What are the most popular metal albums?

When Ben posted that every band with an album of 100 ratings or more on RYM were now on Metal Academy, it got me wondering how many ratings the most popular metal albums have and how they compare. Well here's the top twenty metal releases on RYM by number of ratings and there are a couple of surprises (to me at least). In brackets is the number of ratings followed by the average score (subject to RYMs weighting policy).

#1 Black Sabbath - Paranoid (37200 / 4.20)

#2 Metallica - Master of Puppets (31722 / 4.01)

#3 Metallica - Ride the Lightning (28646 / 4.06)

#4 Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath (25844 / 4.06)

#5 Black Sabbath - Master of Reality (25134 / 4.12)

#6 Rage Against the Machine - Rage Against the Machine (23000 / 3.94)

#7 Metallica - ...And Justice for All (22890 / 3.80)

#8 Metallica - Metallica [Black Album] (22752 / 3.48)

#9 Metallica - Kill 'Em All (22615 / 3.77)

#10 Tool - Lateralus (22547 / 3.94)

#11 System of a Down - Toxicity (21168 / 3.94)

#12 Tool - Ænima (20134 / 3.91)

#13 Slayer - Reign in Blood (19579 / 3.95)

#14 Alice in Chains - Dirt (18818 / 3.94)

#15 Megadeth - Rust in Peace (18683 / 4.00)

#16 Iron Maiden - The Number of the Beast (18016 / 3.92)

#17 Deafheaven - Sunbather (17794 / 3.68)

#18 Burzum - Filosofem (16979 / 3.90)

#19 Deftones - White Pony (16601 / 3.90)

#20 Iron Maiden - Powerslave (16002 / 3.93)

As RYMs ratings are probably more indicative of the population at large than a dedicated metal site would be, it seems that the most well known metal acts by far are Black Sabbath and Metallica - not a massive surprise really. What is a surprise is that two Tool albums are higher than any Iron Maiden album and Judas Priest don't even make the top 20 with Painkiller being their highest entry at #53. 

Also surprising is that a figure as reviled as Varg Vikernes gets an entry in the top 20 with Filosofem being the highest black metal entry. 

RATM is a good album, but the sixth most popular metal album - really? Obviously there's a few "metal albums for people who don't like metal" (Alice in Chains, SOAD, Deftones, RATM, Tool , Deafheaven).

Just to compare, the most popular release overall is Radiohead's OK Computer with 73102 ratings and metal's highest entry (Paranoid) is at #29

So, what do you think?

I find this list less surprising than you do Sonny. It all comes down to RYM's market which is heavily weighted towards the United States. Iron Maiden have always struggled to gain the same sort of traction in the USA as they have in Europe for example while the likes of Rage Against The Machine & System Of A Down are easily more popular in the USA than they are anywhere else in the world.

RYM also has an inherent bias towards certain genres & subgenres of music for the same reason actually. I've often noticed that genres like hip hop, folk, progressive rock & indie rock seem to pick up enormous numbers on RYM compared to where I would think those genres sit with the rest of the world. In metal circles it's very hard for a traditionally focused metal album to score well these days with the more progressive, avant-garde & atmospheric releases inevitably scoring more interest. This was one of the reasons we started up the Metal Academy website in the first place actually. Plus, there are pockets of the globe that receive very little attention compared to others. Take my home country of Australia for example. There are loads of great Aussie releases that have been around for years/decades but are still yet to receive 100 ratings on RYM & these are often worthy of much more adoration than some of the top rating releases (see last month's The Sphere feature release for example which was my album of 2013 yet is only sitting at 81 ratings at present). Hopefully we eventually see MA taking off a bit & giving us a more rounded view of the wider metal opinion.

I find this list less surprising than you do Sonny. It all comes down to RYM's market which is heavily weighted towards the United States. Iron Maiden have always struggled to gain the same sort of traction in the USA as they have in Europe for example while the likes of Rage Against The Machine & System Of A Down are easily more popular in the USA than they are anywhere else in the world.

RYM also has an inherent bias towards certain genres & subgenres of music for the same reason actually. I've often noticed that genres like hip hop, folk, progressive rock & indie rock seem to pick up enormous numbers on RYM compared to where I would think those genres sit with the rest of the world. In metal circles it's very hard for a traditionally focused metal album to score well these days with the more progressive, avant-garde & atmospheric releases inevitably scoring more interest. This was one of the reasons we started up the Metal Academy website in the first place actually. Plus, there are pockets of the globe that receive very little attention compared to others. Take my home country of Australia for example. There are loads of great Aussie releases that have been around for years/decades but are still yet to receive 100 ratings on RYM & these are often worthy of much more adoration than some of the top rating releases (see last month's The Sphere feature release for example which was my album of 2013 yet is only sitting at 81 ratings at present). Hopefully we eventually see MA taking off a bit & giving us a more rounded view of the wider metal opinion.

