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: 35
Death: 11
Power: 9
Symphonic: 4
Black: 3
Contemporary: 2
Folk: 1
Doom: 1
Rock: 1

1.Devin Townsend - Empath

2.Memories Of Old - The Zeramin Game

3.Wintersun - Time I

4.An Abstract Illusion - Woe

5.Persefone - Aathma

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1.Pain Of Salvation - In The Passing Light Of Day

2.Enslaved - E

3.Ne Obliviscaris - Urn

4.Kauan - Kaiho

5.Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper

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1.Iced Earth - Incorruptible

2.Soen - Lykaia

3.Firewind - Immortals

4.Moonspell - 1755

5.Beast In Black - Berserker

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1.Leprous - Bilateral

2.Ne Obliviscaris - Portal Of I

3.Persefone - Spiritual Migration

4.Threshold - March Of Progress

5.Witherscape - The Northern Sanctuary

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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.Adagio - Life

2.Anathema - The Optimist

3.Annihilator - For The Demented

4.Anubis Gate - Covered In Black

5.Accept - The Rise Of Chaos

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One of the best bands out there. 11 good albums so far. Hard to rank them but i'm pretty happy with this. So here's the albums ranked including my top 3 picks from each albums.

1.Threshold - Subsurface

2.Threshold - Legends Of The Shires

3.Threshold - Dead Reckoning

4.Threshold - Dividing Lines

5.Threshold - Critical Mass

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1.Shade Empire - Poetry Of The Ill-Minded

2.The Dark Element - The Dark Element

3.Threshold - Legends Of The Shires

4.Ulver - The Assassination Of Julius Caesar

5.Vintersorg - Till Fjälls Del II

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1.Septicflesh - Codex Omega

2.Spectral Voice - Eroded Corridors Of Unbeing

3.Paradise Lost - Medusa

4.Samael - Hegemony

5.Egonaut - The Omega

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Honestly, top 25 albums would probably be a more fitting name, given that I have honourable mentions, and few other categories as well. Some of them are self explanatory, while I want to clarify about the few others.
-Greatest disappointment of the year doesn't necessarily mean the worst album of that year, closer to the point would be that it is an album from which I expected a lot more than I received.

1.Myrkur - Mareridt

2.Elvenking - Secrets Of The Magick Grimoire

3.Wintersun - The Forest Seasons

4.Hallatar - No Stars Upon The Bridge

5.Vintersorg - Till Fjälls Del II

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1.Æther Realm - Tarot

2.Unleash The Archers - Apex

3.Orden Ogan - Gunmen

4.Battle Beast - Bringer Of Pain

5.Firewind - Immortals

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1.Akercocke - Renaissance In Extremis

2.Leprous - Malina

3.Decapitated - Anticult

4.Archspire - Relentless Mutation

5.Wolves In The Throne Room - Thrice Woven

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1.Ne Obliviscaris - Urn

2.Wintersun - The Forest Seasons

3.Persefone - Aathma

4.Septicflesh - Codex Omega

5.Soen - Lykaia

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1.Cradle Of Filth - Cryptoriana: The Seductiveness Of Decay

2.Arch Enemy - Will To Power

3.Myrkur - Mareridt

4.

5.

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1.Ayreon - The Source

2.For All We Know - Take Me Home

3.Leprous - Malina

4.Threshold - Legends Of The Shires

5.Voyager - Ghost Mile

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