1 |
Madder Mortem |
"Towers" |
single |
An American band might hesitate, even in 2023, to cast the bringing down of towers as heroic, |
2 |
Hellgroove |
"Horizon On Hold" |
single |
but Madder Mortem are Norwegian, and anyway, if we had to retire every metaphor |
3 |
Amaranthe |
"Outer Dimensions" |
Outer Dimensions +2 |
that ever had a tragic real-world referent |
4 |
Everdawn |
"Century Black" |
single |
we would be wordless, and no safer or happier. |
5 |
Beyond God |
"A Siren's Cry" |
single |
Pain cannot be allowed to merely accumulate, |
6 |
Phoenix Lake |
"Fractured Wings" |
single |
even when it cannot be forgotten. |
7 |
Kobra Paige |
"Under One Sun" |
single |
The total amount of pain is not reduced by the allocation of blame |
8 |
Septarian |
"Gravity" |
single |
or the application of vengeance, |
9 |
Therion |
"Ayahuasca" |
Ayahuasca +2 |
and the first transformative step of becoming human is learning to consider perspectives beyond your own. |
10 |
Veil of Mist |
"Indelible" |
Another End Is Possible |
Of course this is the implicit challenge of every new song, |
11 |
CELESTE |
"Plisse les yeux jusqu'au sang" |
Epilogue(s) 3 |
and every new day, |
12 |
Hiraes |
"Through The Storm" |
single |
whether they noisily embrace or confront the past or not. |
13 |
Ihsahn |
"PILGRIMAGE TO OBLIVION" |
PILGRIMAGE TO OBLIVION +1 |
How do we continue our own purposeful actions |
14 |
Helfró |
"Traðkandi Blómin í Eigin Hjartagarði" |
Traðkandi Blómin í Eigin Hjartagarði +2 |
when the casualties of purpose surround us? |
15 |
King |
"Mountains Of Ice" |
Fury and Death |
How do we understand the derivation of vividly apparent evil from mundane humanity |
16 |
Malist |
"Ode to the Night" |
single |
without lapsing into a self-defeating taxonomy of otherness? |
17 |
DGM |
"The Calling" |
Life |
We are, individually, capable of assigning internal rationalization to stark insanities: |
18 |
Myrath |
"Child of Prophecy" |
Child of Prophecy +2 |
shooting people at a music festival in the name of freedom, |
19 |
Astral Experience |
"Volver a Empezar" |
Espiral, Pt.2 4 |
dropping bombs on children in hospitals in the name of safety, |
20 |
Eternal Storm |
"A Dim Illusion" |
single |
constructing obdurately dehumanizing processes in the name of equity. |
21 |
Draconicon |
"Slumber Paralysis" |
Pestilence |
But we are also, collectively, capable not just of slow comprehension, |
22 |
Master |
"Walk in the Footsteps of Doom" |
single |
but of evolution. |
23 |
Eldritch |
"Handful Of Sand" |
Innervoid |
We often only think we mean, when we say "change our minds", that we choose a different answer |
24 |
Abäk |
"Balam" |
single |
from among a set that already exists, |
25 |
Crecended |
"Victory" |
Wasting Away |
but this is circular: every new belief exists once it is believed, |
26 |
Fifth Dawn |
"The Day Brings" |
The Day Brings +3 |
but maybe only just in time. |
27 |
Skarlett Riot |
"Hold Tight" |
single |
We change our minds by accepting incompletion as a premise, |
28 |
Dogma |
"Pleasure From Pain" |
Dogma |
by thinking of the things we already know as pieces of a new structure we don't, |
29 |
Lacey Sturm |
"Are You Listening" |
Kenotic Metanoia |
or sometimes, at best, as rubble offering us the meditative labor of clearance. |
30 |
Taylor Acorn |
"Basement" |
single |
The mental exercise of considering the unfamiliar |
