Other good album review sites?

Besides NLTM, what are some other good sites with album reviews? Im looking for reviews of both new AND older stuff. I do know about Glory Daze Music which is a good site for melodic rock reviews, any other sites in the same vein?

www.rateyourmusic.com has almost everything there ever was and there are some cool writeups there which aren't anywhere else. Metal used to be the black sheep as it is fairly "hipster" populated, but that has changed a lot and you can still find a lot of good info and reviews on some very obscure stuff.

For all things prog, I love http://www.progarchives.com

I generally trust sleazeroxx site for hard rock, sleaze and metal reviews.

http://www.sleazeroxx.com/

I really don't read music reviews any longer, I'm so picky it's better if I just sample things myself and make up my own mind.  

S.D. wrote:

I really don't read music reviews any longer, I'm so picky it's better if I just sample things myself and make up my own mind.   

This is me too. I read some reviews from people that I know, but they have no influence over me at all.

I'm interested in review sites and what others think about an album. I read reviews on stuff I've already bought, so for me, it's not for advice, but rather their take on it. The thing I've found is that it's rare to find good reviews. Many times the reviews I've read are the same review reposted (re-worded) by several folks. That is boring and a waste of time. For me reviews are the virtual way of going into the record store and talking to the folks there hanging out about this album or that album. Damn, those were the days. Now, it seems that someone posts a review and that becomes the voice and authority and everyone else just falls in line with it. I'm always on the lookout for those that actually have opinions and not just crowd followers.

I like to visit this one from time to time...

http://www.roughedge.com/cdreviews/

It used to be better, more comprehensive, but for whatever reason the quality of reviews have gone downhill over the last year or so. The archived stuff isn't bad though.

Here's a couple of good prog and classic rock sites. He hasn't written in long time, but the archives are really good and he does not hold back. He also doesn't review anything past 1980. Its one of the places I found when I was getting deeper into 1970s Prog.


http://www.vintageprog.com/

http://www.vintageprog.com/classic70srock/index.htm

His attitude is: "If it isn't 70s music, its crap"

Not for discovering new bands, but it's still impressive because there's whole back catalogues and it's funny:

http://web.archive.org/web/20091026170825/http://www.capnmusic.org/

Unfortunately the website is down (obviously, since I had to link to the Wayback Machine), and no more updates. But the few that are there, are great.

I actually like to read the stuff on Metal Archives. Not that it sways me either way, I just find a lot of them to be fun reading. Even better when it conflicts with my own opinion. I also like the scatter-shot quality one finds on there. Made all the better that reviews are submitted and I assume read/approved for posting.

The only reviewer that ever made me buy stuff was the guy who used to do them for a free local weekly Roxx back in the 80's. He would give guitar ratings. Anything higher than four guitars was a must buy. Never let me down once. Ah, the pre-internet days.

One I used to frequent back in the days: http://www.bnrmetal.com/v3/home/main

I like websites with full discographies, with reviews written by the same person. That's the only way you can get A perspective.

You don't necessarily agree with the taste in music, but you get to know what that person likes and dislikes and can place yourself somewhere there and then you already know when he says "it had enough bagpipe, but not enough guitar solos, but too much layered vocals and it wasn't brutal enough.", if it's what you were looking for.

Bonus points for the reviews being funny.

It's not as active as it used to be, but Satan Stole My Teddybear is another one worth checking out.

http://www.ssmt-reviews.com/

I sometimes find it interesting to read metal reviews on allmusic, just because I often do not agree with them.

A funny one I found:

http://www.markprindle.com/judas.htm