| 1 | Mesarthim | "Arrival, Pt. 6" | Arrival | Our journeys are not defined by their ends, |
| 2 | Mournful Congregation | "The Forbidden Abysm" | The Exuviae of Gods - Part 2 | which are always already familiar or about to become so, |
| 3 | Usnea | "Bathed in Light" | Bathed in Light | but by the least expected points they pass through. |
| 4 | Kostnatění | "Řemen" | Úpal | You do not know, from the first :15 of a Mesarthim song, what the next 9:45 will be like. |
| 5 | Yakuza | "2is1" | Sutra | You don't even know what the second :15 will be like. |
| 6 | Boris | "Not Surprised" | Not Surprised +1 | Black metal has genre conventions, of course, |
| 7 | Immortal | "Thunders Of Darkness" | War Against All | sonic and structural, |
| 8 | Cloak | "Black Flame Eternal" | Black Flame Eternal | but it is also predicated on a sense of cryptic expeditionary curiosity. |
| 9 | Horrendous | "Ontological Mysterium" | single | You might be able to limp through a 2:15 pop song on a single chord-vamp, |
| 10 | Nattverd | "En gammel Kriger Trosser Vind Og Vaer" | I Helvetes Forakt | but you won't last 10 minutes that way, |
| 11 | Blackbraid | "The Spirit Returns" | single | or else your listeners won't. |
| 12 | Black Autumn | "Come Cold Morning Bliss" | The Harvest Of Our Bitter Labours | It's possible to listen to experimental metal as background music, |
| 13 | Krigsgrav | "An Everflowing Vessel" | single | but only in the way that it's possible to complain about the wifi on your commuter train |
| 14 | Avdagata | "Shimmering Black" | Shimmering Black +1 | as it is passing through the Fifth Circle of Hell and you're sitting on the side with the best views. |
| 15 | Aetherian | "ΠΥΡ ΑΕΝΑΟΝ" | ΠΥΡ ΑΕΝΑΟΝ +1 | The essential dogmatic schism of black metal is the inversion of various acquired metal tropes |
| 16 | Kalmah | "Veil of Sin" | Kalmah | into proscriptions: |
| 17 | Balance Breach | "Heart Like Siberia" | ABYZMAL | no preening machismo, |
| 18 | Ray Alder | "My Oblivion" | single | no texture-mapped superficial floridity, |
| 19 | Induction | "A Call Beyond" | single | no sing-alongs, |
| 20 | Sirenia | "Wintry Heart" | 1977 | no simplistic overbearing clarity. |
| 21 | Rage Of Light | "The Scent Of Dead Leaves" | single | All these reasonable qualities are then extrapolated obsessively, |
| 22 | Krashkarma | "Survive The Afterlife" | single | well into the abstract perverse, |
| 23 | Aline Happ | "Sea of Dreams" | single | until even band-name legibility is transcended. |
| 24 | Reasons Behind | "A New Breed" | Architecture of an Ego | It's as telling an irony as anything that the flight from superhero logotypes |
| 25 | Edge Of Paradise | "Soldiers Of Danger" | single | ends up as an anti-aesthetic so consolidated that one artist could become its de facto registrar. |
| 26 | ÊTRE | "Apolune" | single | I have not, obviously, adopted black metal as an exclusionary moral code. |
| 27 | Blind Hex | "Halcyon" | Dystopia | Black metal aspires to a grim asceticism, |
| 28 | The Foreshadowing | "We the Others" | Forsaken Songs | and I stand by, admiringly, offering to be helpful |
| 29 | Oryad | "Blood" | Sacred & Profane | by collecting the disavowed brightnesses. |
| 30 | Mass of Amara | "Rebirth" | single | NO CLEAN SINGING, you bark. |
| 31 | Opus Aeterna | "Lumen Ad Mortem" | Tempus Fugit | Excellent, I say. |
| 32 | Sirenia | "A Thousand Scars" | 1977 | I love singing, |
| 33 | Pimm's | "Follow me." | single | and will probably listen to another song with singing next, |
| 34 | MAD JAMIE | "show more" | single | but sure, let's hear what happens when you have to make a song out of everything else. |
