Should sound quality determine reviews?

It really is as simple as this to me. If it sounds like I'm listening to your band through drywall, over the phone, underwater, it's ruining your art for me.

SQ matters huge to me also, it can very much affect how I respond to the music as well it can determine how much I spin that record. Herc's key word above is "revealing". I have many examples where the SQ is dismal and you don't hear or pick up the nuances that make a passage engaging. 

There are many delicate sound structures in classic prog, most reissue CDs from the 90's were done horribly, brick-walled to death, which is still occurring BTW, and all u hear is a wall of noise. Dynamics and resolution are gone. Pick up a well recorded, properly mixed and mastered album and you will hear these nuances and it will affect how you react to the music, if not then you have a hearing deficiency. 

Like Herc my system is very revealing, some may ask "how do you know this?" Two reasons, 1) Go and listen to a high end system, it costs you nothing to do this. 2) I grew up with analog, and clearly remember how my records sounded back in the day, today's analog gear are light years better than what I had in the 70/80s. So my 70's records sound different, but what I hear now are all the nuances that my Lyra Delos cartridge is capable of reproducing, as well the audio gear before and after it that helps immensely. 

I don't review here, but did on another site that does not exist anymore and it (SQ) clearly makes a different impression.

so that's all cleared up then

No idea about the Jellyfish album.  But about Aja, while it's not sterile, I would definitely call it an album that's too well recorded, to the point where all the rock and roll energy is sucked out of it and it sounds more like a jazz ensemble.  Entirely possible that that's what they wanted, this topic as with many others becomes about us listeners projecting our likes and dislikes on the album independent of the makers' own goals.  That said, for me, Royal Scam is the album I love to play in the mornings on the commute (especially Monday mornings ) because it's so kickass while Aja works better in the evening or on cloudy, rainy days.  It's very languid and luxuriant but energetic it isn't.

Determine?? No

Be considered and critiqued?? Absolutely.

Thirdly, a monkey cannot record music, equalize it, mix it and master it. There appears to be plenty of monkeys that record music as a professional hobby. How do I know? I recorded music professionally for 45 years, starting out in NYC and then went to Nashville before going with Capital Records in California and then returned to Columbia Records in NYC. Before retiring in 2013, I was a freelance mixer and lacquer cutter in London. And in most of my later time I was employed to fix the botch jobs recorded digitally by numerous "professional hobbyists". Mixing and mastering engineers make good coin cleaning up after people. I'm not saying that you're of simian class, however, your credentials may impress the man on the street but they don't mean much to a professional who spent so much time fixing digitally recorded disasters.

Edit: friendlier response.