| 1 | Massive Scar Era | "Between Waves" | Between Waves +1 | In principle the notable thing about Massive Scar Era is that it is a metal band started in Egypt by women. |
| 2 | Nikki Stringfield | "No Surrender" | Apocrypha | In practice, there's enough folk-heritage cosplay in metal, in general, that you could listen to them without the bio open and mistake diaspora for tourism. |
| 3 | Amaranthe | "Insatiable" | Insatiable +1 | The pharaohs on the cover of Powerslave watch us with a minor Phrygian wink as we listen, |
| 4 | Within Temptation | "Ritual" | Ritual | but Cherine Amr's relocation to Montreal was to escape power, |
| 5 | Serenity | "Reflections (of AD)" | Reflections (of AD) +2 | and the Egyptian figures in "Between Waves" are less unfamiliar in a metal context than her vocal delivery, |
| 6 | Secret Sphere | "Blackened Heartbeat" | single | the shouty parts lacking the usual cartoon-monster grimness |
| 7 | Blackbriar | "An Unwelcome Guest" | A Dark Euphony | and the melodic parts more earnest than operatic. |
| 8 | Arshenic | "Nocturnal" | single | Nikki Stringfield is from Texas, which is still maybe marginally easier to escape than Egypt, |
| 9 | Neperia | "Minokawa" | single | but was in a band called The Iron Maidens, whose only streaming-available song is a cover of "Powerslave", |
| 10 | Alkonost | "Оберег" | single | but I discovered that only after sequencing the two songs at the beginning of this list based on how the singing makes me feel. |
| 11 | Genus Ordinis Dei | "Genesis" | single | The tourist, I am well aware, is me, |
| 12 | Draconicon | "Thorns" | single | assembling shards of other people's cultures into hurriedly effigial collage. |
| 13 | Primordial | "How It Ends" | How It Ends | Amr's story is a book. This is a playlist. |
| 14 | Gaerea | "Dormant - Bonus track" | single | Egyptian scars, LA dreams, Europeans flirting with synthwave and metalcore as if those are a single audience; |
| 15 | Fortíð | "Rotinn arfur" | single | Serenity are Austrian, and "Reflections (of AD)" falls conveniently into a week between advance tracks from the upcoming album by their Italian cospirits Temperance; |
| 16 | Lightlorn | "Of Longing Spirit and Infinite Solitude" | single | we build cities precisely to place all of these selves next to each other, |
| 17 | Wolves In The Throne Room | "Beholden to Clan" | Crypt of Ancestral Knowledge 4 | the gothic embrasures of converted custom houses |
| 18 | Psychework | "Shape of a Ghost" | Spark of Hope | watching over the neo-brutalist apertures of what will soon be CBD dispensaries or bubble-tea imports, |
| 19 | Stam1na | "Taivas" | X | the homeless and the vacant in an uneasy market standoff. |
| 20 | Shiva | "ASTE-ROID" | ASTE-ROID +1 | In time, all our talismans will outlive their temporary oppositions, |
| 21 | #2i2 | "BURNBURNBURN" | single | and we will strain to re-remember how it began and how it ends, |
| 22 | Quubi | "Black out" | solid 4 | and re-forget the parts in the middle where we lost track. |
| 23 | INUWASI | "Sacrifice" | Revive Your Faith 5 | All our legacies are rotten, |
| 24 | Yoshino Nanjo | "閃 -Sen-" | single | which is the grim-cosplay way to say that they are all organic, |
| 25 | yosugala | "Sparkle" | single | cycling through the same stages of promise, fruition and reconsideration as we do ourselves, |
| 26 | 莉犬 | "光" | single | individually and in association. |
| 27 | milet | "Anytime Anywhere" | single | For a few seconds #2i2's "BURNBURNBURN" could almost be a glitterball cover of "Bastards of Young". |
| 28 | mzsrz | "Odyssey" | single | All the kids you pass on the street outside their colleges |
| 29 | Nerd Magnet | "Bokushika Shiranai" | single | could almost be your friends from when you were them, |
| 30 | THE MAYTH | "ambition" | single | no more or less legitimate in their obliviousness to the nostalgia that awaits them, |
| 31 | THE SIXTH LIE | "ヒカリツナギ" | single | the wars in which they don't yet know to wonder what their roles will be. |
| 32 | Ivy to Fraudulent Game | "春の中へと" | RE:BIRTH | Who stands, pressed up against the edge of the stage, |
| 33 | RAINASH | "Traces of Flowed Tears" | single | in an awkwardly-shaped nightclub in 1993, waiting to see if the band's new bass player has learned their songs, |