| 35 | NEMOPHILA | "Night Flight" | single | Dante's Nine Circles of Hell are a compelling formalist plan for an urban commons: |
| 36 | MindaRyn | "SURVIVE" | SURVIVE +2 | an accessible and motivationally agnostic navigational superstructure; |
| 37 | Hikari Shiina | "Give me LOVE=SORROW" | single | a playground for mutual and collective attraction; |
| 38 | Underbeasty | "Hiraeth moon" | single | sustenance as maximized play rather than minimal subsistence; |
| 39 | 結束バンド | "光の中へ" | 光の中へ +3 | an insatiable belief in the infinite; |
| 40 | FATE GEAR | "Adventure in the East" | Deathless Memories 2023 3 | a font of moral principle and available outrage; |
| 41 | Yurika Kubo | "Come On!! Come On!!" | Treat You Mean, Keep You Keen 5 | the responsibility to question all settlement; |
| 42 | Yohei Kimura | "Wreckage" | single | self-awareness of our individual impulses as convertible energies; |
| 43 | Pimm's | "shut up!!" | single | shared vigilance against the perverse consequences of unregulated freedom; |
| 44 | Subway Daydream | "New Day Rising" | single | a systemic fertility for dissent. |
| 45 | Regal Lily | "若者たち" | where? 5 | You cannot entomb your enemies in a taxonomy of their unworthinesses |
| 46 | Atomic Skipper | "1998" | Orbital | without enumerating your own ostensible principles, |
| 47 | Su凸ko D凹koi | "Modorenaifutari" | Su凸ko D凹koi wo Shinjiruna 6 | and then, at least, once you forgive them for their blamelessnesses, you are left with something you've learned about yourself. |
| 48 | Fuki | "メトロポリス!ドゲンジャーズ!" | メトロポリス!ドゲンジャーズ! Deluxe Edition 6 | The things that do not compel you |
| 49 | Gran☆Ciel | "TSUNAGU" | Yakusoku (Type-A) 4 | have logics you have not yet appreciated. |
| 50 | SHE'S | "Alchemist" | Shepherd | A 2:15 pop loop without key-modulations or a demarcated bridge |
| 51 | Regal Lily | "管制塔の退屈" | where? 5 | has externalized these elements of transition from within each song out into the flow of them. |
| 52 | yumegiwa last girl | "Light" | single | Your dreams do not converge on a single perfect yearning. |
| 53 | Awkmiu | "color" | single | Your lunch is not a betrayal of your breakfast, |
| 54 | miwa | "未送信" | ハルノオト 4 | the unshared ingredients do not resent each other. |
| 55 | angela | "今でも..." | single | The goal of curiosity is not an immersion in entropy |
| 56 | 楠木 ともり | "presence" | PRESENCE | but a meta-cognition of order |
| 57 | Straightener | "246" | single | such that arbitrary individual rules can be generalized into universal truths. |
| 58 | Chilli Beans. | "you n me" | single | The problem with most categorical imperatives is the idea |
| 59 | cinder-ella | "downno" | single | that law is an expression of will, |
| 60 | Regal Lily | "キラーチューン" | where? 5 | rather than a discovery of common purpose. |
| 61 | Berlue | "Existential" | single | Our societies are not defined by their reductive anthems, |
| 62 | Juliana Madrid | "Trackstar" | Trackstar +2 | but by the depth of their cacophonous soundscapes, |
| 63 | Beth Crowley | "The Worst Betrayal" | The Worst Betrayal 5 | by the layers of regret and redemption they compress into swift substrates, |
| 64 | Taylor Swift | "Hits Different" | Midnights | by the way a word that has been beaten free of meaning can now be used for something new. |
| 65 | Louise Post | "What About" | single | The 70th love song is finally about love, nothing but love, |
| 66 | Cawston | "Sara Tune In" | single | and then you're free: |
| 67 | Tarryn Lamb | "Hoor Jy My" | single | to hear other people's faith as your own latent strength, |
| 68 | Hanna Pakarinen | "Elämä on elämää" | single | to dance when anybody anywhere is dancing, |
