Maidenfans Best Albums of the Millennium: 2018

vote for any albums that you want to move up (read the post for details)!

  • Ihsahn - Amr

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Immortal - Northern Chaos Gods

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Beyond the Black - Heart of the Hurricane

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Lovebites - Clockwork Immortality

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Blaze Bayley - The Redemption of William Black - Infinite Entanglement Part III

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    10

Mosh

Powerslave
Staff member
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...

MMXVIII

  1. Judas Priest - Firepower
  2. The Ocean - Phanerozoic I: Palaeozoic
  3. Ihsahn - Amr
  4. Immortal - Northern Chaos Gods
  5. Voivod - The Wake
  6. Beyond the Black - Heart of the Hurricane
  7. Aeterna - The Legend Begins
  8. Lovebites - Clockwork Immortality
  9. The World is Quiet Here - Prologue
  10. Blaze Bayley - The Redemption of William Black - Infinite Entanglement Part III
  11. Ghost - Prequelle
  12. Deafheaven - Ordinary Corrupt Human Love
  13. Haken - Vector
  14. Rivers of Nihil - Where Owls Know My Name
If ever there was a year for Judas Priest to win, this is it. Firepower was critically acclaimed, beloved by the fans, and by far the biggest album here. Frankly I don't see any legitimate competition and I expect this to be the first decisive victory we've had since maybe AMOLAD in 2006. That's not to say there's a lack of good stuff below the #1 slot though. The Ocean is a very respected recent group and had enough nominations to land a second slot below Priest. The real competition from my vantage point is in the bottom quadrant, with Ghost and Rivers of Nihil in particular having some of the trendier albums of 2018. Blaze wins the award for most unnecessarily long album title, but we'll see if he continues a relatively consistent streak of overperforming in this game.
 
It was between Prologue and Firepower for me back when we made lists (obviously you pick the one that isn't guaranteed to get in), but since then I discovered Phanerozoic I in the summer. What a killer album, especially but not only the three long tracks. It has nasty, beautiful, and epic in just those. It's no Pelagial, but there's already competition with Firepower, at least for me.
 
No illusions about who’s winning this year, but my nominee is another growl-free folk metal band Aeterna with their debut album The Legend Begins. These folks are a female-fronted outfit from Russia, with most of the songs sung in Russian, and flute and violin as the primary folk instruments. Heavy on the folk elements, but with great melodic guitar leads and some nice crunch where it makes sense. Sort of like Enya meets Evanescence. I love it.

Full album:
 
Firepower is pretty great, although I haven't returned to it too much since. Prequelle is one of the better Ghost albums.
 
Frankly I don't see any legitimate competition and I expect this to be the first decisive victory we've had since maybe AMOLAD in 2006.
You weren’t kidding. Ironically I think this is the most interesting year since 2015 but Firepower is steamrolling the competition.
 
You weren’t kidding. Ironically I think this is the most interesting year since 2015 but Firepower is steamrolling the competition.
I think it's true, 2018 feels like a bright light in a slower decade overall compared to the 2000s and early 10s.
 
Firepower just smash the albums here. Everything clicked for the band with it, no fillers (only one weaker song)! Such albums are always special. One of Priest's best, no doubt.

Blaze's Redemption is the most uneven one from the Trilogy and some of the songs are very short. 5 of the songs are solid, Eagle Spirit is the best one.
 
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