| 2023-03-17 | 17 | Majesty | "Freedom Child" | single | Learning to drown this out is both a betrayal of our future |
| 2023-03-17 | 18 | Last in Line | "House Party at the End of the World" | House Party At The End Of The World 3 | and a basic survival skill. |
| 2023-03-17 | 19 | Revolution Saints | "Crime of the Century" | single | Which century would we like to live in? |
| 2023-03-17 | 20 | Redemption | "The Emotional Depiction of Light" | I Am the Storm | The ones made of ancient numbers or the one that starts today? |
| 2023-03-17 | 21 | Einar Solberg | "A Beautiful Life" | A Beautiful Life +1 | Like a lot of good questions, it's not good as a result of how we choose to answer it. |
| 2023-03-17 | 22 | Narnia | "Thief" | Ghost Town | It's good because it reminds us that portals between worlds are artifacts of perspective. |
| 2023-03-17 | 23 | Kamelot | "The Great Divide" | The Awakening | All the universes we can imagine are equally real. |
| 2023-03-17 | 24 | Suotana | "The Ancient" | Ounas I | We create. |
| 2023-03-17 | 25 | Heathen Foray | "Oathbreaker" | Oathbreaker +2 | We forget in order to make space to recreate. |
| 2023-03-17 | 26 | Prevail in Darkness | "All That Avails Is Flight" | single | We lie about names because that's the only way they exist, |
| 2023-03-17 | 27 | Atlases | "Singulars" | single | maybe the only way we exist. |
| 2023-03-17 | 28 | Foretoken | "A Tyrant Rises as Titans Fall" | Triumphs | We invent nemeses because who else is going to? |
| 2023-03-17 | 29 | Reino de Hades | "Árido Edén" | single | We crawled out of the sea with the water right behind us. |
| 2023-03-17 | 30 | Valley of Chrome | "Luha Ng Kaaway" | single | We comfort our enemies with release |
| 2023-03-17 | 31 | Cisza | "Jaki piękny świat" | Jaki piękny świat +3 | when they only asked to remain. |
| 2023-03-17 | 32 | Hyrgal | "Phalanges Assassines" | single | Enter this into the minutes of the guild of the end: |
| 2023-03-17 | 33 | Óreiða | "The Eternal" | single | we discarded our gifts as if they would be perpetually regiven, |
| 2023-03-17 | 34 | Heretoir | "Anima" | single | and then begrudged each other's surreptitious judgment. |
| 2023-03-17 | 35 | Downfall Of Gaia | "The Whir of Flies" | Silhouettes of Disgust | Little wonder that all our best plagues have followed us into the whir of files. |
| 2023-03-17 | 36 | Dødheimsgard | "Abyss Perihelion Transit" | single | Our origin and our doom are magnetic shards |
| 2023-03-17 | 37 | Stömb | "The Realm of Delirium" | Massive Disturbed Meta Art | pinched on either side of a thrumming membrane that might be our sanity, |
| 2023-03-17 | 38 | Vintersea | "At the Gloaming Void" | single | which is as much of why any movement of either one seems like inexplicable magic |
| 2023-03-17 | 39 | Smoulder | "The Talisman and the Blade" | single | as it is of why our journey from one to the other sometimes seems to cover no actual distance. |
| 2023-03-17 | 40 | Metalite | "Take My Hand" | Take My Hand +1 | The power of the subtle knife is not that it subverts theocracies, |
| 2023-03-17 | 41 | Phantom Elite | "Daydark" | Blue Blood | it's that it reminds us to offer mutual transformation. |
| 2023-03-17 | 42 | The Dark Side of the Moon | "The Gates of Time" | The Gates of Time +3 | The theocracies will inevitably subvert themselves. |
| 2023-03-17 | 43 | Asylum Pyre | "There, I Could Die" | single | The gods have other problems. |
| 2023-03-17 | 44 | Silent Utopia | "My Human Nature" | single | It's us who need our belief, |
| 2023-03-17 | 45 | Transworld Identity | "I'm Such a Liar" | Seven Worlds | us who need names so badly that we are willing to burn them as fast as we sign, |
| 2023-03-17 | 46 | Elysion | "Blink Of An Eye" | Bring Out Your Dead | inhaling each moment so we can hope to remember how it smelled |
| 2023-03-17 | 47 | Phantom Divine | "Babylon" | single | after we forget how to tell any story in which it wasn't already foregone. |
| 2023-03-17 | 48 | Eternal Frequency | "Running from Ghosts" | single | You can't prevent the impossible with diligence. |
| 2023-03-17 | 52 | Angel Wolf-Black | "Haunted" | single | as your intolerant ghosts. |
| 2023-03-17 | 53 | Liv Kristine | "In Your Blue Eyes" | single | The things you love, you don't hurl to be returned in the mouths of dogs |
| 2023-03-17 | 54 | ARLEQUIN | "Tebanashite tsukamu zero" | single | or commission to be biographied by the heartless. |
| 2023-03-17 | 104 | Killus | "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! - ABBA Version" | single | Prayer is useless, but grandly knowing uselessness is also kind of the foundation of all art, |
| 2023-03-10 | 1 | Tulip | "Assassins" | single | There's operatic metal and symphonic metal and Tulip have an ex-opera-singer and frequent orchestral flourishes, but in context those things basically just keep this tense, pounding song out of metalcore territory. |
| 2023-03-10 | 2 | Frozen Crown | "In a Moment" | Call of the North | We are living in an era of absurd and glorious abundance for metal as melodic/rhythmic maximalism. |
| 2023-03-10 | 3 | Nereids | "Fight for the Fallen" | single | Nereids have, as I write this, 17 monthly listeners on Spotify. |
| 2023-03-10 | 4 | Mission In Black | "What Does It Take to Be Alive" | single | As best I have been able to tell, there is essentially no end of astonishingly good metal bands waiting for you if you want to go looking for them. |
| 2023-03-10 | 5 | Infinitas | "Xana" | Xana +1 | Every time I figure out some improvement in algorithmic techniques at work to help the world's collective listening self-organize |
| 2023-03-10 | 6 | Evermore | "Forevermore" | single | I point it at the most not-yet-famous metal bands I know, |
| 2023-03-10 | 7 | Sefirot | "El Encuentro" | single | and I find more. |
| 2023-03-10 | 8 | Haunted Gods | "Descending" | Haunted Gods | Frozen Crown are giants, relatively speaking: 100,000+ listeners and comfortably among the 100,000 most popular artists on Spotify worldwide. |
| 2023-03-10 | 9 | Ember Sea | "Shine (My Dying Star)" | Shine (My Dying Star) +1 | These others are fond dreams of love waiting for their turns in our sleep, |
| 2023-03-10 | 10 | Lodestar | "Polaris" | single | practicing their band-photo glower for provisional audiences of thousands |
| 2023-03-10 | 11 | Lumsk | "Det Døde Barn" | Det Døde Barn / Das Tode Kind 2 | or hundreds |
| 2023-03-10 | 12 | Frozen Crown | "Far Away" | Call of the North | or tens. |
| 2023-03-10 | 13 | Rides In ReVellion | "MORE THAN WORDS" | single | Spotify has a stated goal of helping a million creative artists make a living from their art |
| 2023-03-10 | 14 | a crowd of rebellion | "ALVA" | single | by reaching a billion fans. |
| 2023-03-10 | 15 | ALICETOPIA | "The latter part of the NIGHTMARE" | single | If we grant that a corporate mission-statement has to be memorably succinct, |
| 2023-03-10 | 16 | NEMOPHILA | "RISE" | single | then these are almost the numbers that have to be. |
| 2023-03-10 | 76 | Winger | "Proud Desperado" | single | or else other collective social-structures have to inject that missing order of fiscal magnitude from some other direction. |
| 2023-03-10 | 77 | Enter Shikari | "Bloodshot" | Bloodshot +2 | The companies that broker the current flow, like the one I work for, have inevitable incentives to think in the former terms, |
| 2023-03-10 | 78 | Daeria | "Maléfica" | single | but as the workers that do or don't comprise those companies |
| 2023-03-10 | 79 | Periphery | "Wax Wings" | Periphery V: Djent Is Not A Genre | we are still human before and after the temporary alignments of commerce. |
| 2023-03-10 | 80 | Keep Of Kalessin | "Katharsis" | single | Asking streaming to have already solved this problem, or its glass-half-empty correlate of blaming streaming for having caused it, |
| 2023-03-10 | 81 | Mork | "Tilbake Til Opprinnelsen" | Tilbake Til Opprinnelsen +1 | is a performative exercise in grudge-wielding that supports no rational scrutiny. |
| 2023-03-10 | 82 | Moongates Guardian | "II" | Incompleteness X | As of 2022 the recorded-music industry has surpassed its CD-era peak in face-value dollars, |