| 34 | MALKA | "Detachment" | Anatomy Of Sight | and bothers to imagine all of you reconvening there again 30 years later? |
| 35 | Maggot Heart | "LBD" | Hunger | We age into our superconnections, |
| 36 | Friendship Commanders | "We Were Here" | Mass | until it feels like we were all always here. |
| 37 | Snow Coats | "hollow" | Split - EP 4 | The calendar says Bully and then Belly. |
| 38 | SKAAR | "Chaos" | Mad Woman | The kids in college are your kids, |
| 39 | NINA | "Videotheque" | Scala Hearts | refreshing their phone for the Mitski presale, |
| 40 | Gunship | "Empress of the Damned (feat. Lights)" | Unicorn | as you tell them for the third time that they saw her open for Lorde, |
| 41 | Silent Tiger | "Twist Of Fate" | single | but they were 10 and all they remember is Lorde changing outfits in a giant suspended glass box |
| 42 | L.A. Guns | "The Dark Horse" | single | and wondering if she knew we could see her. |
| 43 | Loveless | "Picasso" | Picasso +2 | Once upon a time, |
| 44 | Luca Brasi | "Habits" | The World Don't Owe You Anything | only the famous got to live in glass boxes, |
| 45 | Psyka PH | "Pagmamahal" | single | suspended in the air in front of crowds of watchers; |
| 46 | death's dynamic shroud | "Who I Say I Am" | single | now the boxes fit into your hand |
| 47 | DECEITS | "A Burial Of Dreams" | single | before it has even finished growing. |
| 48 | Page | "För du är rädd" | single | The new kinds of fear dread anonymity |
| 49 | Academy Order | "Echelons Cave" | A New Kind of Fear | as much as exposure, |
| 50 | LiL Lotus | "nosebleeder" | nosebleeder +2 | and more reasonably. |
| 51 | The Mountain Goats | "Murder at the 18th St. Garage" | Murder at the 18th St. Garage +2 | Now the boomboxes fit into your hand, too, along with all the other virtualized tools and myths. |
| 52 | Casino Montreal | "El hombre excepcional" | El hombre excepcional | Notice how the moments go from motionlessness to blur, |
| 53 | Ana Guerra | "Tiempo De Descuento" | single | the shirts from broad stripes to thin straps, |
| 54 | ISLA LAVANDA | "Eskoda" | Efecto Boomerang | the karma from projected to reflective. |
| 55 | Diezell | "Conmiseración" | Caótico | Chaos is another way of saying that any of our particles might collide, |
| 56 | ENGST | "Kopf hoch" | Kopf hoch +3 | undaunted by walls |
| 57 | Vasco Rossi | "Gli Sbagli Che Fai" | single | or less concrete mistakes, |
| 58 | Señor Torrance | "sois todos unos mierdas" | single | or that you are all miraculous, |
| 59 | Vuelve Abril | "Y Si Te Llamo" | single | or that winter doesn't arrive as much as pass. |
| 60 | Professor Green | "Nothing Before It's Time" | POP SHXT 5 | It's time now, time for all these things: |
| 61 | Heavy-K | "Andikayeki" | single | new stories, |
| 62 | NIRA-SA | "Nkosi Usikhumbule" | single | new memories, |
| 63 | LIL V BBM | "Bayacela Nkosi" | single | new questions, |
| 64 | Mthandeni SK | "Sakhulela empini - Radio Edit" | single | wars edited to end. |
| 65 | Riana Nel | "Ek Wonder" | single | Pick any language |
| 66 | Lee Ann Womack | "You've Got To Talk To Me" | Fall Feelings 6 | and tell somebody you love something. |
| 67 | LP | "Wild" | Love Lines | We're only running out of time like we run out of coffee or oat milk |
| 68 | Eve Ai | "惡行 - 電影《惡女》主題曲" | single | or excuses about what evils we don't understand. |
| 69 | Judgitzu | "Sator Arepo" | single | Chaos is another way to start over, |
| 70 | Nihiloxica | "Olutobazzi" | Source of Denial | a font of wordlessness we draw from as we prepare to speak, |
| 71 | oqbqbo | "Colibri" | Water Tiger | an infinite taxonomy of the fleetingly, joyfully incomprehensible. |
| 72 | Aidan Baker | "Ichibanme" | Trio Not Trio - Yonbanme | We come from triangles drawn out by rivers, patrolled by tigresses and denial. |
| 73 | Nomy | "Stay" | Stay | We decide what we want, and then have to survive its implications. |
| 74 | Lauren Babic | "What Was I Made For?" | single | We look for answers, inside of us, to questions we only ask by moving out into the world, |
| 75 | PRIZM | "Dreams" | Rumors in the Night | into the rain, the night, loneliness, each other's arms, all of these songs in exactly this and every other order. |