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My Favorite Metal Albums Of All Time

My favorite metal albums sorted alphabetically by band name and chronological by release date.

1.Æther Realm - Tarot
2.Acid Witch - Witchtanic Hellucinations
3.Allegaeon - Proponent For Sentience
4.Amorphis - Tales From The Thousand Lakes
5.Amorphis - Silent Waters

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Created by Ryanm123 on 23.12.2023



Thumbs up: +16
Hidden Title Tracks – Album Titles That Come From A Song`s Lyrics

Almost all album titles fall in one of two categories: The album shares the title with one of its songs (the title track) or, alternatively, the album title is independent from the songs (no title track).

However, there are examples of songs that have a central link to the album title without sharing the same name. In these cases, certain lyrics from the song were chosen as the album title.

This (alphabetical) list shows the names of these “hidden title tracks” and the central lyrics that gave the name to the corresponding album.

Please feel free to suggest more of your favorite metal/hard rock examples of these “hidden title tracks”.



1.40 Watt Sun - Wider Than The Sky
2.A Forest Of Stars - A Shadowplay For Yesterdays
3.Acid Bath - When The Kite String Pops
4.Agalloch - The Mantle
5.Agalloch - Ashes Against The Grain

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Created by Plattner on 06.07.2023



Thumbs up: +1
Top 50

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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Created by MR11MAIDEN on 28.09.2022



Top 35 Metalcore Albums

1.The Black Dahlia Murder - Nocturnal
2.Between The Buried And Me - Colors
3.The Black Dahlia Murder - Everblack
4.Heaven Shall Burn - Veto
5.Between The Buried And Me - The Great Misdirect

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Created by Mrtvozornik on 25.04.2022



Thumbs up: +4
Metal Albums Ranked From WORSHIP To DISLIKE

Ratings go from:

WORSHIP ❤️❤️❤️: Absolute greatness, a mindblowing album.
LOVE ❤️❤️🖤: Amazing release with very few flaws.
LIKE ❤️🖤🖤: Enjoyable but far from perfect.
DISLIKE 💔: Not very good or maybe not fitting my tastes.

I've decided to stop rating albums with a numerical value as I tend to feel uncomfortable with that. This list has a minimalistic, subjective and visceral approach, based purely on sensations and personal tastes. Mainly for personal use and doesn't pretend to be a serious ranking, but emerges from the need to remember which bands and albums I enjoyed and the ones I disliked. I constantly revisit new releases so first impressions may change over time. It usually takes 8-10 spins for me to get completely sure of a rating.

1.Æther Realm - Tarot
2.Abhoria - Abhoria
3.Acid Bath - When The Kite String Pops
4.Agrypnie - Metamorphosis
5.Allegaeon - Fragments Of Form And Function

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Created by Rinbel on 14.03.2022



Thumbs up: +2
Top 200 Overrated Albums

**Trigger warning**

Albums and EPs rated 8.6+ from 100+ votes which I've given an 8 or lower to.

I've listened to and rated every album on MS that meets this criteria (at time of most recent update) - some of them multiple times - so I feel I can give my honest opinion.

The purpose of this is to list and order the albums that I simply don't "get" and to try re-listening to them in the hope of understanding why they've received so many 9 and 10 votes.

Ordered by my rating then MS rating then number of votes.

Updated: 03-Jan-24

My other lists:
Top 500 Albums (ordered & rated)
Top 25 EPs (also ordered & rated)
Top 200 Overlooked Albums (with genres)
So I Heard You Like Wintersun... (Time II find new bands)

1.Anathema - Judgement
2.Paradise Lost - Draconian Times
3.Anathema - Alternative 4
4.Motörhead - Ace Of Spades
5.Motörhead - Overkill

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Created by nonZero on 19.02.2021



Thumbs up: +6
1001 Metal Albums to Hear Before You Die

An ongoing list for personal use as well as for reference for beginners (& veterans alike). This is solely my personal opinion and taste (Death & Prog mostly but do give every genre a try). Basically will include albums I've rated 8 & above. Sorted by year since I'll need a Venn diagram to sort by genre (seriously MS please make it happen if possible). Will feature multiple releases per year (obviously) and per band (since if a band is putting out better albums it deserves more recognition). Keeping the metal faith alive from India

1.Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin
2.King Crimson - In The Court Of The Crimson King
3.Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin III
4.Black Sabbath - Paranoid
5.Uriah Heep - Look At Yourself