| 2023-03-10 | 83 | Gorod | "Chrematheism" | The Orb | and has recovered to about two-thirds of that peak in inflation-adjusted terms. |
| 2023-03-10 | 84 | Isole | "Vanity" | Anesidora | The other way of saying this is that never in human history has recorded music, as a business, been more than half again as big as it is now. |
| 2023-03-10 | 85 | Afraid of Destiny | "Anti" | single | There were not a million artists living off of their music in the goldenest of golden years of the CD boom. |
| 2023-03-10 | 86 | Reverorum ib Malacht | "Och canel och timjan och salfwa och rökelse och win och olja och semlor och hwete och boskap och får och hästar och wagnar och kroppar och menniskors själar." | Emet Amen : The dark night of the faith | Returning to that gold might get us from 17,800 to 26,700, |
| 2023-03-10 | 87 | E-An-Na | "O, romaniţa" | Alveolar | or our millionth artist from $50 to $75. |
| 2023-03-10 | 112 | Reverorum ib Malacht | ".letipaX .81" | Emet Amen : The dark night of the faith | We will do it by learning to hear their noise-floors as solid ground, |
| 2023-03-03 | 13 | lynch. | "ECLIPSE" | REBORN | I had to look up 永遠, which means "eternal". |
| 2023-03-03 | 14 | NIGAI | "replica" | single | I had to look up "Hitsujibungaku" (羊文学), which means "Sheep Literature". |
| 2023-03-03 | 15 | Ad Infinitum | "From the Ashes" | From the Ashes +3 | I had to look up the lyrics to "永遠のブルー", which means "Eternal Blue", |
| 2023-03-03 | 16 | Memoremains | "In The Dark" | single | and I don't know why they wrote "ブルー" as the borrowed English word "Blue" in phonetic katakana script |
| 2023-03-03 | 17 | Elysion | "Raid The Universe" | Raid The Universe +1 | instead of 青 in kanji, and maybe it's important. |
| 2023-03-03 | 18 | Alwaid | "Illuyanka" | Twelve Daemons | I didn't spot-translate any of "永遠のブルー" from just hearing it, |
| 2023-03-03 | 19 | Liv Kristine | "River Of Diamonds" | single | and that's normal and doesn't usually faze me, |
| 2023-03-03 | 20 | Velkhanos | "Gunpowder" | single | but it's my favorite song ever for now, |
| 2023-03-03 | 21 | Moyra | "Unleashed Spirits" | OMEN | and I keep playing it over and over and then eventually for whatever reason I have to stop, |
| 2023-03-03 | 22 | LYRRE | "Crown" | single | and I want to be able to keep singing it in my head as I walk away, |
| 2023-03-03 | 23 | Hanging Garden | "The Garden" | The Garden +2 | and so I needed to find at least some part of it I could understand without merely memorizing some new noises. |
| 2023-03-03 | 24 | Koburg | "Beauty in the Fight" | single | I recognize 愛, for love, when it's written, and it's "Ai" when you say it, so maybe I should have been able to hear |
| 2023-03-03 | 25 | Djunah | "Hallway" | Femina Furens | 愛をしてるから as "because I am in love". "Ai wo shiteru kara...". |
| 2023-03-03 | 26 | Iress | "Ricochet" | single | I would have been wrong, but not too badly wrong, if I had tried to say this idea myself, |
| 2023-03-03 | 27 | Lesath | "There is a profound sense in which we are isolated" | There is a profound sense in which we are isolated | but I know what the prepositions and infinitives mean if you put them in the right order for me. |
| 2023-03-03 | 28 | An Danzza | "Fólkvangr (Freya's Abode)" | single | So there's my line: "Because I am in love." "Ai wo shiteru kara..." |
| 2023-03-03 | 29 | GALNERYUS | "BRAVEHEARTS" | BETWEEN DREAD AND VALOR | If you walked past me this week and I seemed ethereal and lost, that's why. |
| 2023-03-03 | 30 | Grimgotts | "Until Dawn" | single | I was singing half of a line of this song to myself to hold my heart together until I could play it again, |
| 2023-03-03 | 31 | Powerwolf | "No Prayer At Midnight" | No Prayer At Midnight +2 | still, again, 今も, even now. |
| 2023-03-03 | 32 | Elvenking | "Bride of Night" | Bride of Night +2 | They have names, the three women in Hitsujibungaku, |
| 2023-03-03 | 33 | Narnia | "Hold On" | Hold On +1 | I could probably learn what they are. |
| 2023-03-03 | 34 | Omnium Gatherum | "Slasher" | single | I've been listening to them for almost 5 years, |
| 2023-03-03 | 35 | Enslaved | "Behind The Mirror" | Heimdal | and in that time they've made at least 3 of my favorite songs ever. |
| 2023-03-03 | 36 | Black & Damned | "Hyena's Call" | single | But I need their songs more than they need my love, I think. |
| 2023-03-03 | 37 | Marras | "Musta Heijastin" | single | 80,000 people in Tokyo have listened to them on Spotify in the last month. |
| 2023-03-03 | 38 | Liturgy | "Before I Knew the Truth" | single | They are witnessed. They will not be forgotten. |
| 2023-03-03 | 39 | Spirit Possession | "Orthodox Weapons" | single | Their songs are heard by people who understand them completely. |
| 2023-03-03 | 40 | Majesties | "Verdant Paths to Radiance" | Vast Reaches Unclaimed | I could walk among them as a politely tolerated intrusion, |
| 2023-03-03 | 41 | CHTHONIC | "護國山" | single | albeit one that is sometimes capable of comprehending public-transit announcement, |
| 2023-03-03 | 42 | Cradle Of Filth | "She is a Fire" | single | but love is only rarely a symmetric exchange. |
| 2023-03-03 | 43 | The 69 Eyes | "Death of Darkness" | single | Mostly it is a substance we uncontrollably exude. |
| 2023-03-03 | 44 | Deathstars | "Midnight Party" | Midnight Party +1 | It mixes with nitrogen in a layer around the surface of the world |
| 2023-03-03 | 49 | Ihsahn | "Dom Andra" | Dom Andra +1 | You could begin half your sentences with "Because I am in love", |
| 2023-03-03 | 50 | Haken | "Sempiternal Beings" | Fauna | and maybe in doing so identify the other half that would be better unsaid. |
| 2023-03-03 | 56 | Kirkkovene | "Se on kuin yö" | single | I'm in love with a French melodic metal band I thought were Belgian, |
| 2023-03-03 | 115 | UMC | "Flowers" | Flowers +1 | and then drive home blasting covers we know would infuriate them. |
| 2023-02-24 | 57 | LOVEBITES | "We Are The Resurrection" | JUDGEMENT DAY | I asked ChatGPT to describe this LOVEBITES song, |
| 2023-02-24 | 58 | BABYMETAL | "Light and Darkness" | Light and Darkness +3 | which of course it doesn't know about because it didn't exist |
| 2023-02-24 | 59 | ILLUMISHADE | "Hymn" | Hymn +1 | when ChatGPT's nihilistic world ended, |
| 2023-02-24 | 60 | Soulspell | "Dead Silence" | single | and it did so with magnificently banal obliviousness, |
| 2023-02-24 | 61 | Xeria | "Una Lágrima Más" | single | enthusing over musical features it plausibly could have had |
| 2023-02-24 | 62 | Leah | "Before This War Is Over" | single | but doesn't, |
| 2023-02-24 | 63 | Floor Jansen | "Daydream" | Daydream +2 | and calling out the anthemic repetition of the song's title in its chorus, |
| 2023-02-24 | 64 | Angel Wolf-Black | "Energize Me" | single | which is not a thing. |
| 2023-02-24 | 65 | Burning Witches | "The Dark Tower" | single | The failure to avoid making up clichéd bullshit is a mordant indictment of artificial "intelligence", |
| 2023-02-24 | 66 | Enemy of Reality | "Downfall" | Where Truth May Lie | but an interpretive ballet of testimony |
| 2023-02-24 | 67 | Against Myself | "Providence" | single | to how immanently music is embedded in our collective mimesis. |
| 2023-02-24 | 68 | Transworld Identity | "Play & Pretend" | single | We built a monster we shouldn't have built, |
| 2023-02-24 | 69 | Exilia | "Supernova" | single | and maybe don't exactly know how to take apart again, |
| 2023-02-24 | 70 | Manigance | "Forgotten Survivor" | The Shadows Ball | but it sometimes looks fairly hot for a few moments while it's dancing, |
| 2023-02-24 | 71 | Magnus Karlsson’s Free Fall | "Far from Home" | single | because so do we and we don't know how to make a world where things don't. |
| 2023-02-24 | 72 | Excalion | "Resolution" | single | This is why deliberate dystopia is inevitably plaintive and self-defeating: |
| 2023-02-24 | 73 | Majesty | "Back To Attack" | single | you can't warn people against monstrosity without depicting monsters monstrously, |
| 2023-02-24 | 74 | Firewind | "Destiny Is Calling" | single | but nobody needs to be warned against monsters |
