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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Quite possibly THE most consistent discography in all of metal considering the size and one of the hardest ones to rank. This is one that could probably change at any given time but I'd say the only numbers that I'd probably never change are number one and dead last.

1.Enslaved - Axioma Ethica Odini

2.Enslaved - Below The Lights

3.Enslaved - Ruun

4.Enslaved - Isa

5.Enslaved - Mardraum - Beyond The Within

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2015 was the edge, the cliff, the abyss looking back at us... and we jumped... oh yes we did...

Top 50 of my 8+ ratings

Enjoy! or not I don't really care

Album count: 155
Average rating: 7.15

1.Shape Of Despair - Monotony Fields

2.Arcturus - Arcturian

3.Panopticon - Autumn Eternal

4.Kauan - Sorni Nai

5.Swallow The Sun - Songs From The North I, II & III

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Listen to metal for more than the half of my life, here is the list of my favorites albums of all time.

1.Alcest - Les Voyages De L'âme

2.Alcest - Kodama

3.Alcest - Spiritual Instinct

4.Alestorm - Sunset On The Golden Age

5.Alestorm - No Grave But The Sea

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I feel like my overall favorites list is getting too long. I'm splitting it up by rating.

1.Thy Catafalque - Meta

2.Sepulcros - Vazio

3.Kassad - Faces Turn Away

4.Dream Theater - Black Clouds & Silver Linings

5.Xanthochroid - Of Erthe And Axen: Act I

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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.Insomnium - Winter's Gate

2.Kauan - Sorni Nai

3.Enslaved - Axioma Ethica Odini

4.Wilderun - Veil Of Imagination

5.Steven Wilson - The Raven That Refused To Sing (And Other Stories)

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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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1.Kauan - Sorni Nai

2.Wilderun - Sleep At The Edge Of The Earth

3.Steven Wilson - Hand. Cannot. Erase.

4.Amorphis - Under The Red Cloud

5.Dødheimsgard - A Umbra Omega

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2000-2004 list: http://www.metalstorm.net/users/list.php?list_id=5844
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

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 grows 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 2015 to 2019, with at least 1 vote, were included.
The average expected rating (C) was determined by averaging all the Metal Storm ratings from 2015-2019.
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 +2.

C for 2015-2019 = 7.422
m = 20

Number of albums from each year in the list:
2015 - 31
2016 - 24
2017 - 18
2018 - 12
2019 - 17

Ratings are accurate as of 30/10/2023

1.Mgła - Exercises In Futility

2.Insomnium - Winter's Gate

3.Amorphis - Under The Red Cloud

4.Vektor - Terminal Redux

5.Trees Of Eternity - Hour Of The Nightingale

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1.Thy Catafalque - Rengeteg

2.Rotting Christ - Κατά Τον Δαίμονα Εαυτού

3.Necrophobic - Mark Of The Necrogram

4.Thy Catafalque - Sgùrr

5.Shining - Redefining Darkness

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To commemorate the top 100 albums of 2010 - 2019 I thought I would follow suit and make a list of my own. This has been a very challenging task to say the least. As I reflected on the releases from the last 10 years, it became increasingly difficult to settle on album rankings. In the interest of getting my top 100 published I am potentially releasing the list a little prematurely. The top 30 or so are quite firm. I don't anticipate much change in those albums, however, there could be some mobility throughout the rest of the list.

1.Ulcerate - The Destroyers Of All

2.Esoteric - A Pyrrhic Existence

3.Un - Sentiment

4.Mournful Congregation - The Incubus Of Karma

5.Ulcerate - Shrines Of Paralysis

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1.Shape Of Despair - Monotony Fields

2.A Forest Of Stars - Beware The Sword You Cannot See

3.Enslaved - In Times

4.Mgła - Exercises In Futility

5.Amorphis - Under The Red Cloud

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I began this decade in my final year of high school, in the early phases of my metal journey (Mastodon, Machine Head, Dream Theater, Pantera and Avenged Sevenfold were still recent discoveries). One Masters degree and one PhD later, I'm now a tax-paying Londonian, and have ploughed through what must be comfortably over 2000 new releases during the previous ten years. To commemorate the end of a turbulent decade, I've put together a list of the albums that have stuck with me throughout this decade - I wouldn't consider this to be a 'best albums' list, as there have been some truly ingenious works released in more avant-garde territories, but ultimately these are the albums that have ended up dominating my listening habits, or otherwise making a sufficient impression to make this list.

1.Sylosis - Monolith

2.Sylosis - Edge Of The Earth

3.Amorphis - Under The Red Cloud

4.Be'lakor - Of Breath And Bone

5.Cult Of Luna - Vertikal

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1.Thou - You, Whom I Have Always Hated [Collaboration]

2.Deafheaven - New Bermuda

3.Panopticon - Autumn Eternal

4.Cloud Rat - Qliphoth

5.Ghost - Meliora

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