In progress top 100 albums in no order yet

1.Alice In Chains - Jar Of Flies

2.Porcupine Tree - In Absentia

3.Queens Of The Stone Age - Songs For The Deaf

4.Edge Of Sanity - Crimson

5.Dream Theater - Images And Words

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My favorite metal albums sorted alphabetically by band name and chronological by release date.

1.Æther Realm - Tarot

2.Acid Witch - Witchtanic Hellucinations

3.Allegaeon - Proponent For Sentience

4.Amorphis - Tales From The Thousand Lakes

5.Amorphis - Silent Waters

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Welcome everybody to a little lesson on the history of Sludge & Stoner Metal. I'm Guib and today I have the immense pleasure to serve as your humble teacher.

Please take a seat and travel with me through time as we explore the very best of those two, often blurred, genres. The goal here is simple, I want to get you familiarized with the styles. I want you to understand where they come from through albums on a timeline and while we're at it get a sweet selection of great releases that you might not know and that, hopefully, will get you hooked to explore even more!

But this is a classroom and in my classroom there are a few rules. We want to keep this clean, clear and prevent having a 500+ albums mess. So here are the rules we'll follow throughout this lesson.

- - - - - The Rules - - - - -

1. We will settle for a maximum of 4 albums per year and they will be listed from oldest to newest. Makes it simple to navigate. Those releases will represent what I consider to be hallmarks of the genres for that year. Essentials if you want, yes? Of course, I'll sprinkle a bit of my personality here and there so you will find some unorthodox choices and some less known albums from time to time. It would be boring otherwise... and also why not?

2. We will begin the journey with Melvins' "Gluey Porch Treatments" released in 1987. Why? Because it is arguably the first album to be widely considered as Sludge.

3. The list will mostly feature studio albums. So no Demos & bare minimum when it comes to EPs if any at all. Thank you.

4. I am not going to include releases by Black Sabbath, Blue Cheer, Hawkwind, etc... I fully understand and recognize the influence older bands had on Stoner Rock, but this is not the list for them.

5. Lastly, not really a rule but more of a note. Considering that we're talking about Sludge & Stoner, it is inevitable that Doom, Post, Progressive, Grunge & Hardcore acts will be featured in this list. Those genres simply go together naturally and are often mixed so do not be alarmed!

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That is it, I hope you will all discover something to enjoy through my little history lesson. Also, do not hesitate to comment below if you agree or disagree with some of my picks. After all, this is a classroom and debate is invited as it can be fun and educative. As long everything's done respectfully, of course.

Enjoy & Have Fun... Class dismissed!

NOTE: I will now add my picks for best album of the year using this format (best of xxxx) in the chosen album's description.

- Guib -

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Guib's best Sludge/Stoner Album Picks

Best Of 2023:
Urne - A Feast On Sorrow

Best Of 2024 So Far:
O Zorn! - Vermillion Haze

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Last Update: April 27th, 2024

1.Melvins - Gluey Porch Treatments

2.Soundgarden - Ultramega OK

3.Oxbow - Fuckfest

4.Melvins - Ozma

5.Soundgarden - Louder Than Love

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This covers a wide spectrum of albums that don't all sound the same. But you know the vibe i'm going for on this list.

1.Acid Witch - Rot Among Us

2.American Sharks - American Sharks

3.Baroness - Yellow & Green

4.Boris - Heavy Rocks

5.Cave In - Heavy Pendulum

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Bands in my daily listening rotation. Albums chosen are my favorite by the respective band in most cases 🤘

1.200 Stab Wounds - Slave To The Scalpel

2.A Perfect Circle - Mer De Noms

3.Abbath - Abbath

4.Acid Witch - Rot Among Us

5.Æther Realm - Tarot

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Only the 9s or 10s / 10 are here. Roughly ordered in time.