| 2023-02-24 | 75 | Redemption | "Remember the Dawn" | Remember the Dawn +2 | emerging out of tranquil darkness into the edges of our gruesomely flicking firelight. |
| 2023-02-24 | 76 | Time Primer | "Aligning Hearts" | Artefact | What we need to be warned against, |
| 2023-02-24 | 77 | Coridian | "Coexist" | single | in constantly novel ways so that we pay attention, |
| 2023-02-24 | 78 | E-An-Na | "Fântânile de la Capătul Lumii" | single | is gradually assuming those monsters' internal structure and moral intent ourselves |
| 2023-02-24 | 79 | Heidevolk | "Raidho" | Wederkeer | while we sit too-comfortably too close to that fire. |
| 2023-02-24 | 87 | Dead Crown | "Neiges éternelles" | midgard 5 | Everything we try to say |
| 2023-02-24 | 88 | Insomnium | "1696" | Anno 1696 | always risked trivial solubility in the imagined primordial, |
| 2023-02-24 | 89 | Mors Subita | "Regenerate" | Regenerate +1 | no matter how startling it is to see that nominal ooze tackily reified. |
| 2023-02-24 | 90 | Kalmah | "Haunted by Guilt" | single | Shelley realized we would make our successors, |
| 2023-02-24 | 91 | Downfall Of Gaia | "Existence of Awe" | single | ineptly at first, |
| 2023-02-24 | 92 | Autrest | "December Dusk" | Follow the Cold Path | and Orwell realized we would become anonymous in omnisurveillance |
| 2023-02-24 | 93 | Rheia | "Dirt-Born" | single | before we became indelible in omniscience, |
| 2023-02-24 | 94 | Botanist | "Angel's Trumpet" | single | but neither were able to situate these inevitabilities within redemption. |
| 2023-02-24 | 95 | Mustan Kuun Lapset | "Muistoa kunnioittaen" | single | This is how you write a fight song -- |
| 2023-02-17 | 4 | Sirgaus | "Monti Pallidi" | L'Anguana e la Gemma del Mare Ancestrale | and magic is our word for everything else. |
| 2023-02-17 | 5 | Setanera | "Losing Control" | Equilibrium | The cold that enwraps you is not polished steel, |
| 2023-02-17 | 6 | Katra | "Ever After" | single | it's fear, but at least you were right about the polished part. |
| 2023-02-17 | 7 | Aqvilea | "Activm" | single | If you are journeying into danger, what you want is not a tensile exoskeleton, |
| 2023-02-17 | 8 | Enchantya | "All Down in Flames" | single | it's a bathysphere and a retrieval ship. |
| 2023-02-17 | 9 | Synthwailer | "Dream Pantheon" | single | In the movie version, the bathysphere is a motive transparency, |
| 2023-02-17 | 10 | Beyond God | "Frostbite" | single | not a mute vault on a wishful tether, |
| 2023-02-17 | 11 | Ignea | "Nomad's Luck" | single | and this is what our expeditionary technology aspires to: |
| 2023-02-17 | 12 | Moyra | "Bloody Hands" | single | safe spaces for self-propelled regard. |
| 2023-02-17 | 13 | ODC | "Lost in a Circle" | single | In the movie version, |
| 2023-02-17 | 14 | Setanera | "The Promise" | Equilibrium | armor is accentuation for musculature |
| 2023-02-17 | 15 | Smackbound | "Change" | single | or vulnerability, |
| 2023-02-17 | 16 | Cyan Kicks | "Into You" | Into You +1 | and better when it's the latter, |
| 2023-02-17 | 17 | Bullet to the Heart | "Graveyard Lovers" | single | and this is also what our reticence should aspire to: |
| 2023-02-17 | 18 | Blind Hex | "Dystopia" | single | wild attraction whenever our gravity is undirected, |
| 2023-02-17 | 19 | Sirgaus | "Sotto una Luna Crescente" | L'Anguana e la Gemma del Mare Ancestrale | so at least there's some weak force holding us together. |
| 2023-02-17 | 20 | Faun | "Ylfa Spere" | single | This is why, although our fantasies make take innumerable personal forms, |
| 2023-02-17 | 22 | Frozen Crown | "Fire in the Sky" | single | glistening in either luminous or incandescent light. |
| 2023-02-17 | 23 | Kardinal Sin | "They Crashed In The Storm" | They Crashed In The Storm +1 | But it's also why the tantalizing technical challenge of synthesizing ideals |
| 2023-02-17 | 24 | Dark The Suns | "Phoenix" | single | is inherently self-negating: |
| 2023-02-17 | 25 | Creye | "How Far" | III: Weightless | the product manager knows that no individual hero is ever maximally heroic, |
| 2023-02-17 | 26 | First Signal | "Unbreakable" | Face Your Fears | and thus that we can train an arbitrarily more beautiful goddess than any mortal. |
| 2023-02-17 | 27 | Seventh Crystal | "Million Times" | single | Technology recapitulates teleology, |
| 2023-02-17 | 28 | Steel Rhino | "Blades" | single | but without the purpose. |
| 2023-02-17 | 29 | Robin McAuley | "When the Time Has Come" | Alive | Our collective idols are perfected by our devotion, |
| 2023-02-17 | 30 | L.A. Guns | "Rewind" | single | not trained on their own features. |
| 2023-02-17 | 31 | Black Nazareth | "True Self" | single | The natural equilibrium of art is omnipresence, |
| 2023-02-17 | 32 | Periphery | "Atropos" | Atropos +2 | despite centuries of apparent counter-precedence |
| 2023-02-17 | 33 | Kamelot | "Opus of the Night (Ghost Requiem) (feat. Tina Guo)" | Opus of the Night (Ghost Requiem) 2 | imposed as much by the media's capacitances as their resistances. |
| 2023-02-17 | 34 | Haken | "Lovebite" | Lovebite +3 | What Warhol welcomed was not the imminent dissolution of hierarchical celebrity, |
| 2023-02-17 | 35 | Aragon | "The Calm Before The Storm" | single | but the serene cognizance that the unfamous were never any more deserving of obscurity |
| 2023-02-17 | 36 | Creye | "In the Shadows" | III: Weightless | than the famous were of worship. |
| 2023-02-17 | 37 | FRUITPOCHETTE | "MIRAI -I don't give a damn-" | MIRAI -I don't give a damn- +1 | In the future, the distances between us are subject to instantaneous collapse. |
| 2023-02-17 | 38 | ALICETOPIA | "Butterfly Mirage" | single | Andy, for an artist with a love for the numerable, |
| 2023-02-17 | 39 | Quubi | "The voice you saved" | Take me now 3 | was a few orders of magnitude off with his math. |
| 2023-02-17 | 40 | FaM | "Evergreen" | single | In the equitable future, assuming life-expectancy and world population remain implausibly in roughly current proportion, |
| 2023-02-17 | 41 | GRATIA-ALA | "familiar" | single | we may each be world-famous for about half a second. |
| 2023-02-17 | 112 | Andromida | "Paradox" | single | as a charged substrate through which we throw off sparks; |
| 2023-02-17 | 113 | CHILD | "Hate Well Spent" | Meditations In Filth | as a crisis blast we can definitionally survive; |
| 2023-02-17 | 114 | Lana Del Rabies | "Prayers of Consequence" | single | as an infinity coiled up into our grasp. |
| 2023-02-17 | 115 | Full Of Hell | "Tunnels to God" | Tunnels to God +1 | Our notional elysia were always homogenous and thus mundane, |
| 2023-02-17 | 116 | Usnea | "From Soot and Pyre" | single | and LLM AIs are new episodes of the same uncancellable franchise. |
| 2023-02-17 | 117 | WOE BATHER | "OH ACHLYS PLEASE LOVE ME ONCE MORE II" | OH ACHLYS PLEASE LOVE ME ONCE MORE | Are we sad? Are we lonely? |
| 2023-02-17 | 119 | Chez Kane | "Mary on a Cross" | single | Andy, did you hear about this one? |
| 2023-02-10 | 1 | Delain | "Hideaway Paradise" | Dark Waters | This is a golden era for melodic metal albums, |
| 2023-02-10 | 2 | Elyose | "Ils t'ont dit" | Déviante | and by "era" I mean "three weeks": Dark Sarah; Xandria and REXORIA; |
| 2023-02-10 | 3 | Infinite & Divine | "Ashes to Ashes" | Ascendancy | Delain, Elyose and Infinite & Divine. |
| 2023-02-10 | 4 | Ankor | "Oblivion" | Oblivion +1 | Bright swords, gothic gradients, regal serifs. |
| 2023-02-10 | 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. |
| 2023-02-10 | 6 | Elysion | "Crossing Over" | single | This is how it is with everything, now: |
| 2023-02-10 | 7 | Elyose | "De la Lune à la Terre" | Déviante | mastered beyond all historical precedent, |
| 2023-02-10 | 8 | Forever We Roam | "A Crash Course in the Laws of Gravity" | single | but then also infinite; |
| 2023-02-10 | 9 | Infinite & Divine | "Remedy" | Ascendancy | meticulously assembled, |
| 2023-02-10 | 10 | Fraser Edwards | "My Great Escape" | single | but then also casually plundered; |
| 2023-02-10 | 12 | IKINÄ | "Riivaaja" | single | and afraid of nothing. |
| 2023-02-10 | 13 | Locus Animæ | "Magia D'Inchiostro" | single | I've been listening to metal like this since there wasn't any metal like this, |
