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Thumbs up: +3
Top 50 Melodic Death Metal Albums

I've always been a fan of melodic death metal, having listened to bands such as In Flames, Dark Tranquillity and At The Gates in my first few years of getting into metal around 2005-2008. Now, thanks to MS, I've gotten into many more amazing bands such as Wintersun, Insomnium and Scar Symmetry and it has become one of my favourite sub-genres.

So here are my favourites of the genre with my rating, its sub-genre and release year:

(Score is an average of each album's song ratings, full list located here)

If you discovered any new albums or like the same sort of melodic death 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 500 Albums (ordered & rated)
Top 25 EPs (also 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)

1.Wintersun - Time I
2.Wintersun - Wintersun
3.Insomnium - Winter's Gate
4.At The Gates - Slaughter Of The Soul
5.The Haunted - The Haunted Made Me Do It

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Created by nonZero on 26.02.2024



Thumbs up: +1
The Metal Birthday's

1.
2.Mercyful Fate - Melissa
3.Anthrax - Spreading The Disease
4.Joe Satriani - Flying In A Blue Dream
5.King Diamond - The Eye

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Created by Khold Baroness on 16.11.2023



AJ's Ranking Of 2016

2016 was... well... oh oh... oh oh... well... what the fuck!

Anyhow, here is my top 50 ranking of albums I scored 8+

Album count: 126
Average rating: 7.1

1.Alcest - Kodama
2.Khemmis - Hunted
3.Insomnium - Winter's Gate
4.Trees Of Eternity - Hour Of The Nightingale
5.Skuggsjá - A Piece For Mind & Mirror

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Created by AJ The Great on 27.04.2023



M0rkeleb's Overall Favorites - 8s

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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Created by M0rkeleb on 04.12.2022



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

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Created by TheJahrhead on 03.09.2022



Top 50 Of 2015-2020

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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Created by Alex Avagianos on 21.07.2022



Thumbs up: +4
Death Is Only The Beginning (Of This List)

This is a list of all the death metal albums I have listened to that I thought were at all worth remembering. Like my other genre lists, this is just a record of my own listening experience that I use for personal organization, not a definitive account of the best or all of the death metal out there; there will probably be albums or bands that are not death metal in the strictest sense. You'll find some OSDM, melodeath, tech death, death-doom, maybe a bit of deathcore, I don't know. Maybe some non-death metal albums by death metal bands that I put in here just because.

1.Death - The Sound Of Perseverance
2.Death - Symbolic
3.At The Gates - With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness
4.At The Gates - Slaughter Of The Soul
5.Amon Amarth - With Oden On Our Side

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Created by ScreamingSteelUS on 15.04.2022



Thumbs up: +4
Metal Albums Ranked From WORSHIP To DISLIKE

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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Created by Rinbel on 14.03.2022



Thumbs up: +1
My Top 50 Albums Of 2016

1.Insomnium - Winter's Gate
2.Moonsorrow - Jumalten Aika
3.Witherscape - The Northern Sanctuary
4.Ihsahn - Arktis.
5.Alcest - Kodama

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Created by JHK on 26.02.2022



Dark Tranquillity Best To Worst

1.Dark Tranquillity - Haven
2.Dark Tranquillity - Damage Done
3.Dark Tranquillity - Fiction
4.Dark Tranquillity - Projector
5.Dark Tranquillity - Atoma

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Created by Alex Avagianos on 13.01.2022



Top 20 Of 2016

1.Avantasia - Ghostlights
2.Myrath - Legacy
3.Volbeat - Seal The Deal & Let's Boogie
4.Dynazty - Titanic Mass
5.Dark Tranquillity - Atoma

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Created by Alex Avagianos on 02.08.2021



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

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Created by Crys1s on 24.06.2021



Top 30 Death Metal Albums Of The 10's

1.Mors Principium Est - Embers Of A Dying World
2.Allegaeon - Elements Of The Infinite
3.In Vain - Ænigma
4.Obscura - Omnivium
5.Wolfheart - Shadow World

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Created by Mrtvozornik on 21.03.2021



Best Of 2016 Death Metal

Yet another list of mine, this time going back since the first one in 2017. My favorite death metal-adjacent records of 2016. I will be adding more as I find other great records, feel free to recommend stuff in the comments! Listed alphabetically by band name with the subgenre included.

1.Abnormality - Mechanisms Of Omniscience
2.Aborted - Retrogore
3.Amon Amarth - Jomsviking
4.Anciients - Voice Of The Void
5.Be'lakor - Vessels

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Created by Jaro on 22.11.2020



Thumbs up: +17
MS Meta(l) List Of The 2010's - Top 200

Input:
10 years
20 decade lists
749 bands
973 albums

Output:
200 top albums from 2010-2019

FAQ

How are the points calculated?
Simple math.

Ranked top lists:
1st place = 150 pts.
2nd place = 149 pts.
...
100th place = 51 pts.
...
150th place = 1 pt.

Alphabetically sorted lists:
Each place = 100 pts.

1.Enslaved - Axioma Ethica Odini
2.Esoteric - Paragon Of Dissonance
3.Emptiness - Nothing But The Whole
4.Esoteric - A Pyrrhic Existence
5.Tribulation - The Formulas Of Death

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Created by Starvynth on 24.05.2020