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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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

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1.Avantasia - Ghostlights

2.Iced Earth - Incorruptible

3.Kamelot - The Shadow Theory

4.Soilwork - The Ride Majestic

5.Jorn Lande & Trond Holter - Dracula: Swing Of Death

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1.Symphony X - The Divine Wings Of Tragedy

2.Symphony X - Paradise Lost

3.Symphony X - Iconoclast

4.Symphony X - Underworld

5.Symphony X - V: The New Mythology Suite

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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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Must Listen: The First 2

1.Soilwork - The Ride Majestic

2.Jorn Lande & Trond Holter - Dracula: Swing Of Death

3.Amorphis - Under The Red Cloud

4.Kamelot - Haven

5.Civil War - Gods And Generals

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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.TesseracT - Polaris

2.Caligula's Horse - Bloom

3.Arcturus - Arcturian

4.Steven Wilson - Hand. Cannot. Erase.

5.Leprous - The Congregation

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Ranking Symphony X albums from best to worst. Also featuring my three top cuts from each albums. To be perfectly clear, the three bottom albums aren't bad albums however they don't offer the same interesting experience as the others.

1.Symphony X - The Divine Wings Of Tragedy

2.Symphony X - V: The New Mythology Suite

3.Symphony X - The Damnation Game

4.Symphony X - Twilight In Olympus

5.Symphony X - The Odyssey

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1.Symphony X - Underworld

2.Pressure Points - False Lights

3.Amorphis - Under The Red Cloud

4.Phantasma (NED) - The Deviant Hearts

5.Draconian - Sovran

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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

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1.Melechesh - Enki

2.Tengger Cavalry - Blood Sacrifice Shaman

3.Fear Factory - Genexus

4.Psycroptic - Psycroptic

5.Amorphis - Under The Red Cloud

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Not finished, of course. Never shall be.

1.Macabre Omen - Gods Of War - At War

2.Wiegedood - De Doden Hebben Het Goed

3.Amygdala - EPiphany

4.I Chaos - Masterbleeder

5.Paradise Lost - The Plague Within

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My favourite albums of the past year, the list + some words about the albums can also be found on my blog
https://forsakenatthegates.blogspot.com

1.Fear Factory - Genexus

2.Iron Maiden - The Book Of Souls

3.Cain's Offering - Stormcrow

4.Vanden Plas - Chronicles Of The Immortals: Netherworld II

5.Gloryhammer - Space 1992: Rise Of The Chaos Wizards

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1.Amorphis - Under The Red Cloud

2.Moonspell - Extinct

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

4.Angra - Secret Garden

5.The Gentle Storm - The Diary

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