1.Woods Of Ypres - Woods V: Grey Skies & Electric Light

2.Alcest - Les Voyages De L'âme

3.Abigail Williams - Becoming

4.Soulfallen - The Promise Of Hell

5.Lamb Of God - Resolution

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1.Paradise Lost - Obsidian

2.Alcest - Spiritual Instinct

3.Judas Priest - Firepower

4.Pallbearer - Heartless

5.Vektor - Terminal Redux

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Yes, I decided to do another gothic metal list because it been rapidly changing since my last two lists. I love revisiting this kind of list because of how different my tastes have changed withing this genre of music I'm passionate about.

1.Anathema - Eternity

2.Draconian - Arcane Rain Fell

3.The Foreshadowing - Days Of Nothing

4.Monumentum - In Absentia Christi

5.Tiamat - Wildhoney

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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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1.Meshuggah - Catch Thirtythree

2.Vektor - Black Future

3.Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV

4.Opeth - Ghost Reveries

5.Opeth - Blackwater Park

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Ordered from best to worst. Because listing it is easier than voting and much easier than voting twice.

Latest additions: Blutmond, Wrathblade, High On Fire

Today is January 17, 2013. The update previous to this was on 5/5/12. Welcome to the future.
Fear not, dear reader, I've only been neglecting the list, but not the music.

1.Borknagar - Urd

2.Carach Angren - Where The Corpses Sink Forever

3.Diablo Swing Orchestra - Pandora's Piñata

4.Enslaved - RIITIIR

5.Om - Advaitic Songs

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1.Ne Obliviscaris - Portal Of I

2.Antimatter - Fear Of A Unique Identity

3.Sigh - In Somniphobia

4.Enslaved - RIITIIR

5.Katatonia - Dead End Kings

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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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This is my personal list of the best albums in 2012. Only full-length albums, no EPs or live albums.

1.Between The Buried And Me - The Parallax II: Future Sequence

2.Devin Townsend - Epicloud

3.Testament - Dark Roots Of Earth

4.Rush - Clockwork Angels

5.Overkill - The Electric Age

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1.Vision Divine - Destination Set To Nowhere

2.Weeping Silence - For The Unsung

3.Paradox - Tales Of The Weird

4.Be'lakor - Of Breath And Bone

5.Luca Turilli's Rhapsody - Ascending To Infinity

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1.Alcest - Les Voyages De L'âme

2.Borknagar - Urd

3.Katatonia - Dead End Kings

4.In The Silence - A Fair Dream Gone Mad

5.The Gathering - Disclosure

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1.Enslaved - RIITIIR

2.Ancestors - In Dreams And Time

3.Wintersun - Time I

4.Anaal Nathrakh - Vanitas

5.Royal Thunder - CVI

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1.Woods Of Ypres - Woods V: Grey Skies & Electric Light

2.Killing Joke - MMXII

3.Meshuggah - Koloss

4.Therapy? - A Brief Crack Of Light

5.Overkill - The Electric Age

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My top 20 favorite albums of 2012 (will be updated as time moves along)

1.Anaal Nathrakh - Vanitas

2.In Mourning - The Weight Of Oceans

3.Cattle Decapitation - Monolith Of Inhumanity

4.Pallbearer - Sorrow And Extinction

5.Be'lakor - Of Breath And Bone

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1.Katatonia - Dead End Kings

2.Wintersun - Time I

3.Saturnus - Saturn In Ascension

4.Be'lakor - Of Breath And Bone

5.Paradise Lost - Tragic Idol

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