| 1 | Numenorean | "Home" | Home | Majestic, howling, epic-cathartic Calgary post-black metal. |
| 2 | Kryptos | "Full Throttle" | single | Old-school-style shred-metal from new-school Bangalore. |
| 3 | Necronautical | "Pure Moon" | The Endurance At Night | Distended UK black-metal blur. |
| 4 | Helix Nebula | "God Is God?" | The Last Lights of a Dying Universe | Epic melodic Spanish black-thrash metal. |
| 5 | Denouncement Pyre | "World Encircler" | Black Sun Unbound | Rumbling Australian black-doom metal. |
| 6 | Ade | "Carthago Delenda Est" | Carthago Delenda Est | Concussive, withering Italian power-death metal. |
| 7 | Warehouse | "Reservoir" | single | Bleating, wiry Atlanta post-punk snarl somewhere between Courtney Barnett and Life Without Buildings. |
| 8 | DJ Lycox | "Dor Do Koto" | Mambos Levis D'Outro Mundo | Blacklight-twittery Lisbon afro-fluxwork from a Príncipe Discos compilation probably as important for this year as any single-artist album. |
| 9 | DJ Safari | "Tempo Do Xakazulu" | Mambos Levis D'Outro Mundo | (Worth two excerpts here, but there are 21 more on the compilation.) |
| 10 | Dive In | "Temple" | single | Springy UK electro-joy. |
| 11 | We Are the Catalyst | "Delusion" | single | If pixie power-pop-punk is feminine and grinding alt-metal is masculine, here's the sound of gender synthesis. |
| 12 | Hammers of Misfortune | "The Precipice (Waiting for the Crash...)" | Dead Revolution | Progressive San Francisco retro/neo doom-rock. |
| 13 | Zeppet Store | "FLAKE" | 716 -Special Edition- | Reissue of an excellent early album by one of my favorite J-Rock bands, previously unrepresented on US Spotify. |
| 14 | Fickle Friends | "Cry Baby" | single | Ebullient lazer-blasty UK indie-poptimism. |
| 15 | Allie X | "Casanova" | single | Allie X channeling early Tori Amos. |
| 16 | Kerli | "Diamond Hard" | single | Kerli channeling Robyn-collab-esque fembot armageddon. |
| 17 | Goldroom | "Lying To You" | single | Simmering, whooshy modern sentimental disco. |
| 18 | How To Dress Well | "Lost Youth / Lost You" | single | Indie R&B where the rhythm is post-earthquake power failures and the blues is elegant, defiant resignation. |
| 19 | Panopticon | "Living in the Valley of the Shadow of Death" | Revisions of the Past | Sweeping cryptic-pastoral remix/remastering of two dumbfoundingly vast early records by the world's best Appalachian black metal band. |
| 20 | The Foreshadowing | "Two Horizons" | Seven Heads Ten Horns | Open-hearted Italian gothic love-metal roar. |
| 21 | Evergrey | "Distance" | single | Stuttering, soaring Swedish progressive metal. |
| 22 | Delain | "The Glory and the Scum" | single | The state of the art in gothic symphonic metal-pop-rock. |
| 23 | Epica | "Universal Death Squad" | single | Gloriously overwritten gothic symphonic dystopian concept-metal excess. |
| 24 | Aeranea | "Nothing Left" | The Fading Ones | German gothic electronicore/metal. |
| 25 | Eteddian | "Deep Storm" | Destiny | Intricate, baroque Spanish symphonic metal. |
| 26 | September Mourning | "Angels To Dust" | Volume II | Blaring post-steampunk art-goth metal. |
| 27 | Binary Creed | "In a Time to Come" | single | Duet-laced Swedish progressive power-death metal. |
| 28 | Blacksmith | "Open Wound (feat. Kim Hensely)" | Fall / Apart 4 | Expansive modern emo-uplift. |
| 29 | Helms Alee | "Untoxicated" | single | Bruising Seattle sub-sludge rock. |
| 30 | Tobias Hellkvist | "Kaskelot 1 (Single Version)" | Kaskelot 1 2 | Ambient restraint performed as band music. |
| 31 | Diana Wang | "I don't know" | single | Glittery Dutch-Chinese arena pop. |
| 32 | INHEAVEN | "All There Is" | single | Gauzy, surging London fancy-shoe-gaze. |
| 33 | Billy Talent | "Ghost Ship of Cannibal Rats" | single | Canadian sing-along punk. Maybe the best song title since "The Unicorn Invasion of Dundee". |
| 34 | Freiheit | "Волк" | Freiheit 5 | As a kid my favorite city I knew only from its name on a desk globe was the Russian port of Arkhangelsk. Here, finally, is a band from my grim dream-version of there. |
| 35 | Marco Ligabue | "Spirito libero" | single | Italy will hug you, and then teach you a few simple guitar chords, and then hug you again, and then sing you a song you don't understand that is clearly about this moment when you found each other and the world could finally breathe. |
| 36 | Moenia | "Prohibido Besar" | single | The opposite-of-English Pet Shop Boys. |
| 37 | Volturyon | "Hinterkaifeck" | single | A terrifying death-metal Pokémon you can only catch deep in the Swedish woods at midnight. |
