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Thumbs up: +7
Making My Way Through The MS Top 200

The MS top 200 is supposed to represent the absolute peak of metal music, the timeless classics. I have been listening to metal for about 6 years now and would consider myself fairly knowledgeable about the genre. Yet, I have barely heard half of what the top 200 has to offer. I am now on a quest to listen to it all and give an honest opinion on what I thought of it.
This list will show every album of the top 200 and if I've listened to it whether it's an all-time favourite of mine (+++), I really like it (++), I like it (+), it’s good (*), it’s not great (-), I really dislike it (--) or I hate it from the bottom of my heart (---). The same symbols will be used to characterize what I think my opinion of the albums I haven't heard yet will be, based on my knowledge of the bands and of the genre they play. (?) signifies that I have no idea of whether I'll enjoy it or not and (/) means that my opinion of the album is probably obsolete, and I need to listen to it again. A ★ means the album is in my own top 200.
Edit: The bottom of the top 200 has been changing a lot, with some stuff formerly in the list now closer to 240th, so this is now a top 250. I’m not sure I want to expand the list further down, but I’ll see whenever it’s completed if I feel like going for a top 300 or something like that.
Best discoveries so far: Wildhoney, Nightfall, Out Of Myself, Portal Of I, Autumn Aurora, Nemesis Divina, Abigail, V: Hävitetty, Sounds Of Pain.

1.
2.
3.W.A.S.P. - The Crimson Idol
4.Saturnus - Veronika Decides To Die
5.Ensiferum - Ensiferum

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Created by Roman Doez on 13.04.2023



My Top 50 Albums Of 2000-2009

1.Opeth - Ghost Reveries
2.Riverside - Second Life Syndrome
3.Pain Of Salvation - Remedy Lane
4.Moonsorrow - Verisäkeet
5.Opeth - Blackwater Park

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Created by JHK on 01.10.2022



Thumbs up: +4
Top Metal Albums Each Year I Have Been Alive 2000

A little list series where I list my top 20 favorite metal albums every year starting from the year I was born in.

2000 was a pretty solid year especially for progressive metal, Symphonic metal and power metal, also pretty good year for death metal. This also was the year I started to listen to metal music thanks to those iconic linkin park singles (RIP Chester Bennington).

1.Haggard - Awaking The Centuries
2.Koyaanisqatsy - From The Yearning To Burst The Perpetual Circle
3.Nevermore - Dead Heart In A Dead World
4.Pain Of Salvation - The Perfect Element, Part I
5.Iron Maiden - Brave New World

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Created by Handala on 01.09.2022



Thumbs up: +1
Top 50 Of 2000-2004

1.Pain Of Salvation - Remedy Lane
2.Evergrey - The Inner Circle
3.Dark Tranquillity - Haven
4.Pain Of Salvation - The Perfect Element, Part I
5.Nevermore - Dead Heart In A Dead World

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Created by Alex Avagianos on 12.08.2022



Thumbs up: +1
My Top 30 Albums Of 2000

1.Saturnus - Martyre
2.Pain Of Salvation - The Perfect Element, Part I
3.Porcupine Tree - Lightbulb Sun
4.Nevermore - Dead Heart In A Dead World
5.Radiohead - Kid A

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Created by JHK on 10.08.2022



Thumbs up: +2
The Timeless Ver2

1.All time & genre (including Non-Metal on MS)
2.Only studio albums & EPs
3.The genre is primary one.
4.Only ESPECIALLY favorite (a bit more stringently than ver1 and rating 10 is not enough)
5.The order: A to Z (initial of band's name), next release date
6.Black Wisdom, an album of Russian band Grey Heaven Fall, is deleted. When the situation gets better, I will repost.
Last modified on 3 March 2022

1.Akhlys - The Dreaming I
2.Altar Of Plagues - Mammal
3.Angra - Temple Of Shadows
4.Anthrax - Among The Living
5.Arkha Sva - Gloria Satanae

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Created by Lastempire on 13.02.2022



Pain Of Salvation Best To Worst

1.Pain Of Salvation - Remedy Lane
2.Pain Of Salvation - The Perfect Element, Part I
3.Pain Of Salvation - "BE"
4.Pain Of Salvation - One Hour By The Concrete Lake
5.Pain Of Salvation - Scarsick

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Created by Alex Avagianos on 27.01.2022



Top 20 Of 2000

Must Listen: The First 10

1.Dark Tranquillity - Haven
2.Pain Of Salvation - The Perfect Element, Part I
3.Nevermore - Dead Heart In A Dead World
4.In Flames - Clayman
5.Fates Warning - Disconnected

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Created by Alex Avagianos on 02.04.2021



Thumbs up: +2
Top 200 Overrated Albums

**Trigger warning**

Albums and EPs rated 8.6+ from 100+ votes which I've given an 8 or lower to.

I've listened to and rated every album on MS that meets this criteria (at time of most recent update) - some of them multiple times - so I feel I can give my honest opinion.

The purpose of this is to list and order the albums that I simply don't "get" and to try re-listening to them in the hope of understanding why they've received so many 9 and 10 votes.

Ordered by my rating then MS rating then number of votes.

