Limited to only those albums featured on Metal Storm.

1.Jethro Tull - Thick As A Brick

2.Rush - Moving Pictures

3.King Crimson - In The Court Of The Crimson King

4.Pain Of Salvation - Remedy Lane

5.Queensrÿche - Operation: Mindcrime

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If you know other wonderful songs which are missing in this list, feel free to suggest them to me

1.Adagio - Underworld

2.Aerosmith - Aerosmith

3.After Forever - Prison Of Desire

4.After Forever - Decipher

5.After Forever - After Forever

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- only studio albums
- only albums featured on MS

1.After Forever - Decipher

2.Agalloch - Ashes Against The Grain

3.Ahab - The Call Of The Wretched Sea

4.Alcest - Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde

5.Amon Amarth - With Oden On Our Side

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1.Paradise Lost - Draconian Times

2.Katatonia - Last Fair Deal Gone Down

3.Fields Of The Nephilim - Mourning Sun

4.Anathema - Judgement

5.Draconian - Turning Season Within

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Since many of you felt annoyed by my previous list title I changed it and hopefully you will be ok with it.Power up everybody!!!

1.Helloween - Keeper Of The Seven Keys Part II

2.Blind Guardian - Imaginations From The Other Side

3.Helloween - Keeper Of The Seven Keys Part I

4.Riot - ThunderSteel

5.Gamma Ray - Land Of The Free

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I've been listening to Metal since 2005 and it has become my biggest passion in life.

Rarely a day goes by where I don't listen to it in one form or another. The bands I listened to in my teens inspired me to pick up the guitar (and later drums) and start making music of my own.

So here are the albums that have stood out and made the largest impact on me. To be as transparent as possible, I've labelled albums as 'nostalgia bias' where my memories of the album give it an advantage over others.

(Score is an average of each album's song ratings, full list located here. There are a ton of albums that I've rated 9/10 in the 'TBR' tab that may never make it to this list, be sure to check those out.)

If you discovered any new albums or like the same sort of metal, be sure to give this list a thumbs-up and leave a comment so more people can find these amazing bands!

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

Genre-Specific:
Top 50 Black Metal Albums
Top 50 Melodic Death Metal Albums
Top 45 Thrash Metal Albums
Top 40 Power Metal Albums
Top 30 Doom Metal Albums
Top 30 Heavy Metal Albums

1.Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral

2.Opeth - Blackwater Park

3.Metallica - Master Of Puppets

4.Edge Of Sanity - Crimson

5.Opeth - Still Life

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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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An encyclopedia of metal songs that get you to dance or groove to whether you want to or not.
One album per band. Recommendations are welcome.

1.6:33 - Feary Tales For Strange Lullabies: The Dome

2.Aborym - With No Human Intervention

3.Akphaezya - Anthology II: Links From The Dead Trinity

4.Alestorm - Black Sails At Midnight

5.The Algorithm - Polymorphic Code

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Simply a list of the 30 best Power Metal albums of the European/Melodic style in my opinion. One album per band and in order of preference, although the order may change over time.

1.Gamma Ray - Land Of The Free

2.Blind Guardian - Tales From The Twilight World

3.Kiuas - The Spirit Of Ukko

4.Dark Moor - The Hall Of The Olden Dreams

5.Helloween - Keeper Of The Seven Keys Part I

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1.After Forever - Decipher

2.Battlelore - The Last Alliance

3.Beautiful Sin - The Unexpected

4.Blackmore's Night - Shadow Of The Moon

5.Crimfall - As The Path Unfolds...

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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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Once upon a time, there was a metaller who dared to say : hey, let's put symphonies in our metal, dudes. The dudes thought it was stupid at first, then they tried and guess what? The result was WONDERFUL!!! Here are my 20 favourite symphonic metal albums, taken from all subgenres, from power to folk, black and death.

1.Equilibrium - Sagas

2.Equilibrium - Turis Fratyr

3.Septicflesh - Communion

4.Epica - Design Your Universe

5.Symphony X - Paradise Lost

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Updated 14.4.2024

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. If there are some great records missing, that doesn't necessarily mean I consider them bad, maybe I just forgot about them or just haven't listened to them enough to consider them personal favourites.

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

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A collection of metal albums that heavily use the likes of classical instrumentation, orchestral, opera or/and symphonic keyboard synths. Suggestions/Recommendations are welcome.

1.Adagio - Underworld

2.Aesma Daeva - Dawn Of The New Athens

3.After Forever - Decipher

4.Almôra - Kalihora's Song

5.Ancient Bards - The Alliance Of The Kings

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My Top Symphonic/Atmospheric/Female Fronted(whatever you wanna call it...) Albums of all time with its subgenres: gothic, power, folk, prog...
Still, The order may change from time to time....!!

1.Within Temptation - The Silent Force

2.Nightwish - Century Child

3.Epica - Consign To Oblivion

4.Therion - Vovin

5.Within Temptation - The Heart Of Everything

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