| 1 | Chthe'ilist | "Vecoiitn'aphnaat'smaala" | Le Dernier Crépuscule | Totemic Montreal groaning-obelisk metal. |
| 2 | Marcin Przybyłowicz | "The Trail" | The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt | Gripping Polish/Celtic folk-metal-epicore soundtrack from a video game I don't expect to ever play. |
| 3 | Fatherson | "Lost Little Boys - Radio Edit" | single | Scottish heartbroken grandeur. |
| 4 | Deftones | "Prayers / Triangles" | single | Genre-skimming pings across post-punk nu-gaze this time. |
| 5 | Amoral | "Rude Awakening" | In Sequence | Dense post-prog melodic death-metal. |
| 6 | Inverloch | "The Empyrean Torment" | single | Even denser funereal Australian doom. |
| 7 | Döria | "Cambió el Juego" | Mom3ntum | Shiny, earnest Spanish heavy metal. |
| 8 | Erik Ekholm | "Ascending" | Halos 5 | Spectral metal-edged epicore. |
| 9 | flor | "heart" | Sounds EP 4 | Boundingly anthemic indietronic pop. |
| 10 | Blondfire | "True Confessions" | single | Galloping indie pop-rock. |
| 11 | Monakr | "Resurrection" | Calling Out 5 | Burbling astral synth-pop EP expanding on last year's great "Diamonds". |
| 12 | Florio | "Want You" | single | Modern indietronic channeling of old disco-pop/freestyle energies. |
| 13 | Little Green Cars | "Easier Day" | single | Dark, welling Irish folk-pop. |
| 14 | Allie X | "Old Habits Die Hard" | single | The alternate-universe synthpop Charli XCX. |
| 15 | Eric Prydz | "Liam" | Opus | EDM's simplified progressive electro-house further simplified, ingeniously, by hammering it into an old, misshaped rock-album mold without scraping some leftover Vangelis out of it first. |
| 16 | The Cult | "Dark Energy" | Hidden City | Unexpectedly mature and confident modern melodic-post-punk guitar-rock from another band that could have given up decades ago. |
| 17 | Love of Lesbian | "Cuando no me ves" | single | Alternately murky and sparkling Catalonian indie rock. |
| 18 | Anesthesia | "Aphelion" | An Infinite Winter, Vol. 3: Neptune 5 | Lucid, unhurried ambient-atmospheric post-post-rock. |
| 19 | Full Of Keys | "Me & the Sea" | single | Towering Swedish hyperpop. |
| 20 | Saxon | "Batallions of Steel" | Into the Labyrinth | Deathless old-guard heavy metal. |
| 21 | Dilana | "Airplane" | Dilana | Blustery glam-rock squall. |
| 22 | Mass Gothic | "Mind Is Probably" | Mass Gothic | Crisp, punchy, synth-dance-rock solo rebirth by the guy from Hooray for Earth. |
| 23 | Eagulls | "Lemontrees" | single | The new Chamleons. |
| 24 | September Girls | "Love No One" | single | Fraying, blurry Irish noise-pop. |
| 25 | Chase Rice | "Whisper" | single | Scrape the twangy singing and the few stray bits of banjo off this totally undeniable country song and what's left could be pretty much anything. |
| 26 | Justin Chain | "You Can't Rush Amazing" | single | But refurbished garage-sale album-rock is cheaper and works just as well. |
| 27 | Obscura | "Sermon of the Seven Suns" | Akróasis | Archetypal tempomorphing technical death-metal. |
| 28 | Fleshgod Apocalypse | "In Aeternum" | King | Gothic industrial death-metal verging on epicore extravagance. |
| 29 | Maj Karma | "Sotaa ei tule" | Peltisydän | Djent complexity multifolded back into dark blades. |
| 30 | Agonizer | "All Alone" | All Alone +1 | Melodic Finnish semicore metal. |
| 31 | Violet Cold | "Everything You Can Imagine Is Real..." | Magic Night | Transcendental Azerbaijan experimental melodic post-black metal. |
| 32 | Hellberg | "Synchronize (feat. Aaron Richards)" | single | Elegant catstep-derived trance-pop. |
| 33 | Wontolla | "Can You Feel Me" | single | Frantic, twitchy EDM-rock. |
| 34 | Yokozuna | "¿De Qué Sirve la Resistencia? (feat. Le Butcherettes & Omar Rodríguez-López)" | single | Bracing Mexico City experimental noise-rock. |
| 35 | Prince Rama | "Slip Into Nevermore" | single | Coruscating, lilting art-pop. |
| 36 | Lonely The Brave | "Black Mire" | single | Haunting, surging Brit-guitar-rock. |
| 37 | High Tides | "Opia" | Home Truth's 4 | Shiny, eager, math-nostalgic pop-emo. |
| 38 | Nina Nesbitt | "Chewing Gum" | Modern Love EP 5 | Stark, glossy-duotoned Scottish-is-the-new-Swedish art-dance-pop. |
| 39 | Chelsea Effect | "Youth in 21" | single | Measured, ominous transliteration of Adele-ish drama into muted Eurovision tones. |
| 40 | Shallou | "Heights" | single | Silky, murmuring indie-r&b-ish gauze-pop. |
| 41 | Marionette | "Grey Masses Gather" | Propaganda | Pagan post-black post-rock. |
| 42 | Marcus Warner | "A Tale of Sea Dragons" | Oceans | Jubillant, shimmery folk-epicore. |
| 43 | Sabina Ddumba | "Not Too Young" | Not Too Young pt. 2 2 | Poised, earnest, Tasmin-Archer-reminiscent pop-r&b. |
| 44 | The Animal In Me | "Soap" | single | Melanie Martinez's drifty "Soap" as shouty, crunchy pop-emo-punk. |
| 45 | Morphinist | "Erwachen" | Nihil | Grindingly raw black cathartic metal not nearly as nihilistic as it pretends. |
| 46 | Ember Island | "Need You" | single | Elegiac Swedish atmopop. |
| 47 | Kashuks | "Sunrise" | Fiction | Textural Latvian solo-producer's episodic ambient/post-rock/dubstep assembly. |
| 48 | Christian Reindl | "Calling Out (feat. Atrel)" | single | Crashing trance/epicore pop. |
| 49 | Susanna | "Burning Sea" | single | Norwegian experimental compositor goes This Mortal Coil. |
| 50 | Tombs | "Deceiver" | single | Progressive black metal pushing (or distending) into Boris-esque noise-rock. |
| 51 | Game Theory | "Little Ivory" | Lolita Nation | Oh, and the long-awaited and painfully bittersweet reissue of... |
| 52 | Game Theory | "Mammoth Gardens" | Lolita Nation | ...one of the greatest cryptic power-pop albums of all time. |