Updated: 03-Jan-24

My other lists:
Top 500 Albums (ordered & rated)
Top 25 EPs (also ordered & rated)
Top 200 Overlooked Albums (with genres)
So I Heard You Like Wintersun... (Time II find new bands)

1.Anathema - Judgement
2.Paradise Lost - Draconian Times
3.Anathema - Alternative 4
4.Motörhead - Ace Of Spades
5.Motörhead - Overkill

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Created by nonZero on 19.02.2021



Thumbs up: +2
Personal Favorite Albums From 1970-2020 (metalstorm Bands Only)

1.Paradise Lost - Obsidian
2.Alcest - Spiritual Instinct
3.Judas Priest - Firepower
4.Pallbearer - Heartless
5.Vektor - Terminal Redux

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Created by Alce on 17.11.2020



25 Personal Favorite Prog

1.Symphony X - The Divine Wings Of Tragedy
2.Threshold - Hypothetical
3.Symphony X - V: The New Mythology Suite
4.Opeth - Still Life
5.Cynic - Traced In Air

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Created by Alce on 30.07.2020



Fruits Of 2000

1.Nevermore - Dead Heart In A Dead World
2.Pain Of Salvation - The Perfect Element, Part I
3.Spiral Architect - A Sceptic's Universe
4.Fates Warning - Disconnected
5.Symphony X - V: The New Mythology Suite

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Created by embracing on 21.01.2020



Thumbs up: +2
Best Album Of Each Year

Fifty years of metal, 50 best albums of the year. Note that in order to diversify the list I limited it to one album per band, otherwise there would have been too much Judas Priest and Iron Maiden.

1.Black Sabbath - Paranoid
2.Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV
3.Deep Purple - Machine Head
4.Budgie - Never Turn Your Back On A Friend
5.Queen - Queen II

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Created by Ganondox on 17.10.2019



Thumbs up: +5
Top 100 (+5) Of 2000-2004

2005-2009 list: http://www.metalstorm.net/users/list.php?list_id=5838
2010-2014 list: http://www.metalstorm.net/users/list.php?list_id=5828
2015-2019 list: http://www.metalstorm.net/users/list.php?list_id=6722

I sure do love this site and it's rating system, it makes finding great music so easy and, even more importantly, when an album is overlooked for a while but starts getting a buzz a few months later, boom, there it appears in the top 20.

All that being said, I still wish there was some way to get a weighted ranking that not only takes the rating of the album into account, but also the number of votes that were cast. For example, an album with a rating of 8.8 and 1000 votes would rank higher than an album with a rating of 8.9 and 20 votes. So, I scraped all the albums on the site with at least 1 vote into a database. Then, taking a leaf out of IMDb's book, I used Bayesian estimation (like the IMDb's Top 250) to calculate a weighted rating for each album based on its Metal Storm rating and the number of votes it had received.

The formula for calculating the Top 100 Albums gives a true Bayesian estimate:
Bayes rating (BR) = ( C × m + R × N ) ÷ ( m + N ) where:
C = average expected rating given...
m = minimum number of votes
R = average rating for the album = (Metal Storm rating)
N = number of votes for the album = (votes)

The way the Bayesian estimator works is that all albums in the database are given and additional m fake votes with an average rating of C, irrespective of how many true votes it already has. Then a new weighted rating is calculated...
If the album has no true votes ( N = 0 ), then BR = ( C × m + R × 0 ) ÷ ( m + 0) = C × m ÷ m = C (the average expected rating).
If the album has a number of true votes equal to the minimum ( N = m ), then BR = ( C × m + R × m ) ÷ ( m + m ) = ( C + R ) × m ÷ 2m = ( C + R ) ÷ 2 (halfway between the two ratings).
If the album has a very large number of true votes ( N >> m ), then BR = ( C × m + R × N ) ÷ ( m + N ) ≈ R × N ÷ N = R (the Metal Storm rating).
This means that the Bayes rating will never equal the Metal Storm rating but will approach it as the true votes grow arbitrarily large.

Now that the maths bit is out of the way, here was my methodology:
Only Studio and EP album types, from the years 2000 to 2004, with at least 1 vote, were included.
The average expected rating (C) was determined by averaging all the Metal Storm ratings from 2000-2004.
The minimum number of votes (m) was determined by calculating the 75th percentile of the votes, rounded to the nearest 10.
I also decided that if an album's Bayes rating was within 0.005 of #100, it would be included too; hence the +5.

C for 2000-2004 = 7.599
m = 30

Number of albums from each year in the list:
2000 - 15
2001 - 27
2002 - 14
2003 - 20
2004 - 29

Ratings are accurate as of 30/10/2023

1.Opeth - Blackwater Park
2.Agalloch - The Mantle
3.Tool - Lateralus
4.Wintersun - Wintersun
5.Ensiferum - Ensiferum

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Created by Crys1s on 26.09.2019



Thumbs up: +1
My Favourite Albums Of 2000s

1.Afgrund - Vid Helvetets Grindar
2.After Forever - After Forever
3.Agalloch - The Mantle
4.Agalloch - Ashes Against The Grain
5.Alcest - Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde

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Created by In Bone Factory on 01.09.2018