| 1 | Therion | "Anthem" | Beloved Antichrist | You are unlikely to find a purer or grander evocation of what it means to be a 15-year-old boy dreaming of eternity, and then becoming it, than Therion's new 3-hour, 46-song gothic-metal opera, |
| 2 | BiSH | "PAiNT it BLACK" | single | nor a purer or grander testament to my stubborn belief in the power of music than the fact that I insist on listening to other things this week too. |
| 3 | Minniva | "You Shook Me All Night Long" | single | But look upwards at night. The other stars didn't look at the first one and think "Oh, that's been done." |
| 4 | Haloo Helsinki! | "TEXAS" | single | The Finns don't look at Texas and think "Oh, so much for ridiculous." |
| 5 | Dessa | "5 Out of 6" | single | There are always ways to win the same battles again, |
| 6 | Street Sects | "Things Will Be Better in Hell" | Things Will Be Better in Hell +1 | or lose them. |
| 7 | The Ugly | "Usurpator Vitae" | Thanatology | All we really ever mean by "evil" is that good is a constant process, |
| 8 | Usurpress | "The Iron Gates Will Melt" | single | which is also all we really ever meant by stone or walls. |
| 9 | Kalmah | "The Evil Kin" | single | We are heroic in decay, |
| 10 | Borealis | "Sign of No Return" | single | heroic in retreat, |
| 11 | Armored Dawn | "Chance to Live Again" | single | heroic in rebirth. |
| 12 | Divided Multitude | "Nowhere to Hide" | Guardian Angel | Heroes queue for buses, line up to wait for burritos, |
| 13 | Sebastien | "Amy" | single | shop for the right clothes, and still they fountain out of our broken healing hearts. |
| 14 | Night Flowers | "Cruel Wind" | single | And maybe fragility seems like a rejoinder to bombast, in tactic if not by defintion, |
| 15 | Secrets | "3.17.16" | single | but these eggshell skins hide more steel and rage. |
| 16 | The Wonder Years | "Sister Cities" | single | We open our mouths, and one way or another the universe is unraveled and reassembled. |
| 17 | Twenty One Two | "Castle on the Hill" | XVII | In the way that food all doesn't kill us, the same songs reheard lift us up, place us. |
| 18 | Milestones | "Bittersweetheart" | single | Some of them place us in pilots for teen dramas never to be cast, |
| 19 | Anenon | "Pure" | Tongue | some of them embed us in the walls of generator tombs, |
| 20 | Grimner | "Avundas Hennes Ungdom" | Vanadrottning | some escape. |
| 21 | Barren Earth | "Further Down" | single | Sometimes an old curse is all you can afford, |
| 22 | The Oh Hellos | "Passerine" | Eurus | or you can't reach the end of Texas, |
| 23 | Donovan Woods | "Burn That Bridge" | single | or whatever you call the space between Texas and Canada |
| 24 | Kurt Hugo Schneider | "Fast Car" | single | when you aren't sure you'll ever cross it. |
| 25 | Beth Nielsen Chapman | "Come to Mine" | Hearts of Glass | But here is the thing: when faith succumbs to inspiration, it betrays the depth of its empathy for evil. |
| 26 | Tsuko G. | "Alones" | single | I distrust every ideology only until the moment it gets carried away by its own anthem; |
| 27 | Caleb Hyles | "GO!!!" | single | after that, everything is possible. |
| 28 | ToxicxEternity | "Dark Cave (From "Pokemon Gold / Silver / Crystal") [Metal Version]" | single | Incompatible beliefs become collectable. |
| 29 | XanduIsBored | "Streaming Heart" | Streaming Heart +1 | Streaming heart, dazzling gleam: |
| 30 | Parry Gripp | "Narwhal Eating a Bagel" | single | terrible ideas can have genius. Most don't. Most terrible ideas are just terrible. Really terrible. |
| 31 | Rivers of Nihil | "The Silent Life" | single | But the easiest way to fail is to let the likelihood of failure convince you you are not immortal. |
| 32 | Legion Of The Damned | "Night Of The Sabbath" | Descent Into Chaos | Tonight, of course you are. |
| 33 | Augury | "Mater Dolorosa" | single | You can't argue with a cataclysm. |
| 34 | Gliss | "Broken Minds" | Strange Heaven | But you can ride it back in triumph. |
| 35 | Deon Custom | "Golden Age" | single | You can make shards be puzzle pieces, |
| 36 | TesseracT | "Luminary" | single | and they can show you the way. |
| 37 | Good Tiger | "Float On" | We Will All Be Gone | We have AI, but also guitars. |
| 38 | Ev0lution | "Gummo" | single | The AI also have guitars, and evil. |
