Metal Storm logo
Top lists


Order by:  Date | Popularity | Show all



Thumbs up: +8
Bursting, Smoking & Distorting Stories (A Lesson In Sludge & Stoner By Guib)

Welcome everybody to a little lesson on the history of Sludge & Stoner Metal. I'm Guib and today I have the immense pleasure to serve as your humble teacher.

Please take a seat and travel with me through time as we explore the very best of those two, often blurred, genres. The goal here is simple, I want to get you familiarized with the styles. I want you to understand where they come from through albums on a timeline and while we're at it get a sweet selection of great releases that you might not know and that, hopefully, will get you hooked to explore even more!

But this is a classroom and in my classroom there are a few rules. We want to keep this clean, clear and prevent having a 500+ albums mess. So here are the rules we'll follow throughout this lesson.

- - - - - The Rules - - - - -

1. We will settle for a maximum of 4 albums per year and they will be listed from oldest to newest. Makes it simple to navigate. Those releases will represent what I consider to be hallmarks of the genres for that year. Essentials if you want, yes? Of course, I'll sprinkle a bit of my personality here and there so you will find some unorthodox choices and some less known albums from time to time. It would be boring otherwise... and also why not?

2. We will begin the journey with Melvins' "Gluey Porch Treatments" released in 1987. Why? Because it is arguably the first album to be widely considered as Sludge.

3. The list will mostly feature studio albums. So no Demos & bare minimum when it comes to EPs if any at all. Thank you.

4. I am not going to include releases by Black Sabbath, Blue Cheer, Hawkwind, etc... I fully understand and recognize the influence older bands had on Stoner Rock, but this is not the list for them.

5. Lastly, not really a rule but more of a note. Considering that we're talking about Sludge & Stoner, it is inevitable that Doom, Post, Progressive, Grunge & Hardcore acts will be featured in this list. Those genres simply go together naturally and are often mixed so do not be alarmed!

- - - - - - - - - -

That is it, I hope you will all discover something to enjoy through my little history lesson. Also, do not hesitate to comment below if you agree or disagree with some of my picks. After all, this is a classroom and debate is invited as it can be fun and educative. As long everything's done respectfully, of course.

Enjoy & Have Fun... Class dismissed!

NOTE: I will now add my picks for best album of the year using this format (best of xxxx) in the chosen album's description.

- Guib -

- - - - - - - - - -

Guib's best Sludge/Stoner Album Picks

Best Of 2023:
Urne - A Feast On Sorrow

Best Of 2024 So Far:
O Zorn! - Vermillion Haze

- - - - - - - - - -

Last Update: March 27th, 2024

1.Melvins - Gluey Porch Treatments
2.Soundgarden - Ultramega OK
3.Oxbow - Fuckfest
4.Melvins - Ozma
5.Soundgarden - Louder Than Love

      View entire list ››
Created by Guib on 13.08.2023



AJ's Ranking Of 2017

My glorious ranking of the year of our Lord 2017

Top 50 rated 8 and above

Album count: 132
Average rating: 7.1


1.Enslaved - E
2.Mors Principium Est - Embers Of A Dying World
3.Pallbearer - Heartless
4.Myrkur - Mareridt
5.Ulver - The Assassination Of Julius Caesar

      View entire list ››
Created by AJ The Great on 27.03.2023



Top Metal Albums Each Year I Have Been Alive 2017

A little list series where I list my top 20 favorite metal albums every year starting from the year I was born in.

2017 was an interesting year, overall a solid year but the most notable thing about it the nostalgia sound, many new and old bands reuniting to old sounds but in a new way, Thrash metal had a pretty solid year same with death metal and doom, black metal was in its peak with the ambient mix sound and Progressive metal had a solid showing along with power metal.

My favorite non metal albums of 2017

1. No Shape
By Perfume Genius (Art pop)


2. Brutalism
By Idles (Post-Punk, Post-Hardcore)


3. Melodrama
By Lorde (Synthpop, Art Pop)


4. Ctrl
By SZA (R&B, Neo-Soul)


5. Relatives in Descent
By Protomartyr (Post-Punk, Noise Rock)


My favorite movie from 2017


1.Kreator - Gods Of Violence
2.Power Trip - Nightmare Logic
3.Lingua Ignota - All Bitches Die
4.La Torture Des Ténèbres - IV - Memoirs Of A Machine Girl
5.Dvne - Asheran

      View entire list ››
Created by Handala on 01.01.2023



Thumbs up: +8
A Chronology Of Masterpieces

What seems the most important albums for me in chronological order.
I wish I could carry the list year after year to see how my tastes changed and new findings.
I can help but notice that old albums immediately strike me, while in recent times most albums are good but nothing is groundbreaking. We have a tide of releases in the last decades, and standing above the other requires an impossible lot of talent.
Or is it my listen habbits that changed ? I felts I listened to the old albums albums for a lifetime while I'm only surface checking the new ones. Too little time, too little time to truly live...
Also the mixing technology, the sound is too flat nowadays and lack impact and personnality

1.Frank Zappa - Freak Out
2.The Who - Tommy
3.Frank Zappa - Uncle Meat
4.Frank Zappa - Hot Rats
5.King Crimson - In The Court Of The Crimson King

      View entire list ››
Created by Ansercanagicus on 16.02.2022



Top 15 Stoner Metal Albums

1.Kyuss - Kyuss
2.Kyuss - Blues For The Red Sun
3.Queens Of The Stone Age - Songs For The Deaf
4.Spiritual Beggars - Ad Astra
5.Soundgarden - Superunknown

