| 1 | Astronoid | "Up and Atom" | Air | These are pretty good times for not-quite-metal metal. |
| 2 | Ivar Bjørnson | "Makta Og Vanæra, For All Tid" | Skuggsjá | You can make post-neofolk metal out of post-metal neofolk. |
| 3 | TeraBrite | "Running With Scissors" | single | You can mix some metal into your pixie covers of pop songs. |
| 4 | Blut Aus Nord | "Infra-Voices Ensemble" | Codex Obscura Nomina | Or, obviously, you can take your crypto-atmospheric black metal VERY VERY SERIOUSLY, like an acidic Cthulhuian slime-vortex vaporizing a particle collider. |
| 5 | Terra Tenebrosa | "The End Is Mine to Ride" | The Reverses | Or marching metal for steampunk stormtroopers. |
| 6 | Inter Arma | "Primordial Wound" | single | Or what it sounds like, centuries later, to the wolves stalking through the ruins of Valhalla. |
| 7 | Antwood | "Anthracite" | Virtuous.scr | This is what a city sounds like when you turn on all the optional activation noises. |
| 8 | THE SxPLAY | "未完成キャンバス" | Butterfly Effect 5 | But this is what it sounds like when we dance through it on magic rainbows made by Japanese people who don't exactly grasp that Starlight Express, Mamma Mia and Hamilton are different shows. |
| 9 | Reniss | "La Sauce" | single | And this is what it sounds like when we dance through it on Cameroonian drum-lines. |
| 10 | Legendury Beatz | "Yetunde" | single | And pick up enough speed in Nigeria, |
| 11 | BayouSagaTombo | "Karismatika" | single | to jump all the way to Senegal. |
| 12 | Portkey | "Drag" | Reach Out To Me 4 | And the anthems we blast while we tear down elevated Boston roads we should have known not to build in the first place sound different, but ultimately mean the same thing. |
| 13 | Paws | "Impermanent" | No Grace | They mean "We are not resigned to this." |
| 14 | Stilla | "Vårens sista önskan" | single | They mean "This is not enough." |
| 15 | Phantogram | "You Don’t Get Me High Anymore" | single | They mean we will not be defeated by self-awareness. |
| 16 | Bright Light Bright Light | "Little Bit" | single | They mean we can find the strand of helpless love woven through these days. |
| 17 | Jordan Gable | "Fool of Me" | single | And it can remind us what it was like when that was most of what we knew. |
| 18 | Bastille | "Good Grief" | single | We will not be silenced by the fear of what our younger selves would think of us now. |
| 19 | Trick or Treat | "The Great Escape" | single | We will embarrass them with courageous abandon. |
| 20 | Great Master | "Another Story" | Lion and Queen | Absurdity is glorious. |
| 21 | Palace | "Master of the Universe" | single | Absurdity, like entropy, is just what would have happened if we hadn't been here to believe. |
| 22 | Gojira | "The Cell" | Magma | Serenity is the intolerable glass inertia that might have horrifically prevailed if we didn't have these hammers. |
| 23 | LANY | "yea, babe, no way" | single | Instead we have sparkling shards that crinkle underfoot. |
| 24 | MISSIO | "Hey You, Remember My Name" | I Don't Even Care About You 5 | Our shoes survive, but our paths are shredded. |
| 25 | Jarryd James | "1000x" | single | And this sets us free. |
| 26 | 八三夭 | "刀劍如夢2.0" | single | And then, freed, we go a little crazy. |
| 27 | MonoInput | "Bee Mouth Sips" | Dark Sky | Take a minute to appreciate the background noises in textural isolation. |
| 28 | Nails | "You Will Never Be One of Us" | You Will Never Be One of Us | Now stop that. You will never be one of us. |
| 29 | Finley | "Il Mondo (Gira Il Mondo Gira)" | single | But none of us are, we are gathered together at this Outcast Ball, |
| 30 | Chiara Grispo | "Blind" | Blind | whipping our necks around to watch the angels screaming over in formation, |
| 31 | Mietta | "Non sei solo" | single | and then feeling the air reshaping itself in their wakes, with a different idea of what is possible. |
| 32 | Raige | "Domani" | single | If we can't fly, but there are so many of us, can't we march to their heaven with signs demanding back our dignity? |
| 33 | Apulanta | "Palava pensas" | single | Walls are just a convenient way to store some stones, for a while, until we need them again. |
| 34 | Dare | "Home" | single | But then so are planets, and time. |
| 35 | Sleeping At Last | "Atlas: Joy" | single | And why are we hoarding them in the first place? We need not be collectors of weight. |
| 36 | Laura Mvula | "People" | The Dreaming Room | These are work songs for breaking ourselves out of our own traps. |
| 37 | Lymbyc Systym | "Opposing Bodies" | single | They are dance songs for realizing that we are no more or less real than geometry. |
| 38 | Erik Ekholm | "Worlds Collide" | single | But that geometry and poetry are just different ways to say "Now here is the amazing part." |
| 39 | Antti Martikainen | "The Future That Never Was" | Synthesia | And oh my god, this next part. |
| 40 | Look Mexico | "You're Lucky You Didn't Lose Your Arm" | single | And other obvious but awesome realizations. |
| 41 | Landmarks | "Cutting Strings" | single | Obvious is OK. It took millennia of evolution and civilization to make these obvious things obvious. |
| 42 | Schwarzer Engel | "Vater der Vampire" | single | The goofy costumes we put on are a testament to the sophistication of our constructed normality. |
| 43 | We The Kings | "The Story Of Tonight" | So Far | In some ways the costumes are us being more honest about the same things that are true of all clothing. |
| 44 | Winterhymn | "Blood of the Moon" | Blood & Shadow | All this ridiculous bombast is exactly how it sounds inside our hearts. |
| 45 | DGM | "Animal" | single | At least, I assume the rest of you have Italian progressive-metal bands inside your hearts the same way I do. |
| 46 | Hayden Calnin | "Caution Cares" | single | Surely we are all brittle in the exact sames places on our shells. |
| 47 | Racing Glaciers | "Samadhi (So Far Away)" | single | Otherwise how is any actual contact possible? |
| 48 | The Animal In Me | "Don't Let Me Down" | single | Isn't this what everything sounds like to you? |
| 49 | Mahan Moin | "Elysium" | Elysium +1 | Isn't Iran just as much part of Europe as the rest of us? |
| 50 | Merely | "Yang" | Uncanny Valley | Aren't the Elves? |
| 51 | Katohjärta | "Katohjärta" | single | Elves, Swedes, whatever. |
| 52 | The Zen Circus | "Ilenia" | single | They all have guitars and drums, and bad ideas that may once have been good but now it's time to smash them. |
| 53 | Skeletonwitch | "Red Death, White Light" | single | So we get up in the morning and we say "What are we going to destroy today?" |
| 54 | Sadikbeatz | "Ravage" | single | And we build again, not despite but because we know that some morning this will be the thing we are ready to destroy. |
| 55 | Haley Bonar | "Kismet Kill" | single | How would you ever enjoy a crown if it were grafted to your skull? |
| 56 | Endless Melancholy | "Tiny Box of Memories" | Her Name In A Language Of Stars | It is not necessary to remember things, it is only necessary to be different than you were without them. |
| 57 | NateWantsToBattle | "Escape from the City" | single | If you can, be different than you were without things that didn't even happen to you. |
| 58 | NECRONOMIDOL | "Tamam Shud" | From Chaos Born 6 | This is how we extract humanity from chaos. |
| 59 | Wayfarer | "Ever Climbing" | Old Souls | Not "extract" like removing, but like distilling. |