Oh the life of a reviewer. The dizzying highs! The terrifying lows! The 5/10s! Have you ever thought of becoming a metal reviewer? This might be your lucky day, because Goatreview.org is looking to expand.
As we acquire more contact with labels, there is an increasing number of releases we can not cover for lack of time. As reviewing is a thankless art with no remuneration, we are forced to keep day jobs and Goatreview.org is a labor of passion. Furthermore, the move to a more professional site has involved more steps within the process of actually publishing a review, not to mention the social media sites we maintain as another source of exposure for the blog. We seek to both streamline and expand the operation, looking for Writers, Editors and Team Members that will help us expand to social media sites that we don´t yet post to – involving the social network formerly known as Twitter (or possibly its new competitors), TikTok and others.
The Goat Review focuses on short, streamlined review content about Heavy Metal music and related genres. We believe that, as Metal more and more becomes an aging demographic, we don´t want to waste the time of our readership, who are tied up in day jobs and commitments as much as we are. We believe that writing a review serves the purpose of getting information across and that portraying the writers unique take on a piece of music is more important than viewing the review as a creative writing exercise. At the same time, we always aim to have our reviews be well reasoned. We want to explain why we believe music is good (or not), and trying to put into words where the qualities of an album lie is one of the challenges in reviewing. We believe every album is mediocre until proven otherwise – a 5/10, from where the album can either gain or lose points. As such, compared to other online review sites, we do not consider a 5 to be a bad score. An average album is just that – average. We believe that the stigma around average scores is hurtful to music journalism and as such, we are not hesitant to give out scores in the 4-6 range. At the same time, we aim to have our reviews be respectful towards the artists at all times. We believe that there are many reasons for why an album can be as good or bad as it is and not all of them are due to a lack of commitment or talent or even laziness. The work itself is what we critique at all times, never the artist.
If you are interested in writing, contact us via scuttlegoat@outlook.de. We will require writing examples. As our average is 5/10 and we deem that to be the absolute median an album can be, we ask you to write 3 short reviews for albums you personally deem a 4, 5 and 6/10 respectively – the bell curve tells us this is where the bulk of all released music lies. We are looking for people who can review on a regular basis and on similar schedules as our current writers. Bonus points if you are interested in covering Power Metal, Metalcore/Deathcore or more mainstream oriented Metal acts, as this is where our blind spots lie. If you are interested in editing or maintaining one of our social media presences, please don´t hesitate to contact us.
We are looking forward to hearing from you!