| 38 | Russian Circles | "Afrika" | single | Instead of blessing the rains, we have decided to stay inside and play post-rock. |
| 39 | Sløtface | "Take Me Dancing" | single | I guess Hillary probably won't invite a Norwegian punk band to play her inauguration. Sad. |
| 40 | Kenny Chesney | "Setting the World On Fire" | single | But this one, what about this one? Kenny Chesney and P!nk! I feel like this song is one Lil Uzi Vert remix-cameo away from single-songedly reforging the American union. |
| 41 | Thomas Bergersen | "Threnody for Europe" | single | Now, see, a Threnody for Baton Rouge would seem pretentious and effete. |
| 42 | Antti Martikainen | "Faraway (Remaster)" | Origins | Whereas Finnish folk-epicore seems perfectly reasonable to me. |
| 43 | Shahead Mostafafar | "Eclipse - NGC 6543" | Eternity Clock | Shahead Mostafafar's Facebook bio says "Genre: No Genre!". Bullshit. Genre: Epicore. |
| 44 | Boston Manor | "Laika" | single | Tense, springy UK pop-punk. Apparenlty they had a Boston there first. |
| 45 | Microwave | "Lighterless" | single | Bounding Atlanta post-hardcore. |
| 46 | Owen | "Settled Down" | The King of Whys | Ambitious, muted solo meditations from American Football leader Mike Kinsella. |
| 47 | Signals Midwest | "Should Have Been A Painter" | single | Sharp, stabbing Cleveland math-pop-punk. |
| 48 | Rose Noire | "Awareness" | Quo Vadis | Violins and languid banshees. |
| 49 | WagakkiBand | "Strong Fate" | single | The anti-gloss BABYMETAL. |
| 50 | Kra | "Stop It" | single | Sorry, I don't have any idea where this comes from. It's straightforward semi-generic nearly-anonymous EDM. I just like it. |
| 51 | Tritonal | "Iceland (Viking Clap)" | single | There is a squonking big-room version of the Icelandic football chant. I mean, of course there is, sort of. |
| 52 | Ummet Ozcan | "Megatron" | single | This is what Big Room sounds like when it's not adapting anything else. |
| 53 | Schwarzer Engel | "Wintertod" | Imperium II - Titania | Haunted Bavarian castles are the original big rooms. (I realize Stuttgart is not actually in Bavaria, but it's only one state over.) (Also, the castle has been updated with way too many security cameras and robot sentinels and speakers that play muttering ominous noises all the time for no good reason.) |
| 54 | Lord Of The Lost | "Miss Machine" | Empyrean (Deluxe Edition) | Northern Germanic cybernetic love metal. |
| 55 | SUB DUB MICROMACHINE | "How Deep Is Your Hate" | Settle For Force | Dear history, as best as I can tell it took 39 years after "How Deep Is Your Love?" for somebody to write "How Deep Is Your Hate". The technology just wasn't ready. |
| 56 | The Kenneths | "Hollywood" | single | Suddenly I remember what it felt like when I heard the Manic Street Preachers' "Slash 'n' Burn" for the first time. |
| 57 | Asylums | "I've Seen Your Face In A Music Magazine" | Killer Brain Waves | Also "Nat West–Barclays–Midlands–Lloyds". |
| 58 | Storms | "Special" | single | Also "Motorcycle Emptiness". |
| 59 | Altered Sky | "Stupid in the Dark" | single | Paraclaymore. |
| 60 | DON BROCO | "Everybody" | single | The indisputable masters of neo-progressive djent-disco. |
| 61 | Artjom Savitski | "Xklusiivne" | single | Oblique Estonian arena-pop. |
| 62 | Massive Attack | "The Spoils" | The Spoils / Come Near Me 2 | No tears this time. |
| 63 | The Orb | "Alpine - Prins Thomas Diskomiks" | Alpine Diskomiks - Sin In Space, Pt. 2 3 | Disassembly as remixing. |
| 64 | Oathbreaker | "Needles in Your Skin" | single | Alternately crushing and ethereal Belgian atmospheric post-doom-core. |
| 65 | Dustin Tebbutt | "Wooden Heart" | single | Chiming, yearning serenity. |
| 66 | Sadikbeatz | "Irgendwann" | single | Looping is an art. Or a craft, anyway. |
| 67 | Trostrigo | "Portal" | single | Kaleidoscopic Argentine indie pop-rock. |
| 68 | Morphinist | "Cosmic Maelstrom" | Giants | Ambient music for corrosive alien storms. |
| 69 | Gazelle Twin | "Still Life - Blanck Mass Remix" | Fleshed Out | Just in case this wasn't sinister enough already. |
| 70 | Cronómetrobudú | "Nada" | Esperanto | They call themselves "world" but we'll see if they play this. Surging Spanish latin-folk-metal-punk-hard-rock and my album of the week. |
| 71 | Daisy Victoria | "Animal Lover" | single | If you didn't get to be a Kate Bush fan while she was still releasing indie records, and didn't buy Y Kant Tori Read until long after she learned, don't miss this moment when you could still be one of the first 1000 prescient and fortunate followers of the brilliant Daisy Victoria. Or just start small and play this. It's my song of the week. Do you have a song of the week yet? We can share. |