| 69 | Silbermond | "Offenes Buch" | Offenes Buch 6 | to collect the balloons when they land again, |
| 70 | Belén Aguilera | "ILUSIÓN ÓPTICA" | single | to realize there were never anywhere near 100 of them. |
| 71 | Eva Ryjlen | "Aquelarre Eléctrico" | single | Our myths of transgression are exactly as allegorical and sigilic |
| 72 | Olimpia | "Noiz" | single | as our most conformist codifications. |
| 73 | Hugo Salazar | "Todas las mañanas" | single | Other people's banal habitualities, |
| 74 | Funambulista | "Hasta que amaneciera" | single | their borrowed clothes |
| 75 | Sugarcrush | "Los Muertos" | Bohemian Rhapsody 2 | and atavistic idolization of our juvenilia, |
| 76 | Casino Montreal | "El Manual" | single | their ponderous recapitulation of things we thought automated, |
| 77 | DVLA | "10000 Soles" | single | the way they stop exactly when we're trying to hurry: |
| 78 | levitants | "Oeste" | single | these are strings that attach to points on the surfaces of our hearts |
| 79 | Mustat Ruusut | "Siivet" | single | and allow us to convert linear inertia into emotional compensation. |
| 80 | Nieteenstaande | "Genoeg Vir My" | single | Sometimes it is enough for you to know the things people used to believe |
| 81 | Francois van Coke | "Almal Baklei" | single | in order to empathize with what they now resist or fear. |
| 82 | Wstdyth | "Greased Lightning" | single | Every circle has its characteristic dysfunctions: |
| 83 | Kamiyada+ | "Dead Rockstar !" | single | escape velocities collapsed into crash ballistics, |
| 84 | Degreed | "Ride Along" | single | attraction as demand, |
| 85 | Manga Saint Hilare | "NPC" | Save Yourself | bulimic rejective repetition, |
| 86 | Kharishma | "Sekoloto" | single | exploitative tokenism, |
| 87 | Thabiso Lameslow | "Batamela" | single | the misunderstanding of other people's disco balls as space lasers, |
| 88 | Tsa Manyalo | "Wa nrata goba wang user?" | Wa nrata goba wang user? 5 | the fear that their disbelief will dispel your gods, |
| 89 | Sebopa_Zerosix | "Layiso_213 (stsiipa)" | single | the willingness to fight instead of any of infinite other responses, |
| 90 | Razolo | "bolozwi" | single | the implicit endorsement of compellingly delivered philosophies you have not actually considered, |
| 91 | Mashonisa | "Kade Ngiqholosha" | Uguga Nembewu | the conflation of loyalty and ignorance. |
| 92 | Imacsoul | "Ngithwele" | single | Of all of these we begin innocent, |
| 93 | Naima Kay | "Uyisithandwa Sami" | Uyisithandwa Sami +1 | and then are seduced |
| 94 | Nomfundo Moh | "Moya Wami" | Ugcobo | by rewards we are also wrong to expect. |
| 95 | Darksidevinyl | "Forever" | Forever +1 | Strangers will come and learn to sing our songs, |
| 96 | Claudia León | "Shangalia" | single | but our songs were already not always going to sound like that, |
| 97 | Kimosabe | "Air Miles" | Faded/Jaded | and now they will have a better chance at triumphant evolution than capitulated atrophy. |
| 98 | Bell X1 | "Something Electric" | Merciful Hour | Our emigrations are justified by transient famine, |
| 99 | Volunteer | "Lost With You" | single | but motivated by a restlessness that was there under the hunger all along. |
| 100 | Sepha. | "still I give my hands" | you're here | We fall in love, and the impact is always a jolt of self-doubt: |
| 101 | Undertheskin | "Freezing Lights" | single | if there are other ways, so countless, must not ours surely be wrong? |
| 102 | Vlimmer | "Idealfatal" | single | If other people are beautiful, or tragic, |