| 2023-02-10 | 14 | Djunah | "Phaethon" | single | and every week its unmanageable extents seems to exponentiate: |
| 2023-02-10 | 15 | Shores Of Null | "My Darkest Years" | My Darkest Years +2 | airy transcendence and grim catharses, |
| 2023-02-10 | 16 | Vvilderness | "Orm's Odyssey" | Path | cryptic lexicons and stormbringers, |
| 2023-02-10 | 17 | Wounds of Recollection | "Pale Blue Light" | Warm Glow of the End of Everything | the void's regard. |
| 2023-02-10 | 18 | Entropia | "Final" | single | You could forget everything you think you know about the ending world |
| 2023-02-10 | 19 | Moonthoth | "MARtwe TWe żywOTA" | Uroczysko | and redestroy it from scratch starting every Friday. |
| 2023-02-10 | 20 | Old Forest | "Faust Recants (Satan Cometh)" | single | Satan no longer arrives with a demon host |
| 2023-02-10 | 21 | Doomas | "Cult Yog-Sothoth" | R´LYEH | at an epochal moment of cosmic prolapse, |
| 2023-02-10 | 23 | Narnia | "Rebel" | single | install an app on our phones that singes us with notifications every 45 seconds. |
| 2023-02-10 | 24 | Avaland | "Betrayers" | single | There is a new song. |
| 2023-02-10 | 25 | Wig Wam | "Uppercut Shazam" | Out of the Dark | There is another new song. |
| 2023-02-10 | 26 | Revolution Saints | "Talking Like Strangers" | single | The next one is a pastiche of ideas that were dubious when they were Journey songs, |
| 2023-02-10 | 27 | Khymera | "Don't Wait for Love" | Hold Your Ground | but somehow become transformed to marvel by double kick-drums. |
| 2023-02-10 | 28 | Klone | "Elusive" | Meanwhile | The next one is evasive, reticent, |
| 2023-02-10 | 29 | Osada Vida | "Make Us Proud" | single | and we follow it into countries whose silhouettes we would never recognize in Worldle, |
| 2023-02-10 | 30 | The Antarctica Project | "Owari" | Owari +1 | or the vortices between and outside of them, |
| 2023-02-10 | 99 | The Dark Atom | "Unrestricted" | Unrestricted +1 | to hear yourself explode. |
| 2023-02-10 | 100 | Divided by Design | "I, Establish" | The Fear of Being Forgotten | The next song wants you to disassemble yourself in studious preparation, |
| 2023-02-10 | 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. |
| 2023-02-03 | 3 | LOVEBITES | "Dissonance" | single | and an anonymous backing band that must have existed in a studio for at least an hour, |
| 2023-02-03 | 11 | Xandria | "Two Worlds" | The Wonders Still Awaiting | I assume there is some other aspect of the Japanese idol economy they participate in, |
| 2023-02-03 | 12 | Manigance | "All Your Excesses" | single | but maybe there isn't, and they don't. Maybe this is it. |
| 2023-02-03 | 13 | REXORIA | "Paradigm" | Imperial Dawn | The German symphonic metal band Xandria falls, or at least circles around, the other end of a spectrum of ambition, |
| 2023-02-03 | 14 | Frozen Crown | "Black Heart" | single | at least ostensibly. They have existed in some form for 8 studio albums over almost 30 years, |
| 2023-02-03 | 15 | Nereids | "Sail to Hades" | single | making music that sounds like it probably requires a small kingdom's worth of infrastructure to produce. |
| 2023-02-03 | 16 | ShadoWhisperS | "Däischter Gedanken" | single | "Two Worlds" could also easily end up being my favorite song of the year, |
| 2023-02-03 | 17 | Rave The Reqviem | "Anti-Savior" | Anti-Savior +2 | especially if it comes down to "Before You Light Up" and "Two Worlds" engaging in some form of ritual combat. |
| 2023-02-03 | 18 | Phantom Elite | "Skin of My Teeth" | single | Not all perfect songs are invincible. |
| 2023-02-03 | 19 | RedHook | "Off With Your Head" | Off With Your Head 5 | Not that all invincible songs are perfect, either, or even invincible for long. |
| 2023-02-03 | 20 | Divina PH | "Burn the Bridge" | single | Xandria have gone through 22 members in their time, with several full cycles of everybody other than Marco Heubaum. |
| 2023-02-03 | 21 | SÄÄDÖT | "Emännätön talo" | single | The songs are real; |
| 2023-02-03 | 22 | Dream State | "Chain Reactions" | Untethered 3 | the implied continuum they form is an illusion sustained at least partially by graphic design. |
| 2023-02-03 | 23 | Stand Atlantic | "kill[h]er" | single | We create these notional, confectionary joys, |
| 2023-02-03 | 24 | Vigil Of War | "Domino" | single | and then they outlive our expedient unions, |
| 2023-02-03 | 25 | Enigmatic Entrance | "Out of Time" | Out of Time +1 | and maybe ultimately also our intransigent bodies. |
| 2023-02-03 | 26 | Saint Deamon | "At Break of Dawn" | single | It is fair to ask how the music industry supports the noble labor |
| 2023-02-03 | 27 | Magnus Karlsson’s Free Fall | "Hunt the Flame" | single | that it clearly requires, |
| 2023-02-03 | 28 | Seventh Crystal | "Wonderland" | single | but maybe only fair in the way that it is "fair" to explain the shimmer of wishable stars |
| 2023-02-03 | 29 | Volver Al Origen | "Heridas" | Initium Vulnera 4 | in erratic trajectories of photons through not-quite-empty emptiness. |
| 2023-02-03 | 30 | JJ Mist | "Night Queen" | single | Labor differs from undeserving action by exerting monotony: |
| 2023-02-03 | 31 | Xandria | "Mirror of Time" | The Wonders Still Awaiting | the large rocks broken into smaller rocks do not spontaneously reform, |
| 2023-02-03 | 39 | Falaise | "A Dream Of Relief" | After All This Time | It is cynical, but logical, to hire the victims of economic imbalance to perform work |
| 2023-02-03 | 40 | Déhà | "Everything Is Going to Be Okay" | A Fleur de Peau - V - At The Poles of Everything | that the more-enfranchised are content to recognize as repugnant, |
| 2023-02-03 | 41 | Austere | "Sullen" | single | at least as long as the work remains necessary at all: |
| 2023-02-03 | 42 | Spirit Possession | "Second Possession" | single | mitigation of toxicity into wet and dry goods, |
| 2023-02-03 | 43 | Depravation | "Im Schatten" | single | the breeding of defenseless food, |
| 2023-02-03 | 111 | Powerwolf | "Poison" | single | Not all idol-lines wear eye-liner. |
| 2023-01-27 | 1 | Dark Sarah | "Attack Of Orym" | Attack Of Orym | I've been looking forward to Amberian Dawn's upcoming album of ABBA covers for months, |
| 2023-01-27 | 2 | Amberian Dawn | "Angeleyes" | Take a Chance - a Metal Tribute to Abba | and I spend a frankly inordinate amount of my attention and an even more absurd fraction of my time keeping up with new releases, |
| 2023-01-27 | 3 | Metalite | "Hurricane" | single | so I was borderline mortified to realize that I've spent two solid months |
| 2023-01-27 | 4 | Tulip | "Gemini" | single | looking forward to an album-release that was behind me. |
| 2023-01-27 | 5 | Averlanche | "Little Lotus" | single | Take a Chance came out at the beginning of December, along with its third single ("Super Trouper") the same day, |
| 2023-01-27 | 6 | Liv Sin | "Karma" | KaliYuga | and somehow the single occluded the album in my tools. |
| 2023-01-27 | 7 | Belle Morte | "Exorcism" | single | I have opened a major investigation into this debacle. |
| 2023-01-27 | 8 | Halflives | "everybody knows it" | everybody knows it +2 | Meanwhile, though, the new Dark Sarah album came out last week, and contains no literal metal covers of ABBA songs, |
| 2023-01-27 | 9 | Forever Still | "Can't Begin To Explain" | single | but you might reasonably guess otherwise if you didn't know ABBA's catalog very well. |
| 2023-01-27 | 10 | Dark Sarah | "Goth Disco" | Attack Of Orym | I had somehow also forgotten that Heidi Parviainen formed Dark Sarah after leaving Amberian Dawn, |
| 2023-01-27 | 11 | Ravenlight | "Masque of the Red Death" | Immemorial | so associating them with each other is not my personal genius, |
| 2023-01-27 | 12 | Against Myself | "Sweet Chants Of Death" | single | but if you love things enough, they will find you, |
| 2023-01-27 | 13 | A Light Divided | "Inhale / Exhale" | Inhale / Exhale +1 | will run down the street after you and grab your hand and turn you around. |
| 2023-01-27 | 14 | Hail Sagan | "Alongside Their Own" | single | "Oh!", you might say. |
| 2023-01-27 | 15 | Brachmond | "Die Schlacht" | single | I said "Oh!" a lot this week: |