31 |
Charlotte Sands |
"pity" |
pity +2 |
is morally aerobic |
32 |
Beren Olivia |
"Drown It In Grey" |
single |
or teleologically plyometric |
33 |
Definitely Maybe |
"One More Night" |
single |
or some new revelatory combination of breathtaking and perspective-straining. |
34 |
Rakky Ripper |
"ROTTEN" |
single |
The willingness to listen to your supposed enemy's story, |
35 |
Snow Strippers |
"Just Your Doll" |
single |
the courage to expose yourself to the risk of catastrophic empathy, |
36 |
Thy Slaughter |
"Lost Everything" |
Lost Everything / Reign 2 |
the strength to tear yourself out of a dry, outgrown skin |
37 |
Divorce |
"Sex & The Millennium Bridge" |
Heady Metal 6 |
even when you don't know what color will be revealed: |
38 |
VUKOVI |
"MERCY KILL" |
MERCY KILL +1 |
these are the distant possibilities towards which we micronavigate |
39 |
DARLAH |
"Willow Tree" |
Human Nature 5 |
when we allow ourselves to hear a song we do not know, |
40 |
Cho Tokimeki Sendenbu |
"Sora" |
Sora +1 |
not yet sanitized by the application of previous assumptions |
41 |
CANDY GO!GO! |
"Anymore" |
IDOROCK-legacy- |
to guarantee a regulatory threshold of unincorporated ideas |
42 |
TRiDENT |
"KICKASS" |
Dream Up 5 |
like a maximum number of insect thoraxes per kilogram of okra. |
43 |
zanka |
"Akatokiyami" |
Time 5 |
This is what you open your heart towards |
44 |
Ado |
"unravel" |
single |
when you accept that it is an active organ, |
45 |
Shiina Natsukawa |
"メイクストロボノイズ !!!" |
ケーブルサラダ |
not a hermetic terrarium predicated on stasis. |
46 |
peanut butters |
"スイカP" |
peanut butters II |
We are not enemies, |
47 |
milkyway |
"I want to be able to do it in Amemura" |
Death is calling us 2 |
we are commensurate fugitives from what we used to think we knew, |
48 |
ReoNa |
"原作者" |
R.I.P.(Special Edition) |
all in flight from the same ignorance |
49 |
ACE COLLECTION |
"Driving My Life" |
single |
towards the same peace. |
50 |
Cassidy Paris |
"Walking On Fire" |
single |
We are innumerable centers of infinitesimal microgravity, |
51 |
Paradise Walk |
"Fix Your Heart" |
single |
networks of chaotically intertwined barycentricity, |
52 |
10eighty6 |
"Closer" |
single |
choruses of every noise at once, |
53 |
Ryno Velvet |
"Moet Jou Hê" |
single |
and yes, your next innocent noise may helplessly remind somebody else of unrestorable loss, |
54 |
The Ultimate Heroes |
"Raining in Manila" |
single |
but this is a gift we give each other, |
55 |
123 Pikit! |
"K4ND1L4" |
single |
exemplary persistence |
56 |
Bad Suns |
"Lunar Shadows" |
Infinite Joy 6 |
and mutually complementary headlong defiance. |
57 |
Modern English |
"Crazy Lovers" |
Crazy Lovers +1 |
We can't stop the world. We can't not melt. |
58 |
Lauran Hibberd |
"mary" |
single |
We can't not flow crazily together. |
59 |
Mo Troper |
"Citgo Sign" |
Troper Sings Brion |
We need to hear our own thoughts in other people's throats, |
60 |
Teens in Trouble |
"Winter In The Trap" |
Teens In Trouble / Desert Mambas 4 |
every song a split EP of dreams voice and unvoiced, |
61 |
worlds greatest dad |
"Concrete (A Love Song)" |
Concrete (A Love Song) +1 |
stolid infrastructure and diaphanous escape, |
62 |
Luukas Oja |
"Sanomatta selvää" |
single |
subsistent nutrience and viridian luminosity. |
63 |
Wanitwa Mos |
"Makhelwane (feat. Casswell P)" |
Makhelwane 2 |
