1.Haken - The Mountain

2.The Ocean - Pelagial

3.New Keepers Of The Water Towers - The Cosmic Child

4.Persefone - Spiritual Migration

5.Leprous - Coal

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1.The Ocean - Pelagial

2.Dark Tranquillity - Construct

3.Leprous - Coal

4.Constantine - Resign Due

5.Fireproven - Omnipresence [EP]

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As always - work in progress

1.Witherscape - The Inheritance

2.The Ocean - Pelagial

3.Riverside - Shrine Of New Generation Slaves

4.Steven Wilson - The Raven That Refused To Sing (And Other Stories)

5.Omnium Gatherum - Beyond

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1.Gorguts - Colored Sands

2.The Ocean - Pelagial

3.Intronaut - Habitual Levitations (Instilling Words With Tones)

4.Anciients - Heart Of Oak

5.Revocation - Revocation

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1.Avatarium - Avatarium

2.Amorphis - Circle

3.Wine From Tears - Glad To Be Dead

4.Orphaned Land - All Is One

5.The Vision Bleak - Witching Hour

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1.Witherscape - The Inheritance

2.Ayreon - The Theory Of Everything

3.Týr - Valkyrja

4.Thrawsunblat - Thrawsunblat II: Wanderer On The Continent Of Saplings

5.Summoning - Old Mornings Dawn

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1.Steven Wilson - The Raven That Refused To Sing (And Other Stories)

2.Riverside - Shrine Of New Generation Slaves

3.Caladan Brood - Echoes Of Battle

4.Omnium Gatherum - Beyond

5.Haken - The Mountain

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This list is meant to be an extensive, but by no means exhaustive, collection of the greatest (modern) metal albums and eps. Running the gamut from avant-garde to trve norweigan black metal. *As someone who is young in age, my tastes tend to revolve around the period of the 80s to the present.* Although certain metal albums from before will certainly be featured, the period of the 60s-70s will be under-represented. I refer you to this excellent list to gain a better appreciation for some of the best metal from that period: https://rateyourmusic.com/list/freis/martin_popoffs_the_top_500_heavy_metal_albums_of_all_time/

1.Oak - Lone

2.Oath To Vanquish - Applied Schizophrenic Science

3.Oathbreaker - Rheia

4.Obake - Mutations

5.Obituary - Cause Of Death

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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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This serves as a memory note, pretty much.

1.Insomnium - Above The Weeping World

2.Amorphis - Under The Red Cloud

3.Ghost Brigade - IV - One With The Storm

4.Be'lakor - Of Breath And Bone

5.Metallica - Ride The Lightning

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1.Soilwork - The Living Infinite

2.The Ocean - Pelagial

3.The Dillinger Escape Plan - One Of Us Is The Killer

4.Killswitch Engage - Disarm The Descent

5.In Vain - Ænigma

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1.The Ocean - Pelagial

2.Cult Of Luna - Vertikal

3.Soilwork - The Living Infinite

4.Hypocrisy - End Of Disclosure

5.Fleshgod Apocalypse - Labyrinth

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Personal best picks...

1.Jolly - The Audio Guide To Happiness (Part 2)

2.TesseracT - Altered State

3.Alter Bridge - Fortress

4.The Ocean - Pelagial

5.Haken - The Mountain

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

2013 was one of the best, possibly the best of the decade until now, definitely one of the best for black metal, Experimental, Progressive and Doom metal.

My favorite non metal albums of 2013

1.Stratovarius - Nemesis

2.Summoning - Old Mornings Dawn

3.Queens Of The Stone Age - ...Like Clockwork

4.Caladan Brood - Echoes Of Battle

5.Gris - À L'Âme Enflammée, L'Äme Constellée...

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1.The Ocean - Pelagial

2.Harakiri For The Sky - III: Trauma

3.Neurosis - The Eye Of Every Storm

4.Isis - Panopticon

5.Ghost Brigade - IV - One With The Storm

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