Dream Theater! Once my favourite band of all time, now number 2. I took an involuntary break from them for a while, and upon return realised my feelings had changed to a lot of their music. Also since at some point I stupidly deleted my old ranking of them, I feel now is the time to make a new one.

Feel free to bash my terrible taste.

1.Dream Theater - Black Clouds & Silver Linings

2.Dream Theater - Dream Theater

3.Dream Theater - A Dramatic Turn Of Events

4.Dream Theater - Train Of Thought

5.Dream Theater - Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes From A Memory

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So it begins. 3rd year at MS, 5th year of devoted metal listening. Nothing particularly exciting coming up, but Eternal Storm looks promising, and any new Persefone is a good thing. It's early days after all.

Goal? I made it to 625 albums last year, with a pretty slack first 6 months. Aiming for 800.

Update: This list is officially discontinued, apart from albums that are good enough to warrant multiple listens, aka the top end. There are various reasons for this, but a lot of changes are happening in life and I cannot/do not want to give this much time to every release I can.

1.Cave Sermon - Divine Laughter

2.Illumishade - Another Side Of You

3.Persefone - Lingua Ignota: Part I

4.Solbrud - IIII

5.Lost In Grey - Odyssey Into The Grey

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The best album art of 2024. I usually gravitate towards album covers based on these factors:
-Level of detail (Foreground, background, etc. One dimensional album covers don't work for me usually)
-Art style (Renaissance is cool, power metal fantasy cartoons are not)
-Colour scheme (Vibrant colours but not too wacky or fluro)
-Winter, space, large scale visuals
-Contrast (Through colour and actual landscape)
-Abstract/paradoxical

No particular order, they are all great

1.Solbrud - IIII

2.Eternal Storm - A Giant Bound To Fall

3.Infected Rain - Time

4.Darkspace - Dark Space -II

5.Borknagar - Fall

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The best album art of 2023. I usually gravitate towards album covers based on these factors:
-Level of detail (Foreground, background, etc. One dimensional album covers don't work for me usually)
-Art style (Renaissance is cool, power metal fantasy cartoons are not)
-Colour scheme (Vibrant colours but not too wacky or fluro)
-Winter, space, large scale visuals
-Contrast (Through colour and actual landscape)
-Abstract/paradoxical

No particular order, they are all great

1.Atavistia - Cosmic Warfare

2.Cattle Decapitation - Terrasite

3.Whalesong - Leaving A Dream

4.Morwinyon - Wastelands

5.Oak - Disintegrate

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2023 here we go. My target for the year is 100+ albums, at a rule of 2 albums a week minimum.

1.Nospūn - Opus

2.Periphery - Periphery V: Djent Is Not A Genre

3.Sleep Token - Take Me Back To Eden

4.Crow Black Sky - Sidereal Light: Volume Two

5.Against Myself - Tides Of Insanity

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My final list for 2022.
Just one 10 this year for an absolutely spectacular album.

1.An Abstract Illusion - Woe

2.Persefone - Metanoia

3.Jani Liimatainen - My Father's Son

4.Devin Townsend - Lightwork

5.Stratovarius - Survive

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The goats. The near perfect albums that never get old. Some are full of catchy bangers I'm always humming, and some are so full to the brim of details that I still haven't even uncovered them all.

A brief outline of my ratings:
8.5-9.0 = An excellent album with a few mild drawbacks (Weak song, slightly irritating vocals, odd flow)
9.0-9.5 = Perfect albums that haven't quite warranted the time-earnt 9.5+.
9.5-9.9 = Perfect albums that have stood the test of time, ranked by preference.
10 = I don't expect to hear another album like these, ever.

(I use 'perfect' lightly as it makes no sense for a man-made creation to be flawless. 'Perfect' is simply a term to outline how high a level of enjoyment is, specifically the level of enjoyment when minor faults become insignificant.)

(I evaluate albums outside of metal vastly differently to the ones here, which explains the lack of representation of my other favourite genres. Blue Sky Mining is an exception due to being structured very similarly to my optimal metal album. I may add some picks from other genres down the line.)


STATS:
I know y'all don't look at my lists, so these are purely for my own interest.

-Decades
'10s: 36
'20s: 22
'00s: 7
'90s: 2

-Genres (By best fit or most prominent)
Prog: 35
Death: 11
Power: 9
Symphonic: 4
Black: 3
Contemporary: 2
Folk: 1
Doom: 1
Rock: 1

1.Devin Townsend - Empath

2.Memories Of Old - The Zeramin Game

3.Wintersun - Time I

4.An Abstract Illusion - Woe

5.Persefone - Aathma

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