I've redesigned the site header.  It's an improvement in functionality over the current one I think and hopefully a small bit in design as well.  Please take a look before it goes live and let me know if there are any issues.

Note that for forum pages the submenu will default to showing the forum links.

Test page:
http://www.soundtrackcentral.com/misc/recommended.php

It's almost "Apple" in its clean-like simplicity.  (Is this a thinly veiled homage to Steve Jobs? )  I like it, in any case.

Though I'm wondering why some reviewed albums under "New Releases" have their star ratings featured and some don't?  Specifically, it looks like the ones you reviewed have them.  I think I may be the only one who's contributed a review here in recent times anyway, but my four and a half stars for Gyakuten Kenji 2 is a no show.

I find the tab interface to be a bit unusual.  My expectation with tabs is that bringing a tab's contents to the foreground is accomplished by clicking, not hovering.  I suspect that many others have this expectation.  In your interface, clicking on a tab opens a new page.

It's not that your implementation is wrong or worse, but I think that it is unconventional and that a site isn't as user friendly or welcoming when it thwarts users' expectations  about how Web sites are navigated.

I quite like the look of it, but I don't like that the "albums" tab is on top by default instead of the "forums" tab.

Angela:
Yeah the album links only show my own star ratings.  The idea at first was to have a sort of cumulative reader ranking that would be indicated separately but as there are very few recent reader reviews only the editor's rankings are displayed for now.  I should at the very least include some kind of indicator to show that an album does have reader reviews and will do that soon.

rein:
That's interesting, I've always thought that standard practice is the exact opposite of what you mentioned - that if there are sub-menus to be displayed in navigation hovering is what triggers it.  I think when people click on a link the natural expectation is for it to open a new page.  At least that's the way it works in all the sites I've seen, but if a lot of people feel similarly to you about it I could see about changing it.

Joe:
For forum pages the forum tab and sub-menu will be on top by default.

Any more comments or feedback?

rein's suggestion is counter-intuitive to actual web design, imo.  I agree with what you said, Adam.  The happy medium may be to remove the hover delay when you hover the parent menu, I think that's really the source of the confusion.  The hover delay really doesn't serve a functional purpose.

What I find strange is that the tabs perform one function on hover and another function on click.  That's not unusual for dropdown buttons, but I don't expect tabs to work this way.  I guess it's just me, though, so never mind.