| 1 | Dynazty | "The Grey" | single | This is like "Rainbow in the Dark" merged into "Amaranthe", so it obviously has to be my favorite song for at least a week. |
| 2 | Dark Sarah | "The Gods Speak" | single | Or for four minutes, anyway, and what are weeks? Dark Sarah are the band Heidi Parviainen formed after leaving Amberian Dawn, and Amberian Dawn got a new singer and stayed awesome as well, so that's how you combat entropy. |
| 3 | Helion Prime | "Urth" | single | Helion Prime are a science-based power-metal band. Can you really have a power-metal band that isn't based on science? Helion Prime are a self-awarely science-based power-metal band. |
| 4 | Dark Millennium | "Moving Light" | Where Oceans Collide | I like to imagine that Dark Millennium are the band you get if you start from the faith that Celtic Frost's Cold Lake is a rough template for something great and decent that just wasn't Celtic Frost. |
| 5 | Fit For A King | "Oblivion" | single | If you punch an armored wall with an armored fist, and both survive, you have the basic concept of metalcore drumming. |
| 6 | Starkill | "Until We Fall" | single | I guess I wouldn't want all melodic death-metal bands to try to become PassCode. Probably. |
| 7 | Korpiklaani | "Aallon alla" | single | Smells Like Forest Spirit. |
| 8 | Crippled Black Phoenix | "Great Escape, Pt. 1" | single | Sometimes the void gazes back at you, |
| 9 | Second to Sun | "To Live" | single | or you share a mutual regard, |
| 10 | Mantar | "Midgard Serpent (Seasons of Failure)" | The Modern Art of Setting Ablaze | and duel for the loser's obligation to write the battlemyth, |
| 11 | Madder Mortem | "Far from Home" | single | and the winner's right to stipulate its texture. |
| 12 | BRONCHO | "Boys Got to Go" | single | Some of our fightsongs are for walking in numbers on roadways, |
| 13 | Empress Of | "When I'm With Him" | single | some for dancing in moonlit alleys in couples and truces, |
| 14 | 32 tens | "New Hands" | single | but both of these are formulations of rebellion |
| 15 | Smallpools | "Stumblin' Home" | single | in a displaced age. |
| 16 | The Paper Kites | "Give Me Your Fire, Give Me Your Rain" | Give Me Your Fire, Give Me Your Rain +1 | All of these humane songs are hamonic phrasings of any other inner life than flailing desperately at righteous opposition. |
| 17 | Secret Space | "Alone" | AntiHero | The longer your list of enemies becomes, the more likely it is that you yourself are on it, |
| 18 | MiatriSs | "Вдох" | Вдох +1 | and maybe you no longer recognize what you're become, |
| 19 | Adn Compositions | "IX" | single | because you still think you're looking for a hero, |
| 20 | The Anix | "Interchanger" | Interchanger +1 | and all you actually have left is a thin shell of hair. |
| 21 | KT Tunstall | "The River" | single | You are the collection of all the things you would joyfully lose yourself in, |
| 22 | Raige | "A un passo da te (feat. Sewit)" | single | and the willingness to lose yourself is a substitution of rage for surprise. |
| 23 | Enrico Nigiotti | "Complici" | single | You can't have a sense of rhythm if you think of each beat of your heart as a blow |
| 24 | Metavari | "How Much Darker" | Split 2 | from which you are repeatedly shocked to discover survivors. |
| 25 | Nola Wren | "Mad" | single | In general, having children is usually enough to crack this narcissistic shell from inside, |
| 26 | Tillie | "Hungover on a Feeling" | single | but only if you have them instead of trying to own them. |
| 27 | Aldo Nova | "Fantasy 2.0" | single | Every coward has something they think made them brave, and usually they should have been right. |
| 28 | Reik | "Ya Veremos" | single | Character is how you cope with being wrong, |
| 29 | Ashbury Heights | "Headlights" | The Victorian Wallflowers | and thus with being terrified and caught. |
| 30 | Goteki | "Temple of the Sacred Heart" | Temple of the Sacred Heart +1 | There are no nostalgic bullies, |
| 31 | June Divided | "I Didn't Mind" | Body Wars | but also no irredeemable villains; |
| 32 | Press Club | "When You Were Young - triple j Like A Version" | single | there is only gnawing need, hiding under arbitrary depths of however-gilded crust. |
| 33 | Devlin | "Live in the Booth" | single | The argument for starting with nothing is that if you have built nothing, you'll buy badly, |
| 34 | Blacks | "Might Hear" | single | without learning to distinguish animus |
| 35 | Ebru Polat | "Akşam Sendeyiz Kraliçe" | single | from anima. |
| 36 | Maxida Märak | "Järnrör" | single | If you are steeped in nothing but reflexive dishonesty, and thus automatically assume the unfortunate earned their misfortune like you deserve yours, |
| 37 | Jain | "On My Way" | Souldier | you won't be able to hear the stories of their actual journeys, |
| 38 | Mayonnaise | "Bumalik Ka Na" | single | and then when you find yourself lost or trapped, you won't know what to do other than bellow for a golf cart. |
| 39 | Christine and the Queens | "La marcheuse" | single | But these streets invite you to enter into them under your own power, |
| 40 | Greg Laswell | "Royal Empress" | single | under the power that emanates from your heart, not your ability to make the people who sell your secrets claim they never did. |
| 41 | Eini | "Saaks viel itkee ku sattuu" | single | Nobody follows the king who still hasn't realized that they are the parade, |
| 42 | Night Club | "Scary World" | Scary World | who not only can't dance when watched, but won't even dance when not watched. |
| 43 | Kai Engel | "Traffic" | single | You can't claim a lodestar if you never look up, |
| 44 | Tunde Olaniran | "Mountain" | single | or you look up but only because you never understood that space is not a promised realm moored in anticipation above your uniquely chosen head. |
| 45 | MYFEVER | "Metal Queen" | single | You can't have anthems of grace until you can talk to other humans like they could be you; and like you don't lose if they speak, too; and like speaking at once can have a purpose other than drowning out their hopes, or your own fears. |