch my drift.

Heya, I've been a long term visitor to the site (though, as you can see, I've only registered for an account now - I hope that my greenness on this forum doesn't count against what I have to say) and, though it is excellent (especially given the niche topic), there are a few things which I think would improve it even further.

1) Perhaps a bit more cohesion between the artists and reviews section would be ideal - as in, you only access the artists section and there is perhaps a listing of the albums (with covers and release years) - maybe you'd be able to click on it to access the review (if there is one) and if not maybe some user ratings rating it on quality and on how original it is (two seperate qualities) and some information on the distributions of the ratings (so we could see whether the album is rated 3 stars by the users because everyone thought it was average or because it was a "love or hate" affair).

I'm unsure I described that well, or if it really fits in with the ethos of the site but just my two pennies. It may help readers looking for the best in AGM to distinguish between two albums given good reviews - I think it's important to seperate ratings by quality and originality though, there's good stuff that is completely rehashed out there and there's bad stuff that's something completely new.

Browsing by country or style would be a pipe-dream but very nice

2) A few bands which strike me as very much in the vein of AGM but which aren't here are Ewigkeit, Estradasphere, Secret Chiefs 3, Winds and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (I know they have a review, but surely they warrant an artist section?).

Anyway, sorry for the length, and sorry if I'm being a bit presumptuous suggesting things which would be hard to implement. Love the site!

EDIT: Removed something that had already been done!

Ah, now this is quite a nice idea indeed - user interaction:)

And I know it's kinda late, but I still would like to thank the AGM team for their effort put in this. In the past year now, the reviews have had quite an impact on my music collection, so hereby...



Some albums I'd like to see reviewed some day:

-Carnival in Coal - Viva La Vida (perhaps the new edition with the bonus track and demo tracks on it?)

-Carnival in Coal - Fear not

-Carnival in Coal - Collection Prestige

-Maudlin of the Well - Bath + Leaving your Body Map

-Angizia's DieKemenaten scharlachroter Lichter (not avantgarde, but since I haven't come across too many reviews on this one (and because I don't have it), I'd like to read your opinion on it)

-Devil Doll - All

...


Kind Regards,

H.

It's great that you mention bands/albums that you'd like to see reviewed. They are all taken in regard (not by me since people keep asking for bands I don't listen to, haha).


That feature is actually avaliable, at the bottom of the page for each band is a list of all articles with the band. But maybe I got you wrong and you talk about an enhancement, my brain is fried so I can't think too well.

Thanks for the input anyhow! All suggestions are always taken in regard.

Yeah, there is still a vast gap in the reviews section concerning the classics of AGM. Time will probably fill these, but a "review on demand"-option for our dear readers might speed things up for some bands, what do you think?