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 MMVIII
2008 feels like a huge year similar to what we saw in the early 00s. Personally, 2008 felt like a really big year for Metal as a mainstream force again. You had several bands on high profile tours (Maiden with Somewhere Back in Time, the Metal Masters tour that saw several old masters join forces, etc) and albums that I remember having a ton of hype around. Judas Priest's Nostradamus, Metallica's Death Magnetic, even Amon Amarth's Twilight of the Thunder God felt like albums with huge expectations and promotion. Some of these lived up to the hype, some did not. For my money, I would say that Nostradamus is the weakest album to earn a top seed. Judging by how Angel of Retribution performed in its year, I wouldn't be surprised if popular opinion agrees with me here as once again there are some pretty heavy hitters beneath it. Could this finally be Amon Amarth's year? The Art of War is another album that has the potential to do very well, and also some popular albums from lesser acclaimed bands such as Trivium and Alestorm. A widely enjoyed effort from Blaze and Gojira toward the bottom as well. We also have Iced Earth's short lived reunion with Barlow, although I'll be curious if there is any love for that album here. Opeth's entry in 2008 isn't among their best, but the forum's Opeth bias might be enough to carry it.
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 MMVIII
2008 feels like a huge year similar to what we saw in the early 00s. Personally, 2008 felt like a really big year for Metal as a mainstream force again. You had several bands on high profile tours (Maiden with Somewhere Back in Time, the Metal Masters tour that saw several old masters join forces, etc) and albums that I remember having a ton of hype around. Judas Priest's Nostradamus, Metallica's Death Magnetic, even Amon Amarth's Twilight of the Thunder God felt like albums with huge expectations and promotion. Some of these lived up to the hype, some did not. For my money, I would say that Nostradamus is the weakest album to earn a top seed. Judging by how Angel of Retribution performed in its year, I wouldn't be surprised if popular opinion agrees with me here as once again there are some pretty heavy hitters beneath it. Could this finally be Amon Amarth's year? The Art of War is another album that has the potential to do very well, and also some popular albums from lesser acclaimed bands such as Trivium and Alestorm. A widely enjoyed effort from Blaze and Gojira toward the bottom as well. We also have Iced Earth's short lived reunion with Barlow, although I'll be curious if there is any love for that album here. Opeth's entry in 2008 isn't among their best, but the forum's Opeth bias might be enough to carry it.