| 2023-01-27 | 16 | DEAR MOTHER | "Heart" | single | realizing I could barely pick any of these new Dark Sarah songs to not play; |
| 2023-01-27 | 17 | Moyra | "Rage of the Sky" | single | basking in the ABBA; |
| 2023-01-27 | 18 | Death & Legacy | "The Unnamed Shadow" | The Unnamed Shadow +1 | pasting the URIs of half of these bands into my random work tools for collating collective knowledge, |
| 2023-01-27 | 19 | Seeker Pearl | "Ouroboros" | single | wondering gleefully what else I have missed, |
| 2023-01-27 | 20 | Ravenlight | "Springtime Lament" | Immemorial | as if I weren't already unmanageably immersed in joy; |
| 2023-01-27 | 21 | Cornoctuan | "Weight of Light (The Lightless, Pt. III)" | single | looking at the negative Fs in the weather forecast; |
| 2023-01-27 | 22 | Marras | "Parasiitti" | single | emailing Aaron that Gracie's' new Peanut Butter Sriracha flavor is definitive; |
| 2023-01-27 | 23 | Dead End Finland | "Up so High, Down so Low" | single | playing old Comsat Angels records; |
| 2023-01-27 | 24 | Dark Sarah | "Delirium" | Attack Of Orym | feeling the bones of my aging, declining cat so close under her skin |
| 2023-01-27 | 25 | Uriah Heep | "You'll Never Be Alone" | Chaos & Colour | as she falls lovingly asleep in the bend of my arms with her tiny nose |
| 2023-01-27 | 26 | Ronnie Romero | "The Battle Rages On" | Raised on Heavy Radio | on my trackpad. |
| 2023-01-27 | 27 | Wig Wam | "Forevermore" | single | Did you know that Uriah Heep are still making albums? |
| 2023-01-27 | 28 | Crowne | "Just Believe" | Operation Phoenix | Did you care that they were ever making albums in the first place? They've been doing it for 54 years, |
| 2023-01-27 | 29 | Arctic Rain | "One World" | Unity | 3 longer than Magnum and only a year less than UFO and Deep Purple, |
| 2023-01-27 | 30 | Mono Inc. | "Wiedersehen Woanders" | Ravenblack | and I admit that I kind of confused them with Foghat until well into both bands' post-mainstream stubbornness, |
| 2023-01-27 | 31 | Subway To Sally | "Leinen los" | Leinen los +1 | but where Foghat have settled into a comfortable legacy-tour bluesiness and more live albums than studio ones, |
| 2023-01-27 | 32 | All For Metal | "Raise Your Hammer" | Raise Your Hammer +2 | Uriah Heep have kept up the expansive, Hammond-heavy hard-prog-rock ambition. |
| 2023-01-27 | 33 | Cruachan | "The Reaper" | single | I too aspire to get old in defiantly assiduous dedication to unfashionable arts |
| 2023-01-27 | 34 | Vengeant | "Gaia's Throne" | Mana 5 | with unexhausted implications: |
| 2023-01-27 | 35 | Norwald | "Nekaroth, the Undefeated" | The Spark of Freedom | sentences unimproved by Large Language Models, |
| 2023-01-27 | 36 | Vorna | "Hiljaisuus ei kestä" | single | listening as a reagent for mood instead of a thickener of it, |
| 2023-01-27 | 37 | Finrir | "Power of Mjolnir" | Viking Metal 5 | wild crushes, |
| 2023-01-27 | 38 | Aara | "Emphase der Seelenpein" | single | refusing inscrutable magic sold into ignorance |
| 2023-01-27 | 39 | 'Iisnááhí | "Ma’iitsoh ‘Ałchinígíí" | single | in favor of scrutable magic that gets better with explanation, |
| 2023-01-27 | 40 | Heretoir | "Fatigue (2022)" | Fatigue (2022) +1 | things cooked in pans, |
| 2023-01-27 | 41 | Enslaved | "Forest Dweller" | Forest Dweller +3 | trying to answer good questions with better questions, |
| 2023-01-27 | 42 | Ne Obliviscaris | "Graal" | single | tapping gently on one's moral compass when the needle gets briefly stuck. |
| 2023-01-27 | 43 | Bisa | "The Sinner I Am" | single | Optimism isn't a function of selective perspective |
| 2023-01-27 | 44 | Transworld Identity | "Everything Must Burn" | single | any more than globalism is a dream of uniformity. |
| 2023-01-27 | 45 | Dark Sarah | "Piece Of My Heart" | Attack Of Orym | Localists seek a world made for them, |
| 2023-01-27 | 46 | Isiliel | "聖暗顕現" | single | and thus naturally mistake globalism for a simple inverse that seeks a world made for not them. |
| 2023-01-27 | 47 | ELFENSJóN | "禍つ闇に詠う" | single | But the opposite of what you already know isn't a different textbook, |
| 2023-01-27 | 48 | sui sui | "Being Alive" | LIFE | it is the library of all of the books, |
| 2023-01-27 | 95 | Amberian Dawn | "Mamma Mia" | Take A Chance - A Metal Tribute To ABBA | There's a tent, and some cover band is playing ABBA songs inside, |
| 2023-01-27 | 96 | Dark Sarah | "Breaking Free" | Attack Of Orym | but a few people have drifted out to watch you, |
| 2023-01-27 | 104 | Andromida | "Judgement II" | Judgement II +3 | All the things you anticipate are cliffs, |
| 2023-01-27 | 105 | Xavier Boscher | "Fox" | Zoologica Duodecim #4 : Forest 5 | but only from the angle of your approach. |
| 2023-01-27 | 106 | Olympus Lenticular | "A Thousand Winds" | When the Silence of Absence Deepens | You get to the edge of the world, and there's just more world. |
| 2023-01-27 | 109 | Teramaze | "EASY LOVER" | single | When you reach the end of one, run out of words, there's always "oh!" |
| 2023-01-27 | 111 | Amberian Dawn | "Under Attack" | Take A Chance - A Metal Tribute To ABBA | Most of the things you think you missed are close behind you, following patiently. |
| 2023-01-27 | 112 | Dark Sarah | "Hero And A Villain" | Attack Of Orym | The rest are right in front of you. |
| 2023-01-20 | 1 | BABYMETAL | "METAL KINGDOM" | METAL KINGDOM +2 | The contrived identities we assume are layers we wrap around |
| 2023-01-20 | 2 | OCTAVIAGRACE | "Hardenbergia" | single | the contrived identities we discover within ourselves |
| 2023-01-20 | 3 | Ayasa | "Rou-chou-ren-un" | single | by seeing our reflection in the surface of our skin. |
| 2023-01-20 | 4 | PLEVAIL | "Coda." | single | Careful authenticity, cultivated charm, effusive faith, practiced humility: |
| 2023-01-20 | 5 | Zsasz | "Ultra Heroine" | Ultra Heroine +2 | these are all wishful epilogues backformed |
| 2023-01-20 | 6 | *Luna | "ΔV" | single | from the way we squirm when we discover where the costumes we sent away for |
| 2023-01-20 | 7 | GANGDEMIC | "CRIMIE" | single | came from, and where they rub against our stipulations. |
| 2023-01-20 | 8 | yosugala | "ace of spades" | single | "We have no choice but to retreat", we try to imbue with solemnity, |
| 2023-01-20 | 17 | ONMYO-ZA | "龍葬" | 龍凰童子 | to have it printed on the cloth in the shape of a shirt. |
| 2023-01-20 | 18 | Issa | "Seize the Day" | Lights of Japan | Flip it over, whatever it is. |
| 2023-01-20 | 19 | Shereign | "Six Feet Deep" | Ghost Diaries | If it was made with love and intent, there will be something printed on the back too, |
| 2023-01-20 | 20 | Dark Princess | "Taste of Freedom" | Phoenix | and glistening organs inside. |
| 2023-01-20 | 21 | Daedric | "Alchemy" | Alchemy 6 | This is how you can always tell the difference between somebody earnestly telling you something they have decided to believe |
| 2023-01-20 | 22 | Angel Wolf-Black | "Our Truth" | single | and somebody telling you where following intrinsic beliefs has directed them; |
| 2023-01-20 | 23 | For I Am King | "Avarice" | Crown | between answers in the shape of the truth |
| 2023-01-20 | 24 | Liv Sin | "I Am the Storm" | single | and truth in any of the innumerable shadows it casts against the background of chaos; |
| 2023-01-20 | 25 | Ad Infinitum | "Seth" | Seth +2 | between how people talk when they're talking to you |
| 2023-01-20 | 26 | Twilight Aura | "Sacred Earth" | single | and how they talk when they're talking past you toward some other audience they imagine |
| 2023-01-20 | 27 | As Everything Unfolds | "Ultraviolet" | Ultraviolet +2 | and fear. |
| 2023-01-20 | 28 | Sabaton | "The First Soldier" | Heroes of the Great War | The difference between victory and defeat is never 6%, |
| 2023-01-20 | 29 | The Lightbringer of Sweden | "The beast is rising" | The new world order | nor a scrupulous avoidance of the literal terms of clauses meant to transcribe love |
| 2023-01-20 | 30 | Silver Bullet | "Shadow Of A Curse" | Shadowfall | into the language of demons. |
| 2023-01-20 | 31 | In Victory | "Till the Break of Dawn" | single | You can always have the feeling of declaring old history concluded |
