1 |
Delain |
"Hideaway Paradise" |
Dark Waters |
This is a golden era for melodic metal albums, |
2 |
Elyose |
"Ils t'ont dit" |
Déviante |
and by "era" I mean "three weeks": Dark Sarah; Xandria and REXORIA; |
3 |
Infinite & Divine |
"Ashes to Ashes" |
Ascendancy |
Delain, Elyose and Infinite & Divine. |
4 |
Ankor |
"Oblivion" |
Oblivion +1 |
Bright swords, gothic gradients, regal serifs. |
5 |
Delain |
"Invictus (feat. Marko Hietala & Paolo Ribaldini)" |
Dark Waters |
But take those six records away and it's still an inexhaustibility of hyperbolic grandeur. |
6 |
Elysion |
"Crossing Over" |
single |
This is how it is with everything, now: |
7 |
Elyose |
"De la Lune à la Terre" |
Déviante |
mastered beyond all historical precedent, |
8 |
Forever We Roam |
"A Crash Course in the Laws of Gravity" |
single |
but then also infinite; |
9 |
Infinite & Divine |
"Remedy" |
Ascendancy |
meticulously assembled, |
10 |
Fraser Edwards |
"My Great Escape" |
single |
but then also casually plundered; |
11 |
Cawston |
"DFYF" |
single |
blithely distressed |
12 |
IKINÄ |
"Riivaaja" |
single |
and afraid of nothing. |
13 |
Locus Animæ |
"Magia D'Inchiostro" |
single |
I've been listening to metal like this since there wasn't any metal like this, |
14 |
Djunah |
"Phaethon" |
single |
and every week its unmanageable extents seems to exponentiate: |
15 |
Shores Of Null |
"My Darkest Years" |
My Darkest Years +2 |
airy transcendence and grim catharses, |
16 |
Vvilderness |
"Orm's Odyssey" |
Path |
cryptic lexicons and stormbringers, |
17 |
Wounds of Recollection |
"Pale Blue Light" |
Warm Glow of the End of Everything |
the void's regard. |
18 |
Entropia |
"Final" |
single |
You could forget everything you think you know about the ending world |
19 |
Moonthoth |
"MARtwe TWe żywOTA" |
Uroczysko |
and redestroy it from scratch starting every Friday. |
20 |
Old Forest |
"Faust Recants (Satan Cometh)" |
single |
Satan no longer arrives with a demon host |
21 |
Doomas |
"Cult Yog-Sothoth" |
R´LYEH |
at an epochal moment of cosmic prolapse, |
22 |
Vaget |
"Axis Mundi" |
Axis Mundi |
he is omnipresent, manipulating the ley lines of entropy in order to |
23 |
Narnia |
"Rebel" |
single |
install an app on our phones that singes us with notifications every 45 seconds. |
24 |
Avaland |
"Betrayers" |
single |
There is a new song. |
25 |
Wig Wam |
"Uppercut Shazam" |
Out of the Dark |
There is another new song. |
26 |
Revolution Saints |
"Talking Like Strangers" |
single |
The next one is a pastiche of ideas that were dubious when they were Journey songs, |
27 |
Khymera |
"Don't Wait for Love" |
Hold Your Ground |
but somehow become transformed to marvel by double kick-drums. |
28 |
Klone |
"Elusive" |
Meanwhile |
The next one is evasive, reticent, |
29 |
Osada Vida |
"Make Us Proud" |
single |
and we follow it into countries whose silhouettes we would never recognize in Worldle, |
30 |
The Antarctica Project |
"Owari" |
Owari +1 |
or the vortices between and outside of them, |
31 |
Einar Solberg |
"Grotto (feat. Magnus Børmark)" |
single |
only to find ourselves adrift in bioluminescent reverie. |
32 |
THE ORAL CIGARETTES |
"Enchant" |
single |
This is a golden era for Japanese music you no longer have to go to Japan to hear, |
33 |
KAKUMAY |
"nearly equal" |
single |
and of course for not-going everywhere and hearing every noise. |
34 |
Dragon Ash |
"VOX" |
single |
Sighing choruses of strangers want us to feel their love |
35 |
BLUE ENCOUNT |
"vendetta" |
Journey through the new door 5 |
and to suffer their origin myths of betrayal. |
36 |
ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION |
"ウェザーリポート" |
宿縁 3 |
This is the generation that receives magic as ordinary, but weather as inscrutable, |
