One of my favourite things in life is discovering new music which is awesome, especially if it is awesome in a unique way. So please give me recommendations.

I'm mostly into progressive/art rock and extreme metal, but listen to anything that is good from any genre. For a somewhat different kind of listening experience I turn to classic style heavy metal, the likes of Pagan Altar, Dark Quarterer, Cirith Ungol, Manilla Road, Lord Weird Slough Feg, Hammers of Misfortune, Battleroar, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden.

"Pure Holocaust" by Immortal and "Close to the Edge" by Yes are my favourite two albums. If anyone out there has been totally blown away by these albums then I want to hear from you, particularly if there are other albums which you have been blown away by almost as much, equally, or even more (although I find this difficult to fathom, it'd be awesome if it were possible).

Being overly analytical by nature, it is difficult to come up with a rating system I am happy with. To me, the main purpose of this site is to find new music by finding people with similar tastes. In order to do this, comparison of ratings is necessary, therefore everyone's rating systems should ideally be the same. With this in mind I'll try not to deviate too far from the systems used by people with similar tastes to mine.

A rating of 2.5 should be take it or leave it, I may or may not listen to it again. I am unlikely to rate too many things too much lower simply because I tend only to listen to music which I might like, for instance something one of my rym friends rates highly. Also, it's a waste of my time to rate crappy music. This could mean very good albums are rated 3. Accordingly, if my ratings become skewed toward the high side it doesn't mean I'm not super picky, because I am! If I were to rate all music on this site, it is likely that the number of recordings assigned a certain rating would increase exponentially as ratings decreased, i.e. I'd rate a lot very lowly.

Also, Ive decided to take the approach of rating things quickly without much thought, and without necessarily listening carefully to them. This is not much like me but I figure I can always change the ratings and at least this way I begin to fill in my profile. Let me know if you think my ratings are wrong as it is possible I haven't quite "got it" yet, or I haven't quite got sick of it yet haha.

I will try and use reviews as a means to explain my ratings, to describe the music to non-musicians, and to recommend if there is something similar I prefer. Usually I will mention at the start of my review how many times I have listened to the music before reviewing, and to what extent these were dedicated listening experiences vs background music.