1.Death - Scream Bloody Gore

2.Bolt Thrower - In Battle There Is No Law

3.Death - Leprosy

4.Autopsy - Severed Survival

5.Morbid Angel - Altars Of Madness

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1.Nile - Annihilation Of The Wicked

2.Morbid Angel - Altars Of Madness

3.Behemoth - The Satanist

4.Obituary - Cause Of Death

5.Death - Leprosy

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My favorite death metal albums.

1.Death - Human

2.Suffocation - Effigy Of The Forgotten

3.Edge Of Sanity - Crimson

4.Morbid Angel - Altars Of Madness

5.Demigod - Slumber Of Sullen Eyes

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1.Draconian - Arcane Rain Fell

2.Tristania - Ashes

3.The Project Hate MCMXCIX - Armageddon March Eternal (Symphonies Of Slit Wrists)

4.Epica - Consign To Oblivion

5.Dark Tranquillity - Character

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As we go into 2011, I decided to look back on the last decade, and try and put together a list of what I believe are the highest quality, and favorite releases of the previous decade.

I believe "best" is something of a misnomer, since people's opinions of quality are biased to their tastes. So a more proper title would be "Best Releases that I Enjoyed from 2001-2010".

1.Deströyer 666 - Cold Steel... For An Iron Age

2.Deathspell Omega - Fas - Ite, Maledicti, In Ignem Aeternum

3.Celtic Frost - Monotheist

4.Cobalt - Gin

5.Behemoth - Demigod

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The best albums of the best metalheads there are and there were on earth.

1.Death - Symbolic

2.Opeth - Orchid

3.Katatonia - Brave Murder Day

4.Opeth - Blackwater Park

5.Agalloch - The Mantle

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Top 50 of 2005

Only LPs

Album count: 189
Average rating: 7.08

1.Gojira - From Mars To Sirius

2.Falkenbach - Heralding - The Fireblade

3.Porcupine Tree - Deadwing

4.Children Of Bodom - Are You Dead Yet?

5.Arch Enemy - Doomsday Machine

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Subject to change from time to time. (Currently in a remaking process)

1.Avenged Sevenfold - Waking The Fallen

2.Iron Maiden - The Final Frontier

3.Avenged Sevenfold - City Of Evil

4.Opeth - Still Life

5.Ne Obliviscaris - Citadel

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Plus my top three favourite tracks from each release. \m/

Honourable mentions:
Shining - IV - The Eerie Cold (Black)
System Of A Down - Hypnotize (Nu/Alternative)
System Of A Down - Mezmerize (Nu/Alternative)
Immolation - Harnessing Ruin (Death)
Epica - Consign To Oblivion (Symphonic)
Sabaton - Primo Victoria (Power)

1.Nile - Annihilation Of The Wicked

2.Opeth - Ghost Reveries

3.Primordial - The Gathering Wilderness

4.Draconian - Arcane Rain Fell

5.Kamelot - The Black Halo

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My personal hard rock/heavy metal album of the year that I own.
Truthfully, for several years, I just gave up trying to figure out what was in 2nd place (and sometimes, even in 1st).
Some years have so many options....

1.Black Sabbath - Paranoid

2.Black Sabbath - Master Of Reality

3.Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath Vol. 4

4.Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath

5.Blue Öyster Cult - Secret Treaties

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Since I discovered MS, I got introduced to a lot of great albums/EPs that hadn't been mentioned from other sources, and I'm really thankful for all the discoveries from all kinds of people in this site. So I decided to make a personal all-time best MS albums list myself! Enjoy~~

(bands are in alphabetical order)

1.Agalloch - The Mantle

2.Agalloch - Ashes Against The Grain

3.Agents Of Oblivion - Agents Of Oblivion

4.Alcest - Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde

5.Alcest - Kodama

      View entire list ››

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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My personal favorite death metal albums of all time. A lot of the list is from the 2000's because that's when I was the most into the genre, I still enjoy those albums to this day and they are definitely nostalgic to me

1.Opeth - Ghost Reveries

2.Between The Buried And Me - Colors

3.Gorguts - Considered Dead

4.Behemoth - Demigod

5.Vital Remains - Dechristianize

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1.Skyclad - Wayward Sons Of Mother Earth

2.Running Wild - Pile Of Skulls

3.Skyclad - Jonah's Ark

4.Amorphis - Tales From The Thousand Lakes

5.Moonspell - Wolfheart

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1.Opeth - Ghost Reveries

2.Nine Inch Nails - With Teeth

3.Evoken - Antithesis Of Light

4.Moonsorrow - Verisäkeet

5.Bolt Thrower - Those Once Loyal

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