Rules & Guidelines

Any user caught with plagiarism will be insta-banned.

If you submit a review that was published on another website, you are more than welcome to send it to us - as long as it is YOUR review! Stealing other people's writing is unacceptable and we will not stand for any of it.

This also includes written content for band information. Do not, we repeat, do NOT, copy and paste a biography or some similar text from another website (such as BNR or Tartarean Desire), nor any text from the official or unofficial site of the band.

Plagiarism is evil. We have zero tolerance for this, and these warnings are explicit enough. It doesn't matter if you submitted a review that's not yours even if you gave credit, because the points will go to you and the review will still be listed under your name. Simply put, do not add a review you are not the author of, or you will lose your account and get banned immediately!

Another insta-bannable offense. You'd think this would go without saying, but just so we're clear: you are not allowed to sabotage band information by entering stupid/false/derogatory information, adding fake albums/links, deleting valid links and so on. Do any of that and we'll simply restore the data and ban your account instantly.

It's rather sad that we have to actually write that down, simply because of a few juvenile assholes.

Short version: don't make consecutive, worthless updates just to boost your score. You'll get your points docked at best, banned at worst. For more information about what consists of a "worthless update", read the list below.

Longer version:
Seems like some of you love your score. You love it so much, that even though you are in the top 5 of the user rankings, and have had Veteran access for months now, you still get off seeing your score increase, and gasp in horror if it should ever decrease. You could lose 2000+ points and still keep your ranking, but it would still be a tragedy.

So you decide to be cute, and bloat your score in every possible way with worthless updates. This is called Point Whoring. It includes, but is probably not limited to, the following:

• Adding guesswork lineups to albums. This is the most common form of point whoring as of version 2 (april 2011); for example, adding the most current band members to an album without verifying who really played on the album. Always, always confirm the lineup via an official source, such as the CD/LP/cassette liner notes, or the band's official site. Simply guessing who played on the album is not acceptable and is a bannable offense.
• Adding song lyrics or song lengths one by one. Just don't even think about it. We'll know.
• Adding bootleg albums. Mistakes can happen, but the policy against bootlegs is very clear (the ONLY exception is the all-too-infamous Dawn of the Black Hearts for its historical significance), and repeated offenders will suffer the "Fred Durst" syndrome. NO BOOTLEGS PEOPLE!
• Adding "varied" to an empty "lyrical themes" field. Variants of this include writing "Satan", "death", "evil, darkness" for random black or death metal bands. Also, removing existing "Varied" entry. Unless it's clearly erroneous to a specific band, there is no point to seek out every band with "Varied" as lyrical themes to remove it.
• Similarly to the above, adding meaningless words in the lyrical themes field based on song titles. Yes, this happens.
• Constantly changing a band picture even though the one before that was perfectly suitable (if not more so).
• Adding a bunch of worthless links that have no more (when it's not LESS) information about the band than the actual Encyclopaedia band entry. Also applies to links to CD reviews or interviews as "fan sites". Exception: if the band is very very obscure and this link to an interview is one of the only reference to the band on the Web, it might be tolerated.
• Other worthless links: site to a general store, label or merchandise site instead of a direct link to the band's entry (see the rules for the "Links" section below).
• Adding any invalid albums (see next tab), not just bootlegs. This goes for "Various Artist" compilations, re-releases, re-masters, any variants of the same album. Repeat offenders will be banned.

There are probably more examples of worthless updates, but those should give you a general idea of what NOT to do. However, point-whoring is NOT the following:

• Correcting typos and grammar/spelling mistakes.
• Correcting erroneous factual information (be sure of your source!).
• Updating a truly outdated/irrelevant, or low-quality, band picture or logo, by a better one. For classic bands, pictures of the classic band line-up, especially if rare and/or of good quality, are perfectly suitable. If you want a recent picture, go to Roadrunner's website. For the most part, however, up-to-date pictures are welcome. Use common sense here.
• Adding a band's entry on a label website as an "official" link. E.g., www.label.com/bandname instead of www.label.com.
• As mentioned above, adding a link to an interview if this interview is one of the only references to this band on the Net. If the band already has a website at all (official or not), forget it.
• Updating lyrics if their paragraph and/or formatting is near-illegible (in fact, since one gets only one point per album for such an update, we must commend one's patience for taking the time and effort to do that!)
• Adding re-release, remastering, bonus tracks, etc. information in the "additional notes" field of the original album's entry.
• Any update that truly makes an improvement and makes the site generally better and/or more complete. So if you're unsure, ask yourself this: will doing this update bring anything good in any way? If the answer is the negative, then just forget about it.

