A ranking including all albums of my former favorites.

1.Scar Symmetry - Pitch Black Progress

2.Scar Symmetry - Symmetric In Design

3.Scar Symmetry - Holographic Universe

4.Scar Symmetry - The Unseen Empire

5.Scar Symmetry - Dark Matter Dimensions

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Bands in my daily listening rotation. Albums chosen are my favorite by the respective band in most cases 🤘

1.200 Stab Wounds - Slave To The Scalpel

2.A Perfect Circle - Mer De Noms

3.Abbath - Abbath

4.Acid Witch - Rot Among Us

5.Æther Realm - Tarot

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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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My favorite albums from various genres

1.Slipknot - Iowa

2.Nirvana - Nevermind

3.Summoning - Stronghold

4.Septicflesh - Communion

5.Anathema - Judgement

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"I'll listen to this after I come back home"
I'm so sick of doing this.There are many,many albums that I KNOW will enjoy if I finally make time to listen too. This is more of a personal list,so I can keep track of what I need to hear.

1.Leaves' Eyes - Njord

2.Exodus - Pleasures Of The Flesh

3.Darkthrone - Circle The Wagons

4.Kreator - Coma Of Souls

5.Kreator - Violent Revolution

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1.At The Gates - Slaughter Of The Soul

2.Arch Enemy - Rise Of The Tyrant

3.Arch Enemy - Wages Of Sin

4.Dark Tranquillity - The Gallery

5.In Flames - Colony

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Like my own 2009 top list, it's been extremely hard to narrow down to a final twenty because of so many releases in recent years. But twenty it is and of course, I cheated again with my other two lists of overlooked albums and influential albums. These lists are by no means a definition, but a musical statement and hopefully you reading this list can find out something you haven't heard of before and enjoy it as much as I do. Yes, some big names are missing, some are too obscure while some are too mainstream, but I listen to what I like. Just be sure to give them a go with youtube and internet downloads readily at your disposal ^ ^ Some that didn't quite make it into the list but would want to mention them anyway as they are awesome nonetheless: Bison B.C., E-Force, Hail Of Bullets, Keldian, Draconian, Deadlock, Shadowkeep, Battlelore etc

1.Oceans Of Sadness - The Arrogance Of Ignorance

2.Textures - Silhouettes

3.UnSun - The End Of Life

4.Septicflesh - Communion

5.Poisonblack - A Dead Heavy Day

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In progress top 100 albums in no order yet

1.Alice In Chains - Jar Of Flies

2.Porcupine Tree - In Absentia

3.Queens Of The Stone Age - Songs For The Deaf

4.Edge Of Sanity - Crimson

5.Dream Theater - Images And Words

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My favorite 26 albums in metal

1.Ne Obliviscaris - Portal Of I

2.In Mourning - Shrouded Divine

3.Agalloch - Pale Folklore

4.Opeth - Blackwater Park

5.Be'lakor - Of Breath And Bone

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This list includes death metal albums that musically are progressive and technical.. Alphabetical order.

1.Allegaeon - Proponent For Sentience

2.Atheist - Piece Of Time

3.Atheist - Unquestionable Presence

4.Atheist - Elements

5.Atheist - Jupiter

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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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1.Afgrund - Vid Helvetets Grindar

2.After Forever - After Forever

3.Agalloch - The Mantle

4.Agalloch - Ashes Against The Grain

5.Alcest - Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde

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Only Awesome Albums (OAA)

1.Metallica - ...And Justice For All

2.Machine Head - The Blackening

3.Omnium Gatherum - The Redshift

4.Viikate - Marraskuun Lauluja I

5.Viikate - Marraskuun Lauluja II

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Another yearly top 10 list.

1.Ayreon - 01011001

2.Sabaton - The Art Of War

3.Eluveitie - Slania

4.Amon Amarth - Twilight Of The Thunder God

5.Draconian - Turning Season Within

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Okay guys the countdown is really not a countdown, as in they aren't in any specific order.
PS: I'm sure I forgot some albums, so I might edit this list later on.

1.Lair Of The Minotaur - War Metal Battle Master

2.Saattue - Jäähyvästi

3.Isole - Bliss Of Solitude

4.Forefather - Steadfast

5.Grand Magus - Iron Will

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