| 1 | Ghost | "Spillways" | IMPERA | My life with heavy metal began with Blue Öyster Cult and Black Sabbath. |
| 2 | Satan | "From Second Sight" | single | The two bands toured North America together in 1981, but I was just a little too young for that, |
| 3 | Visions of Atlantis | "Legion of the Seas" | single | and so didn't see BÖC until 1984 (my first concert, in fact), and not Sabbath until 1992. |
| 4 | Threads of Fate | "Moonrise" | The Cold Embrace Of The Light | They continue to exist together in my sentimental mind, but realistically, where Black Sabbath was definitively formational for pretty much all early aspects of metal, |
| 5 | Symphonity | "Marco Polo, Pt. 3: The Plague" | single | BÖC was mostly just a pretty good hard-rock band with a cheerfully coy fondness for the quasi-occult. |
| 6 | Ikirouta | "Aika" | single | There is little identifiable metal, in a retroactive historical sense, in early BÖC records, |
| 7 | Schandmaul | "Knüppel aus dem Sack" | single | in much the same way that it is now hard to explain on strictly musical grounds how The Stranglers were considered a punk band, |
| 8 | Medjay | "Warrior People" | Cleopatra VII | or the Stray Cats part of New Wave. |
| 9 | Mares of Thrace | "In All Her Glory" | single | But emotional voids are often filled by art, and so now we have the Swedish band Ghost, |
| 10 | IATT | "Elixir of Immortality" | single | who are basically the more-metal Blue Öyster Cult I feel like I remember, |
| 11 | Seas on the Moon | "Bad Omens" | single | a giddy Roxette to BÖC's ABBA. |
| 12 | The Big Deal | "Sensational" | single | They are hard to take seriously, but easy to take gloriously, |
| 13 | Snow White Blood | "Emperor's New Clothes" | single | which is arguably the essence of most good music, |
| 14 | Magica | "How can I live without you" | single | or indeed most good humanity. |
| 15 | Belle Morte | "Fallen Idol" | Fallen Idol +1 | Evil, conversely, is our word for things that impose unglorious seriousness |
| 16 | Thy Shade | "Turn the Tide" | single | on the helpless: |
| 17 | milet | "Before the Dawn" | Flare 4 | bombs dropped on theaters, |
| 18 | シバノソウ | "21歳" | single | mundane rights meted out as demonstrations of power, |
| 19 | shinigami | "RAMPAGE" | RAMPAGE +1 | routine needs assigned exorbitant prices, |
| 20 | GANG PARADE | "Period" | PARADE GOES ON 2 | the systematic monotony of money, |
| 21 | ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION | "You To You" | single | your own funny choices |
| 22 | Kiro Akiyama | "燦々と降り積もる夜は" | ONE MORE SHABON | legislated upon the unwillingly unamused. |
| 23 | ハルカミライ | "つばさ" | ニューマニア | Distrust the people who only dance because you're watching, |
| 24 | kobore | "キュートアグレッション" | Purple | joylessly, to only the music of which they think you will approve, |
| 25 | The Otals | "ポニーテール白書" | Psycho Alchemist 6 | but listen, |
| 26 | The BONEZ | "That Song" | single | because they are helplessly and plaintively describing to you |
| 27 | Perfect Average | "Delusyon" | single | the shape of their emptiness, |
| 28 | Fast Animals and Slow Kids | "Vita Sperduta" | single | and if the void inside of them hasn't imploded them yet, |
| 29 | Like Ghosts | "Ghost" | single | you won't make anything better by poking at it. |
| 30 | The Gospel Youth | "Shot In The Dark" | single | The only cure for grim silence is better noise, |
| 31 | Young Guv | "Couldn't Leave U If I Tried" | GUV III | and wrapping grim silence grimly around a quietly shrunken heart |
| 32 | Emmit Fenn | "Human" | single | doesn't change the task or its stakes. |
| 33 | Sepha. | "twitchy mf" | overstimulation brain porridge | Evil seeks silence; |
| 34 | toast | "stuck in my head" | marcus, why's your name toast?? | we sing back. |
