I am secretly a weeaboo.

My ratings explained (not that anyone'd care about it, I'm putting this here as a personal reference for when I'm on the fence):


5 stars = An absolute masterpiece that I often lose myself in and to which I listen repeatedly for several times every week, possibly for years, without getting tired of it. I often develop a personal attachment to them and I will defend these releases and their musical value to death.

4.5 stars = Short of perfection, perhaps there's one or two songs that aren't as stellar as the rest of the release, but it's still an instant classic for me and it often gets the same treatment as 5 stars albums. The key difference here is whether the entire album or just the vast majority of it is excellent.

4 stars = A large portion of the songs, usually more than half is excellent. The album is solid, a piece of work that stands out in the band's discography and in the genre it belongs to as a whole. Albums I rate 4/5 are releases I'd heartly recommend to anyone no matter their experience in that specific genre, due to their undisputable quality. This is my threshold where I stop viewing releases as "just music", and I start considering them art. Note: I do not give a rating higher than this to EPs/singles/similar releases which consists of just three or four songs of average length, simply because it'd be unfair to put them on the same level of entire albums worth of auditory orgasm.

3.5 stars = Several songs are very good, the rest of the album is coherent and I wouldn't back down from relistening to it again in order to savor it better and maybe raise the vote. I only give albums a rating of 3.5 or more if there's at least 3+ songs (or half of them for releases with a few tracks) that catch my attention.

3 stars = This is the threshold for "good releases". Anything under 3 stars I consider something that I would not buy or ignore, while albums that reach this score are something I'd like to be part of my collection or that I already own. There's usually one or two songs that I consider excellent, although this may not always be the case and I can rate albums as 3/5 even though there's no specific song that catches my attention enough for me to relisten to it repeatedly, and there's been cases where I've given a lower score to albums with excellent single songs but an unbearable rest of the release.

2.5 stars = the average "Meh" release. It's listenable but not enough, or maybe it lacks something that keeps me captivated. I will probably forget about it and never listen to it ever again. It's not even bad or boring enough to catch my negative attention.

2 stars = This is either for a consistently boring release that not only does not manage to keep me interested, but also forces me to skip songs and quit the listening early because it's unbearably boring, or an album that I'd ordinarily rate 2.5/5 but that belongs to a band whose discography entirely consists of boring releases. Boring, boring, boring, the keyword here is boring. Music should not be boring.

1.5 stars = Terrible release, either because of poor recording quality that makes the sound impossible to understand or simply because the music is shit and the band has no idea what the fuck they're doing. Just terrible, not much else to say.

1 star = A release so bad its attempt at music is laughable, or so poorly conceived that it's a matter of personal respect not to give it a higher rating.

0.5 stars = Just... What?