...if Johnny did it.

That would be a waste of time, just like the recent Locrian "review".

Nah, the waste of time is listening to "Lulu" in the first place.

...I mean, what should one review there? It´s just bad. I for one would have nothing positive to say to it (except for the one or the other post-rock-riffing I liked which was well hidden between Lou´s babbling) so I´d see no point in recommending or even waste working time on it.

I am surprised to see Watain and Enthral in the avant-garde section. Intentional?

If you see a description like "Arch Catholic Traditional Black Metal", it is not intentional, but the singing of angels we listen to and which we transcribe blindly. No avant-garde without questions (thank you!) and coincedence.

That is quite vague but I guess it is a yes.

So nobody made a decision to put it there, it just happened?

The individual writers upload the texts on their own, where they see fit. Watain is obviously not AGM in any way at all, haven't heard enough of the ENTHRAL album to be the judge of that. The divisions aren't written in stone, there are several reviews of completely un-metal albums uploaded as AGM albums (Hexvessel, Ulver etc). Editor as I may be, I don't edit very much!

Echon, your question and criticism is welcome.

As Andreas said, WATAIN is no avantgarde-metal, yet since the dawn of this enterprise borders have been discussed / shifted / removed / ignored, and WATAIN is not the first band close to ANTI-Avantgarde-Metal which we present in that section in order to provoke, to present examples of how avantgarde can be avoided for sure... instead of "arch catholic traditional" I could have written ANTI avantgarde, but I already did that some time ago.

Feel invited to listen to THE KINKS' "State Of Confusion" album

The reason I asked in the first place is because the site clearly distinguishes between AGM and !AGM. This separation is useful for those who only care about AGM - personally, I read it all. But if no attention is being paid to where the reviews go, you may as well combine the two.

Good point. I personally wished that all reviews were in one big basket (and mine removed in the process).

Good point. I personally wished that all reviews were put in one big basket (and mine removed in the process).

It's not quite like that, in reality. For instance, I put the last Virus review into non-agm because I wanted to make clear it's just not "m" (and I mean going further than just metal or rock), but it's of course still quite "ag". But then I put Yurei into agm, while I could consider it even less metal than Virus apart from the stuff I "critize" on it as being very metal. You see, I just fuck around with that as much as we fool around with the style tags we put on the reviews. I think it's not meant to be taken all-seriously. And I think one should read most of the reviews one's interested in, for the most part I'd say it's all interesting material even if we are talking about ambient piano music or pop. It's just here for some reason, be it metal, avant-garde, both, or none. Of course, the "Reviews" section was meant to feature everything avant-garde metal, while the "Beyond the Border" section would feature ALL the rest, be it non-avant-garde metal, non-metal avant-garde, or Metallica. Or Videogame music. Or crap, if some of us feels like writing about it.

And above all, one writer's opinion on what's avant-garde [metal] and what's not so avant-garde could and will differ greatly, so just check out what catches your attention or whatever names you are familiar/curious with. Or better, read it all! As we say, The Knowing* doesn't take up space.

*V.V. dixit: the god that burned it.

Oh, I am already reading (almost) all of it. Bands that I know I dislike are the exceptions.

I am not particularly in favour of dividing the reviews into ag-metal and ag-non-metal, or combining the two for that matter. It just struck me that if you do choose to differentiate, you should do so consistently, or else the point of doing so seems lost to me. This is not an issue, though.