This kills the metalfag

Black Sabbath [Warner Bros., 1970]

All of the worst excesses of the counterculture on a plastic platter--drug impaired reaction times, bullshit necromancy, lengthy solos. They claim to oppose war, but if I don't believe in loving my enemies, then I don't believe in loving my allies either, and I've been worried that something like this was going to happen ever since I first saw a numerology column in an underground newspaper. C-

Paranoid [Warner Bros., 1970]

They do take heavy to undreamt of extremes and I suppose I could learn to enjoy them as camp--after all, the title cut is certainly screamworthy. I mean, their fans can't possibly take that whole Lucifer bit seriously, can they? Anyway, I always suspected that horror movies catharsized things I was too rational to care about in the first place. C-

Master of Puppets [Elektra, 1986]

I feel a distinct generation gap between myself and this music--not because my weary bones can't take its power and speed, but because I was born far too soon to have had my dendrites rewired by progressive radio. The momentum of this band can be impressive, and as with most fast metal (as well as some sludge metal), they seem to have acceptable political motivations--antiwar, anticonformity, even anticoke. Fine. The problem is that the revolutionary heroes I envision aren't male chauvinists too naive and inexperienced to know better--they're not Arnold Schwarzenegger as Conan the Barbarian--all flowing hair and huge pecs. That's the image Metallica calls up and I am no more likely to invoke their strength of my own free will than I am the 1812 Overture's. B-

...And Justice For All [Elektra, 1988]

Problem isn't that it's more self-aware than Puppets, which is inevitable when your stock-in-trade is compositions rather than songs. Problem is that it's also longer than Puppets, which is inevitable when your stock-in-trade is compositions rather than songs. Just ask Yes. C+

Metallica [Elektra, 1991] *bomb*

Iron Maiden [Meltdown, 1980s]

Tonight the Stars Revolt [DreamWorks, 1999] *bomb*

Reinventing the Steel [EastWest, 2000] *bomb*

Bumping for based xgau. What's this board's opinion of him? He has p good taste imo, but he's given bad reviews to some Sup Forumscore (slint, radiohead, sigur ros, king crimson, etc.).

gotta wait a few years till metalfags start learning to read in school

A faggot who started the entire trend in music journalism of writing one sentence insults in place of actual informed reviews. Pitchfork and all their ilk are his "children".

Also his music tastes are plebian as fuck.

He hated Deep Purple as well from memory.

Nah, he gave Machine Head a B. But he only reviewed three of their 250 albums.

How are Pitchfork reviews similar to his? Pitchfork reviews meander on about nothing, whereas Bob's are concise and to the point.

Should God Forget: A Retrospective [Columbia, 1997]
Punk engenders postpunk, which incorporates--these guys are English, after all--its essential prepunk Bowie-Ferry axis, but bypasses its equally essential pub, garage, and roots axes. All operative imperatives are purely aesthetic, powered by vagaries of taste, quiddities of form, and oddities of talent; however inevitable the resulting music may have sounded, it was obviously all pose, and just as it had no cultural significance then, it has no historical significance now. All it does is go around on its track and sound good--surprisingly good, considering how meaningless it is, and how inexorably it descends toward sounds-bad. With sincerity off the table, and tune and performance steady as they go, the great puzzle then becomes why the band couldn't keep it up. Because aesthetic imperatives have a moral life just like cultural and historical ones, that's why. A-

I wish /metal/ was just pictures. Would be more fun.

what's his best reviewed metal album?

I don't really see what's wrong with that review, aside from the slightly wanky wording. I don't think he's particularly educated in music theory, so if you're expecting him to discuss elements of the composition, then I guess I can understand why you'd be disappointed. I think he's listened to enough music to know what's good, but he went downhill as a reviewer after he changed his rating system in the 90s.

Reign in blood was pretty high I think

He gave an A to a Motorhead album but some people (including Lemmy himself) have maintained that they aren't really metal.

The B+ he gave RIB seems to have been slightly tongue-in-cheek--the album was so ridiculous and over the top that he probably couldn't help but smile.

Metal is for fags. Panning Ween and Guided by Voices is Christgau's biggest sin.

Once you understand that the kind of rock Christgau likes is basically "Amped up barroom/pub rock", you'll be able to figure out his opinion of an album without even checking his website.

That then explains why he like the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, and Motorhead but not, like, Uriah Heep or Yes.

>metalfag
>Black Sabbath

To be fair, I don't like UH or Yes either.

I'd never listened to the first Black Sabbath album (not the whole thing anyway) so I finally did it yesterday and I can kind of see his point about drug impaired reactions and lengthy solos. They did stretch out the instrumentals a liiiiiiitle too much, especially on "Warning" which just goes on and on and on with nothing but Iommi noodling for like 6 minutes.

Paranoid definitely improved a lot as far as the songwriting and felt like real songs and not a freestyle jam session. "The Wizard" is the only track on the S/T that feels like a proper song.

Uriah Heep, Yes, and Sabbath are stonercore. You're supposed to sit in a beanbag, smoke a bong, and let them take you off on a cosmic journey. That's just how 70s rawk was.

Christgau was the only rock critic who embraced disco instead of whining about it.

Wicked World's lyrics are also a little bit on the cheesy side desu.

He tries too hard to sound quirky and intellectual, uses too much 70s pop-culture references, but at the same time he wants to show how he only likes music for the working class kid, like the Replacements or the Clash.

I don't know, I don't hate him, but when I read one of his reviews, I feel like as if I have just read nothing. Maybe it's due to the fact that English isn't my first language, but I don't learn anything about the album in question most of the time.

Scaruffi uses way too much superlatives and you can easily mock the way he does his reviews, but at least it feels like he listened to the album when he talks about it, and he describes roughly, but accurately, its vibe, most of the time. And this guy isn't even a professional critic.
In contrast, I feel like an AI could easily replace Christgau.

Also this.

Shit, I meant to quote

>but at the same time he wants to show how he only likes music for the working class kid, like the Replacements or the Clash.

That's ironic because metal is the most blue collar music there is as opposed to the college hipster-ish New Wave/punk he jerks off too.

It's been a full year now and we still have Christgau shill threads?

Sup Forums really has turned to absolute shit.

There was one column of his where he says (paraphrasing) "Led Zeppelin have seldom been able to translate their music into a live setting without losing key details. This is in comparison to the Stones or The Who, who are playing glorified pub rock and so are capable of projecting it in an arena setting and sounding bigger."

What a dick