Metal Storm logo
Top lists


Order by:  Date | Popularity | Show all



Thumbs up: +1
Top Metal Albums Each Year I Have Been Alive 2015

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

2015 was a great one, I honestly forgot how good that year was for metal, black metal had a strong showing and Symphonic was not that far behind, Progressive and gothic had great releases and the great return of Iron Maiden.

1.Amorphis - Under The Red Cloud
2.Ghost - Meliora
3.Mgła - Exercises In Futility
4.Draconian - Sovran
5.Swallow The Sun - Songs From The North I, II & III

      View entire list ››
Created by Handala on 18.12.2022



Thumbs up: +2
TheJahrhead's Totally Biased Personal Favorites

1.Megadeth - Rust In Peace
2.Disforia - The Age Of Ether
3.Iron Maiden - Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son
4.Ayreon - The Theory Of Everything
5.Amorphis - Under The Red Cloud

      View entire list ››
Created by TheJahrhead on 03.09.2022



Thumbs up: +3
My Favourite Albums

The goats. The near perfect albums that never get old. Some are full of catchy bangers I'm always humming, and some are so full to the brim of details that I still haven't even uncovered them all.

A brief outline of my ratings:
8.5-9.0 = An excellent album with a few mild drawbacks (Weak song, slightly irritating vocals, odd flow)
9.0-9.5 = Perfect albums that haven't quite warranted the time-earnt 9.5+.
9.5-9.9 = Perfect albums that have stood the test of time, ranked by preference.
10 = I don't expect to hear another album like these, ever.

(I use 'perfect' lightly as it makes no sense for a man-made creation to be flawless. 'Perfect' is simply a term to outline how high a level of enjoyment is, specifically the level of enjoyment when minor faults become insignificant.)

(I evaluate albums outside of metal vastly differently to the ones here, which explains the lack of representation of my other favourite genres. Blue Sky Mining is an exception due to being structured very similarly to my optimal metal album. I may add some picks from other genres down the line.)


STATS:
I know y'all don't look at my lists, so these are purely for my own interest.

-Decades
'10s: 36
'20s: 22
'00s: 7
'90s: 2

-Genres (By best fit or most prominent)
Prog: 36
Death: 11
Power: 9
Symphonic: 4
Black: 3
Folk: 1
Doom: 1
Rock: 1
Alternative pop: 1

1.Devin Townsend - Empath
2.Memories Of Old - The Zeramin Game
3.Wintersun - Time I
4.An Abstract Illusion - Woe
5.Persefone - Aathma

      View entire list ››
Created by 24emd on 30.06.2022



Thumbs up: +2
My Top 50 Albums Of 2010-2019

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)

      View entire list ››
Created by JHK on 26.04.2022



Thumbs up: +1
My Top 50 Albums Of 2015

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

      View entire list ››
Created by JHK on 06.03.2022



Thumbs up: +6
So I Heard You Like Wintersun...

This list aims to be the Wintersun equivalent of LeKiwi's fantastic So I Heard You Like Opeth... list (go and check that one out if you're a fan).

A lot of us around these parts are/were big fans of Wintersun. While Jari may take his sweet time writing, recording, (and let's not forget) producing albums, there are many bands that have a similar sound we can enjoy listening to while we wait for the next Wintersun release, praying that it doesn't disappoint!

This list is a collection of the best albums by those bands.

In alphabetical order and featuring 1 album per band. I will add to this list over time as I discover more.

Enjoy!

My other lists:
Top 500 Albums (ordered & rated)
Top 25 EPs (also ordered & rated)
Top 200 Overlooked Albums (with genres)
Top 200 Overrated Albums (trigger warning)

1.Æther Realm - Tarot
2.Aephanemer - Prokopton
3.Atavistia - One Within The Sun
4.Blind Stare - Symphony Of Delusions
5.Children Of Bodom - Hatebreeder

      View entire list ››
Created by nonZero on 16.07.2021



Thumbs up: +1
Top 100 (+2) Of 2015-2019

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

      View entire list ››
Created by Crys1s on 24.06.2021



Thumbs up: +1
2015

1.Thou - You, Whom I Have Always Hated [Collaboration]
2.Deafheaven - New Bermuda
3.Panopticon - Autumn Eternal
4.Cloud Rat - Qliphoth
5.Ghost - Meliora

      View entire list ››
Created by Marc-Antoine on 24.05.2019



Thumbs up: +21
Top 500 Albums of All Time

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

      View entire list ››
Created by nonZero on 06.10.2018



Thumbs up: +4
Yet Another Useless Folking List

This is a list of all the folk metal albums I have listened to that I found to be of at least marginal quality. It is purely for my own organizational purposes and is not meant to be a definitive statement about the genre; for that reason, there are some entries that don't entirely fit the description, including some neofolk albums and bands that don't exactly play "folk metal" but are close enough.

1.Elvenking - Secrets Of The Magick Grimoire
2.Forefather - Ours Is The Kingdom
3.Forefather - Steadfast
4.Forefather - Last Of The Line
5.Dalriada - Áldás

      View entire list ››
Created by ScreamingSteelUS on 17.05.2016



Thumbs up: +1
My Top Albums Of 2015

1.Draconian - Sovran
2.Swallow The Sun - Songs From The North I, II & III
3.Paradise Lost - The Plague Within
4.Moonspell - Extinct
5.My Dying Bride - Feel The Misery

      View entire list ››
Created by The Melting Snow on 15.03.2016



Thumbs up: +1
Another Generic "What I Liked In 2015" List

I doubt that anybody cares but, this is everything I listened to from 2015 in order of my enjoyment. Any and all hate is welcome!

1.Blind Guardian - Beyond The Red Mirror
2.Iron Maiden - The Book Of Souls
3.Cain's Offering - Stormcrow
4.Amorphis - Under The Red Cloud
5.Kamelot - Haven

      View entire list ››
Created by TheJahrhead on 26.02.2016



Thumbs up: +1
My Top 50 Albums

This serves as a memory note, pretty much.

1.Insomnium - Above The Weeping World
2.Amorphis - Under The Red Cloud
3.Ghost Brigade - IV - One With The Storm
4.Be'lakor - Of Breath And Bone
5.Metallica - Ride The Lightning

      View entire list ››
Created by Risto on 23.02.2016



Dr. Wvrm's 2015 Super Spins

Words are for dummies. So are arbitrary lists. This is the crap I played a lot and liked a lot. My tastes are shit.

1.Amorphis - Under The Red Cloud
2.Nylithia - Hyperthrash
3.Beaten To Death - Unplugged
4.Cain's Offering - Stormcrow
5.Glaciation - Sur Les Falaises De Marbre

      View entire list ››
Created by Dr. Wvrm on 04.10.2015



Thumbs up: +5
2015 - Leth's List Of Likables (Non-Metal Inclusive)

Every album to catch my ear during 2015, rated, with plenty of non-metal for those of you who like to branch out and see what the whole world of music has to offer. Variety'll always be a virtue.

Numerous focused listens needed before rating.
Updates will (hopefully) be constant.

New Update: In order to promote exploration into albums you may not know, I've decided to include "Standout Track" segments for any album which has a track I feel you all MUST listen to. Hopefully these can help hook people with albums they're not familiar with, because chances are they instantaneously hooked me.

1.Death Grips - The Powers That B
2.Leprous - The Congregation
3.Clarence Clarity - No Now
4.Björk - Vulnicura
5.Envy - Atheist's Cornea

      View entire list ››
Created by Lethrokai on 17.07.2015