It's simple, really. We catch you at point-whoring (and we will), we drop your score, if you don't get the message, we "Durst" (aka ban) you. So, just don't do it.

Please, try to avoid spelling mistakes. We realize that many people often don't take the time to really type well on the Internet, but this is not a chatroom or even a message board, and you should take what you submit seriously enough to at least write properly. This goes especially for song titles. Try to respect the punctuation and proper capitalization too. If the songs are in a foreign language, make sure the spelling is accurate.

Proper capitalisation is important. Do not enter information in ALL CAPS or all lowercase. Respect the capitalisation for band names, album and song titles. Tip: band names and song/album titles generally have the first letter of each word capitalized (except for acronyms obviously), except for small words like "the" and "of" (unless of course they start the title).
Good: Council of the Fallen, Storm of the Light's Bane
Not so good: Council Of The Fallen, Storm Of The Light's Bane
Bad: COUNCIL OF THE FALLEN, storm of the lights bane

When in doubt, use the Wikipedia standards for capitalisation.

When entering line-up and artist information, always use the real instrument names. It's "vocals, guitars, bass and drums", not "regurgitated vokills", "666 shredding strings of doom", "baritone cacophony" and "pounding rhythms of madness" or *insert pretentious/dumb metaphore here*.

Another rule that might appear obvious, but we've had several violators already: you are not allowed to create sock puppets, for example, to rig review scores, the recommendation system, or to spam reports.

We have had people try to create multiple accounts to add more votes to the similar artists recommendation system. As stated here, any user caught registering more than one account (and they always, invariably get caught!) for this purpose will be instantly banned, and all their votes will be wiped in one click of a mouse, so don't bother.

Similarly, we've had the occasional idiots who created several accounts and submitted seemingly different reviews to boost an album's score. Needless to say, once caught the reviews were deleted and all the accounts were banned.

Other uses of sock puppets may include (but are not limited to): sending several reports (or report comments) from different accounts to make the original report seem more important; reporting a pending band claiming the band is legit (while in reality both the band and the report were sent by the same person), and of course, posting on the forum with multiple accounts all pretending to agree with each others to reinforce your viewpoint. To repeat: users caught with sock puppets will be instantly banned.

Neutral information only, written in 3rd person, at all times. (This does not apply to reviews, obviously, but band/album/artist/label data.) This site is meant to be an encyclopedia after all. Do NOT write stuff, in the lineup or additional notes fields or anywhere else, that promotes or bashes the band in question! Do not write a biography in the first person, e.g. "This is my band we formed last year, we sound like band X and draw influences from Y, etc etc".

Be reasonable for the data you enter in the additional notes (whether it's for bands, albums, labels or artists). It clearly says "no personal opinions", yet we still see submissions where it says things like "Awesome brutal band for all death metal fans!", or "their talent has brought them much recognition in their home country" and the likes. Don't.

Guidelines regarding the "not to be confused" issue:
There are three stances where "not to be confused with" might be useful:

• When there is a non-metal band/artist of the same name;
• When there are two bands/artists from the same name and the same country ;
• When the same person has a bunch of ambiguous band names/side projects, like Paul Chain, Devin Townsend... we don't want our contributors to add Paul Di'Anno's full discography under each of his band entries: Paul Di'Anno, Paul Di'Anno's Killers, Di'Anno, Killers (UK), Di'Anno Killers, etc..

>> Band links <<

Everyone can contribute links to websites related to a band. Do not, however, add a link to the main page of a site such as "Headbanger's Delight" to every single band that sells merchandise there. If you do that you could at least link to the page with the actual band merchandise. For example:
Acceptable:: http://www.headbanger.net/bandname/, http://www.sitename.com/band.ext?id=666
Unacceptable: : http://www.headbanger.net, http://www.mydistro.com/home
I.e., a direct link to a band page. Linking to the label or store's main page is useless.

