Alright, Top 13 for me, because 13 and this is what I could figure well enough and be satisfied with right now. Ordering subject to roughly change somewhere around fifth slot depending on what mood I’m in on any given day, but these are solid mainstays in my rotation (most of them for decades at this point). Doesn’t reflect how broad my interests go, but you can see that I gravitate a lot toward black metal, and I favor stuff that isn’t afraid to be its own thing. Weird is good. Non-metal albums removed though there are a couple in my top 10 if I weren’t being genre specific.

1. Dødheimsgard - A Umbra Omega
2. Ved Buens Ende - Written in Waters
3. Murmuüre - Murmuüre
4. Emptiness - Not For Music
5. The Skaden - You Will Hope I Had Died
6. Solefald - The Linear Scaffold
7. Samael - Eternal
8. At the Gates - The Red in the Sky is Ours
9. Ulver - Bergtatt - Et Eeventyr i 5 Capitler
10. Cryptopsy - None So Vile
11. Summoning - Old Mornings Dawn
12. Rotting Christ - Khronos
13. Akercocke - Words That Go Unspoken, Deeds That Go Undone

Some faves off the dome:

Unearth - The Oncoming Storm

Unleash The Archers - Apex

Strapping Young Lad - City

Misery Signals - Mirrors

Entheos - Time Will Take Us All

Striker - Ultrapower

Astronoid - Air

Meshuggah - Chaosphere

Shai Hulud - Misanthropy Pure

Dream Theater — Metropolis Part 2 is the best metal album ever written and I’ll die on the hill.

There are albums I like more, albums I definitely listen to more, but if we’re talking overall quality Metropolis pt 2 is an absolute masterpiece.

I tend to listen to a lot of symphonic metal. I know some folks are turned off if the vocals aren’t harsh enough, so some of these are probably a total miss, but some of my favorite albums are:

1. Delain - The Human Contradiction
2. The Agonist - Lullabies for the Dormant Mind
3. Within Temptation - The Unforgiving
4. Opeth - Blackwater Park
5. Nightwish - Endless Forms Most Beautiful
6. Frantic Amber - Burning Insight
7. Infected Rain - 86
8. Dream Theater - Train of Thought
9. Iron Maiden - Killers
10. Epica - The Holographic Principle

Agalloch - The Mantle. It’s an absolute work of art that makes me want to disappear into a frozen forest.

In alphabetical order:
. Amon Amarth - Fate of Norns
. Leaves Eyes - Vinland Saga
. Manowar - Louder than Hell (and the epic Gods of War)
. Metallica - Metallica (black album)
. Moonsorrow - Voimasta ja Kunniasta
. Nightwish - Wishmaster (Century Child, Oceanborn and Once are great too)
. Sabaton - Art of War
. System of a Down - Toxicity
. Wintersun - Wintersun
. Within Temptation - Mother Earth

Random albums that come to mind:

Hatebreed — Concrete Confessional or Supremacy
Pantera — Vulgar Display of Power
Alice in Chains — Dirt (yes I group it in with metal)
Gorguts — Obscura
Cannibal Corpse — Torture
Deftones — Diamond Eyes
GODFLESH — A World Lit Only By Fire
Godsmack — debut or Oracle
Lamb of God — Ashes of the Wake
Mayhem — Daemon
Chimaira — Impossibility of Reason
Nine Inch Nails — anything before Bad Witch tbh
Type O Negative — October Rust

1/2 both Acid Bath albums

3 Burning Witch - Crippled Lucifer

4/5 Khanate - Khanate/Things Viral

6-9 Black Sabbath - first 4 albums

10 Gorguts - Obscura

I can’t really or an order to them as they’re all favorites of mine, but there’s a top 10:

Iron Maiden - Somewhere in time

Life of Agony - River runs red

At the gates - Slaughter of the soul

In Flames - Colony

Sentenced - Down

Black Sabbath - Master of reality

Iced Earth - Alive in Athens (I know this is cheating as it’s basically a best of album, but so what)

Kyuss - Welcome to sky valley

Queensryche - Operation mindcrime

Death - The sound of perseverance

Honestly though, I could put together a top “whatever” and still have too little space to place all the entries.

I grew up downloading songs a la carte and now I use services like Spotify and YouTube Music, so I never paid much attention to albums as a whole.

But there’s a couple of standouts for me, albums I have listened all the way through multiple times, and they’re both from Iron Maiden:

• Rock in Rio live, 2001

Most of my life, I thought concerts were stupid because I’d only been to ones at like, the county fair, with shitty country music from amateur cover artists on blown out speakers and surrounded by drunk and rowdy rednecks.

This is the album that convinced me that live shows were worth seeing. In my opinion, this is the gold standard for live albums. I’ve never seen any other band with so many in their discography, and it makes me wish that other bands released more. But it makes sense: Iron Maiden has always been a show band first, and a studio band second.

