| 1 | MASS OF THE FERMENTING DREGS | "あさひなぐ" | No New World | When I first fell in love with guitars that sounded like bagpipes, I could just barely believe it was genetic. Years later, of course, a DNA test would show that genetically I'm way more Sicilian than Scottish. And not Japanese at all. But I have to tell you, I went to Japan once, and was able to eat the food. You are genetically predisposed to fall in love with everybody. |
| 2 | Muncie Girls | "Falling Down" | single | The Japanese indie trio MASS OF THE FERMENTING DREGS could tour with the English indie trio Muncie Girls. They could learn each other's songs. |
| 3 | BILLIE IDLE | "本当の夢を" | BILLIed IDLE 2.0 | You can eat the food. This is all your fear needs to know. All the other people are people, |
| 4 | Magistina Saga | "C.a.W" | Brand new world 3 | glorious and complicated. No new world, brand new world, all of these are the same world, the same majestic terrifying world. |
| 5 | Bentham | "Bandwagon" | Bulbous Bow 5 | Misunderstanding this gives you trade wars and holy wars and holy walls. |
| 6 | Christine and the Queens | "Doesn't matter" | Doesn't matter +1 | Aspire instead to spend 100% of your GDP on joy. |
| 7 | Morbo y Mambo | "Pomán" | Muta | It is liberating and empathetic to admit that you wouldn't know a Mexican drug-gang from an Argentine afro-kraut-funk band, |
| 8 | Big Narstie | "Grime Battle of Hastings (feat. The Town Crier)" | BDL Bipolar | or the hairpiece of a stable genius from the broken heart of a coward. |
| 9 | Immortal | "Gates To Blashyrkh" | Northern Chaos Gods | Mythology is an excuse to wear awesome armor; |
| 10 | Omnium Gatherum | "Gods Go First" | single | trust no despots in boring clothes, |
| 11 | Mob Rules | "Ghost of a Chance" | single | arriving in undignified chariots, |
| 12 | Beyond The Black | "My God Is Dead" | single | promising only to give you back broken things you once had. |
| 13 | Manticora | "Echoes of a Silent Scream" | single | You were born under borderless skies, |
| 14 | Vermilia | "Äiti Maa" | Kätkyt | with infinite unbounded power. |
| 15 | Gaerea | "Absent" | Unsettling Whispers | All anthems are sung in your language, |
| 16 | Doro | "Lift Me Up" | single | in our language. |
| 17 | Michael Romeo | "Djinn" | single | As the great guitarist Turing immortally explained, after all, language is the thing with which anthems can be sung. |
| 18 | Maraton | "Seismic" | single | We are emotionally organized by muse, not by authority, |
| 19 | WEN | "GRIT" | EPHEM:ERA | and always far better at superhero movies than diplomacy, |
| 20 | Orchards | "Drama King" | Losers/Lovers | which is less a reason for political despair than an argument for |
| 21 | Erik Ekholm | "Desolation" | Invader 3 | more superhero movies requiring international logistics. |
| 22 | Dan Bull | "Fortnite Rap Battle Royale" | single | You may not understand those people, but this is an eleven-minute geek-rap song about a video game I've never played, |
| 23 | SixteenInMono | "Found What I Lost" | single | and there appear to be infinite variations awaiting. |
| 24 | Sunrise In My Attache Case | "Letter" | Light The Fire 6 | The optimist says "ooh, what's in that glass?! |
| 25 | Obscura | "Ethereal Skies" | single | The pessimist clings to one half-empty glass, slowly and self-righteously dehydrating. |
| 26 | Skeletonwitch | "Temple of the Sun" | single | The optimist understands darkess as an homage to light, and vice versa. |
| 27 | Fifth Quadrant | "Liquid Shard" | Vision | As the great drum-programmer Euclid memorably noted, if you cut a straight line into equal and unequal segments, stars pour out and your town immediately gets better restaurants. |
| 28 | Corvus Corax | "Her Wirt" | Her Wirt +1 | If you don't drink, you can still dance to drinking songs, |
| 29 | Gwydion | "793" | Thirteen | but if you don't love, your fight songs will only ever grind to petulant clattering halts, leaking misinformation and corrosive distrust. |
| 30 | Secret Cutter | "4 1/2" | Quantum Eraser | You can recognize fake leaders by seeing who needs a crowd in front of them but is afraid to have anybody see the back of their head; |
| 31 | Betontod | "La Familia" | single | by the trail of bankruptcies and denials where a hero would have bound anthologies of their own greatest failures; |
| 32 | Kid Moxie | "4am" | Perfect Shadow | by what they do with discarded moments discovered. |
| 33 | Crippled Black Phoenix | "To You I Give" | single | All the other people are powerless, too. This is all your fear needs to know. |
| 34 | Tangled Thoughts of Leaving | "The Alarmist" | No Tether | We only become dangerous together. |
| 35 | Chapter and Verse | "A Devil in Blue" | single | The world is not a safe space, it is a crucible of indefensible fantasies: |
| 36 | Halcyon Way | "Slaves to Silicon" | single | a wireless smart-crucible that sometimes freezes the hearts it was supposed to melt, and the troubleshooting FAQ claims you can restart it from the command-line, but not if the command line is controlled by an nihilist voting-block, |
| 37 | Black Fast | "Husk" | single | and not if the control panel is now below sea-level and killing coral reefs because the manufacturers have been freed from stifling emission regulations, |
| 38 | Belzebubs | "Maleficarum - The Veil of the Moon Queen, Pt. I" | Blackened Call 2 | and not if you aren't willing to fall in love with dark spirits, |
| 39 | Tiga | "Bohong" | single | and the reincarnations of things you never knew, |
| 40 | Marta Soto | "Un sueño compartido" | single | and let them tell you their story in their own panic-inducingly unintelligible words and know that it's not only your beautiful wishful story, too, but the story of your impossible and impossibly better lives together. |