RANKING CRITERIA :

1. Originality

2. Songwriting

3. Vigorous performance

1.Anacrusis - Screams And Whispers

2.Overkill - Feel The Fire

3.Nuclear Assault - Game Over

4.Wrathchild America - 3-D

5.Toxik - World Circus

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Welcome to my 2016 list. Most of you are aware how lists on MS work :- If the album appears at the top it's amazing (imo) and highly recommend you give it a listen... if it's featured at the bottom then I probably don't like it. If you have any recommendations for albums, feel free to leave a message in the comments section!!

1.Whispered - Metsutan - Songs Of The Void

2.Mesarthim - Pillars

3.Equilibrium - Armageddon

4.Omnium Gatherum - Grey Heavens

5.Twilight Force - Heroes Of Mighty Magic

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1.Anthrax - For All Kings

2.Fleshgod Apocalypse - King

3.Cauldron - In Ruin

4.Abbath - Abbath

5.Metallica - Hardwired... To Self-Destruct

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One of source of entertainment in the couple of months since I've joined MS has been watching albums careen up and down the 2015 top 20. I thought it might be interesting to compile a list of every album that shows up on the 2016 top 20 list at any point during the year (modulo how often I'm actually able to observe the list) along with some statistics. Ranking on this list is ordered by peak rank, then last date at that rank, then end of year rank.

1.Insomnium - Winter's Gate

2.Trees Of Eternity - Hour Of The Nightingale

3.Aenaon - Hypnosophy

4.Dark Tranquillity - Atoma

5.Anaal Nathrakh - The Whole Of The Law

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★★★★★ - Masterpiece!
★★★★½ - Excellent!
★★★★☆ - Great!
★★★½☆ - Very Good!
★★★☆☆ - Enjoyable!
★★½☆☆ - OK, Nothing Special...
★★☆☆☆ - Mediocre/Poor
★½☆☆☆ - Don't Touch
★☆☆☆☆ - I Want My Money Back

1.Cloudscape - Voice Of Reason

2.Adam Wakeman & Damian Wilson - Weir Keeper's Tale

3.Fifth To Infinity - Omnipotent Transdimensional Soulfire

4.Dissona - Paleopneumatic

5.Bloodiest - Bloodiest

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Like my other genre-based lists, this exists purely for my own organizational purposes and not to provide a definitive statement about or guidebook to the thrash genre. I've folded some speed metal and other occasional outliers into this list, maybe a few not-so-thrash albums by otherwise-thrash bands, since they're close enough and I wasn't going to make a separate list.

1.Slayer - Reign In Blood

2.Gama Bomb - Citizen Brain

3.Cross Examination - Menace II Sobriety

4.Slayer - Seasons In The Abyss

5.Metallica - Ride The Lightning

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1.Testament - Brotherhood Of The Snake

2.Metallica - Hardwired...To Self-Destruct

3.Megadeth - Dystopia

4.Anthrax - For All Kings

5.Dark Tranquillity - Atoma

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My favorite to least favorite from 2016. I will be adding and moving albums as the year goes on.

1.Epica - The Holographic Principle

2.Testament - Brotherhood Of The Snake

3.Avantasia - Ghostlights

4.Allegaeon - Proponent For Sentience

5.Brymir - Slayer Of Gods

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1.Insomnium - Winter's Gate

2.Dark Tranquillity - Atoma

3.Avantasia - Ghostlights

4.Alter Bridge - The Last Hero

5.Abbath - Abbath

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Favourite albums of 2016 (including only those which I would rate 7+)

1.Vektor - Terminal Redux

2.Slice The Cake - Odyssey To The West

3.Animals As Leaders - The Madness Of Many

4.Gardenjia - Arkestral

5.Hypno5e - Shores Of The Abstract Line

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1.Vektor - Terminal Redux

2.Plini - Handmade Cities

3.Alcest - Kodama

4.The Dillinger Escape Plan - Dissociation

5.Thank You Scientist - Stranger Heads Prevail

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My favorite metal albums sorted alphabetically by band name and chronological by release date.

1.Æther Realm - Tarot

2.Acid Witch - Witchtanic Hellucinations

3.Allegaeon - Proponent For Sentience

4.Amorphis - Tales From The Thousand Lakes

5.Amorphis - Silent Waters

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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.Behemoth - The Satanist

2.Rhapsody Of Fire - From Chaos To Eternity

3.Mors Principium Est - Dawn Of The 5th Era

4.Insomnium - Shadows Of The Dying Sun

5.Wintersun - Time I

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1.Deströyer 666 - Wildfire

2.Asphyx - Incoming Death

3.Anaal Nathrakh - The Whole Of The Law

4.Meshiaak - Alliance Of Thieves

5.After All - Waves Of Annihilation

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