| 1 | Onyria | "Denial" | single | Sometimes the "symphonic" in "symphonic metal" means the arrangements are at least partially orchestral, |
| 2 | Dark Princess | "My Shadow Self" | My Shadow Self +1 | but sometimes it's just a coded way of admitting to a maximalist ambition |
| 3 | Faun | "Gwydion" | single | to be good by exuberant technique. |
| 4 | Mute Prophet | "Designer Scars" | Cycle of Fire | Metal, as a whole, |
| 5 | Neperia | "Contrast" | single | oscillates through this Lagrange point over time, |
| 6 | Empire of Giants | "Dying Star" | Dying Star +2 | spinning off into shredding and double-kick polyrhythm for a while |
| 7 | Seven Kingdoms | "Universal Terrestrial" | single | before orbiting back into monospaced blastbeats and deliberately noteless grunting. |
| 8 | Giant Walker | "Katoomba" | single | Maybe all musical forms, if not all art forms, do this, |
| 9 | Flowerleaf | "The Storm" | The Storm +2 | and not over time as much as throughout it, |
| 10 | New Saviors | "My Demise" | single | a cloud of possibility stretching from abstruse nominal complexity |
| 11 | Osatia | "Decode" | Decode +1 | to confrontational apparent simplicity. |
| 12 | Eternal Psycho | "Religion" | Trail of Agony | Clouds don't hover along a single sharp axis, though, |
| 13 | Tales of a Sleeping Giant | "Morgana" | single | they billow and blur and suffuse. |
| 14 | April Weeps | "Crossing the Waves" | single | Art, like most human obsessions, doesn't gain and lose complexity |
| 15 | Lena Scissorhands | "Borderlines (feat. Death Dealer Union)" | single | as much as it moves it around. |
| 16 | Blinding Sunrise | "Guess Who Is Back" | single | Implicit in the idea of "technique" is an established definition of what one hash to learn to be adept, |
| 17 | 高槻かなこ | "Before the Nightmare" | single | and the history of these definitions and establishments |
| 18 | BRIDEAR | "Ray of Chaos" | single | informs any minimalist rejection of them. |
| 19 | SIPP | "DON'T WARP" | single | Choosing a death-metal rasp, or a single shade of blue paint, |
| 20 | 大橋彩香 | "Be My Friend!!!" | single | is a voluntary self-constraint |
| 21 | 藤川千愛 | "ゆずれない" | single | that redistributes the constant amount of potential creativity |
| 22 | Appare! | "sanzameku" | single | into a combination of the other formal elements of the work |
| 23 | Run Girls, Run! | "RADIANT" | Get set,Go! 6 | and the ways in which it is received. |
| 24 | ano | "AIDA" | single | 4'33" is one extreme of this, to the extent that all points on the circumference of a circle |
| 25 | DECO*27 | "キメラ" | キメラ +1 | are definitional minima of at least one possible translation of circularity into Cartesiana. |
| 26 | Hitsujibungaku | "OOPARTS" | OOPARTS +3 | In a literal sense it asks -- demands -- the least possible craft from its performers, |
| 27 | Mika Nakashima | "HELLO" | single | and thus requires the most active attention from its audience to compensate. |
| 28 | peanut butters | "マーチング" | めちゃポップ / マーチング 2 | But, critically, 4'33" still has performers, |
| 29 | チョーキューメイ | "She Side Blue" | single | and a composer, and sheet music, and recordings of it being performed, |
| 30 | The Yeahs | "iT GiRL" | single | and thus an existence entirely embedded in a critical framework of performed, composed, describable, recordable music. |
| 31 | As December Falls | "Go Away" | single | 4'33" is not a field-recording of a specific non-silent silence, |
| 32 | Sorry X | "Down Bad" | single | nor simply a foregrounding of a particular background, |
| 33 | Royal & the Serpent | "Happier in Hell" | single | but a complex convolution of the entire cultural mechanism of art. |
| 34 | LØLØ | "junkie" | junkie +1 | Every abstract minimalism minimizes some attributes in order to maximize all of the others; |
| 35 | The Linda Lindas | "Magic" | Growing Up | accepts a set of constraints in order to achieve a set of freedoms. |
| 36 | Lola Indigo | "ABC" | Toy Story 2 | This is as true in politics and economics and user-interface design |
| 37 | TeZATalks | "Lex Luthor" | single | as it is in hip hop and metal and pizza, |
| 38 | Ravenna Golden | "Sack Of Grass" | Ms. Genius | and you can think of art as a living metaphor for society, |
| 39 | ericdoa | "lifeline" | single | but you don't have to. |
| 40 | miraie | "Vivy" | single | There are only two or three hundred countries, |
