[actsasbuffoon]

Wolves in the Throne Room and So Hideous are great examples of metal bands with sweeping atmospheres and non-intrusive vocals.

The Algorithm and Master Boot Record are metal-inspired electronic music with no vocals.

Video game soundtracks also work well. Danny Baronowsky, Ridiculon (The End Is Nigh soundtrack is phenomenal), and Disasterpiece are some of my favorite indie game composers.

Metroid Metal is kinda similar, but it's highly technical prog-metal covers of music from the Metroid series. Descendants of Erdrick and Armcannon are also enjoyable metal video game cover bands.

If you want to get lost in coding for a long while without needing to change albums, Chronicles of Time is a 5 hour long compilation of covers of music from Chrono Trigger by a huge variety of artists. If you listen to this from start to finish without stopping, you should probably take a break and stretch for a while.

I really enjoy the soundtrack from Elder Scrolls Online. The new Doom has an excellent soundtrack as well, though it does have occasional voice-over.

[NinoScript]

I love listening to video game soundtracks when working.

If I want to focus 100%, work fast and have no idea what’s going around me, I’ll put some fast paced Kirby music from the SNES versions and code away as if I was racing King Dedede.

If I want to get in the mood for some architecting or refactoring, I’ll put some Final Fantasy chip-tunes to work through the mysteries.

[actsasbuffoon]

The soundtrack for Shovel Knight is also excellent. Even though the game is recent, the music is completely authentic to capabilities of the sound chip in the NES.

That said, I find the sound of the NES to be a bit too bright and crisp for background listening. I agree that SNES era music is easier for programming. Super Metroid, Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, Final Fantasy 2 (FFIV in Japan), Final Fantasy 3 (FFVI in Japan), Chrono Trigger, and Earthbound immediately come to mind as great soundtracks.

If you want to listen to soundtracks for SNES games, you can use Audio Overload (free and multi-platform): http://www.bannister.org/software/ao.htm

The music from SNES games is stored in SPC files (individual songs) and RSN files (collection all SPC files for a game). The files are extremely small. You could probably fit the soundtracks for every official SNES game into a few dozen megabytes. You can learn more about the format at the Video Game Music Preservation Foundation wiki: http://www.vgmpf.com/Wiki/index.php/SPC

The London Philharmonic has some great video game cover albums as well.

[NinoScript]

That’s exactly what I do. I’ve been using Bannister’s emulators and Audio Overload since my childhood!

Though nowadays I prefer playing the SPC files in a player called Vox: https://vox.rocks

And in my phone I have a collection of maybe weeks worth of music in a few MBs