Current Top 100 as of September 2019. Having listened to metal for 45 years or so - here are my favourites (favourite track). One album limit per band. Enjoy!

1.Absu - Absu

2.AC/DC - If You Want Blood You've Got It

3.Agalloch - The Mantle

4.Akercocke - Words That Go Unspoken, Deeds That Go Undone

5.Alcest - Écailles De Lune

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1.Novembre - Wish I Could Dream It Again

2.Metallica - Ride The Lightning

3.Primordial - The Gathering Wilderness

4.Metallica - ...And Justice For All

5.Autumnal - Grey Universe

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1.Obscura - Cosmogenesis

2.Ensiferum - From Afar

3.While Heaven Wept - Vast Oceans Lachrymose

4.Mastodon - Crack The Skye

5.Warbringer - Waking Into Nightmares

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**Trigger warning**

Albums and EPs rated 8.6+ from 100+ votes which I've given an 8 or lower to.

I've listened to and rated every album on MS that meets this criteria (at time of most recent update) - some of them multiple times - so I feel I can give my honest opinion.

The purpose of this is to list and order the albums that I simply don't "get" and to try re-listening to them in the hope of understanding why they've received so many 9 and 10 votes.

Ordered by my rating then MS rating then number of votes.

Updated: 03-Jan-24

My other lists:
Top 500 Albums (ordered & rated)
Top 25 EPs (also ordered & rated)
Top 200 Overlooked Albums (with genres)
So I Heard You Like Wintersun... (Time II find new bands)

1.Anathema - Judgement

2.Paradise Lost - Draconian Times

3.Anathema - Alternative 4

4.Motörhead - Ace Of Spades

5.Motörhead - Overkill

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Only a "20 best" list for this quite good year - or well, 'quite good year' for prog at least.

The first four are arranged in preference order, then th sixteen order are in alphabetical order.

Beware: this is a consolidated - but not definitive - version, it might see some changes in the newt few months.

1.Riverside - Anno Domini High Definition

2.Kalisia - Cybion

3.Ghost Brigade - Isolation Songs

4.Sólstafir - Köld

5.Amesoeurs - Amesoeurs

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My favorite and most enjoyed album's of the decade 2000-2009. Roughly in order, but not exactly.

You can kinda tell from this list that I joined Metalstorm in 2009. I started discovering far more music thanks to this site, hence the number of '09 releases featured. I'm slowly starting to pick back through the top lists of previous years, so I expect more pre-'09 releases will be added to this list.

1.Opeth - Blackwater Park

2.Vektor - Black Future

3.Between The Buried And Me - The Great Misdirect

4.SikTh - Death Of A Dead Day

5.Protest The Hero - Fortress

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Here are my top 25 of 2009, going to try to get more years done as I get more free time.

1.Be'lakor - Stone's Reach

2.Baroness - Blue Record

3.Amorphis - Skyforger

4.While Heaven Wept - Vast Oceans Lachrymose

5.Mastodon - Crack The Skye

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2000-2004 list: http://www.metalstorm.net/users/list.php?list_id=5844
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 2005 to 2009, with at least 1 vote, were included.
The average expected rating (C) was determined by averaging all the Metal Storm ratings from 2005-2009.
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 +8.

C for 2005-2009 = 7.593
m = 20

Number of albums from each year in the list:
2005 - 26
2006 - 20
2007 - 23
2008 - 17
2009 - 23

Ratings are accurate as of 30/10/2023

1.Agalloch - Ashes Against The Grain

2.Opeth - Ghost Reveries

3.Be'lakor - Stone's Reach

4.Gojira - From Mars To Sirius

5.Saturnus - Veronika Decides To Die

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1.Obscura - Cosmogenesis

2.Gorod - Process Of A New Decline

3.Cryptopsy - None So Vile

4.Septicflesh - The Great Mass

5.Desecravity - Implicit Obedience

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Here we go... I'd rate this year a 9 for the unusual quality of album releases! Qué impressionante! \m/

1.Mastodon - Crack The Skye

2.Amorphis - Skyforger

3.Suidakra - Crógacht

4.Ensiferum - From Afar

5.Alestorm - Black Sails At Midnight

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1.Novembre - Wish I Could Dream It Again

2.Primordial - The Gathering Wilderness

3.Metallica - ...And Justice For All

4.Novembre - Arte Novecento

5.Metallica - Ride The Lightning

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1.Possessed - Seven Churches

2.Sepultura - Morbid Visions

3.Death - Scream Bloody Gore

4.Death - Leprosy

5.Autopsy - Severed Survival

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This list shows only my preferences in metal. These albums are not necessarily the best of the bands written by, but I return to them again and again. In my opinion, all this masterpieces confirm the variety and greatness of metal music.
Rules:
1. One album per band.
2. Ordered from highest position (top) to lowest (bottom).
3. No heavy, power, doom, gothic, sludge/stoner albums.

1.Children Of Bodom - Follow The Reaper

2.Dimmu Borgir - Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia

3.In Flames - Clayman

4.Soilwork - Natural Born Chaos

5.Gojira - From Mars To Sirius

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The albums below is my definition of extreme metal music, regardless of their genre. Entire list is based only on my personal preferences in metal.
Rules:
1. One album per band
2. 305 groups/305 albums

1.In Flames - Clayman

2.Metallica - ...And Justice For All

3.Chimaira - Chimaira

4.Death - Symbolic

5.Testament - The New Order

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Well, here I put my personal top with which to me have been the best albums of 2009. They are not all they are, but if they all are.

1.Disarmonia Mundi - The Isolation Game

2.Obscura - Cosmogenesis

3.Sybreed - The Pulse Of Awakening

4.The Black Dahlia Murder - Deflorate

5.Asphyx - Death...The Brutal Way

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