Do not add links to album reviews or interviews, unless there is no other source about the band on the Internet.

For those with the Veteran rank: you may update URLs or delete broken links. Do not delete valid links! You are allowed to delete broken, false or unrelated links, to keep the integrity of the information. Deleting valid links just for the hell of it, or to spite the owner of the linked site, or whatever stupid reason, will not be tolerated.

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>> Artist links <<

You can add the musician/artist's links such as his homepage, his Facebook, Youtube channel, etc.

Do NOT add links to interviews, nor to links to the artist's BAND homepage unless you link directly to a detailed section about the artist. For example, for Steve Harris, linking to Steve Harris @ Ironmaiden.com is acceptable, because that link contains a detailed biography with information not present on the artist page. But linking only to Ironmaiden.com directly on Steve Harris's artist page is useless, since that link is already present on the Iron Maiden page. Similarly, if Steve Harris has a personal homepage, do not add it to Iron Maiden's page; add it to his artist page instead. Exception: if Steve Harris played in a non-metal band, it would be OK to add a link to this band on his artist page, under the link category Unlisted bands.

For links to the artist's non-metal/unlisted bands (link category: "unlisted bands", only add up to ONE link per non-metal band. For example, Kurt Cobain is on the site because of his link to Earth and Melvins, but he's of course more famous for Nirvana, a band not featured on the site. Adding a link to the Official Nirvana Website is acceptable; adding various Nirvana websites is not. One per unlisted band is enough.

In other words, link to pages related to the artist as a PERSON and not his/her bands, unless those bands are not on the site (such as non-metal bands). Keep band links to the band pages.

Exception: for solo artists, if the artist's homepage is both about the artist (as a person) and his/her solo band, it's acceptable to add the link to both pages.

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>> Label links <<

In the "website" text field of a label, you should add the label's main homepage. For any other link, use the "External links" section. You can add the label's Youtube channel, Myspace, Facebook, Webstore (if different than the homepage), and so on, in that section.

Since April 2012, you can now add lineups from the artist's page by searching for the band(s) an artist has been part of. You can only add actual members (permanent or live) from this page; guest and session artists must be added from the albums they participated in. This is an important distinction, since you can also add non-featured bands (bands not listed on the site) on the artist page with lineup information (instrument, year range, etc.) just like you would for a featured band, but you can only add bands the artist has been a member of. Do not add every single band the artist has been a guest for! The resulting clutter will be ludicrous.

For example: adding Nirvana and Foo Fighters on Dave Grohl's page is acceptable, since he respectively was/is a member of those bands. Adding Tenacious D or Killing Joke is not, since he was simply a guest for those bands.

Related to that, there is also a category of external link (mentioned in the External Links section above), "Unlisted bands". You can use this section to link to no more than ONE site (official band sites should take priority) per unlisted band on the artist page. For example, it is acceptable to add the official Foo Fighters website to Dave Grohl's page, but if you do that, do not also add the Foo Fighters Facebook, Youtube, etc. Basically, pick one that makes sense as a basic reference only. This site is not meant to be a directory of non-metal links, after all.

[Edit 2013/01/01: Previously, bands were required to have at least one physical release (CD, tape or LP) to be listed. As of January 1st, 2013, some digital-only bands will be acceptable: see below.]

First, the band must have at least released SOME material. If you don't even have a physical demo or a digital full-length, forget it. The band might have been formed, even got a logo, but how will we know that they won't just disband before even recording anything? An mp3 or two on MySpace or the likes is not enough. A physical demo or a digital full-length, with proof of its existence, is the minimum.

This demo/album must be released already. An upcoming release is not acceptable: wait until the actual release date before submitting the band. We used to accept such bands, until we realized many of them were all talk and never even released the demo for real. So we're very strict on this. Expect any band whose sole album is upcoming to be insta-rejected by the first moderator who sees it in the queue.

