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...
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...
2009 is another big year with a couple highly important albums. The headline act is no doubt the top seed here, with Mastodon's breakthrough Crack the Skye. Simultaneously the band's most progressive and probably most highly revered work, I think this album really broke new ground for what progressive metal could be especially in light of the more extreme offerings from bands like Opeth and Between the Buried & Me. Even compared to Dream Theater's offering this year, you can hear them pushing some boundaries. Who knew basically stealing the Rush formula and adding some sludge could be so innovative? Speaking of DT, they earned a high seed after being absent for two albums in a row due to nobody nominating their albums. I will be curious to see how Black Clouds performs as it tends to be a controversial album, but I strongly believe that the more distance we get from it (and with several DT albums since then including finally a followup with Portnoy 15 years later), the more I notice elements on this album that I really miss from the band. Thematically, melodically, even the riffs feel so much more fresh than what they've done recently. And, after all, all the finest wines IMPROVE WITH AGE.
We have Dio's swan song in the #2 slot, which I'll be watching with great interest considering how poorly he has performed in this game so far. The Devil You Know is arguably the best thing Dio did since the 80s, so I will be curious if this gets the recognition it deserves. On the other hand, it's hard to give it to a pretty good but run of the mill Sabbath album when you have albums like Crack the Skye. I also think we have a couple sleeper hits here including Endgame, which, despite the low seed, I wouldn't be surprised to see win the whole thing. Megadeth isn't super popular around here, but man Endgame was such a huge album when it came out and is probably the first set of evidence that Megadave still can deliver the goods. Down toward the bottom is probably the Devin Townsend album that is most likely to succeed here and so far Dev has performed decently despite never being in danger of a top three contender. We'll see if that continues. We also have a pretty important Nile album, even though their brand of metal hasn't done especially well here.
- Mastodon - Crack the Skye
- Heaven & Hell - The Devil You Know
- Dream Theater - Black Clouds and Silver Linings
- Megadeth - Endgame
- Kreator - Hordes of Chaos
- Rammstein - Liebe Ist Fur Alle Da
- Nile - Those Whom God Detests
- Sonata Arctica - Days of the Gray
- Cains Offering - Gather the Faithful
- Rishloo - Feathergun
- Samael - Above
- Amputated - Wading Through the Rancid Offal
- Hammerfall - No Sacrifice, No Victory
- Devin Townsend - Addicted
