My choices of albums with strong forms of atmospheric sound in metal. Recommendations are welcome, though I won't add all as this will be towards personal taste.

1.A Forest Of Stars - A Shadowplay For Yesterdays

2.Agalloch - Ashes Against The Grain

3.Ahab - The Call Of The Wretched Sea

4.Akelei - De Zwaarte Van Het Doorstane

5.Alcest - Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde

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This list contains most beautiful, majestic and soul-touching releases I've ever experienced.
My most favorite genres are Black Metal, Post Metal, Shoegaze, Doom Metal, Ambient and Neo-Classical in general .

Albums are ranked by the year,I think this way is more useful.

I will keep expanding my list as i can.

1.Anathema - The Silent Enigma

2.Blut Aus Nord - Ultima Thulée

3.Deinonychus - The Silence Of December

4.Blut Aus Nord - Memoria Vetusta I - Fathers Of The Icy Age

5.Burzum - Filosofem

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More doom on the way: as of 14th June I'm slowly adding a few albums, hopefully to reach the 50 mark.

1.Candlemass - Nightfall

2.DoomSword - Let Battle Commence

3.Mourning Beloveth - The Sullen Sulcus

4.Skepticism - Lead And Aether

5.Shape Of Despair - Angels Of Distress

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In this list, many Death Doom have also

1.Empyrium - A Wintersunset...

2.Empyrium - Songs Of Moors And Misty Fields

3.Saturnus - Veronika Decides To Die

4.Shape Of Despair - Illusion's Play

5.Shape Of Despair - Angels Of Distress

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The following is a list of favorites that will steal your mind from this mortal realm; albums that will take you on an indelible journey.

1.Abyssal - Novit Enim Dominus Qui Sunt Eius

2.Agalloch - The Mantle

3.Ahab - The Call Of The Wretched Sea

4.Alcest - Écailles De Lune

5.Arkona - Гой, Роде, Гой!

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These are the albums which I like the most. Since I have not listened to a lot of albums( let's say, max 400 for me), it would be pretentious to make a list of my 100 favorite albums, so I keep this list short.

1.Tool - Lateralus

2.Esoteric - The Maniacal Vale

3.Lurker Of Chalice - Lurker Of Chalice

4.Godspeed You! Black Emperor - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven

5.Blut Aus Nord - The Work Which Transforms God

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Slow/Depress/Funeral/Love/Gloom/Beauty/Sorrow/Obscure/Cold/Atmospheric/

1.Ahab - The Call Of The Wretched Sea

2.Akelei - De Zwaarte Van Het Doorstane

3.Amorphis - Tales From The Thousand Lakes

4.Anathema - The Silent Enigma

5.Corrupted - El Mundo Frio

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Some of my favourite stuff I have scratched it up to one pile. One album per band, no order, just chaos.

1.Eibon - Entering Darkness

2.Ghost Brigade - Isolation Songs

3.Mar De Grises - Draining The Waterheart

4.Ankhagram - Where Are You Now

5.Anorexia Nervosa - New Obscurantis Order

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The wide spectrum of sounds expressed through the sub-genre of Doom Metal often gets overshadowed by the somehow inaccessible slowness that is in its nature and so DM doesn't get the recognition it deserves for being, in my opinion, one of the most flexible subgenres of Metal ... Because of that, Doom Metal has remained among my favorite genres of music since the time I was introduced to it through My Dying Bride's "Turn Loose the Swans".

1.Esoteric - The Maniacal Vale

2.Saturnus - Martyre

3.Lacrimas Profundere - Memorandum

4.My Dying Bride - Turn Loose The Swans

5.Process Of Guilt - Erosion

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The saddest albums I've ever heard in alphabetical order.

1.Agalloch - Ashes Against The Grain

2.Agalloch - The Mantle

3.Ahab - The Giant

4.Aoria - The Constant

5.An Autumn For Crippled Children - Everything

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1.Draconian - Arcane Rain Fell

2.My Dying Bride - Songs Of Darkness, Words Of Light

3.Evoken - A Caress Of The Void

4.Draconian - Where Lovers Mourn

5.Swallow The Sun - New Moon

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An ongoing list for personal use as well as for reference for beginners (& veterans alike). This is solely my personal opinion and taste (Death & Prog mostly but do give every genre a try). Basically will include albums I've rated 8 & above. Sorted by year since I'll need a Venn diagram to sort by genre (seriously MS please make it happen if possible). Will feature multiple releases per year (obviously) and per band (since if a band is putting out better albums it deserves more recognition). Keeping the metal faith alive from India

1.Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin

2.King Crimson - In The Court Of The Crimson King

3.Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin III

4.Black Sabbath - Paranoid

5.Uriah Heep - Look At Yourself

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2005-2009 list: http://www.metalstorm.net/users/list.php?list_id=5838
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 2000 to 2004, with at least 1 vote, were included.
The average expected rating (C) was determined by averaging all the Metal Storm ratings from 2000-2004.
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 +5.

C for 2000-2004 = 7.599
m = 30

Number of albums from each year in the list:
2000 - 15
2001 - 27
2002 - 14
2003 - 20
2004 - 29

Ratings are accurate as of 30/10/2023

1.Opeth - Blackwater Park

2.Agalloch - The Mantle

3.Tool - Lateralus

4.Wintersun - Wintersun

5.Ensiferum - Ensiferum

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1.My Dying Bride - The Angel And The Dark River

2.Swallow The Sun - The Morning Never Came

3.Draconian - Arcane Rain Fell

4.Novembers Doom - The Pale Haunt Departure

5.Ghost Brigade - Isolation Songs

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1.Be'lakor - Stone's Reach

2.Doom:VS - Dead Words Speak

3.Swallow The Sun - Hope

4.Amon Amarth - With Oden On Our Side

5.Draconian - Arcane Rain Fell

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