| 39 | Wade Bowen | "Broken Glass" | Solid Ground | You can't really stop the future from happening, but it can sound so beautifully plaintive if you try, |
| 40 | Maxida Märak | "Baseball Bat" | single | and feel so intoxicating if you don't. |
| 41 | Celer | "Hotel Mona Lisa" | Landmarks | There are spaces between things, between right and wrong and now and once, |
| 42 | Belanova | "Nada Es Igual" | single | spaces you can briefly occupy, |
| 43 | Annalisa | "Il mondo prima di te" | single | so what will you wear? |
| 44 | Le Vibrazioni | "Così sbagliato" | V | How will you misuse or misunderstand this space, |
| 45 | Mina | "Only Fools" | single | or a quiet corner of it? |
| 46 | Skambankt | "Når Imperiet Faller" | Horisonten Brenner | The Norse gods had guitars, too, |
| 47 | Stavangerkameratene | "Det e'kje någe å tenka på" | single | and hammers and drum triggers, |
| 48 | Sumo Cyco | "Undefeated" | single | and it didn't save them. |
| 49 | Fireflight | "I Won't Look Back" | single | So why do we still imagine the next song will save us? |
| 50 | Massendefekt | "Pazifik" | single | Why these choruses? |
| 51 | W.E.T. | "Urgent" | single | Haven't we heard them before? |
| 52 | Voodoo Circle | "Just Take My Heart" | Raised on Rock | But then all of these redemptions are made of the same radio waves, |
| 53 | Rozzi | "Never Over You" | single | and it doesn't keep them from pouring through us. |
| 54 | Sloan | "The Day Will Be Mine" | single | If you grow up next to an ocean, |
| 55 | Midas Fall | "Evaporate" | single | or next to outer space, |
| 56 | Mia Dyson | "Being Scared" | single | you hear certain stories, |
| 57 | Missy Higgins | "Futon Couch" | single | and learn their logic as intrinsic, |
| 58 | Varry Brava | "Nada Personal" | single | and thus come to recognize it in unfamiliar fables, |
| 59 | The Atlas Moth | "Smiling Knife" | Coma Noir | and how they end. |
| 60 | Black Map | "Invisible Worlds" | Trace The Path 4 | Post-anything emerges from a kind of defiant resignation |
| 61 | Rolo Tomassi | "Aftermath" | single | to so much past having happened already, |
| 62 | Visigoth | "Steel and Silver" | Conqueror's Oath | before we could really do anything about it other than belatedly cheer. |
| 63 | Letzte Instanz | "Morgenland" | single | One day you're watching your 10-year-old teaching herself "Ode to Joy" on violin one note at a time, the next moment she's on stage at Wacken, |
| 64 | Linney | "Outta My Heart" | single | or dancing alone in purple light. |
| 65 | Kodes | "Burası Gerçek" | Toplama Kampı | It's hopeless trying to be prepared for all of these things. |
| 66 | Siirbaz | "Yavaşla Dünya" | Yavaşla Dünya +1 | You can pick one language, as if that one you will master, |
| 67 | Elleran Elvis | "Eylül Ayindan Bir Gün" | single | but that never will never make the other people shut up. |
| 68 | Konsumo Respeto | "Recaída" | Los primeros días de la Ley Seca 6 | The thing you ought to be doing with your one language is learning to listen in it. |
| 69 | Margaret Island | "Hóvirág" | single | Then at least when you finally run out of things to say, you still have a skill. |
| 70 | Diodato | "Adesso" | single | If you know how to build spaces for listening, |
| 71 | I AM THEY | "Scars" | single | you can disentangle the human parameters of temples from the superfluous strictures of sects. |
| 72 | TWICE | "BRAND NEW GIRL" | Candy Pop 4 | Icons and idols, they all need water, and some way to know which direction the audience will enter from, |
| 73 | Son Lux | "The Fool You Need" | Brighter Wounds | or some way to trap them. |
| 74 | GoGo Penguin | "Transient State" | A Humdrum Star | I mean, even with the strictest safeguards, certain trace quantities of jazz are always going to be detectable. |
| 75 | Xavier Boscher | "Female Architecture" | Embryogenesis | All you can realistically hope is to disguise them as progressive-metal interstices, |
| 76 | Mithridatic | "Hunting Fever" | He Who Lies Underneath | or submerge them in ichor. |
| 77 | Эпидемия | "Побег на ксентарон" | Легенда ксентарона | All we ever really hope is to seem momentarily favored by authoritative angels. |
| 78 | VETO | "16 Colors" | 16 Colors | All the angels ever really hope |
| 79 | Pur:Pur | "Fire" | single | is that we will keep making songs. |