| 2023-01-20 | 32 | Kardinal Sin | "Siege Of Jerusalem" | single | by waiting to say your lines just as the gates are closing |
| 2023-01-20 | 33 | Legado de una Tragedia | "Misantropía" | Misantropía +1 | for the night, careful to stand on the other side of them |
| 2023-01-20 | 34 | Twilight Force | "At the Heart of Wintervale" | At the Heart of Wintervale | from everybody whose love you crave. |
| 2023-01-20 | 35 | Elvenking | "The Hanging Tree" | The Hanging Tree +1 | But they climb the trees that hang over the walls, |
| 2023-01-20 | 36 | Shakra | "Invincible" | Invincible +1 | and settle in the branches to watch you realize |
| 2023-01-20 | 37 | Nekonomicon | "Brand New Journey" | single | there's nothing out here to sleep in except suddenly-expensive mud. |
| 2023-01-20 | 38 | Big City | "Sons of Desire" | Sunwind Sails | You can't just dismiss your friends, |
| 2023-01-20 | 39 | Khymera | "Hear Me Calling" | single | and you can't walk a shared journey without your steps and theirs |
| 2023-01-20 | 40 | Tygers Of Pan Tang | "Edge of the World" | single | cooperating to make new paths towards places that didn't used to be places. |
| 2023-01-20 | 42 | First Signal | "Shoot the Bullet" | single | but you still have to decide if you're going to tell them the story of loss you've practiced on yourself, |
| 2023-01-20 | 43 | GALNERYUS | "RUN TO THE EDGE" | single | or the story of gain that begins when that dream-sequence ends, and leads everywhere. |
| 2023-01-20 | 89 | Insomnium | "The Witch Hunter" | single | but "love and life are deep". |
| 2023-01-20 | 90 | Imperium Dekadenz | "Forests in Gale" | Into Sorrow Evermore | What you say about our company is what we say to society. |
| 2023-01-20 | 91 | Dead Wasteland | "Black Rose" | single | Fools obey commands. |
| 2023-01-20 | 92 | Leipa | "Fremdkörper" | Reue | We chose to arrive here, our rewards unpromised, |
| 2023-01-20 | 93 | Vitrail | "Cette source" | Le mépris du monde | not because we distrust the rest of the world, |
| 2023-01-20 | 94 | Atrocity | "Teufelsmarsch" | OKKULT III | but to dance: |
| 2023-01-20 | 95 | Full Of Hell | "Rubble Home" | single | among ruins, when storms bring ruins; |
| 2023-01-20 | 96 | Stömb | "The Realm of Delirium" | single | loyally oblivious in periodic darkness; |
| 2023-01-20 | 97 | Hypno5e | "Lava from the Sky" | Lava from the Sky +2 | burned by debris from beyond our control; |
| 2023-01-20 | 98 | Isole | "The Songs of the Whales" | single | but justified by the sound. |
| 2023-01-20 | 99 | The Ocean | "Preboreal" | single | We have come to be the ones who carry us from before to during. |
| 2023-01-20 | 100 | Oak Pantheon | "Dissociate" | The Absence | Severance is our privilege, not yours. |
| 2023-01-20 | 101 | Katatonia | "Colossal Shade" | Sky Void of Stars | You may not know our names, |
| 2023-01-20 | 123 | Shereign | "Strong" | Ghost Diaries | We don't band together to infuse a single purpose with more certainty, |
| 2023-01-20 | 124 | Issa | "It's Over" | Lights of Japan | we do it to shred selfishness's conviction. |
| 2023-01-20 | 125 | Broken Peach | "What A Feeling" | single | "Positioned for the future" is our fond attempt to make you feel less bad for standing around, not yet unscared of dancing, less like that defines you. |
| 2023-01-20 | 126 | Megaraptor | "A Thousand Miles" | single | The distance from the wall to the center of the floor is short, and yet crosses worlds, |
| 2023-01-20 | 127 | Agordas | "Running Up That Hill" | single | transcends negotiations. |
| 2023-01-13 | 1 | Kamelot | "One More Flag in the Ground" | single | A language model doesn't have pronouns, |
| 2023-01-13 | 2 | Meadows | "Forgive Me" | single | particularly not "you" or "I", |
| 2023-01-13 | 3 | Lattermath | "Waking Life" | Winter's Painting | but maybe more usefully not even "it". |
| 2023-01-13 | 4 | Enter Shikari | "(pls) set me on fire" | single | We collaborate with solipsism when we infer an imaginary self |
| 2023-01-13 | 5 | VV | "Neon Noir" | Neon Noir | in between each other. |
| 2023-01-13 | 6 | Viikate | "Älä pelkää pimeää" | single | We do not talk about the volition of the air |
| 2023-01-13 | 7 | Beyond Awareness | "Crime" | single | that our songs transit. |
| 2023-01-13 | 8 | Bloody Falls | "Dancing with Flames" | single | We do not fault it for failing to render our voices with more variety |
| 2023-01-13 | 9 | Ruinthrone | "The Dreamweaver" | The Unconscious Mind of Arda | than we are numbered. |
| 2023-01-13 | 10 | Bloodbound | "Odin's Prayer" | single | We do not measure it by our satisfaction with what we do with our breath. |
| 2023-01-13 | 11 | Grá | "White City Devil" | Lycaon | "I am not a robot", I am required to testify before prodding grimly at ChatGPT. |
| 2023-01-13 | 12 | Warg | "In the Eye of the Beholder" | The Endless Travel | Even the robots are wary of robots, |
| 2023-01-13 | 13 | Oceanhoarse | "Brick" | Brick | but the corrupt property of offering a preconstrained grammar of denial |
| 2023-01-13 | 14 | Drakwald | "Storm of Embers" | Black Moon Falls | is that is inherently heartless even when it separates admitted hearts. |
| 2023-01-13 | 15 | Amras Numenesse | "Rise From the Ashes" | Indestructible 3 | The implied question is offensive, both meaningfully and formally. |
| 2023-01-13 | 16 | E-An-Na | "Trecătoare" | single | The soul of the Turing Test is that it separates those who correctly categorize it as a moral injunction phrased as a thought experiment |
| 2023-01-13 | 17 | NanowaR of Steel | "Winterstorm in the Night (Feat. Madeleine Liljestam)" | single | from those who obtusely interpret it as a challenge. |
| 2023-01-13 | 18 | Delain | "Moth to a Flame" | Moth to a Flame +2 | Our new Houdinis brag that they will escape from a falling parachute, |
| 2023-01-13 | 19 | Phantom Elite | "Inner Beast" | single | or from our forgiveness, |
| 2023-01-13 | 20 | Beyond The Black | "Free Me" | Beyond The Black | or from their own empathy, |
| 2023-01-13 | 21 | Shereign | "Dying Sun" | single | and then ask, from a midair rapidly running out of mid-, for loans to fund their ambitions for impact. |
| 2023-01-13 | 22 | Frozen Crown | "Victorious" | single | At least, I think that's what they were asking. |
| 2023-01-13 | 23 | Enchantya | "Existence" | single | Conversations with the falling are plagued by wind noise. |
| 2023-01-13 | 24 | Existenter | "Symbols" | Symbols +2 | We are iterations away from a machine intended to listen for us, |
| 2023-01-13 | 25 | Segmentia | "Fighter" | Alone 5 | and this will be one of its ebulliently shaped but joyless premises: |
| 2023-01-13 | 26 | LOVEBITES | "The Spirit Lives On" | single | it can hear the mercifully unsung |
| 2023-01-13 | 66 | Floor Jansen | "Invincible" | Invincible +2 | Even on the dark side we could see that light. |
| 2023-01-13 | 67 | Creye | "Air" | single | The thing you need answers to be is less varied, less variously wrong, |
| 2023-01-13 | 68 | First Night | "Savage Heart" | Deep Connection | perfected memorably, once each, as the basis for new questions. |
| 2023-01-13 | 69 | All My Shadows | "The Phantoms of the Dawn" | single | The thing you need is to touch each other, |
| 2023-01-13 | 70 | Seventh Crystal | "Higher Ground" | single | to feel each other's bodies humming silently |
| 2023-01-13 | 71 | T3nors | "Set Fire to the Rain" | single | and then not silently. |
| 2023-01-13 | 72 | Robin McAuley | "Feel Like Hell" | single | Recordings of those signals are memory and yearning, |
| 2023-01-13 | 106 | False Gods | "Time For Heresy" | Time For Heresy +1 | It's not, of course, that there were no interesting questions to be asked of moon rocks, |
| 2023-01-13 | 107 | WuW | "Orchaostre 2" | Orchaostre 2 +1 | any more than there's no point to modeling human language. |
| 2023-01-13 | 108 | Walg | "Harteloos" | III | Pointlessly teaching a machine to listen to human songs is a waste of machines and fuel, but the songs themselves are not consumed. |
| 2023-01-13 | 109 | Depravation | "Vampire Burial" | single | You can't unshare and unlove what we have already sung to each other. |
