Primarily it is a place to catalogue, rate and review albums, but there are also charts based on ratings which can be viewed by genre, year etc or overall (take with a pinch of salt like all online charts). Plus users create lists so if you have an album that you love and find it on a well written list, ie good comments for each albu, then it is easy to find other stuff you may enjoy. You can also find out who has the closest taste to you, after you have listed and rated a fair amount of albums, and also see what else they like that you don't have. There are tons of ways to use it but most people fail to see it.

I'll probably check it out, then. ^_^

I could attempt to make a recommendation based on your knowledge of Tool, but I'd most likely fail. Nevertheless, here it goes: The Church (Priest=Aura), Coheed and Cambria, and most of all Porcupine Tree (Deadwing album). I will brace myself for critque on these choices.

No critique at all! Some damn fine choices in my opinion... good to see Priest = Aura in there... freaking amazing album that I could play nytime and enjoy immensely

What genre is Coheed considered?

I can't help but wonder.

Hardcore? I dunno, thats probably selling them short.... from what I do know about them (very little) I think they are kinda heavy, thrashy, not overly complex musically, but lyrically quite cool... but I know bugger all about them, so if anyone wants to correct me... :-)

I definitely don't think they're hardcore. xD

For finding new stuff, figure out what exactly you're into, then look at websites, find blogs to follow, wikipedia genres, pandora.com lets you make a radio station with artists you like and plays similar tracks, spinner.com lets you listen to a bunch of full albums just released, buy music magazines, look up songs you like on youtube and see what related videos come up, find out what labels the bands you like are on and go to their websites, you could even go to myspace and search bands you like, then branch out through their friends, who are usually similar artists. There's a lot of ways to find new bands... but if you aren't that into music yet, it'll get a lot easier as you start to know more bands and figure out the genres you like. Or you can be like me and just sort through tons of crap for a few good albums, but I don't think many people actually like doing that.

Pandora is really the closest thing to a radio station I listen to at that point. Can't handle the regular radio, mostly commercials, and a good song is like 1 in 10...

I have the local (Milwaukee) alternative station on in the car, I believe its called 102.1 Independent Alternative Radio... long name... but it's a pretty decent station, for a radio station, of course...

Otherwise I mostly listen to my own Mp3's or CDs...