My glorious ranking of the year of our Lord 2017

Top 50 rated 8 and above

Album count: 132
Average rating: 7.1

1.Enslaved - E

2.Mors Principium Est - Embers Of A Dying World

3.Pallbearer - Heartless

4.Myrkur - Mareridt

5.Ulver - The Assassination Of Julius Caesar

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A little list series where I list my top 20 favorite metal albums every year starting from the year I was born in.

2017 was an interesting year, overall a solid year but the most notable thing about it the nostalgia sound, many new and old bands reuniting to old sounds but in a new way, Thrash metal had a pretty solid year same with death metal and doom, black metal was in its peak with the ambient mix sound and Progressive metal had a solid showing along with power metal.

My favorite non metal albums of 2017

1. No Shape
By Perfume Genius (Art pop)


2. Brutalism
By Idles (Post-Punk, Post-Hardcore)


3. Melodrama
By Lorde (Synthpop, Art Pop)


4. Ctrl
By SZA (R&B, Neo-Soul)


5. Relatives in Descent
By Protomartyr (Post-Punk, Noise Rock)


My favorite movie from 2017

1.Kreator - Gods Of Violence

2.Power Trip - Nightmare Logic

3.Lingua Ignota - All Bitches Die

4.La Torture Des Ténèbres - IV - Memoirs Of A Machine Girl

5.Dvne - Asheran

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1.Megadeth - Rust In Peace

2.Disforia - The Age Of Ether

3.Iron Maiden - Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son

4.Ayreon - The Theory Of Everything

5.Amorphis - Under The Red Cloud

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This is a list of all the death metal albums I have listened to that I thought were at all worth remembering. Like my other genre lists, this is just a record of my own listening experience that I use for personal organization, not a definitive account of the best or all of the death metal out there; there will probably be albums or bands that are not death metal in the strictest sense. You'll find some OSDM, melodeath, tech death, death-doom, maybe a bit of deathcore, I don't know. Maybe some non-death metal albums by death metal bands that I put in here just because.

1.Death - The Sound Of Perseverance

2.Death - Symbolic

3.At The Gates - With Fear I Kiss The Burning Darkness

4.At The Gates - Slaughter Of The Soul

5.Amon Amarth - With Oden On Our Side

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1.Pain Of Salvation - In The Passing Light Of Day

2.Enslaved - E

3.Ne Obliviscaris - Urn

4.Kauan - Kaiho

5.Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper

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2000-2004 list: http://www.metalstorm.net/users/list.php?list_id=5844
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

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 grows 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 2015 to 2019, with at least 1 vote, were included.
The average expected rating (C) was determined by averaging all the Metal Storm ratings from 2015-2019.
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 +2.

C for 2015-2019 = 7.422
m = 20

Number of albums from each year in the list:
2015 - 31
2016 - 24
2017 - 18
2018 - 12
2019 - 17

Ratings are accurate as of 30/10/2023

1.Mgła - Exercises In Futility

2.Insomnium - Winter's Gate

3.Amorphis - Under The Red Cloud

4.Vektor - Terminal Redux

5.Trees Of Eternity - Hour Of The Nightingale

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1.Adagio - Life

2.Anathema - The Optimist

3.Annihilator - For The Demented

4.Anubis Gate - Covered In Black

5.Accept - The Rise Of Chaos

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1.Mors Principium Est - Embers Of A Dying World

2.Allegaeon - Elements Of The Infinite

3.In Vain - Ænigma

4.Obscura - Omnivium

5.Wolfheart - Shadow World

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This was probably the second-best decade in music for me (with the first being 2000s). There were albums that changed my perspective on how to perceive the world and helped me dive deeper into this neverending journey of discovering music. It always felt like there is a unique world hidden in every album and that makes me want to discover as much as possible to broaden my horizons.

1.TesseracT - Altered State

2.Behemoth - The Satanist

3.Wintersun - Time I

4.Septicflesh - The Great Mass

5.Myrath - Legacy

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1.Summoning - Old Mornings Dawn

2.Amorphis - Queen Of Time

3.Moonsorrow - Jumalten Aika

4.Septicflesh - Codex Omega

5.Slipknot - We Are Not Your Kind

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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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No particular order

1.Graveworm - As The Angels Reach The Beauty

2.Graveworm - Scourge Of Malice

3.Dimmu Borgir - For All Tid

4.Dimmu Borgir - Stormblåst

5.Dimmu Borgir - Enthrone Darkness Triumphant

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This is my personal preference. Also, I'm always searching and finding new bands and new albums. Recommend me some good shit, I'll listen and maybe I'll change my mind on my personal top!

1.Altar Of Betelgeuze - Among The Ruins

2.Septicflesh - Codex Omega

3.Persefone - Aathma

4.Elder - Reflections Of A Floating World

5.Cradle Of Filth - Cryptoriana: The Seductiveness Of Decay

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Honestly, top 25 albums would probably be a more fitting name, given that I have honourable mentions, and few other categories as well. Some of them are self explanatory, while I want to clarify about the few others.
-Greatest disappointment of the year doesn't necessarily mean the worst album of that year, closer to the point would be that it is an album from which I expected a lot more than I received.

1.Myrkur - Mareridt

2.Elvenking - Secrets Of The Magick Grimoire

3.Wintersun - The Forest Seasons

4.Hallatar - No Stars Upon The Bridge

5.Vintersorg - Till Fjälls Del II

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This is my Top-20 list of the albums I listened to obsessively this year. Apart from #1 the rest are in no particular order. Feel free to comment.

Other albums that I enjoyed a lot, but didn't make the list: Bell Witch - Mirror Reaper, Satyricon - Deep Calleth Upon Deep, The Ominous Circle - Appalling Ascension, Vallenfyre - Fear Those Who Fear Him, Loss (USA) - Horizonless, Iced Earth - Incorruptible, Havok - Conformicide, Full Of Hell - Trumpeting Ecstasy, River Of Souls - The Well Of Urd, Aetherian - The Untamed Wilderness, Below - Upon A Pale Horse, Midnight - Sweet Death And Ecstasy, Immolation - Atonement, Yellow Eyes - Immersion Trench Reverie, Sorcerer - The Crowning Of The Fire King, Converge - The Dusk In Us, Ophis - The Dismal Circle, Inconcessus Lux Lucis - The Crowning Quietus, Temple Of Void - Lords Of Death, Persefone - Aathma, Necrot - Blood Offerings.

1.Wormwood - Ghostlands - Wounds From A Bleeding Earth

2.Venenum - Trance Of Death

3.Sun Of The Sleepless - To The Elements

4.Paradise Lost - Medusa

5.Kreator - Gods Of Violence

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