| 2023-01-13 | 110 | Ahab | "Mobilis in Mobili" | The Coral Tombs | How does it feel being covered in water, you wonder? How does it feel being covered in space? |
| 2023-01-13 | 111 | Blood Stained Dusk | "No Light Shall Penetrate" | single | It's the same: it doesn't. That not how we live. |
| 2023-01-13 | 112 | Fvnerals | "Yearning" | single | It might be how we die, but is drowning worse than being torn from your home by gloved hands, |
| 2023-01-13 | 113 | God Disease | "Ashes" | single | only to be interrogated in languages that are all unnatural to you. |
| 2023-01-13 | 114 | Wounds of Recollection | "Vacancy" | single | Even the rocks know not to talk to rocks. |
| 2023-01-13 | 116 | The Dark Atom | "Cosmic Annihilation" | Ancients 2 | gray rocks and gradient nihilisms and great doubts. |
| 2023-01-13 | 117 | Outrun The Sunlight | "Quark 2.0" | Quark 2.0 +2 | When we looked inside of our atoms we found nothing there, too. |
| 2023-01-06 | 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, |
| 2023-01-06 | 2 | Manigance | "The Shadows Ball" | single | especially ones that don't even justify their nerdiness by explicating some obscure detail of Númenórean backstory. |
| 2023-01-06 | 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. |
| 2023-01-06 | 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", |
| 2023-01-06 | 5 | Above the Stars | "Ангел" | single | or, come to think of it, most sports commentary. |
| 2023-01-06 | 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, |
| 2023-01-06 | 7 | Silver Bullet | "Creatures Of The Night" | Creatures Of The Night +2 | by which we mean details from The Silmarillion, |
| 2023-01-06 | 8 | Crowne | "Operation Phoenix" | single | with the exception of, as guitarist Luca Catalano notes, "and only one time with The Hobbit ones". |
| 2023-01-06 | 9 | Revolution Saints | "Need Each Other" | single | But, really, there's no evasive imperative to pretend that you don't love what you love. |
| 2023-01-06 | 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, |
| 2023-01-06 | 11 | REXORIA | "Light up the Sky" | single | folded through the bellows of Queen's harmonic theatricality, |
| 2023-01-06 | 12 | Annacrusa | "La Espina" | single | as it is any kind of variation on Eluveitie or, |
| 2023-01-06 | 13 | Motive Black | "Caged" | Caged 5 | to pick another example completely at random, Oakenshield. |
| 2023-01-06 | 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". |
| 2023-01-06 | 15 | LÝSIS | "Handprints" | single | Whether that will still be true by the time you read this, I feel less sure. |
| 2023-01-06 | 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, |
| 2023-01-06 | 17 | Mroh | "Truth" | single | but then that's probably true of everything, |
| 2023-01-06 | 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, |
| 2022-12-30 | 1 | Lonesome_Blue | "Blue Like Sapphire (The Flower Of Hope)" | Second To None | The last couple weeks of the year are traditionally a lull in the music-release calendar. |
| 2022-12-30 | 2 | PassCode | "Clouds Across The Moon" | REVERBERATE ep. 4 | The word "traditionally" is your cue to look up and think about whose entrenched power-structures are being reinforced by asserted habit, |
| 2022-12-30 | 3 | LOVEBITES | "Judgement Day" | single | and in which arbitrary contexts. |
| 2022-12-30 | 4 | LIV MOON | "Addiction" | OUR STORIES | Meanwhile, people keep making songs and "releasing" them from their own interior monologues, |
| 2022-12-30 | 5 | Eir Aoi | "ANSWER" | single | and the kinds of Japanese bands I like seem, collectively, particularly disinclined to regard calendar-year days as a resource to be budgeted. |
| 2022-12-30 | 6 | Magistina Saga | "eclipse" | Abyss Grey Heron 6 | Or else my curiosity expands to fill any nominal void, and I am aesthetically defenseless against young Japanese women in short skirts, |
| 2022-12-30 | 7 | ELFENSJóN | "ECLIPSE" | single | or cartoons wearing gloves, |
| 2022-12-30 | 9 | Underbeasty | "beast" | single | or headless guitars or idol groups playing their own instruments |
| 2022-12-30 | 11 | My Criminal Lovers' | "ANTHEM." | single | nor which things are instruments or effigies or metaphors. |
| 2022-12-30 | 25 | Lonesome_Blue | "Mine" | Second To None | These blue lakes of fire are part of a methodical irrigation of joy, |
| 2022-12-30 | 36 | Rides In ReVellion | "FALLING STAR" | single | in the light of old orbits decaying, |
| 2022-12-30 | 37 | 616 | "Cathedral of Scars" | single | in the temples of what we believe we have lost |
| 2022-12-30 | 38 | Lord Of The Lost | "Blood & Glitter" | Blood & Glitter | but aren't sure whether to celebrate or mourn, |
| 2022-12-30 | 39 | Arogya | "Desire" | Desire +1 | in temperance or abandon. |
| 2022-12-30 | 40 | Atrocity | "Malicious Sukkubus" | Malicious Sukkubus +3 | The opportunity to have your name written in chrome |
| 2022-12-30 | 41 | Dead Wasteland | "Ocean Song" | single | is also an invitation to prepare yourself for tarnish |
| 2022-12-30 | 42 | GhostSeeker | "Who We Are" | single | and the other graceful corrosions of the same elements that sustain us. |
| 2022-12-30 | 43 | Besna | "Neha" | single | I am not appreciably more defenseful against ambiguously-aged Slovakian dudes lurking dubiously behind trees. |
| 2022-12-30 | 44 | Noumena | "Murhenäytelmä" | Murhenäytelmä +1 | We write uplifting stories about misery, |
| 2022-12-30 | 45 | Elyose | "L'Assemblée" | single | or essays about fear and potential, |
| 2022-12-30 | 46 | Anchor Thought | "Built To Bow" | single | or lists of what we found inside arbitrary boundaries, |
| 2022-12-30 | 47 | Seas on the Moon | "The Rule Of 21" | single | because all we know to expect on new worlds are the things we loved in the old lives |
| 2022-12-30 | 48 | Existenter | "Memento Mori" | single | we lived before we reached them. |
| 2022-12-30 | 49 | The Big Deal | "Intuition" | single | And then we arrive, and realize we have crossed the universe in generation ships only to step onto a new planet humming songs we loved in middle school. |
| 2022-12-23 | 1 | Mare Infinitum | "Celestial Escapist" | Cryosleep | Take a three-minute pop song and add six minutes of extended coda grandeur, |
| 2022-12-23 | 2 | Frozen Crown | "Call of the North" | single | or just attach it to an engine and fire the assembly into the secret abyss hidden at the Pole. |
| 2022-12-23 | 3 | Hanging Garden | "The Four Winds" | single | We are the creatures of monumental impulse |
| 2022-12-23 | 4 | Klaymore | "Phrygian Dominate Me" | single | or reverent regard. |
| 2022-12-23 | 5 | Niovel | "First Acolyte" | Long Way From Neverland | Thus I hate superstition, but can't pretend I don't understand the appeal of the imaginary immortal. |
| 2022-12-23 | 6 | Eons Enthroned | "Best Served Cold" | single | These songs overflow with it. |
| 2022-12-23 | 8 | Dark Sarah | "Invincible" | single | into our throats from a glittery space beyond us. |
| 2022-12-23 | 9 | The Dark Side of the Moon | "Double Trouble / Lumos! (Hedwig´s Theme)" | Double Trouble / Lumos! (Hedwig´s Theme) +2 | Half of our legends are about these crossings |
| 2022-12-23 | 10 | Ankor | "Prisoner" | single | from notional majesty into mundane reality, |
| 2022-12-23 | 11 | Silver Bullet | "The Thirteen Nails" | The Thirteen Nails +1 | or the corresponding precariousness with which we remain real |
| 2022-12-23 | 12 | Haunted Gods | "Threshold" | single | against the metagravitational pull of regal abstraction |
| 2022-12-23 | 13 | Carmilla | "Evil" | single | and disingenuous rapture. |
| 2022-12-23 | 14 | Martin Gonzalez | "From the Ground Up" | single | We begin rooted, but then we look up. |
| 2022-12-23 | 15 | E-An-Na | "'colo 'mbia" | single | Point a flashlight at the stars, |
| 2022-12-23 | 16 | Inchaos | "My Gallaxy" | single | and claim them, one by one. |
| 2022-12-23 | 17 | ONMYO-ZA | "茨木童子" | single | But then don't be surprised when they fight back. |
| 2022-12-23 | 18 | NEMOPHILA | "炎天 -ENTEN-" | Seize the Fate | The real heavens are made of gossamer emptiness strung between blazing fires |
| 2022-12-23 | 19 | NEO JAPONISM | "Howl out" | single | waiting for our rising wings with eager tongues. |
