THIS IS A POWER RANKING GAME. The albums are arranged in the poll from best to worst, with the top seeded album being the top ranked album. I seeded the albums based on two facts: how many lists it appeared on, and my general understanding of this board's tastes after being here for 15 years. This way we don't have to spend multiple rounds moving an album like Brave New World to the top, it's already there unless voters decide to knock it off the top spot.
Essential Questions:
How do you knock albums off the top spot? If you feel like an album is ranked too low, vote for that album. Any album that receives a significant plurality of votes (this number will be fluid and based on participation) will move up a slot. If you like the list as is, vote for the top album.
How often does this update? I will look at the numbers roughly every 24 hours and move albums accordingly. You can vote for as many albums as you want and you can vote whenever the poll resets. After a week, I will close the poll and we will move on to the next year. This will take us to mid December with the finals wrapping up right at the new year.
How were albums selected? I would say 95% of the albums that will appear in this game were sourced from Maidenfans lists. Every album that was submitted will appear in the game. For years that have a lot of duplicates (2000 being one), I filled in the list with other acclaimed albums. Many years surprisingly had close to all unique albums, with 2014, 2020, and 2023 having only one duplicate each. No year featured an entirely unique list of albums. No Maidenfans nominated albums were seeded lower than an album I pulled from an outside source.
Do I need to listen to every album here? Not necessarily, but I would highly encourage it! You have a week to vote and the voting will update every day (so you can vote every day or you can vote once a week or whatever you want). Everybody has unlimited votes. I think you will get more out of this game if you listen to the albums you're not familiar with and see if you can find any new favorites.
My favorite album isn't here! You had 7 months to send me a list!!!
I want to thank everybody who participated. I received 17 lists and 250+ albums! Most years had quite a variety of material and it made me appreciate the diversity of taste around here. I'm really excited to dig into each list I got and I am going to do my best to listen to every album. With that being said, let's get started with...
YEAR MMI (2000)
If 2000 was the beginning of a new Metal resurgence, 2001 seems like the genre really blossoming again. My impression of 2000 in the last round was that there weren't a lot of stone cold classics despite 2000 having a "metal is back" feeling to it largely fueled by the Maiden reunion. In 2001, by contrast, we have several breakthrough albums by bands that would dominate the decade such as Opeth, Devin Townsend, System of a Down. We see bands from the 90s turning in all time classics and showing that they still have a lot of juice such as Iced Earth, Tool, and Gamma Ray. Unlike the previous year, almost every user nominated album is a cornerstone album in its subgenre or Metal as a whole.
Our top seed, Blackwater Park, was nominated in three separate lists. Other albums that received multiple nominations are Iced Earth and Tool. Three albums, Terria, Toxicity, and Jane Doe are pretty highly revered albums but did not receive any nominations, so it will be interesting to see if they have similar success stories as Silicon Messiah and Clayman in the 2000 round. I expect more movement in general this time around and I don't necessarily expect Blackwater Park to hold the top seed the entire time, although it is yet another formative album.
I would love to see more discussion and debate in the thread. If you nominated an album and want to see it do well, post some songs you like and explain why it should be at the top of the list!
Essential Questions:
How do you knock albums off the top spot? If you feel like an album is ranked too low, vote for that album. Any album that receives a significant plurality of votes (this number will be fluid and based on participation) will move up a slot. If you like the list as is, vote for the top album.
How often does this update? I will look at the numbers roughly every 24 hours and move albums accordingly. You can vote for as many albums as you want and you can vote whenever the poll resets. After a week, I will close the poll and we will move on to the next year. This will take us to mid December with the finals wrapping up right at the new year.
How were albums selected? I would say 95% of the albums that will appear in this game were sourced from Maidenfans lists. Every album that was submitted will appear in the game. For years that have a lot of duplicates (2000 being one), I filled in the list with other acclaimed albums. Many years surprisingly had close to all unique albums, with 2014, 2020, and 2023 having only one duplicate each. No year featured an entirely unique list of albums. No Maidenfans nominated albums were seeded lower than an album I pulled from an outside source.
Do I need to listen to every album here? Not necessarily, but I would highly encourage it! You have a week to vote and the voting will update every day (so you can vote every day or you can vote once a week or whatever you want). Everybody has unlimited votes. I think you will get more out of this game if you listen to the albums you're not familiar with and see if you can find any new favorites.
My favorite album isn't here! You had 7 months to send me a list!!!
I want to thank everybody who participated. I received 17 lists and 250+ albums! Most years had quite a variety of material and it made me appreciate the diversity of taste around here. I'm really excited to dig into each list I got and I am going to do my best to listen to every album. With that being said, let's get started with...
YEAR MMI (2000)
If 2000 was the beginning of a new Metal resurgence, 2001 seems like the genre really blossoming again. My impression of 2000 in the last round was that there weren't a lot of stone cold classics despite 2000 having a "metal is back" feeling to it largely fueled by the Maiden reunion. In 2001, by contrast, we have several breakthrough albums by bands that would dominate the decade such as Opeth, Devin Townsend, System of a Down. We see bands from the 90s turning in all time classics and showing that they still have a lot of juice such as Iced Earth, Tool, and Gamma Ray. Unlike the previous year, almost every user nominated album is a cornerstone album in its subgenre or Metal as a whole.
Our top seed, Blackwater Park, was nominated in three separate lists. Other albums that received multiple nominations are Iced Earth and Tool. Three albums, Terria, Toxicity, and Jane Doe are pretty highly revered albums but did not receive any nominations, so it will be interesting to see if they have similar success stories as Silicon Messiah and Clayman in the 2000 round. I expect more movement in general this time around and I don't necessarily expect Blackwater Park to hold the top seed the entire time, although it is yet another formative album.
I would love to see more discussion and debate in the thread. If you nominated an album and want to see it do well, post some songs you like and explain why it should be at the top of the list!
