My favorites 2010 albums.

1.After The Burial - Dig Deep

2.Shadow Of Intent - Melancholy

3.Gojira - Magma

4.Slash - World On Fire

5.Batushka - Litourgiya

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This is my top albums (only with those where I gave 8 or more). I will update the list now and then

1.Megadeth - Rust In Peace

2.Opeth - Ghost Reveries

3.Slipknot - Iowa

4.Moonsorrow - Kivenkantaja

5.Children Of Bodom - Follow The Reaper

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1.Pain Of Salvation - In The Passing Light Of Day

2.Enslaved - E

3.Ne Obliviscaris - Urn

4.Kauan - Kaiho

5.Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper

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Note: Tool intentionally ommitted because they don't consider themselves metal. Otherwise you'd see their first 4 albums in top 25.

Last updated: 27 March 2024.

1.Moonsorrow - Kivenkantaja

2.Agalloch - The Mantle

3.Opeth - Blackwater Park

4.Edge Of Sanity - Crimson

5.Lost Horizon - A Flame To The Ground Beneath

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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
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

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All the 2018 albums I listened to this year. Just like last year I always added the specific genre/subgenre so you can get an idea what might be of interest to you.

1.Sunnata - Outlands

2.Crescent - The Order Of Amenti

3.IAH - ll

4.Rivers Of Nihil - Where Owls Know My Name

5.Riverside - Wasteland

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1.TesseracT - Sonder

2.Primordial - Exile Amongst The Ruins

3.Shadow Of Intent - Reclaimer

4.Ilsa - Corpse Fortress

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1.Warbringer - Woe To The Vanquished

2.The Faceless - In Becoming A Ghost

3.The Black Dahlia Murder - Nightbringers

4.Trivium - The Sin And The Sentence

5.Goatwhore - Vengeful Ascension

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1.Chelsea Wolfe - Hiss Spun

2.Shadow Of Intent - Reclaimer

3.Archspire - Relentless Mutation

4.Ne Obliviscaris - Urn

5.Unleash The Archers - Apex

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Listed alphabetically by band name, with subgenres for easier browsing.
Updated semi-regularly

1.Aeternam - Ruins Of Empires

2.Æther Realm - Tarot

3.Archspire - Relentless Mutation

4.Artificial Brain - Infrared Horizon

5.Benighted - Necrobreed

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As much as I love deathcore, I can not deny that the genre kinda sucks. A lot of it is generic, monotonous, and repetitive open-note chugging to create a background for a vocalists who are very talented but all sound the same. That's why you can rely on me to sort through those albums to find the legitimately interesting albums. It's still deathcore, don't get me wrong, so don't be surprised to hear breakdowns and/or BREE BREEs. Unless there was a significant stylistic change, I am only mentioning one album per band. I also am not mentioning Fallujah, The Faceless's Akeldama, or other semi-deathcore bands/albums that are already very well known and loved in the metal community. If you haven't listened to them, please do so, they're fantastic. Albums that are very enjoyable even if you hate deathcore are marked with a (*). It does not mean quality, it means accessibility.

1.Thy Art Is Murder - Holy War

2.Make Them Suffer - Neverbloom

3.Ovid's Withering - Scryers Of The Ibis

4.Black Tongue - The Unconquerable Dark

5.Fit For An Autopsy - Absolute Hope, Absolute Hell

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1.Be'lakor - Of Breath And Bone

2.Be'lakor - Stone's Reach

3.Ne Obliviscaris - Portal Of I

4.Orphaned Land - Mabool

5.Protest The Hero - Fortress

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So here are some Brutal, Technical, Progressive and sometimes Atmospheric death metal works I enjoy or that I believe should be given a try because they're unique and interesting, almost an essentials list when it comes to that style. There are some unorthodox choices as well in the mix that aren't just full-on tech death, some bands also incorporate grind, black, core elements or even jazz. Hope you'll all find something that suits your taste! The list is ordered by years. Feel free to comment and give recommendations! Just refrain from telling me an album shouldn't be featured here... All the albums here are deliberately hand-picked and if it made the list, it's for a reason.

Personal absolute favorites of mine have a ★ beside the genre. And my pics of best album for each year are identified by (best of xxxx) beside the albums.

🇨🇦 = From Canada, My Country! We're quite good at Technical and Brutal Death Metal... Trust me. I mean, you'll see for yourself.

-Guib-

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Guib's Best Tech/Brutal/Prog Death Metal Album Picks

Best Of 2023:
The Zenith Passage - Datalysium

Best of 2024 So Far:
Exist - Hijacking The Zeitgeist

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TAGS: Technical Death Metal, Melodic Tech-Death, Brutal, Atmospheric, Progressive, Blackened Tech-Death, Technical Thrash, Deathgrind, Deathcore, Symphonic, Dissonant Tech-Death, Experimental, Avantgarde, Grindcore, Jazz

Last Updated: April 21st, 2024

1.Atheist - Piece Of Time

2.Nocturnus - The Key

3.Atrocity - Hallucinations

4.Death - Human

5.Suffocation - Effigy Of The Forgotten

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