Review Round-up Edition 1: Music for the Win

It's been a while since I talked about one of my favorite things: Music. Likewise, it's been a while since I've thrown up any info and/or reviews on recent albums that have dropped from the sky.

Well today is the day to remedy that, seeing as how I've had time to fly through some recent material - and some old favorites all at the same time. I'll have more details on my nostalgia moment later in the weekend, in the first installation of what I'll be entitling Blast From the Past.

In the meantime, while I actually write-up these reviews I've been mentioning, I should probably take the time to actually setup some fashion of a rating system. I've only literally reviewed one album previously on the Blaarg and I'm not sure using Brutalisks from Starcraft will serve as useful grading mechanism, except in certain cases.

So for future reference here's how my Reviews will go down, and I even made an example for you fine folks:

E.g.

4.5 Ishmael's

Mastodon - Leviathan

Grade: 4.5 - The quintessential prog metal adaptation of Moby Dick
Label: Relapse
Release Date: August 31, 2004
Site(s): http://www.mastodonrocks.com/ | http://www.myspace.com/mastodon
High Point: All 13m 40s of Hearts Alive.
Low Point: It actually ends.

[Insert Clearly Amazing Review text here]

And here's how the album grading system is going to work:

Jay's Official Album Review Grading System of Doom 

5.0 - Best thing since sliced bread (Perfect)

4.5 - Instant Classic (Excellent)
4.0 - Groovy! (Great)
3.5 - Well Played (Very Good)
3.0 - I Can Dig It (Good)
2.5 - Alright (Average)
2.0 - Meh (Disappointing)
1.5 - Uninspiring (Bad)
1.0 - Are They Even Trying? (Embarrassing)
0.5 - Flaming Heap (Generally Awful)
0.0 - Musical Abortion (Absolute Garbage)

I'll tag the grading system on the side of the blog for easy reference and when I get around to it add a Reviews page, which will catalog any reviews I make appear.

It's like, Magic. OK, time to write these reviews for real.

- J