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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Dead Man - Euphoria - added - April 23rd, 2008
Reviewer: Mark McKinney

4/5

 

Sweden’s Dead Man is an interesting band both for what they are doing, but also for what they are not doing. Confused? Once you hear this album it will become crystal clear. Dead Man’s sound is very much related to early 1970’s heavy rock, yet they are exactly not heavy rock. The approach and the themes are very much in tune with Black Sabbath, Pentagram, Bang and many other heavy metal pioneers yet these bring more folk elements to their music. Instead of shooting for the dark, bending sludge they lean more towards warm melodies. Now please don’t think these guys are barefoot, flower sniffers though because their songs are certainly thick, involved and thoroughly dynamic. It’s just that this band might be considered more of  a nephew to Sabbath and their like as opposed to someone like Witchcraft who are far a direct descendent of the early metal acts. There is definitely warmth to Dead Man’s music although there are still enough edgy moments to keep you on toes as well. This band deserves quite a bit of credit for first following their own path and for secondly succeeding in creating a strongly layered release that shows it’s influences but dives into their own universe as well.