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Created by metalriff on 05.02.2021



Thumbs up: +1
Top 100 (+8) Of 2005-2009

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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Created by Crys1s on 19.09.2019



Thumbs up: +3
Metalcore's Finest

1.All That Remains - The Fall Of Ideals
2.Bleeding Through - The Truth
3.Killswitch Engage - The End Of Heartache
4.Dry Kill Logic - The Darker Side Of Nonsense
5.Evergreen Terrace - Sincerity Is An Easy Disguise In This Business

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Created by MOIST on 01.11.2017



Best Songs Ever

Obviously, a list of my favorite songs, or songs that mean something special to me at least. I don't remember them all of course so I'll be adding more as soon as I'm reminded of them.
I wanted to pull this off on Spotify but I'm missing a whole lot of songs, so I figured this would be a good place to save it.

1.After Forever - Decipher
2.Ahab - The Giant
3.Amesoeurs - Amesoeurs
4.Arcturus - The Sham Mirrors
5.Between The Buried And Me - The Great Misdirect

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Created by Unhealer on 08.09.2016



Thumbs up: +13
Current Top 100, 5 Years On

Back when I joined the site in 2011, I did a customary top 100 album list. Every year since then, when I've looked back at it it's become increasingly unrecognisable from my own tastes. Seeing bands I once listened to daily vanish from my playlists, new bands emerge as favourites, and bands even come and go in my reckonings during that time period (Iced Earth, Alcest, even Pain Of Salvation and more certainly peaked in my listening habits around 2011-12 to slowly vanish into obscurity). Now that it's just gone 5 years since I did that list, I thought I might do an updated list just to see how much my tastes have shifted. Whilst compiling the list, I pretty much worked on gut instinct, which was weird as I found myself almost disregarding albums I know I like whilst promoting albums I'm honestly undecided on - it almost seemed to veer away from album quality at times to embracing a subconscious effect the albums have had. Anyway, here it is, plus some honorable mentions that I was surprised missed out.

1.Dream Theater - Images And Words
2.Sylosis - Monolith
3.Sylosis - Edge Of The Earth
4.Agalloch - The Mantle
5.Protest The Hero - Kezia

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Created by musclassia on 23.03.2016



Thumbs up: +1
Zach's Picks: Extreme Progressive Metal

The music of progressive metal features complex, layered arrangements in longer than typical songs, often including lengthy instrumental passages allowing the performers to display technical proficiency and interplay. Many time signature changes are common, as is the incorporation of Western classical music influences. The sound is generally driven by the guitars and drums, but it is quite typical to add elements non-standard to rock or metal such as synthesizers and an array of orchestral elements.

1.Atheist - Unquestionable Presence
2.Cynic - Focus
3.Meshuggah - Destroy Erase Improve
4.Edge Of Sanity - Crimson
5.Arcturus - Aspera Hiems Symfonia

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Created by zach_buddie on 28.01.2016



Thumbs up: +15
Progressive Spiritual Euphoria / Best prog Albums Ever .

So here we are again . After many years of dedication and love to this music that we call progressive metal, here are some of the best albums that ever existed and made the earth a better place . Give to these albums the attention and the respect they deserve and you will be fully awarded. I think i will try and limit this list to 3 cd's maximum per band to make this thing more challenging .

1.Dan Swanö - Moontower
2.Cynic - Traced In Air
3.Cynic - Focus
4.Enslaved - Axioma Ethica Odini
5.Enslaved - Ruun

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Created by Hazelnut Nero on 20.09.2014



Thumbs up: +20
Epic Album Closers

Some albums are really good. Many of these are good all the way around. And, in many cases, there is a single song that stands out, sometimes it's the last song on the album. This is a list of those songs.

For a more in depth look at this, I've codified each into a given category:
Type 1 - 'The long song at the end.' Often the title track. These have a tendency to be most well written and dynamic pieces on the album.

1.!T.O.O.H.! - Order And Punishment (Řád A Trest)
2.Abigail Williams - Becoming
3.Agalloch - The Mantle
4.Amon Amarth - Versus The World
5.Anekdoten - Vemod

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Created by BigNaughtyV on 02.07.2013



Albums I Have To Listen

1.Monuments - Gnosis
2.Weeping Silence - For The Unsung
3.Munruthel - Epoch Of Aquarius
4.Ex Deo - Caligvla
5.The Levitation Hex - The Levitation Hex

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Created by Atrus on 31.10.2012