The crowd has the perfect amount of presence in the mix. Someome took the time to make sure you can always hear them, adjusting the levels so that they never drown out the band and vice versa. And you can feel how large the audience is. And they’re total putty in Bruce’s experienced hands.

It inspires a real sense of community that I’ve come to crave from live shows, even as an introvert, and it helped kick off a life-long addiction.

• Brave New World, 2000

I think we can all agree that almost every album has a weak track or two. One that’s just boring or doesn’t fit with the rest, that seems just kind of thrown in.

Not this album.

This album heralded the triumphant return of lead vocalist Bruce Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith after 7 and 10 years, respectively.

It’s the first album with the full-bodied, punchy Iron Maiden sound that I’ve come to love. Instead of firing Janick Gers to make room for Smith, they just said “fuck it, let’s have three guitarists,” and it fucking works. And they still have the same lineup almost a quarter century later.

Not every song is iconic, but they’re all enjoyable, and several of them would end up being staples of their setlists going forward. (They also played many of them at Rock in Rio as part of the supporting tour.)

It’s not explicitly a concept album, but it very nearly works as one. And the album art is actually really fucking cool (Iron Maiden’s album art is admittedly hit or miss cough Dance of Death cough).

I don’t usually listen to whole albums, but let’s see what looking though my spotify yields:

1. d’Artagnan - Felsenfest
2. Scooter - God save the rave (ik, not metal)
3. Nightwish - Imaginaerum
4. Saltatio Mortis- Brot und Spiele (anything by them)
5. Disforia - The Age of Aether
6. Mandowar - Hellboys from cow
7. Electroc Callboy - Tekkno
8. Powerwolf - Blood of the saints
9. Beast in Black - Dark connection (any of their 3 albums is great)
10. Dream Evil - Dragonslayer
11. Gloryhammer- Return to the kingdom of Fife
12. Lord of the lost - Judas
13. Demons & Wizards - Touched by the Crimson King
14. Blind Guardian - Nightfall in Middle-Earth
15. Leaves’ Eyes - Symphonies of the Night
16. Edguy - Hellfire Club
17. Alestorm - Curse of the crystal coconut
18. Visions of Atlantis - Pirates
19. Ye Banished Privateers - Legend of Libertalia
20. Van Canto - Voices of Fire
21. In Extremo - Quid pro quo
22. Feuerschwanz - Das Elfte Gebot
23. Avantasia - Moonglow
24. Nanowar of Steel - Stairway to Valhalla
25. Brothers of Metal - Emblas Saga

Yeah, I think that’s enough :)

Not in order and from the top of my head.

• Paul Chain, Park Of Reason
• Devin Townsend, Ocean Machine: Biomech
• Korn, Issues
• Type O Negative, Bloody Kisses
• Arcturus, The Shame Mirror

Hard to narrow down favorites because my feelings change often, but these 5 have been in rotation most often lately (in no particular order)

• King Woman - Celestial Blues [doom]
• System of a Down - Toxicity [alt metal? nu metal?]
• Violet Cold - Empire of Love [post-black metal]
• Liturgy - 93696 [black metal]
• Thou - Magus [sludge]

And I’ll say that I don’t necessarily think these are the best albums ever… I don’t think I could ever make up my mind about that! Looking forward to seeing everyone else’s picks.

Recent favourites, in no particular order:

Prog or adjacent : The ocean - Pelagial

Kglw - petrodragonic apocalypse (was my album of the year last year and one of the most fun albums I’ve heard in a long time. Felt like listening to painkiller or master of puppets for the first time. Legit top 10 all time album for me, I think)

Katatonia - the fall of hearts

Haken - affinity

Pain of salvation - in the passing light of day (or remedy lane or perfect element)

Soen - Lotus

Opeth - Ghost reveries (or any of the preceding albums, really)

Leprous - the congregation

Mastodon - crack the skye (or leviathan or emperor of sand)

Doom and adjacent: Warning - watching from a distance

Yob - our raw heart

My dying bride - feel the misery

Anathema - judgement

High on fire - death is this communion

Bongripper - Satan worshipping doom

Black and adjacent: Agalloch - the mountain

Negură bunget - virstele pamintilui (or OM)

Blackbraid - Blackbraid I or II

Bucovina - Sub stele (folk metal, really)

Power metal and such:

Dragony - viribus unitis

Blind Guardian - nightfall in middle earth (altho most of their stuff is awesome)

Adamantis - Far flung realm

Sellsword - unto the breach

Ominous Glory - the elven dream

And maaaaany more that would take me ages to list. If anyone vibes with any of the lists and wants more, hit me up, would be happy to talk more.

1. Moonsorrow - Verisäkeet
2. Suldusk - Lunar Falls
3. Wintersun - The Forest Seasons
4. Agalloch - The Mantle
5. Mors Principium Est- Seven