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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Fifty years of metal, 50 best albums of the year. Note that in order to diversify the list I limited it to one album per band, otherwise there would have been too much Judas Priest and Iron Maiden.

1.Black Sabbath - Paranoid

2.Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV

3.Deep Purple - Machine Head

4.Budgie - Never Turn Your Back On A Friend

5.Queen - Queen II

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Current Top 100 as of September 2019. Having listened to metal for 45 years or so - here are my favourites (favourite track). One album limit per band. Enjoy!

1.Absu - Absu

2.AC/DC - If You Want Blood You've Got It

3.Agalloch - The Mantle

4.Akercocke - Words That Go Unspoken, Deeds That Go Undone

5.Alcest - Écailles De Lune

      View entire list ››

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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1.Rage Against The Machine - Rage Against The Machine

2.Megadeth - Countdown To Extinction

3.Running Wild - Pile Of Skulls

4.Alice In Chains - Dirt

5.Darkthrone - A Blaze In The Northern Sky

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1.At The Gates - Slaughter Of The Soul

2.Rammstein - Mutter

3.Primordial - To The Nameless Dead

4.The Gathering - Mandylion

5.Alice In Chains - Dirt

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Metal albums that blow me away every time I hear them. Loosely ordered... list gets less organized as it goes on. My favorite song from each album is included.

1.Dream Theater - Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From A Memory

2.Faith No More - Angel Dust

3.Dream Theater - Six Degrees Of Inner Turbulence

4.Tool - Ænima

5.Metallica - ...And Justice For All

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What the title says.

1.Metallica - ...And Justice For All

2.Black Sabbath - Master Of Reality

3.Alice In Chains - Dirt

4.Megadeth - Rust In Peace

5.Faith No More - Angel Dust

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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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1.Alice In Chains - Jar Of Flies

2.Animals As Leaders - Animals As Leaders

3.Damageplan - New Found Power

4.Dying Fetus - Killing On Adrenaline

5.Fear Factory - Archetype

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LATEST EDIT: December 12/2016- Added a whole bunch of progressive rock albums; processing earlier suggestions on the list.

Assembled below are some choice selections in alternative metal, prog rock, prog metal, jazz and avant-garde metal. I don't necessarily consider these styles to be my favourite (I do have a penchant for post-metal and cavernous death metal these days), but they have been the foundations of my taste for the last seven or eight years.

1.

2.Soundgarden - Down On The Upside

3.Rishloo - Living As Ghosts With Buildings As Teeth

4.Karnivool - Asymmetry

5.Blindead - Absence

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Main criterias:
How much I love it(obviously)
Songwritting
Importance and originality
Consistency and diversity (consistency is more importance, but diversity can make a difference)

1.Metallica - Ride The Lightning

2.Megadeth - Rust In Peace

3.Morbid Angel - Altars Of Madness

4.Candlemass - Epicus Doomicus Metallicus

5.Slayer - Haunting The Chapel

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AtoZ (Album)

1.Lost Horizon - A Flame To The Ground Beneath

2.Ihsahn - After

3.Anthrax - Among The Living

4.Faith No More - Angel Dust

5.Riverside - Anno Domini High Definition

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1.Smothered - The Inevitable End

2.Cryptopsy - Cryptopsy

3.Lamb Of God - Sacrament

4.Lamb Of God - Wrath

5.Metallica - Ride The Lightning

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my 100 favorite metal albums of all times. Alphabetical order.

1.Agalloch - Ashes Against The Grain

2.Agalloch - The Serpent & The Sphere

3.Ahab - The Giant

4.Alice In Chains - Dirt

5.Altar Of Plagues - Mammal

      View entire list ››