2020 Favorite Albums
Looking back at album rankings from five years ago
Every year, the wonderful Rock Report site does an annual album survey. I recently came across my 2020 album ranking submission and I thought it would be interesting to look now that it’s five years later.
Speaking of Rock Report, it’s a great site to learn about new melodic rock. They have user reviews of new albums and maintain a nice list of upcoming albums and recent music videos. It is a European site, so there is a strong focus on Euro-rock and metal, which is fine with me because there is a lot of great stuff there. But that means you won’t see much about bands such as Trivium, Avenged Sevenfold, Shinedown, etc.
To create this list back then, I used by stats as collected by last.fm, which I’ve been using since 2008 or so. I do like all the stats, but you need to have a way to ensure your plays are “scrobbled” (last.fm’s term for tracked) with them. I use Neptune with iTunes on my Mac and Marvis on my iPhone, which covers 95% of my music listening. Most stats are now hidden by last.fm’s $5/month Pro subscription, however.
Here’s my 2020 album ranking:
H.E.A.T. II - H.E.A.T
What the Dead Men Say - Trivium
The Dark Delight - Dynazty
Aeromantic - The Night Flight Orchestra
Horizons - Beyond the Black
HUMAN. :II: NATURE. - Night wish
The Last Knight - Serenity
F8 - Five Finger Death Punch
Viridian - Temperance
Discovery - Gathering of Kings
Lions - Tokyo Motor Fist
Mother - In This Moment
Time for a Miracle - Perfect Plan
Grit Your Teeth - Vega
Chapter I: Monarchy - Ad Infinitum
Midnight Empire - One Desire
Change the World - Harem Scarem
Looking back at this list, I can say that five years later I rate What the Dead Men Say ahead of H.E.A.T. II, but I still listen to the top 5 regularly.
