1.Devin Townsend - Ziltoid The Omniscient

2.In Mourning - Shrouded Divine

3.Circus Maximus - The 1st Chapter

4.Threshold - Dead Reckoning

5.Seventh Wonder - Mercy Falls

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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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How my tastes evolved over the last two years. For the sake of comparison, I reported the original list below the updated one.

1.Warning - Watching From A Distance

2.Evoken - A Caress Of The Void

3.Cobalt - Eater Of Birds

4.The Angelic Process - Weighing Souls With Sand

5.Shining - V - Halmstad

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1.Epica - The Divine Conspiracy

2.Moonspell - Under Satanæ

3.Therion - Gothic Kabbalah

4.Samael - Solar Soul

5.Amorphis - Silent Waters

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My top prog albums. The list will be regularly updated.

1.Opeth - Ghost Reveries

2.Opeth - Blackwater Park

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

4.An Abstract Illusion - Woe

5.Gojira - Magma

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Top 50 of 2007. Rated 8+.

Only LPs.

Album count: 193
Average rating: 6.96

1.Porcupine Tree - Fear Of A Blank Planet

2.Moonsorrow - V: Hävitetty

3.Alcest - Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde

4.Rotting Christ - Theogonia

5.Machine Head - The Blackening

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1.Palaye Royale - The Bastards

2.Palaye Royale - Fever Dream

3.Green Lung - This Heathen Land

4.Orm - Intet • Altet

5.Spiritbox - The Fear Of Fear

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These are the best prog metal albums.

1.Symphony X - The Odyssey

2.Death - The Sound Of Perseverance

3.Blood Incantation - Hidden History Of The Human Race

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

5.Atavistia - Cosmic Warfare

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1.Porcupine Tree - Fear Of A Blank Planet

2.Antimatter - Leaving Eden

3.Moonsorrow - V: Hävitetty

4.Riverside - Rapid Eye Movement

5.Dark Tranquillity - Fiction

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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

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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

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...And since that day, he was never the same.

"He who speaks without an attentive ear is mute."

1.Across The Sun - Before The Night Takes Us

2.Agalloch - Ashes Against The Grain

3.Agent Fresco - Destrier

4.Amorphis - Under The Red Cloud

5.Angel Vivaldi - Universal Language

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List of my top epics - long songs (all in one or split into parts) with multiple parts and recurring themes, with an overall concept.

1.Symphony X - The Odyssey

2.Dream Theater - A Change Of Seasons

3.Edge Of Sanity - Crimson

4.Fates Warning - A Pleasant Shade Of Gray

5.Green Carnation - Light Of Day, Day Of Darkness

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Hello this is my list of the best and most fun songs to play on the drums for me. The only rule I tried to keep it to two songs per band and has to be metal (or very close to it). Enjoy
Also the songs I didn't add, but are very fun are Liquid Tension Experiment: Paradigm Shift, Another Dimension, Blotted Science: Oscillation Cycles, and Rush: Spirit of the Radio.

1.Dream Theater - A Change Of Seasons

2.Lamb Of God - Ashes Of The Wake

3.Dream Theater - Awake

4.Animals As Leaders - Animals As Leaders

5.Blotted Science - The Machinations Of Dementia

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Metal / Rock / Instrumental / Etc...

1.Fanisk - Noontide

2.Be'lakor - Stone's Reach

3.Amon Amarth - With Oden On Our Side

4.

5.Anathema - A Moment In Time

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