...and in general you people get so pissed off if someone isn't drinking the kool aid and taking the very predictable and easy route of echoing every "classic" album is a masterpiece and everything that differs from that, such as any nu-metal album, is automatically bullshit.
Sorry, I listen to a ton of metal. Just because I think Iron Maiden's Number of the beast is somewhere around a 75 and Slipknot's Iowa is (what would equate to in your ratings) to a 95 does not mean I am a moron who doesn't really listen to metal or doesn't get it. I;ve listened to just as many records (thousands) as the rest of you. I might value different things and might like different things, but to suggest that everything is crap that isn't universally loved by the majority of heavy metal fans speaks volumes really on how little some people really actually feel this music. It seems at times people have been told what to like and that is the only way they can judge music at all.
It isn't necessarily the reviews, yeah, i think it is a bit over the top for 99% of any record over 20 years old to be a classic, it is more like the forum users that bitch and complain when you don't subscribe to the groupthink and absurd conformity that certain records are classics and anyone who says differently is not into metal, but a faggoty poser. Sorry, There are hundreds of millions of people buying records and none of these records have cracked diamond status other than a very few. So you lose that argument that there is such thing as a universally loved metal record that is canon. The fact is that the majority of metal fans do not like Maiden, Priest and Metallica judging by the amount of people listening to metal and the record sales. The loudest critics don't speak for everyone.
So here we go, do the predictable thing and talk a bunch of shit about how I'm wrong and don't get metal. My record collection begs to differ.