| 1 | BABYMETAL | "Divine Attack - Shingeki -" | single | It's fairly undeniably true that BABYMETAL is a terrible name, a permanent commitment to an initial gimmickry that has long since become just another magnificent variation on kinetic joy, |
| 2 | Hikicomoteikoku | "Empire" | single | but you probably don't know what Hikicomoteikoku means, and thus maybe that's even worse. |
| 3 | Eir Aoi | "心臓" | 心臓 6 | Google Translate says it means "Recruitment is also an empire", |
| 4 | GARNiDELiA | "Oka Ramman" | single | and learning enough Japanese to confidently contradict this is hard, |
| 5 | Mada Mitakoto no Nai Sekai | "シャルル feat.松下" | single | but learning enough to understand how kanji are constructed isn't nearly as intractable. |
| 6 | CHiCO with HoneyWorks | "ハートの誓い" | single | Google turns "hikicomoteikoku" into 引き込も帝国, but you can see in the artwork that the name is actually 緋鬼籠帝國, |
| 7 | may in film | "Blinding Lights" | single | which might not actually mean "Scarlet Demon Cage Empire", but let's say it does. |
| 8 | JIEMEI | "IRIS" | IRIS/WATASHISTYLE 3 | You don't need to have internalized the history of a street |
| 9 | Sekaisen | "TERASEKAI" | single | to learn where it leads, |
| 10 | CALETWOLF | "AVALON" | single | you just have to be willing to walk up and down it |
| 11 | Sede Vacante | "Mistaken" | Conium | until it becomes fond of your weird shoes, |
| 12 | Ann My Guard | "Martyrium" | single | curious about how you decide where to stop, |
| 13 | Antillia | "Из пепла" | single | brave enough to ask you what's playing in your mint-green earbuds |
| 14 | Tarja | "Eye of the Storm - Single Version" | single | that makes you micro-oscillate at wait lights. |
| 15 | Neopera | "Tuba Mirum" | single | Now you have something to trade. |
| 16 | BREAK ME DOWN | "The Other Life" | single | In this way quiet tourism modulates into audibility, |
| 17 | As Everything Unfolds | "Felt Like Home" | single | but your presence was already never silent. |
| 18 | As December Falls | "Mayday" | single | Calling these songs out of the air changes them in every living sense other than the morbid literal. |
| 19 | SCARLET | "In And Out" | single | Sometimes, when you can't read the signs, |
| 20 | In This Moment | "Burn 1983" | Blood 1983 5 | you have to duck through doorway curtains into warm darkness |
| 21 | Chez Kane | "Children of Tomorrow Gone" | Powerzone | to find out whether this is a ramen restaurant |
| 22 | Qntal | "O Welt" | O Welt +2 | or a store that sells fake display food to ramen restaurants, |
| 23 | Brutus | "Brave" | Unison Life | but neither enterprise is abstruse on its own terms. |
| 24 | The Otolith | "Ekpyrotic" | Folium Limina | The unfamiliar does not exist to mock you |
| 25 | The Lord | "Rise to Diminish" | Devotional | the way the familiar does, |
| 26 | BIG|BRAVE | "carvers, farriers and knaves" | single | but you can learn. |
| 27 | Black Math Horseman | "Black Math Horseman" | Black Math Horseman +3 | Be generous with your ignorance |
| 28 | Avatarium | "Nocturne" | Death, Where Is Your Sting | and you end up with less of it. |
| 29 | Ruby the Hatchet | "The Change" | Fear Is a Cruel Master | All of our cities reach towards each other, |
| 30 | Brutus | "Dreamlife" | Unison Life | like all of our hands, |
| 31 | Avantasia | "Welcome To The Shadows" | A Paranormal Evening with the Moonflower Society | because there is nothing else. |
| 32 | MindAhead | "Burning Horizon" | single | Other people's cryptic symbols |
| 33 | Orden Ogan | "December" | Final Days | are just their way of saying the same things you would say if you were here: |
| 34 | SpellBlast | "The Dyatlov Pass" | single | "Recruitment is also an empire", |
| 35 | Grimner | "Hämtad av Valkyrior" | single | or "Now we push the wolves into the sea", |
