Due to the overwhelming "popularity" of my last list, I have decided to do the same thing in 2012

1.Hail Spirit Noir - Pneuma

2.Baroness - Yellow & Green

3.Devin Townsend - Epicloud

4.Arjen Anthony Lucassen - Lost In The New Real

5.Royal Thunder - CVI

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My top 50 of the year. Rated 8 & Above

Alcest, Gojira, Les discrets and Blut Aus Nord make the french connection . Allez les bleus!

Black Sabbath announced their reunion, Wintersun reappeared with time Soundgarden too for the last time.

Nearly forgot the world was supposed to end....

Album count: 172
Average rating: 7.05

1.Gojira - L'Enfant Sauvage

2.Alcest - Les Voyages De L'âme

3.Saturnus - Saturn In Ascension

4.Cult Of Fire - Triumvirát

5.Les Discrets - Ariettes Oubliées...

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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
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 2010 to 2014, with at least 1 vote, were included.
The average expected rating (C) was determined by averaging all the Metal Storm ratings from 2010-2014.
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 2010-2014 = 7.478
m = 20

Number of albums from each year in the list:
2010 - 24
2011 - 28
2012 - 16
2013 - 22
2014 - 12

Ratings are accurate as of 30/10/2023

1.Gallowbraid - Ashen Eidolon

2.Enslaved - Axioma Ethica Odini

3.Aquilus - Griseus

4.Ne Obliviscaris - Portal Of I

5.Be'lakor - Of Breath And Bone

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1.Enslaved - RIITIIR

2.Meshuggah - Koloss

3.Gojira - L'Enfant Sauvage

4.In Mourning - The Weight Of Oceans

5.Be'lakor - Of Breath And Bone

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So, I figure with all the staff picks and ms awards going around, I'd post some of the new favorites I've found in 2012, as well as some anticipated favs of the year! Some of these have really changed since the MS awards, since I found myself enjoying certain albums way more than others, which likely would have been on my list otherwise.

1.Be'lakor - Of Breath And Bone

2.Ne Obliviscaris - Portal Of I

3.Enslaved - RIITIIR

4.Xanthochroid - Blessed He With Boils

5.Atoma - Skylight

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1.Katatonia - Dead End Kings

2.Wintersun - Time I

3.Saturnus - Saturn In Ascension

4.Be'lakor - Of Breath And Bone

5.Paradise Lost - Tragic Idol

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This is my personal favourite top 50 albums of all time, this list can change because i can enter new things and my tastes may differ over time.

IS NOT UPDATED!

1.Cult Of Luna - Somewhere Along The Highway

2.Ulver - Perdition City

3.Agalloch - Ashes Against The Grain

4.Queensrÿche - Operation: Mindcrime

5.Bolt Thrower - Those Once Loyal

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1.Epica - The Phantom Agony

2.Tristania - Widow's Weeds

3.Atoma - Skylight

4.Godflesh - Streetcleaner

5.Septicflesh - Communion

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The perfect ones. The ones that I could listen to over and over and never get bored.
I will be adding as I remember or got new ones.

1.Alcest - Écailles De Lune

2.Anathema - We're Here Because We're Here

3.At The Soundawn - Shifting

4.Atoma - Skylight

5.Camel - The Snow Goose

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1.Diablo Swing Orchestra - Pandora's Piñata

2.Anathema - Weather Systems

3.Devin Townsend - Epicloud

4.Atoma - Skylight

5.Torche - Harmonicraft

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1.The Foreshadowing - Second World

2.Alcest - Les Voyages De L'âme

3.Les Discrets - Ariettes Oubliées...

4.Ne Obliviscaris - Portal Of I

5.Moonspell - Omega White

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1.Sybreed - Antares

2.Atoma - Skylight

3.Thrice - Vheissu

4.Katatonia - Night Is The New Day

5.Scar Symmetry - Holographic Universe

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1.Alcest - Les Voyages De L'âme

2.Eluveitie - Helvetios

3.Swallow The Sun - Emerald Forest And The Blackbird

4.The 11th Hour - Lacrima Mortis

5.Anaal Nathrakh - Vanitas

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1.Kreator - Phantom Antichrist

2.Katatonia - Dead End Kings

3.Paradise Lost - Tragic Idol

4.Adrenaline Mob - Omertá

5.To-Mera - Exile

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Final form of the list, according to what I've listened from 2012 up until the end of MSA 2012.

1.Barren Earth - The Devil's Resolve

2.Atoma - Skylight

3.Saturnus - Saturn In Ascension

4.Swallow The Sun - Emerald Forest And The Blackbird

5.Ne Obliviscaris - Portal Of I

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