      View entire list ››
Created by Mrtvozornik on 09.02.2022



Thumbs up: +1
Top 100 (+2) Of 2015-2019

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
2010-2014 list: http://www.metalstorm.net/users/list.php?list_id=5828

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 grows 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 2015 to 2019, with at least 1 vote, were included.
The average expected rating (C) was determined by averaging all the Metal Storm ratings from 2015-2019.
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 2015-2019 = 7.422
m = 20

Number of albums from each year in the list:
2015 - 31
2016 - 24
2017 - 18
2018 - 12
2019 - 17

Ratings are accurate as of 30/10/2023

1.Mgła - Exercises In Futility
2.Insomnium - Winter's Gate
3.Amorphis - Under The Red Cloud
4.Vektor - Terminal Redux
5.Trees Of Eternity - Hour Of The Nightingale

      View entire list ››
Created by Crys1s on 24.06.2021



Thumbs up: +10
Metal Rambo's Absolute Favorite Albums Of All Time

Updated 24.1.2022

My rather personal and improvised take on the subject matter. The list is pretty wage, I'll be updating it a lot and the order might vary a little depending on some things, but they're all great and awesome records no matter what.

Limited to metal and rock albums found on Metal Storm. Most of them (at least 90%) are anyway, so doesn't matter. The absent ones are mostly more pop and synth oriented stuff and some really obscure jazz and fusion albums.

1.Marillion - Marbles
2.Anathema - Weather Systems
3.Iron Maiden - Somewhere In Time
4.Moonsorrow - Voimasta Ja Kunniasta
5.Moonsorrow - Kivenkantaja

      View entire list ››
Created by Metal Rasputin on 15.02.2020



Thumbs up: +18
Neachy's Select: Top 100 Albums Of The 10s

100 full length albums that I favor in approximate order of preference plus 10 non-LP releases at the end. Limited to metal albums and albums featured on the site.

1.Indesinence - Vessels Of Light And Decay
2.Mitochondrion - Parasignosis
3.Murmuüre - Murmuüre
4.Deathspell Omega - Paracletus
5.Ustalost - The Spoor Of Vipers

      View entire list ››
Created by Neachy on 29.12.2019



Thumbs up: +13
150 Albums To Become An Adult To: 2010-2019

I began this decade in my final year of high school, in the early phases of my metal journey (Mastodon, Machine Head, Dream Theater, Pantera and Avenged Sevenfold were still recent discoveries). One Masters degree and one PhD later, I'm now a tax-paying Londonian, and have ploughed through what must be comfortably over 2000 new releases during the previous ten years. To commemorate the end of a turbulent decade, I've put together a list of the albums that have stuck with me throughout this decade - I wouldn't consider this to be a 'best albums' list, as there have been some truly ingenious works released in more avant-garde territories, but ultimately these are the albums that have ended up dominating my listening habits, or otherwise making a sufficient impression to make this list.

1.Sylosis - Monolith
2.Sylosis - Edge Of The Earth
3.Amorphis - Under The Red Cloud
4.Be'lakor - Of Breath And Bone
5.Cult Of Luna - Vertikal

      View entire list ››
Created by musclassia on 27.12.2019



Thumbs up: +1
Favorite Stoner/Doom/Sludge Albums

Fuzz me up buttercup

1.Black Sabbath - Master Of Reality
2.Clutch - Clutch
3.Queens Of The Stone Age - Songs For The Deaf
4.Mastodon - Leviathan
5.Melvins - Lysol

      View entire list ››
Created by ThenLividity96 on 27.09.2019



Thumbs up: +1
2017

1.Converge - The Dusk In Us
2.Sólstafir - Berdreyminn
3.Pharmakon - Contact
4.Oktoplut - Le démon normal
5.Artificial Brain - Infrared Horizon

      View entire list ››
Created by Marc-Antoine on 30.12.2018



My Top 10 Of 2017

This is my personal preference. Also, I'm always searching and finding new bands and new albums. Recommend me some good shit, I'll listen and maybe I'll change my mind on my personal top!

1.Altar Of Betelgeuze - Among The Ruins
2.Septicflesh - Codex Omega
3.Persefone - Aathma
4.Elder - Reflections Of A Floating World
5.Cradle Of Filth - Cryptoriana: The Seductiveness Of Decay

      View entire list ››
Created by ShadowGlanzmann on 18.02.2018



Thumbs up: +1
Top 20 Albums Of 2017

1.Power Trip - Nightmare Logic
2.Cavalera Conspiracy - Psychosis
3.Black Anvil - As Was
4.Siberian Meat Grinder - Metal Bear Stomp
5.Dying Fetus - Wrong One To Fuck With

      View entire list ››
Created by Daddy Pig on 03.01.2018



50 Albums I Enjoyed In 2017

My personal Top 50 of a fantastic Year. As you can see the major part of this list is kind of proggy, concluded with some heavier stuff and a few Rock Albums. There may be some more creative or boundary breaking releases left out, but these are the works that exited and convoyed me throughout 2017.
Please enjoy, suggestions are appreciated.

1.Mastodon - Emperor Of Sand
2.The Night Flight Orchestra - Amber Galactic
3.Soen - Lykaia
4.Voyager - Ghost Mile
5.Dodecahedron - Kwintessens

      View entire list ››
Created by Jambi0905 on 28.12.2017



Thumbs up: +1
Top 10 2k17

1.Lör - In Forgotten Sleep
2.Æther Realm - Tarot
3.Archspire - Relentless Mutation
4.Elder - Reflections Of A Floating World
5.Dvne - Asheran

      View entire list ››
Created by BelovedBröder on 04.12.2017