A valid physical release is always preferred, and you must provide evidence of the availability of this physical format. This means a CD, LP, or even a tape. Photographs of the physical release(s), such as this or this example, will go a long way into having your submission accepted (whereas blank-looking CD-Rs hand-written in black marker will not). We also require evidence of legitimate distribution. Unprofessional BS such as "Promo Tape limited to 5 copies", "Promo CD-R limited to 10 copies", etc., are not going to fly. We actually prefer serious digital releases (see below "Valid Digital Releases") over garage/bedroom amateurism.

It would be best if there is mention of the band anywhere on the Web, even if it's just a demo review. Otherwise, it could be a joke/fake band and we have no way of knowing.

If the band is not mentioned anywhere on the Web, or if you cannot prove that they have a physical release by using Web links alone, the best ways to prove that they have a physical release is by making a scan or photography of:

• Some of their releases
• Mailorder lists / Flyers
• Magazine / Zine reviews

There are numerous sites that you can easily use to host your pictures and scans. Tinypic is a good one.

Valid Digital Releases?
While physical releases are preferred, digital distribution is now more than common and predominant, and as of 2013, we are now also accepting digital-only releases -- with some caveats. Here are criteria for a band's digital release to be accepted:

• Official Distribution: The album must be available through an official and/or permanent (as "permanent" as Internet sites go, anyway) channel. This means sending us a link to a Mediafire-hosted .rar file is not good enough (could be faked too easily). You must show us where this album is hosted (such as a band's official site, a serious digital distributor, etc.) Note, this does not mean free albums are excluded.
• Quality Download: No streaming-only (such as on MySpace or YouTube); the digital album must be available as a full high-quality download, preferably in lossless format.
• Length of material: The album must be a full-length. There is no hard-defined cut-off, as that would be arbitrary: a good guideline, however, would be roughly 30 minutes of original material. This is to avoid the kind of bands that have a lazy "promo single", or a "3 song EP", of which 2 are covers, for instance. Expect moderator discretion for evaluating this. An EP may be accepted depending on the situation. Two EPs are better than one, for sure.
• Fixed tracklist: The album must have a fixed tracklisting. An assorted bunch of songs posted every now and then on ReverbNation is not an "EP" or a "demo". Another song posted later is not "demo 2". And so on.
• Final mix: No rehearsals, raw promos, rough mixes of any kinds are accepted for digital releases. Only finished, professional albums.
• Cover art: The album should ideally have a cover art, since it serves as a visual identifier for a collection of songs and can be used for making a DIY physical release, should the buyer want the songs on a CD for his/her personal collection. If the digital release has a fully defined cover (and preferably not just a logo on a white background), it will go a long way into making it more serious. Liner notes and inserts are even better.

MODERATOR DISCRETION APPLIES. In other words, if the digital album shows true effort and professionalism, it has much higher chances of being accepted than a random collection of garage-sounding songs in a .rar called "demo 1" that will lead to a 404 page in two weeks. The above criteria will be evaluated by the moderators, and they are entitled to use their full discretion. These criteria may be adjusted over time, we reserve the right to tweak them as required as we ease in digital-only bands. And remember that a clear-cut proof of a physical release is always the best ticket for acceptance (unless it's 3 little tapes you obviously made for your mother, your brother and your friend... and yes, we've had this kind of submission!).

That's a no-brainer, obviously. Don't submit fake bands, don't add false information, and if you want to make updates such as band line-ups, check the validity of your sources. You must provide compelling evidence of the band's existence (see "must have valid release" above) and of its "metalness".

When you add an album, make sure you got all the necessary information and especially all the tracks, or else just don't bother. Song lengths are optional, but try to be consistent; if you want to include the song lengths, do so for every song on the album. Do NOT add an album with a bunch of nameless tracks (unless, of course, the tracks are actually unnamed, in which case, write "-" sans quotes)! If you don't have at least the tracklisting, just wait until you do or don't bother!

For albums with unknown tracklistings, please add them under "Other releases" in the band's additional notes.

