edited over and over again

1.Be'lakor - Of Breath And Bone

2.Eyefear - The Inception Of Darkness

3.Ne Obliviscaris - Portal Of I

4.Ahab - The Giant

5.Chaosweaver - Enter The Realm Of The Doppelgänger

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this is my list and i update it when i should

1.Enslaved - RIITIIR

2.Kråke - Conquering Death

3.Ne Obliviscaris - Portal Of I

4.Be'lakor - Of Breath And Bone

5.Vision Divine - Destination Set To Nowhere

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1.Gojira - L'Enfant Sauvage

2.Ne Obliviscaris - Portal Of I

3.Ihsahn - Eremita

4.Meshuggah - Koloss

5.Enslaved - RIITIIR

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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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Due to the overwhelming "popularity" of my last list, I have decided to do the same thing in 2012

1.Hail Spirit Noir - Pneuma

2.Baroness - Yellow & Green

3.Devin Townsend - Epicloud

4.Arjen Anthony Lucassen - Lost In The New Real

5.Royal Thunder - CVI

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This is currently undergoing a year end overhaul. All albums added, but not ordered or commented. Expect completion whenever I get round to it!

1.Lamb Of God - Resolution

2.Wilds Forlorn - We, The Damned

3.Dodecahedron - Dodecahedron

4.Monolithe - Interlude Second

5.Liberteer - Better To Die On Your Feet Than Live On Your Knees

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My top 50 of the year. Rated 8 & Above

Alcest, Gojira, Les discrets and Blut Aus Nord make the french connection . Allez les bleus!

Black Sabbath announced their reunion, Wintersun reappeared with time Soundgarden too for the last time.

Nearly forgot the world was supposed to end....

Album count: 172
Average rating: 7.05

1.Gojira - L'Enfant Sauvage

2.Alcest - Les Voyages De L'âme

3.Saturnus - Saturn In Ascension

4.Cult Of Fire - Triumvirát

5.Les Discrets - Ariettes Oubliées...

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Quite possibly THE most consistent discography in all of metal considering the size and one of the hardest ones to rank. This is one that could probably change at any given time but I'd say the only numbers that I'd probably never change are number one and dead last.

1.Enslaved - Axioma Ethica Odini

2.Enslaved - Below The Lights

3.Enslaved - Ruun

4.Enslaved - Isa

5.Enslaved - Mardraum - Beyond The Within

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Only the 9s or 10s / 10 are here. Roughly ordered in time.

1.Agalloch - Marrow Of The Spirit

2.Kingcrow - Phlegethon

3.Crippled Black Phoenix - I, Vigilante

4.Igorrr - Nostril

5.Triptykon - Eparistera Daimones

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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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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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1.Agalloch - Ashes Against The Grain

2.Alcest - Écailles De Lune

3.Amorphis - Under The Red Cloud

4.As I Lay Dying - Shadows Are Security

5.Before The Dawn - Deadlight

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1.Enslaved - RIITIIR

2.Meshuggah - Koloss

3.Gojira - L'Enfant Sauvage

4.In Mourning - The Weight Of Oceans

5.Be'lakor - Of Breath And Bone

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So, I figure with all the staff picks and ms awards going around, I'd post some of the new favorites I've found in 2012, as well as some anticipated favs of the year! Some of these have really changed since the MS awards, since I found myself enjoying certain albums way more than others, which likely would have been on my list otherwise.

1.Be'lakor - Of Breath And Bone

2.Ne Obliviscaris - Portal Of I

3.Enslaved - RIITIIR

4.Xanthochroid - Blessed He With Boils

5.Atoma - Skylight

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