Talk:As I Lay Dying (band)/GA1

GA Reassessment

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Result: Delisted. Article clearly falls short of GA level, nobody willing to work on it.

Walter Görlitz submitted a {{GAR request}} for this article last month. It is a band I am familiar with, and whose status as a GA I had known of, but not checked on in some time.

I just saw all the news and additions, and I'm floored that this band is together again. I was certain the arrest was the end of this band, and they had moved on to a disgusting mockery of themselves (don't ping me on that).

Walt, I gotta tell ya, despite all the disagreements we usually have, I'm with you on this. It needs reviewed and polished up, but I think it's keepable if the work is put in. Review coming soon. dannymusiceditor ^oops 19:13, 11 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

We have disagreements? Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:08, 9 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

I'd go into why that's true but I'd rather not. Not important to the topic anyway. dannymusiceditor ^oops 22:51, 9 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Lead

~~"which included drummer Jordan Mancino" can be cut, that's not a critical piece of information for the lead~~ I now realize that Mancino was a bandmate of his before AILD. Now I can see why that warrants a lead mention, and I've rewritten it accordingly.
That second paragraph is nasty. Completely discombobulated, with miscellaneous information from the band's history poorly cobbled together in no particular organization. Keep their accomplishments separate from the rest of their releases and history.
All the listed associated acts are fine, but no references should be in the template. A hidden note redirecting the user to the Talk page should suffice.
There's more, but the remaining problems are easy and I can fix them without discussion.
The rest of the lead fails to mention any of the band's members until the reunion. They should have been introduced long before that - preferably in the very first paragraph.
No hlist/flatlist/etc. for the genres, but those for everything else? C'mon, that's ridiculous. I get this isn't GA criteria, but please, GAs are supposed to look nice, and inconsistency is not.
- Look nice? That's the problem with the bullets. They don't look nice. They look like someone just found bullets and wants to use them everywhere. I understand that lists are designed to make screen readers and other mechanical processes easier, but their appearance is not one of the considerations. Also, there's nothing that says a good article is supposed to look nice, but the content is supposed to be good. Walter Görlitz (talk) 17:19, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  - I strongly disagree, they do look nice, but that wasn't the point. Let me clarify. Look nice = meet the GA criteria, be consistent, have everything cited, etc. I hope you get what I mean. I just wanted to choose one or the other for the whole box, and that's been done now. No need to worry.dannymusiceditor ^oops 18:39, 20 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Formation and first releases (2000–2004)

The band's name came from the novel of the same name by William Faulkner that was published in 1930; although the band's lyrics and music are not directly inspired by the novel. I get that this band used to be extreme-underground stuff, but the reference sites used to support this information are iffy. I can let these go since they're band member interviews, but could we look for possible replacements?
The same goes for lambgoat.com, which appears in the third paragraph.
Second paragraph has no references.
Touring then occurred to promote the album...nothing after this has any references.
There is no mention of the replacements of the departed band members, yet these replacements are now some of the band's core-members. Sgrosso and Hipa arrived during this period, but aren't named until the next section, and that's not the right way to do it.

Success (2005–2009)

Unsourced statements:

As I Lay Dying entered Big Fish recording studio in Encinitas, California, US in January 2005 to record their third studio album.
and sold about 275,000 copies.
By this time, guitarist Evan White had quit the band for personal reasons after his mother died.
The album contained the original and re-recorded versions of the songs from the split album—the band preferred to re-release the material, as they didn't want their fans paying large sums of money to listen to early releases. Ah, so like Evanescence did?
Third paragraph fails verification. The only part of that which is supported is Gilbert's recruitment.
It was the first time that bass guitarist Gilbert recorded a studio album with the band.
and toured through Europe in September with Darkest Hour, Himsa, and Maroon. verification failed
and was nominated for a Grammy Award in the category of "Best Metal Performance" for the song "Nothing Left". The other Grammy Award nominees included winner Slayer, King Diamond, Machine Head, and Shadows Fall. The band played a portion of the 2008 Warped Tour... though these should be easy to cite.

Other problems:

Tim Lambesis's finely honed roar in bittersweet instrumental matrices augmented by occasional clean vocals by bass guitarist Clint Norris. I get this is a quote, but it is a fragment nonetheless. Make it so it's not one.
As mentioned before, this section should not be where Sgrosso and Hipa are introduced.

The Powerless Rise and Decas (2010–2011)

Missing cites:

The band's final headline tour of the year was in Europe, with Heaven Shall Burn, Suicide Silence, and Sylosis. Sylosis is not in the supporting reference.
This was followed by a mid-2010 headlining tour titled "The Cool Tour" across the US, and a headlining tour across US/Canada that also featured All That Remains, Unearth, and Carnifex.
Obvious citation needed tag.
Don't know how much of that last paragraph is sourced, the only one on it is dead.

dannymusiceditor ^oops 02:23, 16 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Awakened, Tim Lambesis' trial and hiatus (2012–2016)

On May 7, 2013, Lambesis was arrested in Oceanside, California, US we don't need to specify the US
Subsequently, prior to his criminal charges, Lambesis started a new band entitled Pyrithion with guitarist Ryan Glisan, formerly of Allegaeon. They released one EP as a band. No source.
Rather than continue on without Lambesis, Mancino, along with former members Phil Sgrosso, Nick Hipa, and Josh Gilbert, decided to focus on a different style of music under a different band name, Wovenwar, with Shane Blay as the vocalist I think we should mention that Blay was initially playing for Oh, Sleeper, but I don't know that is for certain the appropriate course of action now that Blay has his own page. So I'm leaving it be until someone else decides.
Made some other small corrections that I felt would be more easy and productive for me to fix than suggest.

