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Thumbs up: +2
Top 30 Progressive Metal Albums Of The 00's

1.Devin Townsend - Ziltoid The Omniscient
2.In Mourning - Shrouded Divine
3.Circus Maximus - The 1st Chapter
4.Threshold - Dead Reckoning
5.Seventh Wonder - Mercy Falls

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Created by Mrtvozornik on 20.09.2020



25 Personal Favorite Prog

1.Symphony X - The Divine Wings Of Tragedy
2.Threshold - Hypothetical
3.Symphony X - V: The New Mythology Suite
4.Opeth - Still Life
5.Cynic - Traced In Air

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Created by Alce on 30.07.2020



Thumbs up: +9
G.O.A.T.s

The greatest albums of all time aka albums that nobody needs to listen to unless they want to aka only 9/10 and 10/10 albums here aka no memes, sorry. No particular order either. Will add more albums in the future. Because I can't add new albums in the past, can I?

1.Lurker Of Chalice - Lurker Of Chalice
2.!T.O.O.H.! - Order And Punishment (Řád A Trest)
3.Evoken - Quietus
4.Immortal - At The Heart Of Winter
5.Judas Priest - Sad Wings Of Destiny

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Created by Metren on 19.05.2020



A Little Further (Into The Progressive)

One album per artist in alphabetical order which happen to be my favorites. Feels like an addendum to the ?Beginner's Guide To Building A Prog Collection" (http://www.metalstorm.net/users/list.php?list_id=58) often mentioning the same band but different releases.

1.36 Crazyfists - A Snow Capped Romance
2.Agrypnie - 16[485]
3.Ahab - The Call Of The Wretched Sea
4.Akercocke - Words That Go Unspoken, Deeds That Go Undone
5.Alkaloid - Liquid Anatomy

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Created by niklas_sn7 on 28.04.2020



Top 30 Albums Of 2002

1.Agalloch - The Mantle
2.Immortal - Sons Of Northern Darkness
3.Porcupine Tree - In Absentia
4.Pain Of Salvation - Remedy Lane
5.Arcturus - The Sham Mirrors

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Created by al3xjpt on 01.04.2020



Thumbs up: +5
Top 100 (+5) Of 2000-2004

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
2015-2019 list: http://www.metalstorm.net/users/list.php?list_id=6722

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 grow 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 2000 to 2004, with at least 1 vote, were included.
The average expected rating (C) was determined by averaging all the Metal Storm ratings from 2000-2004.
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 +5.

C for 2000-2004 = 7.599
m = 30

Number of albums from each year in the list:
2000 - 15
2001 - 27
2002 - 14
2003 - 20
2004 - 29

Ratings are accurate as of 30/10/2023

1.Opeth - Blackwater Park
2.Agalloch - The Mantle
3.Tool - Lateralus
4.Wintersun - Wintersun
5.Ensiferum - Ensiferum

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Created by Crys1s on 26.09.2019



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

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Created by nonZero on 06.10.2018



Thumbs up: +1
My Favourite Albums Of 2000s

1.Afgrund - Vid Helvetets Grindar
2.After Forever - After Forever
3.Agalloch - The Mantle
4.Agalloch - Ashes Against The Grain
5.Alcest - Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde

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Created by In Bone Factory on 01.09.2018



Thumbs up: +7
The Best Prog Out There

My absolute favorite prog rock/metal albums. None of these are less than a 9/10 to my ears. No particular order.

1.Spock's Beard - Snow
2.Devin Townsend Project - Terria
3.IQ - Dark Matter
4.Dream Theater - Awake
5.Marillion - Clutching At Straws

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Created by Metren on 06.03.2018



Thumbs up: +2
Best Metal Albums Ever (IMO)

Metal albums that blow me away every time I hear them. Loosely ordered... list gets less organized as it goes on. My favorite song from each album is included.

1.Dream Theater - Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From A Memory
2.Faith No More - Angel Dust
3.Dream Theater - Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence
4.Tool - Ænima
5.Metallica - ...And Justice For All

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Created by matthewdurham on 09.05.2017



Five-Second 30 Favorite Progressive Metal Album

Just for my favorite
2016.09.16

1.Dream Theater - Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From A Memory
2.Symphony X - The Divine Wings Of Tragedy
3.Pain Of Salvation - Remedy Lane
4.Queensrÿche - Operation: Mindcrime
5.Circus Maximus - The 1st Chapter

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Created by HowieWu on 16.09.2016



Thumbs up: +13
Current Top 100, 5 Years On

Back when I joined the site in 2011, I did a customary top 100 album list. Every year since then, when I've looked back at it it's become increasingly unrecognisable from my own tastes. Seeing bands I once listened to daily vanish from my playlists, new bands emerge as favourites, and bands even come and go in my reckonings during that time period (Iced Earth, Alcest, even Pain Of Salvation and more certainly peaked in my listening habits around 2011-12 to slowly vanish into obscurity). Now that it's just gone 5 years since I did that list, I thought I might do an updated list just to see how much my tastes have shifted. Whilst compiling the list, I pretty much worked on gut instinct, which was weird as I found myself almost disregarding albums I know I like whilst promoting albums I'm honestly undecided on - it almost seemed to veer away from album quality at times to embracing a subconscious effect the albums have had. Anyway, here it is, plus some honorable mentions that I was surprised missed out.

1.Dream Theater - Images And Words
2.Sylosis - Monolith
3.Sylosis - Edge Of The Earth
4.Agalloch - The Mantle
5.Protest The Hero - Kezia

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Created by musclassia on 23.03.2016



Thumbs up: +24
2000-2014: A 'Factored' Top 100

Take a look at the Top Album lists of recent years and you'll notice an obvious trend. In 2005 the average rating of the top 25 albums is 8.76. Jump to 2014 and the average among the top 25 has dropped to 8.26. An almost linear decrease is observable for the 10 years in between.

I was curious to see what a Top 100 for 2000-2014 would look like if I factored the votes to account for the 'rating decline'. I hope you find it interesting.

1.Agalloch - The Mantle
2.Opeth - Blackwater Park
3.Blindead - Affliction XXIX II MXMVI
4.Aquilus - Griseus
5.Nevermore - Dead Heart In A Dead World

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Created by Moose on 13.09.2015



My Favorite 100 Metal Albums Of All Time

AtoZ (Album)

1.Lost Horizon - A Flame To The Ground Beneath
2.Ihsahn - After
3.Anthrax - Among The Living
4.Faith No More - Angel Dust
5.Riverside - Anno Domini High Definition

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Created by D.C.O on 08.09.2015



Thumbs up: +2
A Progressive Metal Journey

1.
2.Fates Warning - The Spectre Within
3.Slauter Xstoyes - Winter Kill
4.Watch Tower - Energetic Disassembly
5.Trilogy - Life On Earth

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Created by Floflo79 on 04.06.2015