Maidenfans Best Albums of the Millennium: 2020

vote for any albums that you want to move up (read the post for details)!

  • Enisferum - Thalassic

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Elder - Omens

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Blue Oyster Cult - The Symbol Remains

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Caligula's Horse - Rise Radiant

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Grave Digger - Fields of Blood

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Lovebites - Electric Pentagram

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Enslaved - Heimdal

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • My Dying Bride - The Ghost of Orion

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Pain of Salvation - Panther

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    3

Mosh

Powerslave
Staff member
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...

MMXX
  1. Unleash the Archers - Abyss
  2. Nightwish - Human :||: Nature
  3. John Petrucci - Terminal Velocity
  4. The Ocean - Phanerozoic II: Mesozoic I Cenozoic
  5. Enisiferum - Thalassic
  6. Elder - Omens
  7. Blue Oyster Cult - The Symbol Remains
  8. Caligula's Horse - Rise Radiant
  9. Grave Digger - Fields of Blood
  10. Lovebites - Electric Pentagram
  11. Crescent Lament - Land of Lost Voices
  12. Enslaved - Heimdal
  13. My Dying Bride - The Ghost of Orion
  14. Pain of Salvation - Panther
  15. Testament - Titans of Creation
The pandemic year. You definitely get a sense that some of the bigger name artists may have been holding back their releases.and that others are using the pandeic to release more experimental or infrequent projects (e.g. John Petrucci). Blue Oyster Cult (!) makes their debut in the game with their first LP in nearly 20 years. Otherwise a lot of the perennial favorites are here: Unleash the Archers, Nightwish, The Ocean, Pain of Salvation, Testament. Once again I feel like this is Unleash the Archers' game to lose, but they fell short in the last year they appeared in so we'll see.
 
Abyss is an easy winner for me here. It was probably my most listened to album of 2020 and still holds up. Great album!

Also tossing a vote to Testament, as I truly enjoy that album and raged to it quite a bit during lockdown drublness.

Terminal Velocity was cool, but not amazing, and you couldn't pay me to vote Human :\\: Nature. I'll give the others a listen when I can!
 
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