That sucks - what difference does it make for anyone which album gets more votes than another one? The point is to see how this particular community collectively feels about the year's releases; not trying to get your fav to "win".

I was kinda surprised that vektor didn't make my top 10 last year (if i remember right), but it just felt too long and while i liked terminal redux a lot, it still felt like a slight set down after outer isolation, which imo is even better

If any of my favorites make the Top 10, I'll eat my hat.

Please eat a fedora so that there is one less in the world.

When the competitive spirit takes hold anything can become a competition. This very forum is a good example of how any innocuous topic can become a hotly contested battle.

Hell no! I'd be sick for a week!

I just sent my list to BH. Thanks!
I assume this thread will be opened when the voting is closed, right? It will be interesting.

I've sent my list as well.

Damn, it was hard picking 10 out of a crop of like 50 albums, but there are some albums that are clear winners.

I can't wait to talk about them in the results thread. :3

Yes and then you can list your favorite albums.

My top ten, including two debut at 9th and 10th position.

1. Galneyrus - Ultimate Sacrifice
2. ayreon the source
3. sceptic flesh codex omega
4. paradise lost medusa
5. Anubis gate Covered in Black
6. Sun of the Sleepless - To the Elements
7. Loviatar - Loviatar
8. adagio life
9. artificial langage the observer
10. Droid Terrestrial Mutations

Thank you again!

Why did you only capitalize half the band names and album titles?

finally sent mine as well - i'm gussing my #2, #3, #5 and #10 will end up fairly highish on the poll, and i'm pretty sure i'll be the only one to vote for my #8

Congrats on being the 100th vote!

Obviously that means we beat our total of 94 last year, and if last year was any indication, there's going to be a surge of people tomorrow who wait for the very last day to vote, so we're gonna hit a fairly respectable total this time. Much better than those sites that ask a dozen contributors at the very least. Thank you to everybody who has voted so far, let's make the last day and a half really count! The voting is much more spread out this year so it's still very tight (the album sitting at #20 is within striking distance of becoming #9 with one vote) so your vote absolutely counts. Lets get that drama!

List has been sent. It's supposed to be in the form of a PM directly to you right BastardHead? Oh and it's sent twice cuz of a mistake in album title. Cormorant had a song on Diaspora called The Migration that was my favorite....so I accidentally put that as the album title in the original.

If "The Migration" alone was the entire album it would still make my top 40 on the year easily. What a great fucking song that is.

No one submitted Riddlemaster to the archive so I'm waiting to see if it gets approved in time before I submit my list. There is also few bandcamp albums I still wanted to check out if I have time today.

Sent mine, deadline day as usual with me. It wasn't easy at all to trim it down to 10 releases. There's probably 5-7 albums which would be comfortably listed as excellent releases in a different format than this one.

here is my list:

1. hell yeah
2. hell yeah
3. hell yeah
4. hell yeah
5. hell yeah
6. hell yeah
7. hell yeah
8. hell yeah
9. hell yeah
10. hell yeah

1. Beastmaker - Inside the Skull
2. Quayde LaHue - Day of the Oppressor
3. Skulled - Eat Thrash
4. Septicflesh - Codex Omega
5. Bear Mace - Butchering the Colossus
6. Deserter - Coils of the Lesser Serpent
7. Nidingr - The High Heat Licks Against Heaven
8. Apostate Viaticum - Before the Gates of Gomorrah
9. Chainsaw - Filthy Blasphemy
10. Paradise Lost - Medusa

They're finally gonna take it home this year.

Cool! Waiting.

How bout that Brokencyde.........lmfao

Just voted! I'm excited to see the results now!

Are predictions allowed? If not I apologize in advance. My prediction is that Venenum will be within the top 5. Other than that I have no clue. That's what I love about this site, it's kind of unpredictable. A lot of other metal sites there's not really any surprises. Here goes almost every list I've seen on mainstream metal/music sites. Mastodon, Power Trip, Morbid Angel, Elder, Converge, you know the big names. And while I enjoy my fair share of the more mainstream releases and my list has several of the more mainstream choices I like finding out about obscure stuff that like 5 people outside of the metallum community know of. Such as Wreche. I found that in the quality albums of 2017 thread and loved it. I have seen it on literally zero other sites.

When it came right down to it, I only ended up rating 17 albums from 2017. Only 4 of them are good enough I think to bother listing. I mean, I'm not going to list 10 just for the sake of having 10. So, no votes from me. I know I know, you're all brokenhearted.

Unfortunately I didn't receive Autopsy's new EP in time to give it a listen and Spotify only has the one track I've already heard. Otherwise I feel good about my list. Surprised myself with what came out on top, but a great album is a great album. I included quite a few lesser known and relatively new bands along with some big names.