| 2022-12-23 | 22 | SAISEIGA | "SPORTS" | single | This is why we see ourselves most sharply in slow motion, |
| 2022-12-23 | 64 | Defueld | "Touch The Sky" | single | polished to our impression of a supernatural sheen, |
| 2022-12-23 | 65 | A Pregnant Light | "Eating Emeralds" | Eating Emeralds / Threshold Angel 2 | as if showing the stars themselves would lure then down into our hands, |
| 2022-12-23 | 66 | Breath Of Wind | "Ocean" | single | into our quenching thirst. |
| 2022-12-23 | 67 | Oceanhoarse | "Carved in Stone" | Carved in Stone 5 | Half of our legends are about these doomed yearnings |
| 2022-12-23 | 68 | Insomnium | "White Christ (feat. Sakis Tolis)" | single | in which we try to improvise, |
| 2022-12-23 | 69 | Depravation | "War Dreams of Itself" | single | but recapitulate long-existing dreams: |
| 2022-12-23 | 70 | Archierophant | "Scenes From A Mirador" | single | of witness as command; |
| 2022-12-23 | 71 | Antecantamentum | "In the Green Petrichor" | Saturnine December | of cyclicality as rebirth; |
| 2022-12-23 | 72 | Vitrail | "La tentation" | single | of desire as resolve. |
| 2022-12-23 | 73 | Wounds of Recollection | "Leo Minor" | single | Take a three-minute pop song and fold it upon itself |
| 2022-12-23 | 74 | THE ANSWER LIES IN THE BLACK VOID | "In Obsidian Clouds" | In Obsidian Clouds +1 | until it becomes the blade of a black sword sharp enough to cut the sky. |
| 2022-12-23 | 80 | Shores Of Null | "Nothing Left to Burn" | single | we fan through our possessions choosing the next one to sacrifice |
| 2022-12-23 | 81 | Subway To Sally | "Was ihr wollt" | single | in order to appease a god only brought into existence by the act. |
| 2022-12-09 | 12 | Senamile Mhlongo | "Ngaze Ngamuhle" | ANGINAFRONTAL 6 | that I usually put towards the end of these lists not because they are inherently more other than Japanese idol rock or cryptic metal or Scottish electropop, |
| 2022-12-09 | 35 | PassCode | "SIREN" | single | but any week can offer you at least this. |
| 2022-12-09 | 43 | GARNiDELiA | "Soten" | single | languages in which the past and present are not oppositional nouns, |
| 2022-12-09 | 44 | ARTiCLEAR | "KAGUNE" | HAIIRO NO NINGEN | languages that do not impose an identity debate onto simple referential grammar. |
| 2022-12-09 | 46 | ASTERISM | "一途" | 一途 / unravel 2 | In all of these songs we are inscrutable and unmistakable and fully generalizable, |
| 2022-12-09 | 47 | Issa | "Live Again" | single | and it should be blissfully no more surprising to hear echoes of your internal monologue in the voice of a Norwegian rock singer or a Senegalese R&B producer or an Atlanta rapper. |
| 2022-12-09 | 48 | IT'sALIE | "Unbroken" | Emosphere | We have made many terrible machines with our dubious hands, |
| 2022-12-09 | 49 | Nevena | "Writer's Block" | Nevena | but we have also made the ones that carry songs beyond their original accidental clearings, |
| 2022-12-09 | 50 | Beyond Frequencies | "All In" | single | over skeptical horizons. |
| 2022-12-09 | 51 | Mhelyssa | "La Trampa" | single | We are engines of the distorted transmission of grace, |
| 2022-12-09 | 52 | Xandria | "The Wonders Still Awaiting" | The Wonders Still Awaiting +3 | of the fragmentary translation of rapture, |
| 2022-12-09 | 53 | Within Temptation | "The Fire Within" | Forgotten Songs 2 | of the tentative transmutation of nominal elements. |
| 2022-12-09 | 54 | Against Myself | "Beyond The Deep" | single | Each step can be flight or witness. |
| 2022-12-09 | 55 | Deathless Legacy | "Hollow" | Mater Larvarum | Maybe each step can only be flight or witness, |
| 2022-12-09 | 56 | Gomorra | "A Chance for the Better" | Dealer of Souls | and flight is the ruptured detachment of movement from self-awareness |
| 2022-12-09 | 57 | Symphony Of Sweden | "Just Let It Bleed" | Just Let It Bleed +1 | in the hopes of evading consequence. |
| 2022-12-09 | 58 | Redemption | "I Am the Storm" | single | But of course that is never how the journeys or stories end. |
| 2022-12-09 | 59 | First Signal | "Never Gonna Let You Go" | single | Consequences are a manifold in intent-space, not a wolf distractable by voles. |
| 2022-12-09 | 60 | The Foreshadowing | "Memento" | single | Or a wolf, but a wolf that sees you once and then never forgets. |
| 2022-12-09 | 63 | Maladie | "So Close" | Wound of Gods | and thus wards we send before us to ask for preparatory forgiveness. |
| 2022-12-09 | 64 | Fvnerals | "Ashen Era" | single | There may or may not be a chorus; I am happy to apologize if you think that helps, |
| 2022-12-09 | 65 | Imperium Dekadenz | "November Monument" | November Monument +1 | but I suspect our immunity or culpability will not be so easily triangulated |
| 2022-12-09 | 66 | Woods of Desolation | "Beneath a Sea of Stars" | The Falling Tide | on this round world in infinite shapeless space. |
| 2022-12-09 | 67 | Shaam Larein | "Flesh of Gold" | Sticka En Kniv I Världen | And of course this is just as true of the songs whose parameters you can enumerate |
| 2022-12-09 | 89 | No Resolve | "Hallelujah" | single | We spin. All the chords are secrets we share. |
| 2022-12-09 | 91 | Tragedy | "Venus" | single | We take turns imagining the divine, quickly in the way that tectonics are slow, |
| 2022-12-02 | 2 | Rave The Reqviem | "Ofelia" | Ofelia +1 | don't touch it until you find out, |
| 2022-12-02 | 3 | Theicon | "Nonexistent" | single | or turn it up. |
| 2022-12-02 | 4 | REXORIA | "Set Me on Fire" | single | Obvious choices are rarely the only choices, of course, |
| 2022-12-02 | 5 | Delain | "Beneath (Feat. Paolo Ribaldini)" | Beneath 2 | and I have loved songs that found others: |
| 2022-12-02 | 6 | Beyond The Black | "Dancing In The Dark" | Dancing In The Dark +3 | tear the wires out of the back so the knob is useless; |
| 2022-12-02 | 7 | Asylum Pyre | "Virtual Guns" | single | pull it off with your teeth; |
| 2022-12-02 | 8 | Flowerleaf | "Fireflies" | Fireflies +2 | turn all the knobs to their zeros and see what is left; |
| 2022-12-02 | 9 | Deathless Legacy | "Ora Pro Nobis" | single | find the person who invented that knob and let them show you why it's there; |
| 2022-12-02 | 10 | Upon These Scars | "Manifestation" | single | unplug yourself from everything that knob is connected to |
| 2022-12-02 | 11 | Brothers of Metal | "Berserkir" | Berserkir +1 | and start over. |
| 2022-12-02 | 12 | Wig Wam | "Out of the Dark" | single | But all joyful solutions to the unknown |
| 2022-12-02 | 13 | Krilloan | "Emperor Rising" | single | regard ignorance with bemused eagerness. |
| 2022-12-02 | 14 | Obituary | "Dying of Everything" | Dying of Everything +1 | They do not begin with anonymous RFCs |
| 2022-12-02 | 15 | Atrocity | "Faces From Beyond" | Faces From Beyond +2 | pasted into email bodies in awkward and inexplicable Caslon. |
| 2022-12-02 | 16 | Metallica | "Lux Æterna" | single | They do not seek to use this knob to get 1.4% more of anything unprecious. |
| 2022-12-02 | 17 | Katatonia | "Austerity" | Austerity +1 | They do not yearn to itemize grievances |
| 2022-12-02 | 18 | Jours Pâles | "Tensions" | Tensions | or define themselves in indignant opposition to the inevitable. |
| 2022-12-02 | 19 | Imha Tarikat | "Touch Of Mercy" | Hearts Unchained - At War With A Passionless World | They do not quietly accede. |
| 2022-12-02 | 20 | Revolution Saints | "Eagle Flight" | single | So not only do I usually prefer the songs made by the curious and exuberant, |
| 2022-12-02 | 21 | LIV MOON | "Never..." | single | but I consider it part of my responsibility as a listener to contribute to the curiosity and exuberance by how I hear. |
| 2022-12-02 | 31 | Maki Ohguro | "君に届け feat, doa, 川島だりあ" | single | Idol rock, metal, disco, hyperpop: |
| 2022-12-02 | 64 | Dwell in Doom | "The Witch in Me" | Songs from the Deadland | but that it cannot even negotiate in that currency. |
| 2022-12-02 | 67 | Krvna | "Tithonus I" | Long Forgotten Relic | the same kind that seeks mortal guidance from an unquestionable immortal |
| 2022-12-02 | 68 | Lisieux | "Révolution" | Abide! | that can definitionally be only one of relevant or real, |
| 2022-12-02 | 69 |