37 |
a flood of circle |
"月夜の道を俺が行く" |
single |
and you have not walked a mile in their zero-drop shoes. |
38 |
HOWL |
"AndarTeikar" |
AndarTeikar +2 |
They move like assassins dance. |
39 |
NANO |
"FIGHT SONG" |
NOIXE |
They have temples in 38th-floor corridors, |
40 |
KRD8 |
"Queen Glory" |
single |
and posters of Rihanna as a cyborg, |
41 |
Quubi |
"Take me now" |
single |
and every time you look in a new direction there are 48 more of them, telling you what they want: |
42 |
Schrödinger's dog |
"Reincarnation" |
single |
frenetic transience and impossible loyalty; |
43 |
アカネサス |
"Saitei" |
single |
the courage to sing like you are trying to awaken stones; |
44 |
Cocco |
"Kujira no Stage" |
single |
the pealing purity of shimmery islands. |
45 |
YU-KA |
"星月夜" |
single |
Sometimes the drums are latches, not so much opening or closing |
46 |
GANGDEMIC |
"Up All Night Fuckers" |
single |
as practicing for the sudden need to reveal a passageway |
47 |
OWl |
"Everything" |
IJigen 2 |
or sow it with spikes. |
48 |
SpecialThanks |
"All right!!!" |
Sweet pea E.P. 5 |
The best new songs remind us of all of the old ones, |
49 |
AFTER SQUALL |
"Crush" |
single |
or the spaces betwixt. |
50 |
Skeletal Family |
"Beautiful Disaster" |
single |
The songs are made of numbers, |
51 |
Raed Raees |
"Tesla Beats Exclusive" |
single |
are about the insufficiency of numbers, |
52 |
Rebecca Black |
"Erase You" |
Let Her Burn |
are proof of the redemptive power of forgetting. |
53 |
Transviolet |
"Naive" |
Naive |
Sometimes the drums are just the little sounds that the parts of your head make as you breathe, |
54 |
Charlotte Clark |
"Of Course You're Bored" |
Of Course You're Bored +2 |
as you look around for landmarks or horizons, |
55 |
Sophie Ellis-Bextor |
"Breaking the Circle" |
single |
as you anticipate a still- or again-hypothetical audience. |
56 |
Daughter |
"Party" |
single |
Sometimes the drums are tracked in a stunned haze, |
57 |
Taylor Acorn |
"I Think I'm in Love" |
single |
sometimes the song gets away from you and you run after it. |
58 |
Reyna Roberts |
"Another Round (feat. Tayler Holder)" |
single |
There is music, and then there's country music, |
59 |
Elizma Theron |
"Man so na my hart" |
single |
and then there are countries where country has been through enough unforgivability to burn off all the coyness |
60 |
Ray Dylan |
"Kom Lê My Voor Jou" |
single |
so that the entrails of joy are exposed. |
61 |
Herbert Grönemeyer |
"Angstfrei" |
Angstfrei +1 |
This is a golden era for declamatory 80s-revival Euro-dance-pop, |
62 |
Marion Ravn |
"Danse" |
Ti ville hester |
for Swedish songs that turn out to be Norwegian, |
63 |
Bee |
"Viimeisiä sanoja" |
single |
for Alessia Cara songs from a different north, |
64 |
Jakub Zytecki |
"Remind Me" |
single |
for gently sentimental djent, |
65 |
Enter Shikari |
"It Hurts" |
It Hurts +1 |
for post-hardcore that sounds like Jesus Jones lost Jesus, |
66 |
familypet |
"good book" |
single |
for maudlin emo hyperpop torn between the plangent need to drink the energy drink and the compulsion to collect it, |
67 |
Letting Up Despite Great Faults |
"Halfway Crooks" |
single |
for kickstarter shoegaze, |
68 |
Small Black |
"Desert of the Heart" |
single |
for cyclical spells. |
69 |
Repion |
"Sin Hablar" |
Repion |
This is a tortured and undaunted golden era for unglobal European blare, |
70 |
Pan |
"La gran lección de soltar" |
single |
not dressed as Americans dressed as Prussians |
71 |
Niña Polaca |
"Mucho tiempo contigo" |
single |
but heraldic of their own cities, |
72 |
Muro María |
"Ese Sentimiento" |
Ese Sentimiento +1 |
indigenous to narrow lanes |
73 |
Quinto Diario |
