| 1 | Ainur | "Forging of the Rings" | single | If you avoid things that do not appear to have taken the most rudimental precautions against self-embarrassment, you will probably pass on 2023 folk-/power-metal songs about The Lord of the Rings, |
| 2 | Manigance | "The Shadows Ball" | single | especially ones that don't even justify their nerdiness by explicating some obscure detail of Númenórean backstory. |
| 3 | Hadadanza | "La Última Función" | single | "Forging of the Rings" is about...the forging of the Rings. The Rings that the Lords of the Rings are Lords of. |
| 4 | Grimgotts | "Ride the Storm" | single | This is like a band called Paris writing a song about how the Eiffel Tower is tall and thus visible, or Runrig covering "Loch Lomond", |
| 5 | Above the Stars | "Ангел" | single | or, come to think of it, most sports commentary. |
| 6 | Obituary | "My Will to Live" | My Will to Live +2 | Ainur, to be fair, have spent 17 years writing folk/prog/metal songs about, mostly, reasonable metal subjects, |
| 7 | Silver Bullet | "Creatures Of The Night" | Creatures Of The Night +2 | by which we mean details from The Silmarillion, |
| 8 | Crowne | "Operation Phoenix" | single | with the exception of, as guitarist Luca Catalano notes, "and only one time with The Hobbit ones". |
| 9 | Revolution Saints | "Need Each Other" | single | But, really, there's no evasive imperative to pretend that you don't love what you love. |
| 10 | Stargazer | "Can You Conceive It" | single | "Forging of the Rings" is as much a culmination of the folk-hard-rock impulses of Jethro Tull and Led Zeppelin, |
| 11 | REXORIA | "Light up the Sky" | single | folded through the bellows of Queen's harmonic theatricality, |
| 12 | Annacrusa | "La Espina" | single | as it is any kind of variation on Eluveitie or, |
| 13 | Motive Black | "Caged" | Caged 5 | to pick another example completely at random, Oakenshield. |
| 14 | For I Am King | "Trojans" | Trojans +2 | I had to Ctrl-F Ainur's discography page to make sure they have not already written a song called "Beleriand Rhapsody". |
| 15 | LÝSIS | "Handprints" | single | Whether that will still be true by the time you read this, I feel less sure. |
| 16 | Katatonia | "Birds" | Birds +2 | In general, you'll appreciate metal more if you aren't afraid to take goofy things seriously without forgetting that they're goofy, |
| 17 | Mroh | "Truth" | single | but then that's probably true of everything, |
| 18 | Black Tomb | "The Core" | Black Tomb | and helpfully suggests that most kinds of creative failure stem from either failing to take a goofy thing seriously enough, |
| 19 | Concrete Castles | "Dollhouse" | single | or forgetting, while you're taking it seriously, that it's not. |
| 20 | As December Falls | "Carousel" | single | This is either a profound truth underpinning human nature, |
| 21 | liza | "brandy boy" | single | or the beginning of an oblique explanation of why it makes sense to me to go from "Paradise By the Earendil Light" to this breathy sweatshirt lament by a singer about whom I know, after a few minutes of diligent research, literally nothing. |
| 22 | Llynks | "Heaven Sing Now" | single | That is, it makes sense because everything makes sense. |
| 23 | TORICAGO | "TUBURETA TOMATO" | BAKA MITAI 4 | Streaming reifies the abstract principle that all human songs may be juxtaposed. |
| 24 | SawanoHiroyuki[nZk] | "FAKEit" | single | We do not have to walk the distance between cultural points. |
| 25 | Maaya Uchida | "Loud Hailer" | Loud Hailer +2 | Food and music have similar power to carry the nature of one culture into the body of another, |
| 26 | BABY-CRAYON~1361~ | "I Love you Forever !" | single | but in food we're still back in the LP era: |
| 27 | いぎなり東北産 | "微妙" | single | appreciating one platter at a time, studying the ingredients on the back, |
| 28 | TheWORLD | "skyhigh" | TheEMPRESS III | or if we're feeling ambitious, stacking up 2-6 plates on the spindle so that we can |
| 29 | acro-A | "Lasting Forever" | single | eat half of each meal and then flip them all over. |
| 30 | circle crusher | "FLASH BACK" | Beyond 4 | In the infinite playlist world, each bite can completely reset not just your palate |
