The concept of this list is not exceptionally well defined, but I'm circling a basic concept of lean, fast-paced metal with high-pitched vocals that tend to be on the harsher side. The album that inspired the compilation was Evil Invaders' Shattering Reflection, so that can serve as a template; not everything here necessarily sounds exactly like that, but it's all somewhere in the blackened speed/power-thrash/particularly aggressive heavy metal continuum. I'm going entirely by what feels right to me and not necessarily what makes sense on paper, so don't hold this to a rigid standard of consistency.

Here are a few individual tracks that I also thought fit the mood nicely:

Accept - "Fast As A Shark"
Accept - "Fight It Back"
3 Inches Of Blood - "Leather Lord"
Judas Priest - "Ram It Down"
Judas Priest - "Hard As Iron"
Satan - "Trial By Fire"
Crisix - "Ultra Thrash"
Fifth Angel - "In The Fallout"

1.Judas Priest - Painkiller

2.Evil Invaders - Shattering Reflection

3.Bütcher - 666 Goats Carry My Chariot

4.Agent Steel - Skeptics Apocalypse

5.Riot - ThunderSteel

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I've omitted Legacy Of The Dark Lands because, while I like it, it is not a conventional Blind Guardian studio album and does not feel relevant to this ranking. Additionally, while Beyond The Red Mirror is handily my least favorite BG album, it still hovers around a 7 or an 8, so the stratification is not that immense. All of these albums are at least "good," and most of them are masterpieces.

1.Blind Guardian - Nightfall In Middle-Earth

2.Blind Guardian - Imaginations From The Other Side

3.Blind Guardian - A Twist In The Myth

4.Blind Guardian - Somewhere Far Beyond

5.Blind Guardian - At The Edge Of Time

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1.Judas Priest - Painkiller

2.Judas Priest - Stained Class

3.Judas Priest - Firepower

4.Judas Priest - Defenders Of The Faith

5.Judas Priest - Sad Wings Of Destiny

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1.Black Sabbath - Paranoid

2.Black Sabbath - Heaven And Hell

3.Black Sabbath - Headless Cross

4.Black Sabbath - Master Of Reality

5.Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath

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This is a list of all the death metal albums I have listened to that I thought were at all worth remembering. Like my other genre lists, this is just a record of my own listening experience that I use for personal organization, not a definitive account of the best or all of the death metal out there; there will probably be albums or bands that are not death metal in the strictest sense. You'll find some OSDM, melodeath, tech death, death-doom, maybe a bit of deathcore, I don't know. Maybe some non-death metal albums by death metal bands that I put in here just because.

1.Death - The Sound Of Perseverance

2.Death - Symbolic

3.At The Gates - With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness

4.At The Gates - Slaughter Of The Soul

5.Amon Amarth - With Oden On Our Side

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Grindcore is not one of my favorite subgenres, but I like it well enough on the whole. My experience with it has not been particularly broad, as I don't listen to it with much regularity, and so I have a lot of empty spaces. Of all my genre lists, this is possibly the most practical, because I do need help remembering what grindcore I like and how much I've heard.

Like my other genre lists, this is not meant to dictate for all time and all purposes what is and is not grindcore; there may be bands that are borderline or adjacent or individual albums by grindcore bands that are not in themselves grindcore. This is just for my own organization and reference.

I originally included Anaal Nathrakh and Melt-Banana on the grounds that grindcore forms part of the basis for their styles (and, more critically, because it was getting lonely at the top of the list), but considering either of them a grindcore act without heavy qualification would be quite a stretch. I already know that I like them anyway, so their inclusion on this list was not helpful to me in terms of making this a resource; on revision, I decided to nix them (and also the non-grind Carcass albums).

The first portion of the list contains albums that I count among my favorite grindcore releases. From then on, the list is broken into tiers of ratings 9/10 down to 6/10. If it isn't on the list, I haven't heard it or I didn't like it.

Last updated December 28, 2023.

1.Gridlink - Longhena

2.Gridlink - Coronet Juniper

3.Contrastic - Contrastic

4.Contrastic - Mamun

5.Takafumi Matsubara - Strange, Beautiful And Fast

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This right here is a list of metal songs that, for some reason, contain Satan's favorite instrument: the banjo. The intent behind this list is mostly to highlight bands that do not usually utilize a banjo and decided to spring one on unsuspecting listeners, so I'm not going to include every single song by the assuredly dozens of folk metal bands whoso picketh þe banjo with regularity, but one or two representative songs from such artists would probably be fine.