| 36 | Galderia | "Striking The Earth" | single | or "Angels were always really meteors". |
| 37 | The Division Red | "Chroma" | Chroma +1 | Different linguistic systems arrange their compositely conserved complexities into different internal configurations. |
| 38 | Sullen | "Locust" | single | You can't really change the things you need to say, |
| 39 | Avantasia | "Kill The Pain Away" | A Paranormal Evening with the Moonflower Society | but there are infinite ways to say them, |
| 40 | Iron Kingdom | "Queen of the Crystal Throne" | single | in which the infinite is variously evident or elided. |
| 41 | Elder | "Endless Return" | single | I think, in general, because I believe in the infinite only as a literal abstraction, |
| 42 | Bloodred Hourglass | "In Lieu of Flowers" | single | I would rather hear it celebrated than assumed. |
| 43 | Marras | "Poissaoleva" | single | Or maybe that's pointing causation in the wrong direction. |
| 44 | Iskandr | "Knagend Zout" | single | The pious warned us that black metal was driving the lost into the disciplines of Satan |
| 45 | Darkthrone | "Caravan of Broken Ghosts" | single | but disciplines were the only religious impulses I actually understood. |
| 46 | Abduction | "Dismantling The Corpse Of Demeter" | Black Blood | I remember when we found the gods stretched out dead, |
| 47 | Ggu:ll | "Voertuig der Verlorenen" | Ex Est | or rocks that looked like they might once have been gods, |
| 48 | Mroh | "Whispers from Nowhere" | XII | or pictures from the surface of Mars that appear to show HM-2 pedals. |
| 49 | Full Of Hell | "Swarming Hornets" | Aurora Leaking from an Open Wound 3 | None of these other planets are real until we can stomp on them. |
| 50 | Imha Tarikat | "Streams Of Power - Canavar" | single | Here before the colonies are planted in the sky, |
| 51 | Gothminister | "Sinister" | Pandemonium | all our cities glower at each other |
| 52 | Avantasia | "Arabesque" | A Paranormal Evening with the Moonflower Society | across whatever distances and boundaries separate them |
| 53 | HYDE | "PANDORA" | single | until there no longer are any. |
| 54 | VII DAYS REASON | "Youth" | single | The walls become continuous, the cities grander. |
| 55 | Mrs. GREEN APPLE | "Soranji" | single | Now they have something to trade: |
| 56 | FOMARE | "80%" | midori | ramen, or the fake ramen you need to run a ramen shop properly. |
| 57 | ROTH BART BARON | "月に吠える" | single | The spinning world, so as not to be shaken off, |
| 58 | Jimmy Eat World | "Place Your Debts" | single | replaces each of our torments in small increments. |
| 59 | Justin Courtney Pierre | "House Of Strangers" | single | The most convincing bowls of fake ramen, like the most intricate kanji, are stories of how there is still time to become elaborate, |
| 60 | Archers Of Loaf | "Human" | Reason in Decline | to rhyme "hostile" with "nostrils". |
| 61 | Carly Rae Jepsen | "Surrender My Heart" | The Loneliest Time | We open our chests, remove our hearts, and give them to some shocked stranger, |
| 62 | Fefe Dobson | "Recharge My Heart" | single | who blows us a kiss and then places them on the charging pad in three slightly different orientations until the little LEDs finally light up. |
| 63 | Taylor Swift | "Maroon" | Midnights | The rocks that looked like gods, after midnight, shake themselves loose of the soil and go home to their current boyfriends, |
| 64 | Hyd | "Fallen Angel" | single | researching for the aftermath. |
| 65 | Black Dresses | "Kill All Your Friends" | single | Sometimes, when you can't read the labels, you imagine how Prince might have turned out if he'd grown up in a pandemic |
| 66 | Miguel Angeles | "everything is all in ur head" | single | and had Discord. |
