This is the top 50 of my favourite 100 albums of 2000-2009.

1.Warning - Watching From A Distance

2.Esoteric - The Maniacal Vale

3.Primordial - To The Nameless Dead

4.Process Of Guilt - Erosion

5.Negură Bunget - OM

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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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I updated the list, so there are now 100 entries, and I consider 100 to be to little. These are albums I listen to regularly, and some I listened to frantically for a while.

1.Rapture - Songs For The Withering

2.System Of A Down - Toxicity

3.Warning - Watching From A Distance

4.Edge Of Sanity - Crimson II

5.Converge - Jane Doe

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Welcome everybody to a little lesson on the history of Sludge & Stoner Metal. I'm Guib and today I have the immense pleasure to serve as your humble teacher.

Please take a seat and travel with me through time as we explore the very best of those two, often blurred, genres. The goal here is simple, I want to get you familiarized with the styles. I want you to understand where they come from through albums on a timeline and while we're at it get a sweet selection of great releases that you might not know and that, hopefully, will get you hooked to explore even more!

But this is a classroom and in my classroom there are a few rules. We want to keep this clean, clear and prevent having a 500+ albums mess. So here are the rules we'll follow throughout this lesson.

- - - - - The Rules - - - - -

1. We will settle for a maximum of 4 albums per year and they will be listed from oldest to newest. Makes it simple to navigate. Those releases will represent what I consider to be hallmarks of the genres for that year. Essentials if you want, yes? Of course, I'll sprinkle a bit of my personality here and there so you will find some unorthodox choices and some less known albums from time to time. It would be boring otherwise... and also why not?

2. We will begin the journey with Melvins' "Gluey Porch Treatments" released in 1987. Why? Because it is arguably the first album to be widely considered as Sludge.

3. The list will mostly feature studio albums. So no Demos & bare minimum when it comes to EPs if any at all. Thank you.

4. I am not going to include releases by Black Sabbath, Blue Cheer, Hawkwind, etc... I fully understand and recognize the influence older bands had on Stoner Rock, but this is not the list for them.

5. Lastly, not really a rule but more of a note. Considering that we're talking about Sludge & Stoner, it is inevitable that Doom, Post, Progressive, Grunge & Hardcore acts will be featured in this list. Those genres simply go together naturally and are often mixed so do not be alarmed!

- - - - - - - - - -

That is it, I hope you will all discover something to enjoy through my little history lesson. Also, do not hesitate to comment below if you agree or disagree with some of my picks. After all, this is a classroom and debate is invited as it can be fun and educative. As long everything's done respectfully, of course.

Enjoy & Have Fun... Class dismissed!

NOTE: I will now add my picks for best album of the year using this format (best of xxxx) in the chosen album's description.

- Guib -

- - - - - - - - - -

Guib's best Sludge/Stoner Album Picks

Best Of 2023:
Urne - A Feast On Sorrow

Best Of 2024 So Far:
O Zorn! - Vermillion Haze

- - - - - - - - - -

Last Update: May 3rd, 2024

1.Melvins - Gluey Porch Treatments

2.Soundgarden - Ultramega OK

3.Oxbow - Fuckfest

4.Melvins - Ozma

5.Soundgarden - Louder Than Love

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I think the title is self explanitory. Not in order of preference as it would change daily and I can't be arsed changing it around all the time!:) it's a bit of a mixture of all the stuff I like so I'm reasonably sure alot of the picks won't be everyones cup of piss.

1.Agalloch - Ashes Against The Grain

2.Alcest - Souvenirs D'un Autre Monde

3.Arsis - A Celebration Of Guilt

4.Be'lakor - Stone's Reach

5.Between The Buried And Me - Colors

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Secret tracks, sometimes also called ghost tracks, unlisted tracks or hidden tracks, are songs or audio pieces that were left off the track list of an album.

The easiest way to hide a secret track is providing the space for a distinct track that is just not listed on the back cover. However, there are also other possibilities:

Multisided records are vinyl records that have more than one groove per side. Therefore, double-grooved LPs can contain the secret track in the second groove.
Moreover, some vinyl records contain audio in the locked groove, which is usually silent and used for keeping the needle from drifting into the label area.

Compact discs may contain secret songs in the pregap of a track. Therefore (depending on the CD player), the secret track is not played automatically, but has to be manually back-scanned to be started.

In general, secret songs are often placed at the end of the final track, which contains the listed song and the unlisted audio separated by some minutes of silence.

Enhanced CDs may contain tracks that are not recognized by regular CD players but can only be detected as multimedia files by a computer.

In rare cases, two tracks have to be played simultaneously in order to either complement each other or to suppress distorted parts, resulting in a reconstructed song.

In general, there seems to be a trend that fewer secret tracks are produced for new releases. Moreover, re-issues of older albums often contain formerly secret tracks as listed bonus tracks or omit them entirely, especially for digital versions of the album.

Please feel free to suggest more examples of secret tracks on metal/hard rock albums.

1.Acid Bath - Paegan Terrorism Tactics

2.Anthrax - Volume 8: The Threat Is Real

3.Anthrax - We've Come For You All

4.Anthrax - Worship Music

5.Arcturus - La Masquerade Infernale

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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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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

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1.Tool - Lateralus

2.Dream Theater - Awake

3.Queensrÿche - Rage For Order

4.The Tea Party - The Edges Of Twilight

5.Arcturus - La Masquerade Infernale

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Ok, this is my list of the greatest metal albuns of all time!
Honestly, my real list would be all about Opeth (hehe) but i want to put also other bands I admire!
Enjoy!

1.Opeth - Blackwater Park

2.Moonspell - Memorial

3.Draconian - Turning Season Within

4.The Gathering - Mandylion

5.Katatonia - Brave Murder Day

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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.P.H.O.B.O.S. - Phlogiston Catharsis

2.Paara - Riitti

3.Pagan Altar - Mythical & Magical

4.Pagan's Mind - Enigmatic : Calling

5.Paganizer - Into The Catacombs

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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

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1.Machine Head - The Blackening

2.Overkill - Ironbound

3.Tool - Lateralus

4.Rush - Clockwork Angels

5.Rush - Snakes & Arrows

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This covers a wide spectrum of albums that don't all sound the same. But you know the vibe i'm going for on this list.

1.Acid Witch - Rot Among Us

2.American Sharks - American Sharks

3.Baroness - Yellow & Green

4.Boris - Heavy Rocks

5.Cave In - Heavy Pendulum

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