Acceptable releases:

• Full-length
• Live album
• Demo
• Single
• EP
• DVD
• Boxed set
• Split
• Video/VHS
• Compilation
• Split DVD/video

Unacceptable releases:

• Bootlegs of any kind (the ONLY exception is Dawn of the Black Hearts, for historical reasons)
• "Various artists" compilations (albums with over 6 participating bands are usually considered V/A compilations rather than splits, but not always -- see below)
• Samplers (even if they have below 6 bands, samplers are not acceptable!)
• Promos only sent to labels
• Unreleased recordings
• Album re-releases (exceptions can be made for re-releases with significant additions or changes, such as this demo compilation)
• Upcoming albums, unless all the information (exact release date, tracklisting and cover art) is 100% confirmed by one official source, such as the band or the label
• Albums with empty or incomplete tracklisting (see previous rule)

...Usually. Don't ever keep submitting the same band repeatedly.

If your band is rejected, you will receive an email notification (if you didn't receive anything, check in your spam folder). But regardless of your notification settings, you can see the status of your band submissions at all time under My Bands in the top left menu. Rejected bands will be flagged in red.

If your submission was rejected, you may apply corrections (based on the reason posted) and resubmit. Use caution when resubmitting! The mods can see the history of all the changes, and they will know if you have resubmitted without responding to the reason(s) that they gave you. If your band is clearly unacceptable (i.e. not metal, fake, not a valid release), repeated submissions will only a) annoy the moderators, b) result in the band being blacklisted (thus preventing any further resubmission), and c) possibly cause your account to get banned. If you want to object to a band rejection, go here, read the first post, and most of all, BE POLITE.

If a band is still pending acceptance, it will not disappear out of the queue - so there is no need to keep spamming us with the same band over and over again. Just be patient, we'll get to it eventually.

If, for some reason, you believe your band submission did not go through because you got a blank screen or something after your submission, please check if it's present either in your drafts or in the submission queue. If it's not showing up, something went wrong server-side (and we're sorry about that), so do resubmit.

So normally there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to submit a band twice. If you do so by accident, that's acceptable, as browsers can be fickle; but it's hard to double-post something two days apart.

If a band changes name, there will be two (or more) entries on the site, provided that they have releases under each name. So if you know of a band that has a new name, please wait until they actually have released something under that name before making a new submission. For example, we have entries for both Kreator and Tormentor, but not one for Tyrant (as they were previously called) because they never released anything under that name.

As of November 2012, you can now link these bands together using the "Years Active" rows in the editing form (more information here).

Please note that bands whose name change isn't significant enough (to be judged by a moderator) won't be added. Example: Dezperadoz, formerly called Desperados, kept the same page.

Please, when you review an album, try to stick to the album content. It doesn't matter how well written it is, how poetic it sounds, how original it is, if all you do is make silly metaphors that go nowhere or mean nothing. It might sound a silly thing to ask for, but such reviews sadly exist (some are even famous for it...). Reviews should give the potential listeners a good idea of what the album sounds like, not show off one's English vocabulary.

Did we mention this yet? Well, it also means, lashing out on a band's image, attitude or reputation is not exactly a good idea either. That doesn't mean we'll refuse a review if you attack a band's image or integrity - in fact, sometimes such things do need to be pointed out and criticized. But a review based mostly on that is of little interest.
This also includes attacks or generalizations on the listeners, not just the fans (see examples below).
Ubiquitous examples include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Cradle of Filth/Dimmu Borgir/etc. are "goth fags";
• Yngwie Malmsteem has a pretentious and arrogant personality;
• Jon Schaffer's attitude is annoying;
• *Insert female singer here* is so hot;
• Christians/Satanists/Jews/etc. are so dumb;
• Black metal "elitists" are so narrow-minded;
• Similarly, "tr00 metal elitists won't like this because it's so avant-garde!"

If you really think it's relevant to the actual album content, by all means feel free to point it out, but don't dwell on it.

Note: here, the "music" includes everything about the album content, depending on the release type. So DO write about the following:

• composition and songwriting
• instrumentation
• singing
• lyrics
• production
• atmosphere and mood
• emotions
• ideas and themes
• structure

For videos and DVDs, you might want to discuss the image quality, lighting and bonus material; for live albums, the band performance and energy; for best-of compilations, the quality of the track selection; for boxed sets, even the packaging can be discussion-worthy. So it's not exclusively about the notes played and the RIFFS, DUDE!!1, or if each song "rules" or "sucks". Tell us about the overall content, not just the aesthetics.