| 41 | wishlane | "windcheater" | dunderhead 5 | and there were six hundred thousand new songs last week, |
| 42 | $WAGGOT | "1nite4ever" | 1nite4ever +1 | just counting the ones on the surface of the only planet we've politized |
| 43 | New Sylveon | "КтО тАкИе СуЩеСтВа" | single | and the ones on the only streaming service whose database I'm allowed to query, |
| 44 | Ryan Oakes | "R.I.P" | R.I.P +1 | so it would be a lot more practical to use the countries |
| 45 | CVLTE | "run." | single | as metaphors for the songs. |
| 46 | ASH DA HERO | "Just do it" | single | But metaphor is a realist's delusion, |
| 47 | amazarashi | "空白の車窓から" | single | realism as much an -ism as colonialism |
| 48 | MADKID | "Bring Back" | Bring Back / RISE / FAITH 3 | or fascism or racism or rockism. |
| 49 | Rhythmic Toy World | "Zanzou to 8beat" | Kokoro-to no tane | Metaphor asserts a distinction between the real and the poetic, |
| 50 | Age Factory | "First day song" | single | and Cage's insight, |
| 51 | Spaced Out Kids | "Big Time" | single | which isn't Cage's because you can't own an insight if it's true, |
| 52 | ZON | "Spoil ME Rotten" | Spoil ME Rotten +2 | is that this is all and only a matter of perspective. |
| 53 | VV | "Loveletting - 7" Cut" | single | Metaphor is a relationship, not a state, |
| 54 | All Things Fallen | "Pandemonium" | single | and everything that poses as a state |
| 55 | Egor Lappo | "Crepuscular" | Naturealism | is an accumulation of relationships teetering on the structural verge |
| 56 | Helsott | "Independence Night" | single | of achieving unity |
| 57 | Unherz | "Löwenherz" | single | by forgetting itself. |
| 58 | Genus Ordinis Dei | "The Entropic Queen" | single | We can blame Putin for bombing Ukrainian hospitals, |
| 59 | Morthifera | "Apostasía" | single | but he didn't invent autocracy or bombs |
| 60 | Smash Into Pieces | "A Shot in the Dark" | A Shot in the Dark 5 | or the assignment of fears to boundaries. |
| 61 | Treat | "Jesus from Hollywood" | The Endgame | We can and should be appalled by Trump wondering about the point of having nuclear weapons you aren't allowed to use, |
| 62 | Crashdïet | "Together Whatever" | single | but nothing Trump did while president was even remotely as appalling as the fact that he could get elected. |
| 63 | Kreator | "Strongest Of The Strong" | Strongest Of The Strong +1 | The Ukrainian army seems momentarily heroic, |
| 64 | Rise to the Sky | "It's the End" | single | but having armies is how we get wars, |
| 65 | Mroh | "Wounded Souls" | single | and wars are how armies convince us to tolerate |
| 66 | Heidra | "Retribution's Dawn" | To Hell or Kingdom Come | nihilism among us by uniforming it. |
| 67 | Aara | "Strepitus Mundi" | single | We can see the naked dishonesty of justifying the attacks on Ukraine as de-Nazification, |
| 68 | Marrasmieli | "The Forest of My Soul" | Martaiden Mailta | and the pragmatic irony of Germany rearming to fight against disingenuous Nazi aversion, |
| 69 | Dauþuz | "Bergschmied I: Mein Berg - Bergkgesænge" | Vom schwarzen Schmied: Bergkgesænge | but Putin is right, no matter how hypocritically, that Nazification is still entirely conceivable. |
| 70 | Last Lightning | "Sett Meg Fri" | single | His invasion may as well be a performative exorcism with actual casualties, |
| 71 | Kontinuum | "Hafið Logar" | single | but he is exploiting the real human weakness that we have not consigned Nazis to the mythical domain of demons, |
| 72 | Cosmic Putrefaction | "Sol's Upheaval Debris" | single | and arguably haven't quite confined demons to a consensually unanimous mythicality, either. |
| 73 | Helms Alee | "Tripping Up the Stairs" | Tripping Up the Stairs +1 | We have allowed Russia to continue to exist in its belligerent, myopic form |
| 74 | Bakahira | "Pingala" | single | by failing to offer any fully irresistible alternatives. |
| 75 | Striborg | "In Between Worlds" | single | Most of the countries allied in moral opposition to this war |
| 76 | Astronoid | "Eyes" | single | have invaded as many sovereign countries as Russia has, |
| 77 | De Arma | "Shame Drifter" | single | and invasion is very much an active league still in its regular season. |
| 78 | HEALTH | "MURDER DEATH KILL" | DISCO4 :: PART II | If the US is a better social proposition than Russia, |
