5 – The album is excellent, it could also be considered perfect or near perfect. There may be a few glitches or setbacks, but they are not detrimental.

4 – The album is very good. There aren’t too many glitches or setbacks but the ones that are present keep the album from being excellent.

3 – The album is mediocre. While the album is alright, there isn’t anything that makes it stand out above other albums. Some of it is good, and some of it needs work.

2 – The album is bad. Many things have gone wrong, and unless it happens to be within your personal favorite genre, chances are it’s not even worth your time. The band has a lot to work on.

1 – The album is terrible. The album isn’t worth your time, no exceptions.

Note: Be aware that in November 2004 the grading scale was revised to how it is shown above in order to maintain more consistences between our reviewers. Many of the reviews in our Archive may include ½ marks and ¼ marks and please be aware that the ratings at that time were also more open to our reviewers’ interpretations of the rating scale, as opposed to this now absolute grading scale which our reviewers are responsible to follow in their rating procedures.


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Martyr - Feeding the Abscess - added - November 26th, 2006
Reviewer: Jason E. Goltz

5/5

Some bands just manage to do everything right.  Take the French-Canadian band Martyr as an example.  On Feeding the Abscess, which is their third full-length CD and first for Galy Records, Martyr carve for themselves a unique musical niche in the thrashlands between the Allan Holdsworth-like lead runs of Meshuggah and the perversely funky basslines of an L.D. 50-era Mudvayne.  Martyr play very technical metal, but they pull it off in a way that is as original as it is spectacular.  Speed, jaw-dropping virtuosity (literally!), multi-instrumentalism (violin), ambition without tedium (the four-part “Dead Horizon”), and the requisite time changes galore.  I didn’t know it before, but this is apparently how you “feed the abscess.”  A note on trendiness, however.  Need I mention how annoying it’s become to list the names of the recently dead in your liner notes?  I single out Dimebag in particular.  In many cases, it just comes off as insincere.  But Martyr’s contribution to the name-game (in this case Piggy D’Amour) comes off as neither insincere nor annoying.  Their ferocious cover of “Brain Scan” does for Voivod what Metallica did for Diamondhead, viz. it makes you want to go out and buy a Voivod CD.  That’s a tribute for ya!  Finally, to top it all off, I add the obvious: great title and fascinatingly cool artwork by Richard Marchand.  With all this, you have the makings of what, given time, may actually become a true classic of twenty-first century heavy metal.