1.Children Of Bodom - Lookin' Out My Backdoor (CCR cover)

2.Æther Realm - Redneck Vikings From Hell

3.Taake - Myr

4.Mastodon - Divinations

5.Sonata Arctica - Cinderblox

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This is a list of all the power metal albums I have listened to that are worth remembering. Like my other genre lists, this is not meant to be a definitive guide to power metal or a binding judgment on what power metal is or is not. The list exists purely for my own organizational purposes and may contain bands or albums that are not strictly True Knights of the Eternal Thundersword.

The first cluster includes my favorite albums in the genre (and a significant number of my all-time favorites); beyond that, they are listed by rating from 9/10 down to 6/10 and alphabetically within each bracket.

Last updated November 27, 2021.

1.Blind Guardian - Nightfall In Middle-Earth

2.Blind Guardian - Imaginations From The Other Side

3.Blind Guardian - Somewhere Far Beyond

4.Jag Panzer - Thane To The Throne

5.X Japan - Art Of Life

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This is a list of all the folk metal albums I have listened to that I found to be of at least marginal quality. It is purely for my own organizational purposes and is not meant to be a definitive statement about the genre; for that reason, there are some entries that don't entirely fit the description, including some neofolk albums and bands that don't exactly play "folk metal" but are close enough.

1.Elvenking - Secrets Of The Magick Grimoire

2.Forefather - Ours Is The Kingdom

3.Forefather - Steadfast

4.Forefather - Last Of The Line

5.Dalriada - Áldás

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Like my other genre-based lists, this exists purely for my own organizational purposes and not to provide a definitive statement about or guidebook to the thrash genre. I've folded some speed metal and other occasional outliers into this list, maybe a few not-so-thrash albums by otherwise-thrash bands, since they're close enough and I wasn't going to make a separate list.

1.Slayer - Reign In Blood

2.Gama Bomb - Citizen Brain

3.Cross Examination - Menace II Sobriety

4.Slayer - Seasons In The Abyss

5.Metallica - Ride The Lightning

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As is the case with my other lists, this is for my own organizational purposes and is designed purely to help me keep track of all the many black metal bands and albums that I enjoy, since I can't keep all of this information in my head. It has no other benefit whatsoever and will likely result in tantrums should anyone else see it. I'm aware that I haven't listened to every black metal album that I should have. I only went down to the 6s on this list, so it's possible that I have listened to your favorite black metal album that you desperately need to suggest and I thought it was terrible. There are a lot of heinously incompetent black metal bands out there.

1.Sigh - Imaginary Sonicscape

2.Sigh - Graveward

3.Dissection - Storm Of The Light's Bane

4.Sigh - Heir To Despair

5.The Meads Of Asphodel - The Murder Of Jesus The Jew

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This is a list of the doom albums I have listened to.

The list starts with a handful of what I'd call my favorite doom albums. The first few of those count among my favorite of all time, with Paranoid, Watching From A Distance, and Черно at present holding a perfect 10. This list does have a cutoff point, stretching from those 10s through some high 9s and all the way down to middling 6s. If I rated it below a 6, it does not appear on this list, and that's because I disliked the album.

1.Black Sabbath - Paranoid

2.Warning - Watching From A Distance

3.Kypck - Черно

4.Woods Of Ypres - Woods 5: Grey Skies & Electric Light

5.Heaven And Hell - The Devil You Know

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Zombies are great. Plain and simple. Zombies go great with heavy metal. Also plain and simple. I had drawn up a playlist of those metal songs most suited to soundtracking a zombie slaughtering, should a zombie apocalypse ever be upon us, which I thought was a good idea. And it was. What was not a good idea was the list, which wasn't particularly good at all. To rectify the situation, I have created this new, improved, and less embarrassingly terrible list. Since there are more than 50 wonderful songs to kill zombies to and I don't actually know them all, this isn't so much the "Top 50" as "50." Maybe if I get around to it I'll do up a sequel. In any case, here are 50.

1.Goblin - "Dawn of the Dead" soundtrack

2.Disturbed - Down With The Sickness

3.Drowning Pool - Bodies

4.Gama Bomb - Zombie Blood Nightmare

5.Bonded By Blood - Feed The Beast

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