Top 50 of 2007. Rated 8+.

Only LPs.

Album count: 193
Average rating: 6.96

1.Porcupine Tree - Fear Of A Blank Planet

2.Moonsorrow - V: Hävitetty

3.Alcest - Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde

4.Rotting Christ - Theogonia

5.Machine Head - The Blackening

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Some stories, themes or concepts are presented not just in one single song but are split in separate tracks that (often) share the same title but are distinguished by a number of the corresponding part of the song series.

However, sometimes these parts are not found together on one album, but are included on different releases of the artist.
They can be found on two (or more) conceptually linked albums (where they function as part of an ensemble together with the other songs), or they can be included on independent releases (where only they alone continue their story).

Therefore, the main purpose of this list is to give an overview that enables the reader to find the missing song pieces - or even to inform that these pieces exist at all.

Please feel free to find and suggest more examples of these "song jigsaw puzzles": one song(concept) in separate parts on different albums.

1.After Forever - Prison Of Desire

2.Agathodaimon - Higher Art Of Rebellion

3.Agathodaimon - Phoenix

4.Alestorm - Sunset On The Golden Age

5.Alestorm - Curse Of The Crystal Coconut

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Mind map:

Blue = win
Undead = win
Hell = win
Blue = win
Nature ft. Water = win
Color eyegasm = win
Grim reaper = win
Boys being boys = win
Badly done CGI = win
Blue = win
Blue = win
Orthodox stuff = win
Black and white = win, sometimes

Last updated on 29 July 2023.

1.Emperor - Reverence

2.Wintersun - Wintersun

3.The Ruins Of Beverast - Rain Upon The Impure

4.Dissection - Live Legacy

5.Ozzy Osbourne - Diary Of A Madman

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Subject to change from time to time. (Currently in a remaking process)

1.Avenged Sevenfold - Waking The Fallen

2.Iron Maiden - The Final Frontier

3.Avenged Sevenfold - City Of Evil

4.Opeth - Still Life

5.Ne Obliviscaris - Citadel

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1.Porcupine Tree - Fear Of A Blank Planet

2.Antimatter - Leaving Eden

3.Moonsorrow - V: Hävitetty

4.Riverside - Rapid Eye Movement

5.Dark Tranquillity - Fiction

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Fairly self-explanatory. I don't think I will approach these in any particular order, I'll treat it whimsically. I'm not sure what I'll do once I have familiarized myself with these sufficiently. I might go and leave a comment on the album's page.

Last updated on 4 May 2023.

EDIT: Actually, I'll just go from top to bottom, although sometimes I add albums somewhere near the top of the list.

1.Sakis Tolis - Among The Fires Of Hell

2.Dio - The Last In Line

3.Swallow The Sun - Hope

4.Ne Obliviscaris - Portal Of I

5.Extol - Undeceived

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Ratings go from:

WORSHIP ❤️❤️❤️: Absolute greatness, a mindblowing album.
LOVE ❤️❤️🖤: Amazing release with very few flaws.
LIKE ❤️🖤🖤: Enjoyable but far from perfect.
DISLIKE 💔: Not very good or maybe not fitting my tastes.

I've decided to stop rating albums with a numerical value as I tend to feel uncomfortable with that. This list has a minimalistic, subjective and visceral approach, based purely on sensations and personal tastes. Mainly for personal use and doesn't pretend to be a serious ranking, but emerges from the need to remember which bands and albums I enjoyed and the ones I disliked. I constantly revisit new releases so first impressions may change over time. It usually takes 8-10 spins for me to get completely sure of a rating.

1.Æther Realm - Tarot

2.Abhoria - Abhoria

3.Acid Bath - When The Kite String Pops

4.Agrypnie - Metamorphosis

5.Allegaeon - Fragments Of Form And Function

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An ongoing list for personal use as well as for reference for beginners (& veterans alike). This is solely my personal opinion and taste (Death & Prog mostly but do give every genre a try). Basically will include albums I've rated 8 & above. Sorted by year since I'll need a Venn diagram to sort by genre (seriously MS please make it happen if possible). Will feature multiple releases per year (obviously) and per band (since if a band is putting out better albums it deserves more recognition). Keeping the metal faith alive from India

1.Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin

2.King Crimson - In The Court Of The Crimson King

3.Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin III

4.Black Sabbath - Paranoid

5.Uriah Heep - Look At Yourself

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1.Draconian - Arcane Rain Fell

2.Swallow The Sun - The Morning Never Came

3.Solitude Aeturnus - Alone

4.Helevorn - Forthcoming Displeasures

5.Candlemass - Candlemass

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2000-2004 list: http://www.metalstorm.net/users/list.php?list_id=5844
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 2005 to 2009, with at least 1 vote, were included.
The average expected rating (C) was determined by averaging all the Metal Storm ratings from 2005-2009.
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 +8.

C for 2005-2009 = 7.593
m = 20

Number of albums from each year in the list:
2005 - 26
2006 - 20
2007 - 23
2008 - 17
2009 - 23

Ratings are accurate as of 30/10/2023

1.Agalloch - Ashes Against The Grain

2.Opeth - Ghost Reveries

3.Be'lakor - Stone's Reach

4.Gojira - From Mars To Sirius

5.Saturnus - Veronika Decides To Die

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1.Neurosis - Given To The Rising

2.Rotting Christ - Theogonia

3.Electric Wizard - Witchcult Today

4.Finntroll - Ur Jordens Djup

5.King Diamond - Give Me Your Soul... Please

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1.In Flames - Reroute To Remain

2.Katatonia - Viva Emptiness

3.Crematory - Pray

4.The Project Hate MCMXCIX - Armageddon March Eternal (Symphonies Of Slit Wrists)

5.Mercenary - The Hours That Remain

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By Year.

1.Empyrium - Weiland

2.Anathema - A Natural Disaster

3.Evergrey - The Inner Circle

4.Opeth - Ghost Reveries

5.Katatonia - The Great Cold Distance

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These are my favourite albums of all time, the best being first. This is obviously all my own opinion, so please don't shit all over my musical tastes, especially since I am a fan of melodic music, which a lot of people don't seem to like anymore. All these albums have touched me in one way or another and they are all albums I can listen to again and again without ever getting bored.

1.Iron Maiden - Brave New World

2.Katatonia - Night Is The New Day

3.Sentenced - The Cold White Light

4.Wintersun - Time I

5.Omnium Gatherum - Beyond

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How my tastes evolved over the last two years. For the sake of comparison, I reported the original list below the updated one.

1.Warning - Watching From A Distance

2.Evoken - A Caress Of The Void

3.Cobalt - Eater Of Birds

4.The Angelic Process - Weighing Souls With Sand

5.Shining - V - Halmstad

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