These are albums that I'm currently enjoying. They may be classics that I'm revisiting or new gems I've recently discovered. (Ordered alphabetically)

- A star (⭐️) denotes a new discovery that I find exceptionally special!
- A flame (🔥) denotes an album that I've heard before, enjoyed, and am revisiting this month!

1.Atrium Carceri - Forgotten Gods

2.Blackend Horizon - Nerhegeb

3.Caldon Glover - Ùir

4.Daevar - Amber Eyes

5.Dead Head - Shadow Soul

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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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These are albums that I'm currently enjoying. They may be classics that I'm revisiting or new gems I've recently discovered. (Ordered alphabetically)

- A star (⭐️) denotes a new discovery that I find exceptionally special!
- A flame (🔥) denotes an album that I've heard before, enjoyed, and am revisiting this month!

1.Allfather - A Violent Truth

2.Amorphis - Under The Red Cloud

3.Anvil - Metal On Metal

4.Artrosis - Hidden Dimension

5.Azaghal - Immortalized In Luciferian Blood

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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.

2016 was pretty solid year for metal, a couple of masterpieces in melodic death metal and power metal, black metal keep going strong and some old acts returning stronger than ever.


My favorite non metal albums of 2016

1. ★
By David Bowie (Art rock)


2. Atrocity Exhibition
By Danny Brown (Experimental Hip Hop, Hardcore Hip Hop)


3. Runaljod – Ragnarok
By Wardruna (Dark Folk, Neo-Pagan Folk)


4.Blonde
By Frank Ocean (R&B, Neo-Soul, Ambient Pop)


5. Act V: Hymns With the Devil in Confessional
By The Dear Hunter (Progressive Rock, Rock Opera)



My favorite movie from 2016

1.Insomnium - Winter's Gate

2.Eternal Champion - The Armor of Ire

3.Trees Of Eternity - Hour Of The Nightingale

4.La Torture Des Ténèbres - Civilization Is The Tomb Of Our Noble Gods

5.Demon Bitch - Hellfriends

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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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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.Insomnium - Winter's Gate

2.Moonsorrow - Jumalten Aika

3.Witherscape - The Northern Sanctuary

4.Ihsahn - Arktis.

5.Alcest - Kodama

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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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One band, one album in alphabetical order. No EPs, demos, etc.
Favourite album: Mgła - With Hearts Toward None
Favourite song: Schammasch - "Above The Stars Of God"

1.1914 - The Blind Leading The Blind

2.Abbath - Abbath

3.Accept - Blood Of The Nations

4.Aenaon - Hypnosophy

5.Agalloch - Marrow Of The Spirit

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An ever-growing list of albums/EPs that were just fun to listen to. They had something unique, were experimental/strange and/or had interestingly/efficiently lined up vocals and/or instruments that are too hard to forget easily. Naturally, quite a few of them will be avant-garde, but anything else goes that stand out in their subgenre more than others.

1....? - ...!

2.!T.O.O.H.! - Order And Punishment (Řád A Trest)

3.6:33 - Deadly Scenes

4.Acid Bath - When The Kite String Pops

5.Age Of Silence - Acceleration

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Better never than late, right? Order is not particular.

1.Vektor - Terminal Redux

2.Dark Tranquillity - Atoma

3.Insomnium - Winter's Gate

4.Uada - Devoid Of Light

5.Be'lakor - Vessels

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The choice was though, not only because there were some very good albums out there, but also because as you get older, life fucks you up, and you never have enough time to listen to all the albums you want, for as much as you want. Or as much as they deserve. I must add that the list could be different if I made it on any other day, depending on the mood. I would like to note some honorable mentions too, such as Witherscape - The Northern Sanctuary, Rotting Christ - Rituals, Avantasia - Ghostlights, Skuggsja - A Piece For Mind and Mirror, Ihsahn - Arktis, Moonsorrow, Jumalten Aika, Be'lakor - Vessels, Thy Catafalque Meta, and most of all Katatonia - The Fall of Hearts and Fates Warning - Theories of Flight.

1.Borknagar - Winter Thrice

2.Dark Tranquillity - Atoma

3.Insomnium - Winter's Gate

4.Trees Of Eternity - Hour Of The Nightingale

5.Delain - Moonbathers

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1.Fleshgod Apocalypse - King

2.Obscura - Akróasis

3.Vredehammer - Violator

4.Flotsam And Jetsam - Flotsam And Jetsam

5.Moonsorrow - jumalten alka

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1.Cult Of Luna - Mariner [Collaboration]

2.Oranssi Pazuzu - Värähtelijä

3.Mistur - In Memoriam

4.Thy Catafalque - Meta

5.In The Woods... - Pure

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