Maidenfans Best Albums of the Millennium: 2005

[MrKnickerbocker]

Voting for OPETH, plus Bolt Thrower and Riverside.

Listened to both for the first time in the last day and they are both amazing albums. Those Once Loyal is an absolute powerhouse of groovy death metal and it's consistently badass (especially the bass tone and prominence).

I can't believe more people here aren't voting for Riverside. I've heard about this album for a long time and just never really got around to it, but it is mesmerizing. Truly awesome classic prog metal with just the right amount of melancholy. It's kinda like if Steven Wilson wrote a Porcupine Tree album that was much more metallic and occasionally aggressive in the vocal department. Truly a hidden gem of an album.

 

[Diesel 11]

Voting Tyranny again (really hope someone checks out this album and gets blown away, it's in a league of its own), also supporting Gojira (monumental album), Bolt Thrower (monumental album), and Meshuggah (Meshuggah gang rise up).

 

[Mosh]

Updated Power Rankings

1. Opeth - Ghost Reveries +1
2. Bruce Dickinson - A Tyranny of Souls -1
3. Gojira - From Mars to Sirius =
4. Judas Priest - Angel of Retribution =
5. Porcupine Tree - Deadwing =
6. Gamma Ray - Majestic =
7. Bolt Thrower - Those Once Loyal =
8. Strapping Young Lad - Alien +5
9. Riverside - Second Life Syndrome +6
10. System of a Down - Hypnotize -2
11. Meshuggah - Catch 33 -1
12. Arch Enemy - Doomsday Machine -3
13. Tyranny - Tides of Awakening -2
14. Reverend Bizarre - Crush the Insects -2
15. Avenged Sevenfold - City of Evil -1

A lot more movement in this round and it's looking like the invisible hand of Maidenfans is starting to make the expected adjustments. For the first time this game, we have three albums jockeying for the top spot as Opeth has barely knocked Bruce into the #2 slot and is currently the king of the hill. Will it last? Gojira and Priest seem to have settled, but I see some strong support for Bolt Thrower and Gamma Ray as well, so I would say there's competition here in both directions.

Strapping Young Lad and Riverside come away as the big winners this round, it seems like the proggers have risen up! Riverside in particular is now no longer a bottom seed and in fact had the highest vote share of the bottom groupings. In its place, Avenged Sevenfold has fallen to the bottom seed where I expect it will stay. As a side note, I revisited this album today and while I do think it is an important piece of the story of Metal in the 21st century, it definitely doesn't hold up as much as anything else on this list. M. Shadows is a clear weak link on this album and the barrage of guitar harmonies is pretty fatiguing, still it's interesting to hear bands like Maiden, In Flames, and others propped up so heavily in such a mainstream America rock act.