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 MMVI
A Matter of Life and Death comes into 2006 like a wrecking ball. Not only is it a beloved album on here, but I'm not sure I actually see any real competition or a clear frontrunner if AMOLAD was not involved. The only other album to receive multiple nominations, and thus a 2nd seed, is With Oden on Our Side. After that, it is a little bit of a hodgepodge. Sabaton comes in with a strong breakthrough sophomore album and Tenacious D brings in one of the more unique albums to enter the game so far with its blend of comedy and folk-y acoustic guitar driven songs. Despite feeling more like a sendup of 70s hard rock and broadway musicals than metal, the crushing riffage of songs like The Metal and Dio's cameo in the opening track gives this a lot of metal credibility and also goes to show how far the genre had come from being in the wilderness of the 90s to a mainstream cultural force again in the 00s.
The more well known albums are in the un-nominated lower seeds. Tool performed very well in their last appearance with Lateralus so I will be curious how 10,000 Days does comparatively. I always thought this was an odd album with some overlooked moments, and it feels early century defining in the way that for a very long time it was the last Tool album. Devin Townsend has a double entry with Synchestra and Strapping Young Lad's swan song The New Black. Mastodon's Blood Mountain is sandwiched between two immense albums in the band's discography, but I would argue this one is a bit underrated and one of Mastodon's most listenable albums.
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 MMVI
A Matter of Life and Death comes into 2006 like a wrecking ball. Not only is it a beloved album on here, but I'm not sure I actually see any real competition or a clear frontrunner if AMOLAD was not involved. The only other album to receive multiple nominations, and thus a 2nd seed, is With Oden on Our Side. After that, it is a little bit of a hodgepodge. Sabaton comes in with a strong breakthrough sophomore album and Tenacious D brings in one of the more unique albums to enter the game so far with its blend of comedy and folk-y acoustic guitar driven songs. Despite feeling more like a sendup of 70s hard rock and broadway musicals than metal, the crushing riffage of songs like The Metal and Dio's cameo in the opening track gives this a lot of metal credibility and also goes to show how far the genre had come from being in the wilderness of the 90s to a mainstream cultural force again in the 00s.
The more well known albums are in the un-nominated lower seeds. Tool performed very well in their last appearance with Lateralus so I will be curious how 10,000 Days does comparatively. I always thought this was an odd album with some overlooked moments, and it feels early century defining in the way that for a very long time it was the last Tool album. Devin Townsend has a double entry with Synchestra and Strapping Young Lad's swan song The New Black. Mastodon's Blood Mountain is sandwiched between two immense albums in the band's discography, but I would argue this one is a bit underrated and one of Mastodon's most listenable albums.