| 103 | Cowboy Junkies | "Shadows 2" | Shadows 2 +2 | haven't we lived too mundanely that we are not beautiful or tragic in those exact ways? |
| 104 | Gyllene Tider | "Dagar att dansa" | Dagar att dansa +1 | Is it too late to choose better nostalgia, |
| 105 | Kurt Baker | "Anchors Up" | Anchors Up +1 | where by "better" we mean anything we haven't already heard a thousand times? |
| 106 | Tenhi | "Elokuun linnut" | single | We compare the things that have made us sad |
| 107 | Mørk Byrde | "Hvitserk Lothbrok" | single | with the things that seem to have made other people happy, |
| 108 | Bakahira | "Garden of Renewal" | single | and this is how a place of adorned assembly |
| 109 | Uttern | "Diana" | Mediterra 3 | gets miscategorized as a portal into lifelessness. |
| 110 | Daridel | "Ash and Blood" | Of This Blood | Reenacted rituals |
| 111 | Secret Archives of the Vatican | "Skjaldmær" | Midgard 4 | and gargoyles not quite visible from below |
| 112 | Aleksi Perälä | "FI3AC2391010" | GAIA 7 | form a cellular architecture for cosmologies of every scale: |
| 113 | JeGong | "An Oval and a Star" | An Oval and a Star +3 | the ones written in earth to describe the celestial, |
| 114 | Cruel Diagonals | "Vestigial Mythology" | single | the ones evoked in breath to honor the stilled, |
| 115 | Aphir | "La Maison-dieu" | The Halo Is Shapeless | the ones that meticulously scalpel redemption free of guilt, |
| 116 | Lyra Pramuk | "Quanta" | single | the ones so temporal that they have no words for time. |
| 117 | Kuggur | "Aurinko ja kuu" | single | Some of the places you have not been, you will have to invent: |
| 118 | Maud The Moth | "Jardincito De Rosa Y Tierra" | Bordando El Manto Terrestre | small spaces of grief and nurture, |
| 119 | Sutekh Hexen | "Fractal: Void" | single | tiny vortices of furious resolution, |
| 120 | Xasthur | "A Future To Fear II" | single | a place where you can meet with those who may have betrayed you, |
| 121 | Phyllomedusa | "I Nourish and Extinguish" | Evading the Cauldron (One Fret Ov Death) | a pond deep enough to conceal beasts. |
| 122 | Emma Hewitt | "EVERLASTING" | EVERLASTING +1 | All of these will be transformed by the arrival of others, and whether you yourself stay or go |
| 123 | Demi Lovato | "Cool for the Summer - Rock Version" | Cool for the Summer 2 | is not just a measurement of your diligence. |
| 124 | The Animal In Me | "Chemical" | single | Some of the things you make are gifts. |
| 125 | Our Last Night | "Chemical" | single | Some of the gifts you give are alchemies of burdens. |
| 126 | First to Eleven | "Every Breath You Take" | single | Our homes are not circumscribed by what we control, |
| 127 | Juliana Hatfield | "Don't Bring Me Down" | single | they are implied by what we embrace. |
| 128 | Tegan and Sara | "Girls Talk" | single | We pull the gargoyles down off the collaborationists' churches, |
| 129 | CLIFFDIVER | "Oh Bondage, Up Yours! (feat. Stephen Egerton of Descendents)" | single | clean out the downspouts and give them sharp ears and wireless sensors, and reattach them with new bolts. |
| 130 | The Dandy Warhols | "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" | The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald +3 | In the future everybody will be famous for covering one song that feels like it's 15 minutes long, |
| 131 | SOM | "Personal Jesus" | Faith 4 | The gargoyles can now see forever, and all their new songs are about what it was like to have lived briefly among us. |
| 132 | Silverhex | "Don't You Want Me" | Don't You Want Me +2 | But then our songs, too, are about living briefly among us. They look down, we look up. Neither song ends like this. Not yet. |