I like to create playlists for fun when I'm not busy. Usually, though, I abandon them soon after. I want this playlist to be a bit different - perhaps not infinitely useful, but I associate all these songs with the season of winter and the winter holidays, and I'll be listening to all these a lot at least for a while. I thought I'd share the songs I included in my digital playlist, maybe you'll find something you like. Many of these are purposely blasphemous - I live surrounded by fundamentalist Christians and they're gonna spend the holidays singing about the birth of Christ - I need me some counterbalance.

1.Dream Theater - Awake

2.Immolation - Close To A World Below

3.Vader - Impressions In Blood

4.Dissection - Storm Of The Light's Bane

5.Emperor - In The Nightside Eclipse

      View entire list ››

Last updated on 11 April 2024.

1.Dream Theater - Images And Words

2.Moonsorrow - Kivenkantaja

3.Wintersun - Wintersun

4.Dissection - Storm Of The Light's Bane

5.Iron Maiden - The Number Of The Beast

      View entire list ››

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

      View entire list ››

All my favourite songs ranked in order best down.

1.Rush - 2112

2.Deep Purple - In Rock

3.Jethro Tull - Aqualung

4.Rainbow - Rising

5.Black Sabbath - Paranoid

      View entire list ››

1.Dissection - Storm Of The Light's Bane

2.Emperor - In The Nightside Eclipse

3.Dawn - Slaughtersun (Crown Of The Triarchy)

4.Agalloch - Ashes Against The Grain

5.Ulver - Bergtatt - Et Eeventyr I 5 Capitler

      View entire list ››

My favourite black metal albums listed and ranked, all varieties within the black metal genre.

1.Summoning - Oath Bound

2.Immortal - At The Heart Of Winter

3.Primordial - To The Nameless Dead

4.Mayhem - De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas

5.Mgła - Exercises In Futility

      View entire list ››

1.Opeth - Still Life

2.Katatonia - Last Fair Deal Gone Down

3.Dissection - Storm Of The Light's Bane

4.In Flames - Whoracle

5.Emperor - In The Nightside Eclipse

      View entire list ››

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

      View entire list ››

1.Moonsorrow - Voimasta Ja Kunniasta

2.Primordial - To The Nameless Dead

3.Moonsorrow - Kivenkantaja

4.Ensiferum - Ensiferum

5.Orphaned Land - Mabool: The Story Of The Three Sons Of Seven

      View entire list ››

I'm bored very easily, and that's why I decided to do some stats about metal storm's top 20 of each year and the top 200. I don't know why I did that, but if you love stats like I do it might interest you. All of the data I collected is from November the 7th 2020.
Updated on August the 3rd 2023

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.Deep Purple - The Book Of Taliesyn

      View entire list ››

Since I discovered MS, I got introduced to a lot of great albums/EPs that hadn't been mentioned from other sources, and I'm really thankful for all the discoveries from all kinds of people in this site. So I decided to make a personal all-time best MS albums list myself! Enjoy~~

(bands are in alphabetical order)

1.Agalloch - The Mantle

2.Agalloch - Ashes Against The Grain

3.Agents Of Oblivion - Agents Of Oblivion

4.Alcest - Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde

5.Alcest - Kodama

      View entire list ››

These are MY Top 250 Albums that are featured on Metal Storm in chronological order to celebrate 50 Years of Metal.

Some bands are featured on this list with more than one album, which means that they are perticulary amazing to me.

I listen to a wide spectrum of metal genres, which is why I tried to keep it diverse and not focus on one genre.

1.Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath

2.Deep Purple - In Rock

3.Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV

4.Uriah Heep - Demons And Wizards

5.Alice Cooper - Billion Dollar Babies

      View entire list ››

1.Empyrium - Songs Of Moors And Misty Fields

2.Thurisaz - Scent Of A Dream

3.Opeth - Morningrise

4.Empyrium - A Wintersunset...

5.Anathema - Eternity

      View entire list ››

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

      View entire list ››

Here is a list of MY favorite black(ish) metal albums (sometimes I like a little creamer...but no sugar). And yes I am aware that bands like Kreator and Amebix and not "Technically" black metal, but I don't care because they had a huge influence and their sound is very "blackened" on certain albums.

1.Emperor - In The Nightside Eclipse

2.Agalloch - Ashes Against The Grain

3.Ulver - Bergtatt - Et Eeventyr I 5 Capitler

4.Burzum - Filosofem

5.Alcest - Les Voyages De L'âme

      View entire list ››