We have to be able to step outside of our pain |
64 |
Son of Africa |
"Ubuhle bendalo" |
single |
and regard it, fondly, |
65 |
Gadla Nxumalo |
"Mamgwaba" |
Amatemu Alombhemu |
in the crumpled hollowness to which it naturally reverts without our bodies to give it shape. |
66 |
Ziyangegugu |
"Babehlala bekuzonda" |
single |
Hold it up by the shoulders, |
67 |
Gqibu |
"Usukhethe abancono" |
single |
at the height of your shoulders. |
68 |
Ezrah |
"Gae Bare Emetse" |
Gae Bare Emetse |
Listen to these songs at the altitude of tongues. |
69 |
uMjabulisi |
"Ngizalwekabusha" |
Umshini wamahits |
We hurt, but that is not who we are, |
70 |
Pleasure Tsa Manyalo |
"Belebele Tsieng" |
single |
and thus not what we need to impose on others in order to be free of it. |
71 |
Mahlomola |
"Tshireletso" |
Tshireletso +2 |
That's what these wedding songs are telling us, of course -- |
72 |
Harpya |
"EHLİLEŞMEZ" |
single |
what all of these songs are telling us, maybe the ones that speak to us in words we don't know yet |
73 |
Janset |
"Laser Spot" |
R.A.W 3 |
even more than the ones that try to reason with us in accents we don't expect: |
74 |
Werd (SOS) |
"Un-United Kingdom" |
But Doctor, I Am Pagliacci |
peace comes only by undrawing the borders from within. |
75 |
Pollen |
"Hive Mind" |
Uncanny Valley |
This is the same emotional truth when you reach out a hand to a single other human you think you know, |
76 |
Olumbe Falú |
"The Albatross" |
single |
or an unseen multitude you can barely integrate as individuals. |
77 |
The Genotype |
"Oneiromancer" |
single |
Towers will be put up and pulled down |
78 |
DEATH'S-HEAD AND THE SPACE ALLUSION |
"Graceless Under Pressure" |
Luc-II-Farul |
according to constantly changing needs. |
79 |
Vaudlow |
"Embrace" |
single |
We're making up songs about things that we've all heard before, like romance and engage and divorce, |
80 |
Sunlight Ascending |
"Finding Your Way Back" |
single |
because each time we recreate the same shapes we discover a new flaw |
81 |
Deep Red |
"Soft Light" |
How This Ends / Soft Light 2 |
that could become a new contour |
82 |
HEALTH |
"UNLOVED" |
UNLOVED 5 |
that could lead us to a different geometry |
83 |
Melt Motif |
"The Night Before" |
single |
and a different way to think about how things end |
84 |
Everything Everything |
"The Mad Stone" |
The Mad Stone +1 |
or don't. |
85 |
vōx |
"Wild Animal" |
Wild Animal +1 |
We stand apart, some chasmic width wider than skin. |
86 |
Atrium Carceri |
"Pathway to Nothing" |
Forgotten Gods |
The empty space between us contains every way we can possibly cross. |
87 |
Vince Clarke |
"Cathedral" |
Songs of Silence |
Towers will be assembled in reverent ceremony, |
88 |
LLUVA |
"Arrebol" |
single |
or dissolved in roiling grace. |
89 |
Anna Meredith |
"Tull" |
single |
Every human thing you fear is somebody's earnest labor of yearning, |
90 |
Donovan Woods |
"I'm Around (Both Sides)" |
I'm Around (Both Sides) +1 |
however misguided in its expression but containing every possible solution in its regrets. |
91 |
Sunrise Skater Kids |
"Face Down - Japanese Version" |
Emotaku |
So look up. We spin, but not entirely in place. |
92 |
Dolly Parton |
"Stairway To Heaven" |
Rockstar |
We careen back and forth across the same narrowly ancient stones, but end up in the same place along only some of the axes. Along others, we move. |