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 MMV (2005)
After a couple lackluster years this is a biggie. If you take Tyranny of Souls out of the equation (which receives a high seed only because of Bruce bias, i.e. many nominations), you have to go all the way to album #8 before you find one that isn't held up as a genre defining/classic album of its subgenre or Metal as a whole. It's actually kinda wild. Angel of Retribution is as big of a classic metal renaissance statement as Brave New World was five years earlier, Deadwing, Ghost Reveries and From Mars to Sirius are among the most modern iconic progressive metal albums, Those Once Loyal is a swan song for a band that I feel in many ways concludes the first golden era of Death Metal, Hypnotize makes a strong case for SOAD's ability to exist outside the nu metal fad and just be one of the most important 21st century Rock bands. Even if you go beneath these initial 8, there are some heavy hitters. Second Life Syndrome is our bottom seed, but I remember Riverside long being considered one of the top second tier prog metal bands. I don't think they ever truly got there honestly, but if you put yourself in the place and time I thin you can see how many people saw this as taking Dream Theater's 90s sound to the next century while the actual DT wasn't really going there anymore.* Alien was also a massive album for the prog and extreme metal sphere, and arguably the greatest Strapping Young Lad album. City of Evil might not perform very well here, but as a gateway Metal album I think this was a really important contribution to the genre.
Looking forward to seeing how this one lands. I think Angel of Retribution is going to come on very strong here but I have to be honest this is the first year where there are a handful of top contenders for me. I'll have to think this one over but I will say at the top I don't think Angel is the best album and I definitely don't think Tyranny is the second best. I'm curious how the forum will vote though as these are the two most broadly appealing albums while everything else is pretty firmly within a subgenre.
*The true torchbearers came 5 years later when Haken released their debut, Aquarius.
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 MMV (2005)
After a couple lackluster years this is a biggie. If you take Tyranny of Souls out of the equation (which receives a high seed only because of Bruce bias, i.e. many nominations), you have to go all the way to album #8 before you find one that isn't held up as a genre defining/classic album of its subgenre or Metal as a whole. It's actually kinda wild. Angel of Retribution is as big of a classic metal renaissance statement as Brave New World was five years earlier, Deadwing, Ghost Reveries and From Mars to Sirius are among the most modern iconic progressive metal albums, Those Once Loyal is a swan song for a band that I feel in many ways concludes the first golden era of Death Metal, Hypnotize makes a strong case for SOAD's ability to exist outside the nu metal fad and just be one of the most important 21st century Rock bands. Even if you go beneath these initial 8, there are some heavy hitters. Second Life Syndrome is our bottom seed, but I remember Riverside long being considered one of the top second tier prog metal bands. I don't think they ever truly got there honestly, but if you put yourself in the place and time I thin you can see how many people saw this as taking Dream Theater's 90s sound to the next century while the actual DT wasn't really going there anymore.* Alien was also a massive album for the prog and extreme metal sphere, and arguably the greatest Strapping Young Lad album. City of Evil might not perform very well here, but as a gateway Metal album I think this was a really important contribution to the genre.
Looking forward to seeing how this one lands. I think Angel of Retribution is going to come on very strong here but I have to be honest this is the first year where there are a handful of top contenders for me. I'll have to think this one over but I will say at the top I don't think Angel is the best album and I definitely don't think Tyranny is the second best. I'm curious how the forum will vote though as these are the two most broadly appealing albums while everything else is pretty firmly within a subgenre.
*The true torchbearers came 5 years later when Haken released their debut, Aquarius.
They're all in a row so I always thought that's funny.