Who else voted for best debut? I doubt my choice will claim the title even if few voters bothered with this category, but I like the idea of giving some attention to newcomers.

Well Riddlemaster is still in pending status, which is a bummer because it was going to be number 5 on my list.

Alright everybody, I'm heading out for New Years festivities. The deadline is officially at midnight Eastern Time but there's going to be sort of a soft cap between then and "whenever I start actually making the post". So if you're a few hours late you'll probably be okay, but try to get it in the next four hours or so if you haven't voted and would like to just to be safe. Thank you everybody for participating and have a safe and happy New Years! Results should hopefully be posted within a day or two but there's a lot more to unpack than last year so it may take slightly longer, hopefully I've streamlined things on my end enough for it to not be a problem though.

well, it depends on what you ask from music, then.
Pure feeling? Pure technical skill? Pure perfection? Well, I'm one day closer to 46 and I have listened to so many great extreme metal this year it's been hard to choose the better.I'm not becoming legendary, I'm just gettin' old, but a good album is a good album and it's always worth mentioning... This choosiness sounds to me like " hey, I'd partecipate to the poll but my dick is harder than yours so I don't bother myself sharing the music I like with you poor impotents"

Of course I'm not brokenhearted, but if you hadn't the will to partecipate why bother posting you wouldn't have? It was much simpler to look over and open another thread instead
Happy new year anyway

I did. Actually, the debut of the year is also the album of the year for me as it's just so bloody good. I don't think they'll rank high on the debut list and definitely won't on the general one

Cool! Meanwhile, could you start the list's thread, please?

Man I'm pumped to see the results. I'm sure hardly any of the pedestrian albums I voted for ended up in the final running but it's still exciting, mostly because I know I'll have new albums to check out when the winners are posted.

He said the results were extremely spread out, so that's another thing that makes 2017 a lackluster year if you ask me--no big tentpole albums for everyone to rally around, just a bunch of niche albums that only appeal to people who like that niche.

Eh, stuff that so many people like isn't guaranteed to actually be all that good though. Vektor's album certainly wasn't album of the year material in my book. It's all relative, is all I'm saying.

Having one or two albums that suck up all the votes usually means that everything else was not so good and those albums were getting votes by default, rather than from being truly stellar. At least that's the impression I got from the Vektor win.

I don’t feel it’s necessary anymore to have that handful or so albums that most people and publications have a consensual favorable opinion about. It’d be a bit boring and pointless these days if the majority of best-of’s listed most of the same albums with little difference other than ranking, and I’m curious how often that may have actually been the case 25, 20, or even 10 years ago.

That doesn’t mean lesser albums are being artificially elevated by default, either. More artists making more music more accessible than ever is the best problem we can have. It should naturally follow that it’d be a crapshoot almost every year from here on out, ESPECIALLY for a place like M-A.

Well everybody, voting is now officially CLOSED. We had 123 votes for 525 album this year, up from the 94 and 409 from last year. Results will be posted likely by tomorrow, it takes a while to get the forum post ready.



To be fair, that's also how it was last year. Avantasia only wound up with like ten votes but still made it to #4 simply because the ten power metal fans on the board all put it really high. The four weeb metal fans managed to get Octaviagrace all the way to #18 if my memory serves. That's really not exactly a new phenomenon. Having more votes total (29 more than last year) actually meant we somehow wound up with less albums in Rando Corner from the looks of it. The top five or so do actually have a fairly healthy lead over the rest of the pack, but it does get noticeably tighter after then. You'll all know for sure once the results are posted later tonight or tomorrow, whenever I finish typing all that bullshit over from the excel sheet. Maybe next year I'll just post a google doc or something, I don't know why I didn't think of that earlier.



The results thread will be coming soon, but since voting is closed I have no problem with people posting their lists now, though you may just want to wait until the next thread so you don't feel the need to do it twice, but it really doesn't matter either way. Go nuts!

Sure, I'll bite for now. My top 10 of 2017:

1. Power Trip
2. The Ominous Circle
3. Extremity
4. Necrot
5. Artificial Brain
6. Bell Witch
7. Elder
8. Hellripper
9. Darkest Hour
10. Urn

The honorable mentions/albums I need more time with list is a mile long. I'm sure in a week I'll realize that I should have put Malokarpatan/Father Befouled/Pyrrhon on there.

^Not bad, Power Trip, Extremity, and Necrot made mine as well.

This was the best album of the year and everything else sucked by comparison: https://www.metal-archives.com/albums/A ... und/610880

Also special shout-out to Tengger Cavalry...