Ok, I'm a noob around here, so apologies if this question is obviously answered elsewhere, I did have a look around for it.

I'm about to write my first review for this site, and I was wondering, is there some sort of a standard for the percentage ratings reviewers give to albums?

The impression that I have been getting is that anything below 80% is not a good album. And for a reviewer to make it look like an album is worth people listening to, they have to give it above 90%.

This seems ridiculously high to me, surely a good album (as in, the viewer recommends you go and buy it) should be given somewhere between 60 and 75%, a must have album somewhere between 75 and 90%, and anything higher than that should only be given if the music caused you to change your religion or something.

That's the sort of scale I think should be employed, it just seems more meaningful than putting 90% of the albums people review in the top 15% of rating.

I understand that people will be biased to only writing reviews of things they think are excellent or terrible. But in my book excellent means greater than 75%, not > 95%.

Thoughts?

There is no standard, and unfortunately it seems like a lot of folks have their minds stuck in the American school grading system (90+ = Excellent, 80-89 = above average, 70-79 = average, 60-69 = below average, 59 or lower = fail). I personally think that's stupid and kind of use 50 as a medium range, where anything below it is actively bad and above means at least something is enjoyable. Most mediocre stuff falls in the 40-60 range for me (I'm aware my early stuff was different, but I was also a retard). It's preference really.

This place is entirely too prone to absurdly high ratings for everything, but I can't stand people saying that perfect and super high scores should only be given to something that causes the listener to orgasm upon listening, but who the hell agrees on what that album is? Just don't worry about other people's ratings.

Perhaps the no-names are that way, but pretty much every name brand reviewer around here has adopted the 50% = neutral grading scheme.



I think that's true too, but let's keep in mind that most people are only interested in talking about things they like, the many threads about [whatever band] that are innevitably prefaced with things like "Only respond if you LIKE the band in question" being pretty obvious evidence of that. So we have to cut them some slack in that regard considering that this is an entirely amateur review site and nobody is obligated to go about these things in a genuinely critical way.

The standard described here is the one I use, and many other reviewers do too.

Also true, but I'm talking more about how there are a disproportionately high amount of 95+ ratings being given out. I saw a stat once (I think it was last year) that something insane like 20-30% of the reviews are in that range. It personally doesn't really bother me since the true worth of a review is measured in the meat. There are people who just skim through the scores and make up their minds that way, but those are people whose opinions I'm not all that interested in anyway.

Alright, thanks for the help guys.

50% = neutral is something I am going to adopt, and anything less than that I would prefer not to listen to.

But I can only think of about 5 or 6 albums I have heard in my life that I would give more than 90% to, so I will probably be harsher than most. Who cares, from what I gather, the smart kids read the reviews instead of skimming ratings.

This is the right attitude for reviewing here, and anywhere else for that matter. Just keep your scoring relatively consistent and let the words do the talking.

I'm not a reviewer myself, but I read a lot of reviews here. If you're going to use 100%, use it only once, on what you honestly believe is the best album ever. Too many users here 100% like theres no tomorrow. I don't know about others, but I lose respect for reviewers with 27 100% scores.

I was hoping this wouldn't come up because it pisses me off when people say this. If you seriously don't think there's anything wrong with an album, what's to stop you from giving it the top score? I'd personally hunt down any reviewer that puts down a line like "So Abe Lincoln's Revenge by Aryan Jewfuck is perfect, nothing at all is wrong with this album. However, I only scored it a 99% because I personally like Vomit Sodomy's Deathnuts Oblivion a teensy bit better".

I wish people wouldn't take scores so seriously in the first place. I'm sorry, but no matter how much you may want to reduce art down to easily digestible numbers on a one-dimensional objective scale, it's simply never going to happen. Ideally, the only things scores should be used for is to give readers a decent idea of what they're getting into when they start the review, and to relate those of a single reviewer to one another.

I know I have too many positive reviews but this is mainly due to the fact that it takes multiple listens for me to have enough to say about an album and I usually don't feel like spending all that time on something I hate. I do that enough in casual conversation as is...

You don't have too many positive reviews if they are well written.

I tend to only review albums I really like and want to tell the world about. I really have no desire or motivation to review mediocre albums, as I've never done so (or maybe once?)... even though the majority of metal albums fall into the mediocre range. I have my review ranges laid out though, just as a reference point for the few people who actually have read one of my reviews, also just in case I actually do have the motivation to write a review for a mediocre album.

I actually base my reviews around the whole 50% is a silent tape scoring system, as that seems to make the most sense to me. If I give the album below a 50% I'd prefer silence, above a 50% and I'll leave it on. As droneriot said, I think a lot of reviews use this system.

I try. A lot of albums below that I really don't like, unless it's for a few special songs like Maiden's FOTD. To me, seeing an release with a score that I gave around 70-80% is very different than seeing it as the average, since I know many people take it as +85% what would be a good album with a few hiccups. I'd rank 85% alone as a very, very good album, but then again getting closer to 100% brings up the "how much is perfect?" since we know how many people like to throw around 100% (nothing I've reviewed is 100%, though some releases I have a couple 99%).

Whatever, I care about the words, not the percentage.

Ultra Boris had perhaps one of the most consistent review scores. For example, his 65% was a good album, 80% as a very good one, 90% as an absolute classic album.

I'm satisfied to know that my Metal-Archives review average is 62, which is more or less what I consider the average for a metal album.

Ratings can be difficult to administer, especially when you're just starting out... As you progress, you'll really begin to see where albums fit in the scheme of your opinion spectrum.