| 35 | Kate Miller-Heidke | "You Can't Hurt Me Anymore (feat. Jaguar Jonze)" | single | You can commission anthems of obedience, |
| 36 | Carina Dahl | "En gang te" | single | but you face this intransigent dilemma: |
| 37 | Alter Ego | "Jammer" | Skree Net Sag | if you allow them the power to move people, |
| 38 | Siddharta | "Persiguiendo una luz" | single | the people get away from you. |
| 39 | Marta Soto | "Te pienso" | single | You can come and make us sing at gunpoint, |
| 40 | Fanny Lu | "Valió La Pena" | single | but you can't take the songs back with you when you go, |
| 41 | Karol Sevilla | "Dime Dime" | single | and you can't unhear how they echoed around an occupied city's squares, |
| 42 | NOTD | "about you" | single | and you can't pretend forever that scoring hockey goals on opponents threatened with Siberia |
| 43 | girlhouse | "paul blart mall cop" | single | is as good as dancing in blood-free snow |
| 44 | A Swift Farewell | "Stressed Out (feat. Clay J Gladstone)" | single | or warm Ukrainian farm mud |
| 45 | Glacier Veins | "Digging Myself Out" | Lunar Reflection | or dizzily across resolutely imaginary lines. |
| 46 | Prince Daddy & the Hyena | "A Random Exercise in Impermanence (The Collector)" | A Random Exercise in Impermanence (The Collector) +1 | Timid, indignant despots seek the weak and neglected to bully, |
| 47 | Pure Obsessions & Red Nights | "A Vanishing Sight" | single | and then are surprised to find that they have made them into heroes. |
| 48 | Sea in the Sky | "Wait, Patiently" | single | You can send a fully armed battalion to remind them of your love, |
| 49 | E-L-R | "Three Winds" | Vexier | but you only do this if you don't love your own battalions, either, |
| 50 | Haunted Shores | "When In Oslo" | Void | and you are thus sending them from an unloving place to a loving one, |
| 51 | Joel Turcotte | "Radiate" | single | from a fear you can't escape |
| 52 | Zero Hour | "Technocracy" | single | into a fear that exists only as long as they sustain it themselves. |
| 53 | Cosmophobe | "Desolate" | single | But only the most broken will follow these orders |
| 54 | Third Realm | "Fuck Your Warship" | single | against the overwhelming evidence of their own witness. |
| 55 | Oumou Sangaré | "Wassulu Don" | Wassulu Don +1 | You probably can't break enough people, fast enough, to keep up this supply, |
| 56 | AMA-AK47 | "Sesibuyile" | single | and you definitely can't if they keep hearing your enemies' songs. |
| 57 | UNjoko | "Izwe" | I-Divorce | You can't make them sing your interminable marching cadences |
| 58 | Mshinwemali | "Iphakade Lami" | Iphakade Lami +3 | for pointless wars of distraction, |
| 59 | Cairo CPT | "Ndixoleleni Bazali" | single | unless you can convince them there are no other songs. |
| 60 | DJ Tira | "Ngiyathembisa" | single | There are so many other songs. |
| 61 | Citizen Deep | "Dtjoh (feat. Jessica LM) - Radio Edit" | Dtjoh (feat. Jessica LM) 2 | We have spent thousands of years singing into this planet's air and its mud and its temporarily repurposed theaters, |
| 62 | Joyous Celebration | "Mnini Mandla Onke" | single | and you are made of that same air and soil and strength |
| 63 | Cheikh Ibra Fam | "Cosaan" | Peace in Africa | if you are made of anything. |
| 64 | MXMS | "Wave Of Mutilation" | single | You can order the tanks to push your petty, murderous borders forward, |
| 65 | Autumn Fires | "Bite Me" | single | but the grip on your heart is not a grievance of your people, and the people are not yours but the heart is, and the air is made of songs that are not about you. |
| 66 | Violet Orlandi | "(Don’t Fear) The Reaper" | single | You sent tanks after your own loss, and the only possible result is more loss. You opened a door and the wind appears, |
| 67 | Ghost | "Kaisarion" | IMPERA | and sells you a glorious tongue of adulation that licks to no serious avail. |