With that being said, do you think the days of the "mega" acts are pretty much over for metal. Are there any modern metal bands (let's say post-2000 for arguments sake) who could play massive worldwide stadium tours like Metallica, Sabbath, Maiden and Priest were able to do? Has the metal scene now become so fractured, encompassing such a wide variety of genres that it is very difficult for single acts to "break out" into the wider mainstream subconscious. Most metal acts, certainly in the UK, would struggle to fill a hall holding 1000 people and then only play one or two dates - in London and er, another part of London probably.

RYM being more US-centric makes it even more surprising that Burzum managed to get an album in the top 20. Maybe the truism that "all publicity is good publicity" played into his success.

And finally, I agree that most metal media does ignore huge amounts of the world's metal scenes and personally the "smaller" scenes are areas I would be very interested in hearing more about. Maybe here at the Academy we could do some kind of scene spotlight feature or discussions to engender awareness. For example, who are the best Australian bands and albums? I am familiar with quite a few, but I would love to learn more. 

This list is quite accurate. After all, classic heavy metal (1970-1982), thrash metal (1983-1991), and alternative metal (1992-2001) were reaching quite the heights of fame in their respective eras. It is quite surprising that albums from some of the big developing bands of the genre like Judas Priest and Motorhead haven't reached the top 20, and two black metal albums (from Deafheaven and Burzum) end up on this list. Seems like the popularity of the once mostly underground genre of black metal has boosted thanks to internet sharing. It would be quite interesting to see what the top 20 list is for one of the clans' metal genres and judge which releases are in an accurate position in those lists. I'm gonna start those threads with my own clans, any of you feel free to do the same with the other clans.

So, as a follow-up, I looked at the releases on the Academy with the most ratings and found that the top 23 (all albums with 17+ ratings) were dominated by five bands - Sabbath (3), Metallica (5), Slayer (4), Maiden(3) and Bathory (4). Megadeth had a couple of entries and Tool and Celtic Frost filled out the rest with one each. Interesting indeed, showing the difference between a metal-oriented site and a more general interest site, with around half of the entries on the RYM chart making the Metal Academy chart. Bathory's first entry on the RYM chart is #107 so they seem to be much more popular amongst dedicated metalheads, less so the alternative metal bands popular on RYM.

#1 Metallica - Ride the Lightning (28 / 4.4)
#2 Metallica - Master of Puppets (27 / 4.7)
#3 Metallica - Kill 'Em All (25 / 4.1)
#4 Slayer - Reign in Blood (24 / 4.6)
#5 Black Sabbath - Paranoid (22 / 4.4)
#6 Metallica - ...And Justice for All (22 / 4.4)
#7 Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath (22 / 4.1)
#8 Bathory - Blood Fire Death (21 / 4.3)
#9 Slayer - Seasons in the Abyss (19 / 4.4)
#10 Megadeth - Rust in Peace (19 / 4.2)
#11 Megadeth - Peace Sells... But Who's Buying? (19/4.1)
#12 Slayer - Show No Mercy (19/4.1)
#13 Iron Maiden - Powerslave (18/4.4)
#14 Iron Maiden - Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (18/4.3)
#15 Bathory - Under the Sign of the Black Mark (18/4.3)
#16 Slayer - South of Heaven (18/4.3)
#17 Tool - Lateralus (18 / 3.9)
#18 Metallica - Metallica [Black Album] (18 / 3.8)
#19 Bathory - Hammerheart (17/4.4)
#20 Black Sabbath - Master of Reality (17/4.4)
#21 Iron Maiden - The Number of the Beast (17/4.1)
#22 Celtic Frost - To Mega Therion (17/3.9)
#23 Bathory - Bathory (17/3.7)

Lots of heavy metal and thrash metal in the Metal Academy list, along with a few Bathory albums and Tool's Lateralus. Quite accurate here in a metal-oriented site. A lot of metalheads in RYM seem to like or at least try alternative metal.

For all the talk about there being a top 4 of American thrash metal, these lists show that there was very distinctively a top 3. Don't get me wrong, Anthrax were a great band at their peak, but they've never reached the popularity or acclaim of the other 3.

I must admit that I'm stunned to see that Filosofem has more ratings than Powerslave on RYM.

In truth, you won't really get an accurate polling of the most popular bands from internet music websites as most participants are likely to be music nerds to a greater or lesser degree and popularity is overwhelmingly determined by the undedicated. I just thought it might make for an interesting talking point is all.