In summary:

• Don't send troll reviews, i.e. reviews written pretty much solely for the purpose of attracting attention and/or riling up others.
• Don't insult listeners or other reviewers in your review.
• Give reasons to support your opinions.
• Avoid "gimmicky" reviews (trying too hard to be original in your format, such as writing in the form of a poem, a story, a mock-interview, etc.), unless you're an exceptionally gifted writer.

If you genuinely hated an album with a passion, go ahead and flame it - just do it intelligently, and don't just cuss it out without giving good reasons (i.e., reasons that have to do with the album's music, production and overall quality). Excessive swearing is probably not a good idea, unless you're doing it well, and for humourous reasons.

On the flip side, the same can be said about excessive fanboy gushing. It's perfectly fine to love an album so much that the inner child in you wants to squeal in glee and jump up and down, but avoid doing that in your reviews... unless, again, you know how to write it so well that it sounds cool and/or humourous, rather than pathetic.

Below are examples of what is considered acceptable or not in regards to the above.

There is not really a minimum of words or lines, but chances are, if it's too short and doesn't say anything, it won't be accepted. You must describe the music (accurately, of course) and give arguments to support your opinions.

Avoid referring to reviews of other members. This can be considered very rude, unless you point out a previously made comparison that you agree with, or wish to elaborate on a point someone made before you. But writing a review contradictory to a previous one just out of spite, or to boost or lower the average rating, is not acceptable.

We ask a minimum of writing ability. We're not all that strict on this (hell, English isn't our first language, and this whole page alone most likely has many grammar mistakes), and we certainly do not ask for sleek professionalism; we just ask for the review to be readable. No abuse of typos, caps or punctuation - or lack thereof - ("This album ROCKED!!!! BEST ALBUM EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!" or then "this album reallly sucked i thought it was gay and teh giutar waspoor its overal prety weak") - just try to be coherent, and if possible, helpful for the readers.

If English is not your first language, and your grasp of English is very crude, just avoid sending reviews altogether. Sorry, this isn't a rag on anyone or their nationality, but that's just the way it is.

Tips:

• Use proper punctuation:
  • One exclamation or question mark is usually sufficient.
  • Ending every sentence with an exclamation/question mark is annoying to the reader.
  • There is a SPACE after the comma (,) and the period (.).
• Proof-read and re-read your text before submitting it.
• If English isn't your first language, you should ask a native speaker to review and perhaps polish your text.
• Don't write your review in a single paragraph.
• Make sure you use two enter strokes between the paragraphs (indents are not supported).
• If you're in doubt as to the meaning of a word, look it up!
• It's spelled "definitely". Not definately, defianetly, definitly, and so on.
• It's "should/would/could have", not "should/would/could of".
• Their/there/they're; it's/its; who's/whose; you're/your; then/than; accept/except; affect/effect; e.g./i.e.; enquire/inquire; rouge/rogue; lose/loose; where/were; etc. If you get confused by those, don't bother sending reviews.
• Metal genres should not be capitalized (unless they start the sentence obviously). "This is a solid Thrash Metal album" is not acceptable; write "This is a solid thrash metal album" instead.
• Avoid writing band names ALL IN CAPS (e.g. write "Candlemass" or "Type O Negative", and not "CANDLEMASS" and "TYPE O NEGATIVE". Some review sites use this standard, but Encyclopaedia Metallum does not. (Because it's not just grammatically incorrect, frankly, it looks ugly too!)
• Check the Reviews sub-forum for more tips about reviewing.

We really shouldn't have to explain that... An inside joke, a quote or a small reference in another language than English is OK if it's not more than that, but the reviews must be available to any other visitor.

In some very rare cases, track-by-track reviews could be appropriate. For albums with short numbers of tracks, this is not a problem. But generally speaking, these reviews are very lacking in content, poorly written, and reek of vapid amateurism. They are also usually very uninteresting reads. Please try to avoid them as much as possible.

Do not review the unfinished promo version of the album, like those with an incomplete tracklist or an unfinished production (rough mix etc.). Only review what is meant to be reviewed: either an official promo copy released by the band for this exact purpose, or the actual, final album.