1.Empyrium - Songs Of Moors And Misty Fields

2.Thurisaz - Scent Of A Dream

3.Opeth - Morningrise

4.Empyrium - A Wintersunset...

5.Anathema - Eternity

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1.Les Discrets - Septembre Et Ses Dernières Pensées

2.Mar De Grises - Streams Inwards

3.Enslaved - Axioma Ethica Odini

4.Todtgelichter - Angst

5.Procession - Destroyers Of The Faith

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An unordered list of records on the dark side.
Solitude, despair, sadness, melancholy. Just a bit of rage.
Cooked to introduce you to the dark side of a once sunny day,

1.Mouth Of The Architect - The Ties That Blind

2.Swallow The Sun - The Morning Never Came

3.The Sins Of Thy Beloved - Lake Of Sorrow

4.Potentiam - Bálsýn

5.Doom:VS - Dead Words Speak

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most memorable releases sorted by year
* - especially interesting albums

1.

2.Ashenspire - Hostile Architecture

3.Soen - Imperial

4.Thy Catafalque - Naiv

5.Kayo Dot - Blasphemy

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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
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 2010 to 2014, with at least 1 vote, were included.
The average expected rating (C) was determined by averaging all the Metal Storm ratings from 2010-2014.
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 2010-2014 = 7.478
m = 20

Number of albums from each year in the list:
2010 - 24
2011 - 28
2012 - 16
2013 - 22
2014 - 12

Ratings are accurate as of 30/10/2023

1.Gallowbraid - Ashen Eidolon

2.Enslaved - Axioma Ethica Odini

3.Aquilus - Griseus

4.Ne Obliviscaris - Portal Of I

5.Be'lakor - Of Breath And Bone

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My favorite albums of 2010.

1.Spires - Spiral Of Ascension

2.Alcest - Écailles De Lune

3.Son Of Aurelius - The Farthest Reaches

4.Kvelertak - Kvelertak

5.Pain Of Salvation - Road Salt One

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1.Vulture Industries - The Malefactor's Bloody Register

2.Carach Angren - Death Came Through A Phantom Ship

3.Melechesh - The Epigenesis

4.Motorjesus - Wheels Of Purgatory

5.God Is An Astronaut - Age Of The Fifth Sun

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Top album's form 2010-2019

1.Enslaved - Axioma Ethica Odini

2.Esoteric - Paragon Of Dissonance

3.Corrupted - Garten Der Unbewusstheit

4.Ihsahn - After

5.Mar De Grises - Streams Inwards

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1.Rotting Christ - Aealo

2.Sabaton - Coat Of Arms

3.Parkway Drive - Deep Blue

4.Equilibrium - Rekreatur

5.Sabaton - The Art Of War

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My Top 50, albums rated 8 & above. Only LPs

RIP: Ronnie James Dio

Album count: 206
Average rating: 6.84

1.Alcest - Écailles De Lune

2.Enslaved - Axioma Ethica Odini

3.Ihsahn - After

4.Killing Joke - Absolute Dissent

5.Mar De Grises - Streams Inwards

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1.Enslaved - Axioma Ethica Odini

2.Ihsahn - After

3.Agalloch - Marrow Of The Spirit

4.Alcest - Écailles De Lune

5.Pain Of Salvation - Road Salt One

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Another entry for my "best of" lists on this site. By the way, they are ranked. Enjoy.

1.Les Discrets - Septembre Et Ses Dernières Pensées

2.Enslaved - Axioma Ethica Odini

3.Lantlôs - .neon

4.Negură Bunget - Măiestrit

5.Agalloch - Marrow Of The Spirit

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I tend to judge albums based on listenability. Which is to say how many times I've listened to said album and the albums with the greatest ratio of fantastic songs

1.Alcest - Écailles De Lune

2.Agalloch - Marrow Of The Spirit

3.Thou - Summit

4.Ghost - Opus Eponymous

5.Enslaved - Axioma Ethica Odini

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1.Enslaved - Axioma Ethica Odini

2.Triptykon - Eparistera Daimones

3.Overkill - Ironbound

4.Iron Maiden - The Final Frontier

5.Anathema - We're Here Because We're Here

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1.Alcest - Écailles De Lune

2.Fear Factory - Mechanize

3.Les Discrets - Septembre Et Ses Dernières Pensées

4.Dark Tranquillity - We Are The Void

5.Eluveitie - Everything Remains as It Never Was

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