1.Agalloch - Marrow Of The Spirit

2.Kingcrow - Phlegethon

3.Crippled Black Phoenix - I, Vigilante

4.Igorrr - Nostril

5.Triptykon - Eparistera Daimones

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Fuzz Pedal, Psychedelia, Black Sabbath, Brant Byork, Dust, Desert, Sand, Ice, Skates,Long Jams in The Dunes, Boogies, Southern California, Acid, Dope, Oil, Gasoline, Evil Eye and UFO’s. Those are elements to consider before listening Stoner Music.
In the Decadence of Grunge Rock A bunch of guys leading by The multi instrumentist Brant Bjork, bring to life a kind of Masters Of Reality 90’s version more aggressive and Psychedelic the result was a great combination of Metal Psychedia, Doom and energy distorted calling Stoner Rock Metal

1.Kyuss - ...And The Circus Leaves Town

2.Colour Haze - Periscope

3.Vista Chino - Peace

4.Ché - Sounds Of Liberation

5.Fu Manchu - The Action Is Go

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This list aims to be the counterpart to the Metal Storm Top 200 Albums (plus a few extras).

If you discover a new band or already like any of ones here, please give this list a thumbs up and/or leave a comment so we can get these overlooked gems in front of more people.

Criteria:
• High-quality musicianship (i.e. 9-10/10 IMO)
• 1 album per band

Ordered by number of votes then MS rating.

As these are albums with a low number of votes, the rating is likely to change frequently. I will update this list as often as I can.

Updated: 29-Jan-24

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

1.Solipsist - The Human Equation

2.Ayahuasca - Beneath The Mind

3.Cryptomnesia - Primordial Oddity

4.Element (USA) - The Energy

5.Telepathy - 12 Areas

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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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My personal favorite alternative/hard rock/non extreme albums. As with all my list this only includes bands on metalstorm...also certain albums that didn't make this list will make my top stoner, doom, sludge list or my progressive/post list

1.Clutch - Blast Tyrant

2.Queens Of The Stone Age - Lullabies To Paralyze

3.Tool - Ænima

4.Primus - Pork Soda

5.Queens Of The Stone Age - Era Vulgaris

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I've been listening to Metal since 2005 and it has become my biggest passion in life.

Rarely a day goes by where I don't listen to it in one form or another. The bands I listened to in my teens inspired me to pick up the guitar (and later drums) and start making music of my own.

So here are the albums that have stood out and made the largest impact on me. To be as transparent as possible, I've labelled albums as 'nostalgia bias' where my memories of the album give it an advantage over others.

(Score is an average of each album's song ratings, full list located here. There are a ton of albums that I've rated 9/10 in the 'TBR' tab that may never make it to this list, be sure to check those out.)

If you discovered any new albums or like the same sort of metal, be sure to give this list a thumbs-up and leave a comment so more people can find these amazing bands!

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

Genre-Specific:
Top 50 Black Metal Albums
Top 50 Melodic Death Metal Albums
Top 45 Thrash Metal Albums
Top 40 Power Metal Albums
Top 30 Doom Metal Albums
Top 30 Heavy Metal Albums

1.Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral

2.Opeth - Blackwater Park

3.Metallica - Master Of Puppets

4.Edge Of Sanity - Crimson

5.Opeth - Still Life

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Take a look at the Top Album lists of recent years and you'll notice an obvious trend. In 2005 the average rating of the top 25 albums is 8.76. Jump to 2014 and the average among the top 25 has dropped to 8.26. An almost linear decrease is observable for the 10 years in between.

I was curious to see what a Top 100 for 2000-2014 would look like if I factored the votes to account for the 'rating decline'. I hope you find it interesting.

1.Agalloch - The Mantle

2.Opeth - Blackwater Park

3.Blindead - Affliction XXIX II MXMVI

4.Aquilus - Griseus

5.Nevermore - Dead Heart In A Dead World

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A comprehensive list. PM me if you know of any more.

1.Iron Maiden - Powerslave

2.Clutch - Blast Tyrant

3.Pink Floyd - Echoes - The Best Of Pink Floyd

4.Corrosion Of Conformity - Deliverance

5.Fates Warning - Awaken The Guardian

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Pure awesomeness! 1 album from each of my favorite metal/rock bands.

1.Metallica - Master Of Puppets

2.Danzig - Danzig 4

3.Monster Magnet - Dopes To Infinity

4.Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV

5.Black Sabbath - Paranoid

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