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 MMII (2002)
I can already tell this is going to be a prog dominated year. Symphony X, Dream Theater, and Opeth all have highly regarded albums, although Opeth's album was not nominated, leading to a low seeding. On the topic of non-nominated albums, I expect this to be similar to 2000 where, despite nobody nominating them, a few low seeded albums are going to jump up quite a bit and leap frog some favorites. I'm not sure if Symphony X has this locked down as much as Maiden and Opeth did, but I do think the top slot is The Odyssey's to lose. Ironically, I think most of the competition is going to come from some of the lower seeded albums.
To me, this is the first great year for the 21st century. Lots of all timers from a pretty large pool of talent. Lots of different subgenres and eras are represented here. I also feel like you get a pretty strong sense of where the next decade is going to go from some of these albums. A formative year to be sure.
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 MMII (2002)
I can already tell this is going to be a prog dominated year. Symphony X, Dream Theater, and Opeth all have highly regarded albums, although Opeth's album was not nominated, leading to a low seeding. On the topic of non-nominated albums, I expect this to be similar to 2000 where, despite nobody nominating them, a few low seeded albums are going to jump up quite a bit and leap frog some favorites. I'm not sure if Symphony X has this locked down as much as Maiden and Opeth did, but I do think the top slot is The Odyssey's to lose. Ironically, I think most of the competition is going to come from some of the lower seeded albums.
To me, this is the first great year for the 21st century. Lots of all timers from a pretty large pool of talent. Lots of different subgenres and eras are represented here. I also feel like you get a pretty strong sense of where the next decade is going to go from some of these albums. A formative year to be sure.
(The Sham Mirrors)