| 79 | Mœnia | "La Célula Que Explota" | single | it would have to be because we are intrinsically less susceptible to invasion |
| 80 | Mint Julep | "If I Say Tomorrow" | single | or oligarchy or any other anti-human corruption, |
| 81 | POLIÇA | "Alive" | single | and I think that this is true, |
| 82 | Cappa | "Ready" | single | but nontrivial to establish |
| 83 | Envy Of None | "Never Said I Love You" | Envy of None | and worryingly marginal in magnitude. |
| 84 | Katy Rose | "Let's Become" | single | Putin cannot remain in power, |
| 85 | Sasha Sova | "Speak" | single | and yet manifestly he can, |
| 86 | Sasha Alex Sloan | "I Blame The World" | single | and Trump and Bolsonaro and Modi, |
| 87 | Ivory Layne | "It Was You" | single | and maybe not Trump again or Le Pen, |
| 88 | Eliza & The Delusionals | "Halloween" | Halloween 5 | but if one side has maybe |
| 89 | shallow pools | "everything is fine" | single | and the other side has missiles, |
| 90 | The Earth Earth | "peel slowly & see" | peel slowly & see +1 | nobody is safe. |
| 91 | SKAAR | "Get Him Away From Me" | single | Safe is one side has certainty |
| 92 | The Artificials | "Embers" | single | and the side with the missiles has futility |
| 93 | The Dark Atom | "Robotic Manipulation" | Robotic Manipulation +2 | and also no missiles. |
| 94 | Spatial Manufacture Ltd. | "KALLIOPEAN ANIMA" | single | In safety we do not compare the magnitudes |
| 95 | U137 | "Lost Among Stars (feat. Linnéa Lindwall)" | Imagination | of war dead and new songs, |
| 96 | Evelum | "Istikhi" | Sa`krama | or celebrate unprecedented defiance of unconscionable imbalance. |
| 97 | Arca | "Cayó" | single | In a decisively just society, |
| 98 | Kite | "Panic Music" | single | not just a collection of temporarily more- or less-broken countries, |
| 99 | Mvzzle | "Beautiful" | single | there is no panic music. |
| 100 | Mzukulu | "Indlela" | single | Or there is, but to preserve the memory of panic |
| 101 | Amasap | "Emzabalazweni" | Winja Mgodoy I | in ambient serenity |
| 102 | Saliwa | "SUKA SISHIMANE" | Zingishiyil' Eziy'emhlangeni | the way churches preserve the memory of superstition |
| 103 | Oumou Sangaré | "Sira" | Sira +2 | in autonomous grace. |
| 104 | Conscious Route | "Slipping" | Pyramid | All of our declared categories are coded ways to dream of |
| 105 | Wiley | "DIY" | single | categorization as only ever chosen for ourselves in motion, |
| 106 | Filthy Gears | "On Air" | Conception | not assigned to our still bodies by those who find them in newly bombed rubble |
| 107 | Simeon Hammond Dallas | "A Hundred Lovers" | single | or ancient volcanic ash. |
| 108 | Fousheé | "double standard" | single | Autocracy and libertarianism are not simpler than social democracy, |
| 109 | Jewel | "The Story (From “American Song Contest”)" | single | they just imperiously wave away all the pressing questions of how we can share the planet |
| 110 | Kelsea Ballerini | "HEARTFIRST" | single | by desperately wishing we didn't. |
| 111 | Thompson Square | "Country in My Soul" | Country in My Soul +1 | But the worst danger of obliging enemies is that they distract us from the regimes we sustain. |
| 112 | Radio Romance | "Stop Loving You" | single | Post-siege Kiev is still a city of people looking up at stars |
| 113 | Koe Wetzel | "April Showers" | single | that could again at any moment be missiles. |
| 114 | The Native | "Blindside" | single | We learned to wish on stars before we learned to make satellites, |
| 115 | Franja Du Plessis | "Gee My ‘n Boerseun" | single | and before we understood that learning to put metal into the air |
| 116 | Dewald Wasserfall | "Bedoel" | single | would be so much easier than learning how not to. |
| 117 | CLIFFDIVER | "IKEA Strikes Back" | single | But the bullets and the missiles fall quickly, at least. |
| 118 | Christie Huff | "Mr. Brightside" | Favorites Collection 5 | We turned the saints into the sea; we can melt the missiles and the guns and the tanks and the coal plants and all the other sigils that nihilists and Nazis use to find each other. |
| 119 | Relic Hearts | "THATS WHAT I WANT" | single | We only move the complexity around, but that's OK, it means it's always there somewhere when we realize we need it back, |
| 120 | Eva Under Fire | "Separate Ways" | Blow EP 3 | when we find that our ways are complicated but the same. |