Top-rated Albums on MA  

What’s the earliest date in the dataset?

## [1] "2002-07-14"

And what’s the lateset?

## [1] "2021-06-27"

How many words are there in one piece of review in general?

## [1] 3735.419

How many words are there in the shortest and the longest review respectively?

## [[1]]
## [1] 735
## 
## [[2]]
## [1] 31195

I think I’d check out that 31195-word-long review later.

Who are the scene darlings?

Let’s see who have the most albums among, say, top 500.

## # A tibble: 486 x 2
##    Band         Album_n
##    <chr>          <int>
##  1 Black Sabbath     10
##  2 Bathory            9
##  3 Blind Guardian     9
##  4 Iron Maiden        8
##  5 Judas Priest       8
##  6 Amorphis           7
##  7 Death              7
##  8 Helloween          7
##  9 Moonsorrow         7
## 10 Neurosis           7
## # ... with 476 more rows

So Black Sabbath top the list with 10 albums. And Bathory, Blind Guardian…

What are the most beloved genres then?

## # A tibble: 291 x 2
##    Genre             Album_n
##    <chr>               <int>
##  1 Death Metal            52
##  2 Black Metal            37
##  3 Heavy Metal            32
##  4 Thrash Metal           32
##  5 Melodic Death Metal    18
##  6 Power/Speed Metal      15
##  7 Heavy/Doom Metal       13
##  8 Doom Metal             11
##  9 Progressive Metal      11
## 10 Power Metal            10
## # ... with 281 more rows

Death metal and black metal turn out to be our favorite. Since I just keep the "genre" as it is, you might notice "Death Metal" and "Melodic Death Metal" are counted as two genres here. It's safe to say the number will rise if I merge these subgenres like “Brutal”, “Post-”, “Atmospheric” and this or that or whatever, let alone there are quite a few bands whose genre are something like "Trve Black Metal (early); Folk/Dark Basement Ambient (mid); Extreme Experimental Punk/Disco (later)".

Which countries provided us most albums we like?

## # A tibble: 37 x 2
##    Country          per(%)
##    <chr>            <int>
##  1 United States     34.4
##  2 Sweden            10.6
##  3 United Kingdom    8.0
##  4 Norway            7.4
##  5 Germany           6.4
##  6 Finland           4.8
##  7 Canada            4.2
##  8 France            2.6
##  9 Australia         2.0
## 10 Switzerland       1.8
## # ... with 27 more rows

??? 34.4% Who would have thought!

What are the most “controversial” albums?

To examnie how the opinion diverges on a certain album, you should look at the the sd value (standard deviantion) of the ratings. “In statistics, the standard deviation is a measure of the amount of variation or dispersion of a set of values,” as Wikipedia puts it. “A low sd indicates that the values tend to be close to the the expected value of the set, while a high sd indicates that the values are spread out over a wider range” bla bla… Based on this concept, a high sd can probably be a sign of dissension within the reviewers, although the album they reviewed may have relatively high rating on average.

## # A tibble: 263 x 6
##    Band          Album               Reviewer Rating.mean Rating.sd Rating.range
##    <chr>         <chr>                  <int>       <dbl>     <dbl> <chr>       
##  1 Velvet Cacoon Genevieve                 17        81.9      29.7 0~100       
##  2 Death         The Sound of Perse~       29        77.2      29.4 3~100       
##  3 Agalloch      Marrow of the Spir~       17        80        29.2 17~100      
##  4 Gorguts       Obscura                   24        81        27.8 0~100       
##  5 Ihsahn        The Adversary             15        83.3      27.4 0~100       
##  6 Electric Wiz~ Dopethrone                17        81        27.2 0~100       
##  7 Metallica     Master of Puppets         38        80.3      27.0 0~100       
##  8 Wormed        Planisphærium             16        81.3      26.8 6~100       
##  9 Celtic Frost  Monotheist                23        85.6      26.0 5~100       
## 10 Opeth         Damnation                 17        83.5      25.7 19~100      
## # ... with 253 more rows

Rather surprising that Death’s The Sound of Perseverance pops up. The album has 29 reviewers whose ratings ranged from 3 to 100, with 29.418 being the sd of the rating values. Opinion really seems divided here.

What are the most “universially acclaimed” albums?

Same concept, measured contrarily.

## # A tibble: 263 x 6
##    Band        Album                 Reviewer Rating.mean Rating.sd Rating.range
##    <chr>       <chr>                    <int>       <dbl>     <dbl> <chr>       
##  1 Entombed    Left Hand Path              23        98.7      2.05 94~100      
##  2 King Diamo~ Abigail                     18        97.2      4.22 84~100      
##  3 Symphony X  The Divine Wings of ~       17        96.5      4.68 83~100      
##  4 W.A.S.P.    The Crimson Idol            16        96.4      6.23 75~100      
##  5 Terrorizer  World Downfall              15        96.3      7.22 73~100      
##  6 Rush        Moving Pictures             15        96.2      3.90 87~100      
##  7 Bathory     Under the Sign of th~       18        95.7      5.65 80~100      
##  8 Katatonia   Dance of December So~       22        95.5      7.15 72~100      
##  9 Type O Neg~ October Rust                15        95.3      7.23 78~100      
## 10 Atheist     Unquestionable Prese~       20        95.2      6.06 80~100      
## # ... with 253 more rows

23 reviewers of Entombed’s Left Hand Path were literally unanimous in their approval of the album, settling their ratings at around 98 out of 100. I’ve added the album to my to-revisit-list actually. (Edited: why they liked it that much? I don't get it.)

Where are my personal favourite albums?

## [1] They are too obscure to be shown here.

OK I faked. But only a couple of them and they don't rank high.