| 31 | BOY MEETS HARU | "confused by the night" | single | but your culinary expectations and nutritional needs. |
| 32 | DAI DAI DAI | "FOLLOW ME" | single | We draw apart, you and I, or our lower and upper jaws, |
| 33 | SCREEN mode | "TRUE STORY" | single | and by the time we meet again, revolutions have been staged and quelled and historiographically resituated. |
| 34 | ラックライフ | "℃" | single | We argue about how to measure things, while we feel them on our skin. |
| 35 | Kaneyorimasaru | "26" | single | Our rings do not bind or conceal us, |
| 36 | Mega Shinnosuke | "SONiC" | Nisenhyakunen | they tap distractedly on the side of the guitar as we wait for the drummer to count us in, |
| 37 | AQMO | "Natural" | Natural / Sabotage 2 | to bring us back out of momentary excruciating silence into the love of noise of love. |
| 38 | Amber’s | "buddy" | single | Our clichés soar, unapologetically, over all the shorter buildings the planners insisted upon, |
| 39 | Hitsujibungaku | "風になれ (cover ver.)" | single | because they knew that it would be easier to coopt idolatry as reverence |
| 40 | New Year Memorial | "Considered" | single | than to talk us out of things we didn't yet realize we would want to believe. |
| 41 | Miguel Angeles | "2 the edge" | MIDNIGHT IN PURGATORY 6 | These songs may invert at any moment, |
| 42 | blackwinterwells | "Diphylla" | single | within or between them. |
| 43 | The Hz | "Daydream" | single | The Nazgul can see you any time you dream of power, |
| 44 | KAUAN | "Fohn" | single | but this is their problem, not yours. |
| 45 | The Howling Void | "Into Darkness Ever More Profound" | Into Darkness Ever More Profound +3 | We turn off the lights, and open our eyes, and in doing so summon every aspirational evil |
| 46 | Рожь | "Прощай" | Всё | to gather about us and be deployed or discharged by our will. |
| 47 | Ontborg | "Steps of Damnation" | single | If you avoid all the things that are warm from our cursed touch |
| 48 | Abraham Mateo | "La Idea" | single | you will be lonely and cold and watching us dance. |
| 49 | Shinova | "Si no es contigo (feat. Rafa Val, Viva Suecia)" | single | One ring for the Basque lords in their mountains, |
| 50 | Audio-Activ | "Es werde Licht" | single | one for the toymakers in the Erzgebirges. |
| 51 | VIVA | "Immer erst am Anfang" | single | So many stories begin this way, dealing out the sigils like cards. |
| 52 | Grumpster | "Hollow" | Hollow +1 | Draw the next song from the list, and for 2:13 that is all you have to care about. |
| 53 | MOG | "Drago'd" | Life 9 | Did he just say something about YAML? If we can have Scottish rap, then of course we can have config-hop. |
| 54 | Elanur | "Tic Tac Toe" | single | The rings are not precious from scarcity. You can download the files and 3D-print them yourself in any color. |
| 55 | marine eyes | "Bones Knowing" | single | They are precious because we put them on, and in doing so assert the right to be transformed by symbolic gestures. |
| 56 | Blanck Mass | "The Wave" | The Rig (Prime Video Original Series Soundtrack) | While this song is playing, I am invisible. |
| 57 | Diary Of Dreams | "The Secret" | single | While this song is playing, I have the power to burn candles in reverse, coalescing wax out of the close air of the room into an ascending pillar, |
| 58 | Slikback | "SLKBLKH FREESTYLE" | single | wrapped around a strand of borrowed memory. |
| 59 | Maredi | "Dumela Darly" | Mamosotho 2023 | One ring for the Pedi in the Transvaal, and I'm dancing to this song in an office building in Boston and I don't know if I'm about to be exorcised or married, and I start to explain that both of these are redundant, but it's not necessary for each song to start over from nothing. |
| 60 | First to Eleven | "White Wedding" | single | A song can start again from where you are, every time you play it, differently or the same. |
| 61 | Lauren Babic | "Crazy" | single | Do you have the heart to throw yourself into it, for three minutes, or away? |
| 62 | Nick Pitera | "Anti-Hero" | single | All of these songs are ridiculous and inevitable, |
| 63 | Twenty One Two | "Anti-Hero" | single | vividly lit or cryptically obscure, |
| 64 | Sondre Lerche | "Anti-Hero" | Anti-Hero / Kiss Me More 2 | enough rings for us all. |