"Vuelves pa verano" |
single |
and forgiven returns. |
74 |
Diezell |
"A Golpe De Mar, Pecho Sereno" |
single |
The soul may request asylum only once, |
75 |
El Capitán Elefante |
"Contigo no hay Paz" |
Asuntos Exteriores |
and thereafter has to learn to dance in coalition. |
76 |
GLAS |
"Vuelves" |
single |
The things that seem oppressively regular tonight |
77 |
BRDigung |
"So High" |
So High 5 |
will be tomorrow how we march: |
78 |
Emscherkurve 77 |
"Leinen Los" |
single |
back along the same close streets |
79 |
Betontod |
"Nie mehr St. Pauli ohne Dich" |
Nie mehr St. Pauli ohne Dich +1 |
to where our apartment was |
80 |
König Kobra |
"Fallen" |
Hirn und weg 5 |
before they tore that building down and built a new one out of our regrets |
81 |
ZSK |
"Ich liebe dieses Leben" |
HassLiebe |
and some new material that makes the new occupants better people |
82 |
Schrottgrenze |
"Boomer-Tränen" |
Das Universum ist nicht binär |
than we were. |
83 |
Diary Of Dreams |
"Viva la Bestia" |
Viva la bestia 2 |
Maybe our regrets are that substance, |
84 |
Ucha |
"Artefacts" |
single |
alloyed to a gossamer tensile strength |
85 |
&lez |
"Traps" |
Traps +1 |
and arrayed in lattice. |
86 |
Bwax |
"Bola Ibaki Story" |
Mashabiki 5 |
It's a golden era for whatever this is, a Yamaha demo-loop Canterbury Tales or a Swahili "Shaddap You Face", I'm not sure. |
87 |
Leo Guardo |
"Imikhuleko" |
Imikhuleko +1 |
One day we will have a love, and it will be divine. |
88 |
Msaki |
"Come In" |
single |
We are not the first creatures to have new songs, |
89 |
David Jones David |
"Na You" |
Na You +2 |
not the ones to discover joy |
90 |
Vico da sporo |
"Thola" |
single |
and claim the absurd right to name it. |
91 |
One Blood Namibia |
"Okahererako (Haiboyebo)" |
single |
This is still an era of blood, uncontainable, |
92 |
Mychildhood |
"Thembi Mtshali 'Sgudi Snaysi'" |
single |
just gyroscopic enough to keep us usually upright. |
93 |
Ocelazimnike |
"INJ' Uqhwalahle" |
INJ'UQHWAYILAHLE |
The things that seem spectral tonight |
94 |
Stabhilithi |
"iPIN kaMampintsha" |
single |
will be earthen by daylight. |
95 |
Ntozabantu |
"Ndiyamsola" |
single |
We are standing outside an abandoned phone booth with pity in our hands |
96 |
Yikii |
"Memoirs of the Corrupted City 堕落之城回忆录" |
The Crow-Cyan Lake 鸦青湖畔 |
and transponders in our cortices. |
97 |
Faten Kanaan |
"Ebla" |
Ebla +2 |
Take all this away and you will be left with just enough |
98 |
MONO |
"Silent Embrace" |
single |
silence |
99 |
The Dark Atom |
"Unrestricted" |
Unrestricted +1 |
to hear yourself explode. |
100 |
Divided by Design |
"I, Establish" |
The Fear of Being Forgotten |
The next song wants you to disassemble yourself in studious preparation, |
101 |
Teeth Of The Sea |
"Vortex of Release" |
Vortex of Release +3 |
and rebuild as a boat or a bridge or diving bell that rings. |
102 |
Izzy Perri |
"Mr. Brightside" |
single |
We hear a song about lovers for the seven-thousandth time, and finally think to wonder |
103 |
Fame on Fire |
"Mr. Brightside" |
single |
about the saints, and the sea. |
104 |
SMR LVE |
"Missing You" |
Flashback Memories |
We hear a song about longing, |
105 |
Kontrollverlust |
"You're the Voice - Rock Version" |
You're the Voice 3 |
and make it about ourselves by singing it. |
106 |
SILENZER |
"out of the dark" |
single |
Dark, light: this is a golden era for binary metaphors |
107 |
Violet Orlandi |
"Owner Of A Lonely Heart" |
single |
and unlimited will. |
108 |
The Native |
"Wildest Dreams" |
Looking Back |
We'll remember us. Our voice is our most familiar sound. |
109 |
Matt Nathanson |
"Coming up Close" |
The Lexington EP 5 |
Don't you know that we can make the wildest dreams come true? |