I admit that there's a lot of stuff in my rating penor which I don't listen to very much. Currently I attempt to give something at least a few listenings before rating, and I am constantly (re)listening to things I rated a long time ago. When I don't rate anything for a long time, it usually means I'm going through my stuff and making sure my ratings are valid/relevant to my current standards.

You'll notice that most of my ratings are pretty high. I've been trying to find the cause for this for the longest time now. Is it that I have low standards, or do I find something positive in almost anything? Another possible culprit may be the fact that I check the RYM rating before listening to anything, as this site is where I get most of my music recommendations. If it has a low rating, I figure it's bad, so I avoid it. As a result, I may actually listen to mostly 'good' music...or am I just going with the crowd and fooling myself into liking albums that everyone else on this site likes? Well, whatever. Either way, I'm having fun listening to stuff.

My ratings are mostly metal, with some other stuff thrown in to make it appear as if I have an open mind.


here's a silly little chronological history of my music taste:

age 10 and before: general pop music (Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys etc). It's all a blur of terrible synth noises.
age 11: some rock, rap or whatever was going on at the time (Three Days Grace, 50 Cent). Went from shit to piss, I guess.
age 12: nu-metal (Linkin Park, Limpbizkit, Slipknot) and classic rock (Led Zeppelin, hooray!) also I was extremely into Metallica at the time. I still somewhat enjoyed stuff on MuchMusic though, but I started to hate synth-pop at that point.
age 13: Pivotal step; started liking bands like Slayer, Pantera, Judas Priest, Black Sabbath, System of a Down, etc. I listened to the biggest names in metal I could find. Totally hated anything I saw as 'mainstream pop', also started appreciating older 'classic' rock more, stuff like the Beatles or Hendrix. I liked 'My Chemical Romance' to, sadly enough.
age 14: The metal got heavier, began listening to stuff like Sepultura, Napalm Death, etc. At this point I only liked metal and rock, I also started to reject the nu-metal stuff. Liked the more poppy black metal, such as Cradle of Filth.
age 15: Developed a taste for black metal, stuff like Emperor or Immortal. Had a weirdly contrived idea of 'true metal', didn't care for anything with acoustic or slow parts. Began to admire technical death metal like Cryptopsy. Some melodic death metal crept in there.
age 16: Began to enjoy stuff that wasn't super-fast, as well as jazz music. I saw beauty in music rather than brutality, even in metal (Agalloch were a key band for me). Finally began to actually give a shit about lyrics, after listening to Frank Zappa. Some electronica as well.
age 17: Stopped giving a crap about 'real or fake metal' and listened to whatever I though was creative. Began to have a sense of lyricism after getting into Bob Dylan.
age 18+: look at my ratings!