Lambesis' release, reunion and criticism (2016–present)

Lambesis attempted to reconnect with Sgrosso and Hipa following his meetings with Gilbert and Mancino—who as a result of Lambesis' actions and the strain it put on their relationships—had stopped speaking to each other following the recording of the second Wovenwar album. I now know what this means (I watched their live discussion video), but I shouldn't have to do that to understand. It's clunky. Are Gilbert and Mancino the ones who stopped talking, or Sgrosso and Hipa? (Here's a hint: it's the latter.) Also, maybe add something about how this conflict lead to Sgrosso's outright departure from Wovenwar.
Sgrosso explained in a discussion video posted on June 16, 2018 by the band explaining their reunion that he replied to all of Lambesis' emails with explicit expressions of having no desire to speak with him. See, here we get some clarification on the previous statement, but it's still not written perfectly; I have amended it for now, but it may need further condensing or polishing.
Hipa was the last to speak with Lambesis due to what Hipa described as not being able to escape Lambesis' arrests shadow and the mental and physical effects it took on him. This should be quoted, and sourced at that point.
Please change the way you sourced all of this. All of the footnotes at the end of the first paragraph is not an effective way to sort this; even if it's all referenced, we shouldn't have to dig through each one to find different parts of cited material in such a large paragraph. I'm not saying break the paragraph up because it's large, but please make the cited material more accessible.

The places I would like citation include:

"one long excuse"
The aforementioned Hipa was the last to speak with Lambesis due to what Hipa described as not being able to escape Lambesis' arrests shadow and the mental and physical effects it took on him.
Cover as much as you can up to a spot where another citation's worth of info is covered. Like, if a lot of it is that YouTube vid by the band, you can cite multiple sentences, but if Alternative Press, Loudwire, etc. is interspersed in there, cite that other info and then reference the YouTube video again where appropriate.

I made various other small tedious fixes in this section...actually, that wasn't so terrible after the first paragraph.

Musical style and influences

Surprisingly not bad. It is pretty much up to snuff for at least bare-bones of GA a GA level musical style section, especially considering bands like this don't get a lot of in-depth style coverage, but you'll need to find some way to make it better if you want to go beyond.

Please, however, do not put seven references in a row to encompass all of their influences; cite them either one at a time or multiple with one or two at a time.

Christianity

Although As I Lay Dying has stated on numerous occasions that all of the members of the group are practicing Christians, the band is usually described by media as being in the metalcore genre, not Christian metal. The band's lyrics do not focus on Christian themes the way many praise music bands do, nor do they treat their music as a direct extension of their private Christian worship or proselytizing efforts. For example, not once do the names God or Jesus appear in any As I Lay Dying song, nor do any of their songs explicitly invoke Christian doctrine or quote the Bible. Most songs tend to address broader spiritual concepts like existential angst or the struggle between reason and spirituality. Air raid siren intensifies this is a big ugly chunk of original research which cannot be present in a GA. You must source it or risk having the article delisted. I would prefer if you didn't just cut it if possible, either, as this does appear like it would be relevant.
In 2014, Lambesis said that although they were marketed as a Christian band, the members privately considered themselves atheists. Is there any update to this information? Was this discussed in their June 2018 YouTube meeting? Elsewhere? You have to think it was. If there wasn't some discussion about this subject among the band members and those who interviewed them, I couldn't possibly conceive how they got back together.

Status query

DannyMusicEditor, where does this GA reassessment stand? Has there been any work to address the issues you've already raised, and do you plan to complete it? If nothing has been addressed in the past 6+ months since your most recent addition, then the obvious thing to do is delist the article, unless someone is willing to step in now and take the article under their wings. Thanks. BlueMoonset (talk) 16:21, 3 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@BlueMoonset: Yikes. You found something deserted. Well, I'm on spring break this week, so I'll have plenty of time to address it. dannymusiceditor ^oops 16:51, 4 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, alright. I didn't keep my promise, and it's bothered me a lot recently, but I now have some time to do this. Working. dannymusiceditor ^oops 01:55, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

@BlueMoonset: I apologize for making this take so long. It is finished now. I will be pinging the Wikiprojects shortly. dannymusiceditor ^oops 03:13, 24 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

This article is in my area of interest but I'm not aware of much more than what is listed in the article and could not help improve the article. DannyMusicEditor suggested that we might want to de-list it, and I'm OK with that option. I think much of the degradation of quality happened while I was watching and I wasn't keeping it clean. I suspect that we can bring back up to GA quality over time and then re-nominate at that time. Walter Görlitz (talk) 18:08, 9 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

As the article has even started to break down in stability today and the closest thing to a main contributor voted to delist, and no other response has been received, I am now delisting this at 10 months. See that's why I hate doing these, because I forget about them. But for this article, it was necessary, unfortunately. dannymusiceditor ^oops 02:44, 11 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]