| 67 | RYL0 | "Leave Me Alone" | single | "Recruitment" is an awfully imperial way of saying hi. |
| 68 | TITUS | "GORGEOUS DISASTER" | DAMNED IF I DO | You can't really change the things other people already know how to say, |
| 69 | Yung Skrrt | "I'm In British" | single | but you can listen |
| 70 | Dappy | "Lingo" | single | until they run out of those, |
| 71 | Young Fathers | "I Saw" | I Saw +1 | and then you both find out what comes next: |
| 72 | Harpya | "7" | single | warm darkness or mint green or footprints in dust. |
| 73 | Alejandra Guzman | "Tuya" | single | Even the symbols you know can be used to write other languages. |
| 74 | Vaasa Palaa | "korkeuxiin" | single | You show up to explain your plan to push the wolves into the sea, |
| 75 | Merta | "Tiimalasi" | single | and the people are quiet and uncomfortable until one of them stands up and explains |
| 76 | Medium Arvet | "Mistään Ei Tuu Mitään" | single | that the wolves come down from the mountains. |
| 77 | Local Bastards | "Frei zu sein" | Frei zu sein +1 | The sea is behind us. |
| 78 | ZSK | "Neuanfang" | Neuanfang +3 | The rocks that look like wolves open their chests and take out handfuls of dark gems, |
| 79 | Southern Lights | "Curtains" | single | and move among us distributing them, |
| 80 | Royal & the Serpent | "Happiness 4 Dummies" | Happiness 4 Dummies +3 | whispering "hold this in one hand, and the other one will bless what it touches." |
| 81 | Taylor Acorn | "Wishing You Hell" | single | That doesn't work, |
| 82 | First Aid Kit | "A Feeling That Never Came" | A Feeling That Never Came +3 | but now you have something worthless to trade. |
| 83 | Tegan and Sara | "All I Wanted" | Crybaby | Run away, or settle in; |
| 84 | Taylor Swift | "Anti-Hero" | Midnights | eventually all of these cities will be one, |
| 85 | PVRIS | "ANIMAL" | ANIMAL / ANYWHERE BUT HERE 2 | and you can prepare by realizing that you already know where everybody else is from. |
| 86 | Palm Ghosts | "Silent Fall" | single | The sea has come to our heels to read what it says on our shoes; |
| 87 | The Wedding Present | "Astronomic" | Astronomic +1 | the wolves have come to the doorway to see if we are people |
| 88 | Simple Minds | "Human Traffic" | Direction of the Heart | or the fake people you need to sell sanctuary. |
| 89 | Celia Es Celíaca | "Nadie Se Acuerda De Ti" | single | You don't need to have a street named after you |
| 90 | Limit | "Qaphela Dali Wami" | I Mathematics | to follow it to where it's still learning not to end. |
| 91 | Umafikizolo | "Viva" | Ngathi Ungafa 4 | The rocks that look like they have never imagined being anything other than rocks |
| 92 | 071 NELLY THE MASTER BEAT | "Moraba Dololo" | single | will be teeming plazas and museum steps and precarious quays along which laughing children chase snuffling wolves. |
| 93 | Maredi | "Gobotse" | Moxomo 5 | They will ask you, later, why the wolves make that noise. |
| 94 | Ayasa | "HIGURASHI" | single | "We all do", you will explain. "But the wolves' sharp teeth keep them from being able to close their mouths, |
| 95 | Hollie Kenniff | "Ways Of Seeing" | single | and so their fears are loud and free while ours are quietly trapped." |
| 96 | Taylor Swift | "The Great War" | Midnights | Now your children have something to trade, too: a secret in a case made out of legends. |
| 97 | Rain Paris | "Bye Bye Bye" | single | Your dire ultimatums can be their sentimental vows. |
| 98 | Simple Minds | "The Walls Came Down" | Direction of the Heart | Nightly military raids: the congregation splits |
| 99 | Byrdy | "Running Up That Hill" | single | into the gods that looked like rocks from which all of our moments are stolen |
| 100 | Rage Of Light | "Running Up That Hill" | single | and the recruited empire of the rest of us who are ready to not be unhappy. |