The Syndicate

16th place: Kane RZA - Combat I can live without the opening monologue, but I love the tonal quality of this whole thing. I'm not sure what the proper terms are, but it has an almost vaporwave aesthetic going on, like the bass is amplified on everything and the rest is washed out. The keyboard rhyt...

17th place: Keldeo The Eagle Stone Collective - Feral Horse Rides the Sun This is certainly relevant, with the lone repeated guitar note standing in isolation amid a vast expanse of flat string. The second guitar introduced at 2:30 doesn't really do anything to alter the scene, and the extreme mini...

18th place: Bloobird Subtle - The Crow My first play note on this was "I'm tanking this, right?", and that amuses me because a part of me knew I wasn't as I typed it. It's deceptively simple. It calls to mind a lot of that turn of the century chilled out trip hop that I'm sure there's a m...

19th place: tane Sink Manhattan - Farm Wow, what an abrasive song. The singer conjures to mind some alternate reality Glenn Danzig. My immediate urge is to cop out and say his voice is too relatable for the rest of the music, garishly superfluous, gaudy at odds with the keen eclectic. But over time...

TOP HALF

Ampharos
birdwithteeth11
Bloobird
BoKnows
Kane
Keldeo
KnightsofCydonia
LordQuas
Made
MyNameIsNothing
Newcomb
nutella
Owner of a Lonely Heart
schadd
staypositivefriend
tane
Tangrowth
Zack
Zarathustra

20th place: BLOODYRAIN10001 Igorrr - Downgrade Desert The original link was taken down a few days after I wrote this and the one that stayed up has some sound effects layed over it at the beginning, I think. Not sure if anything else changed. For whatever that's worth. I had sort of forgotten what ...

21st place: soah Earthshine - When I Die I Shall Return This was the only other really hard catfail for me besides Sweet Trip, which is a shame because it's quite nice. Entirely appropriate for cat 7, I don't know that a song about living life to the fullest and ascending through death to some eter...

22nd place: Marmot Tim Hecker - Where Shadows Make Shadows I felt this was an odd pick. Hecker is a great option to sub to me in general, because I love everything I've ever heard by him and he has a lot of material I'm not familiar with. I'm not sure why this particular one stood out for this cate...

23rd place: Psycho666Soldier Acid Mammoth - Tusks of Doom This started out more promising than I expected for a band named Acid Mammoth. I vouch that you can always correctly judge a doom band by their name. Bongrippers don't fuck around. It takes years of training and focus to become an electric w...

24th place: Marcher Jovian Mestis - Gentle Giant This song was briefly cool as fuck on first encounter, but I started to tire of it by the end of my first listen and never really regained interest. The first 45 seconds, middle 15 seconds, and last full minute of the song are the same phrase repeate...

25th place: roro__b Pogo - redruM Ok, well played. It's more spooky than bleak, but it works to a point. From 2:46 it picks up a much more positive pulse. I love the axe blows synced up to the beat, but musically speaking it's pretty far removed from the category at that point. Solid for a meme sub...

26th place: gbsfranca Dogleg - Kawasaki Backflip This was one of the hedgiest cat fits to me. The emo sound they're pursuing has such a sentimental feel, rooted in the reflecting sadly on the fleeting nature of all things core of the genre. This category was open to an awful lot of moods and mental...

27th place: Adam Nurse With Wound - Black Teeth Hello Tom Waits. I don't know, on the one hand I want to go oh wow they're doing something really unique here that so few other bands try. I love the vocals, which carry the majority of the song without more than that minimalist island beat in support...

28th place: Frog Måneskin - Zitti e Buoni I got a couple of cowboy jams like this, and while they weren't exactly what I had in mind, they seem entirely at home here. The meat and potatoes of this song is very automotive overcompensation commercialcore, but that's benign in itself. The big sell for...

29th place: Logic Bad Religion - Los Angeles is Burning https://i.imgur.com/rbRhMoI.png This song was cute, and I got a kick out of the video. I would have to be getting a decent paycheck to stand in front of a crowd and perform music this resistant to nuance, but when pop punk lands on effective l...

30th place: shubaka17 RIOT - Blackwater Haha, well now... If I gave creativity bonus points, this would certainly earn one. It seems to be quite explicitly wild west cowboys vs robot overlords, and I don't know that you could achieve the category much more directly than that. Unfortunately, I have ...

31st place: Ace Marvel 선미(SUNMI) - Black Pearl Mmm... Maybe there's material out there that would surprise me, but I thought this was going to be the hardest category in the mix for an all kpop playlist. It's such a lush style , and this was the one category that most demanded anything but that. Yo...

32nd place: vanity. Malady - Bad Life Suddenly I'm staring down Trophy Scars wondering if I predicted the future. I do not enjoy these vocals for roughly the same reasons, but where that song was otherwise a smooth ride, this is angry emotional post-hardcore where it just doesn't clash anywhere nea...

33rd place: Relm Susumu Hirasawa - Ghosts Songs under two minutes need to do a lot more for me than this in a walrus. The distortion in this amounts to opening Windows Sound Recorder and clicking Increase Volume a few times. I could cut it some slack for being from 1997, but a brief amped up cut of...

34th place: ladd Sweet Trip - Chapters I could see it in a desert maybe, like some pleasant fantasy incursion. It's certainly sunny, and that slightly distorted synth that comes in around 3:15 has a granulated but smooth flow that easily conjures to mind sand. The outro has a peaceful aquatic hollo...

35th place: Aladyyn In Vain - As I Wither This song kicks so hard out the gate and ends up ... really kind of boring me by the end. I got a supergroup vibe out of it, whatever the hell that means, but it inspired me to go look up the members, and sure enough, they're linked to the likes of Solefald...

36th place: Cory Trophy Scars - Mother This starts out really chill. I love the country twang and clean production. The initial male singer has a nice light rasp to his voice. The guttural vocals that first come out in the background at 0:18 are ok as a novelty. They sound like the singer just dran...

37th place: Visorslash Blue Öyster Cult - Then Came the Last Days of May This kicks off to a great start instrumentally, and I never stop vibing the lead guitar. I think the soundspace works well for it and doesn't succumb to feeling too repetitive for a traditionally structured song. The backup vo...

38th place: PunchyTheCat Tame Impala - One More Hour Tame Impala were on my short list for cat 1 sample songs but got the chop for Chon. Granted my experience has been largely limited to Currents, I don't associate them with a sound that has high potential here. This song does feel different, but n...

39th place:

Moose

Smells Like Apple Bottom Jeans

What the $%#! is an apple bottom jean? They must be really funny, because he can't stop laughing in the middle of his gag.

Real talk mate, did you honestly ever think I would get this?

2.0

4. 4pm gargling sand at a gas station in post-apocalyptic Nevada Everyone's a used car salesman in this town. Whether we're staring in awe at the natural stone monoliths on the horizon of the vast emptiness that brought us here or bartering for black market implants next to the Shinra company store...

I retroactively increased cat 2's point total to 10.5 to match it with what I ended up doing in cats 7 and 8. There were too many subs to give out the range of points I'd wanted to on a 0-10 scale. Resulting new leader board: Scoring through 3 39. 10.1 PunchyTheCat 38. 19.1 Relm 37. 19.2 LordQuas 36...

Scoring through 3 39. 10.1 PunchyTheCat 38. 18.9 LordQuas 37. 19.1 Relm 36. 19.7 Logic 34. 19.8 BoKnows 34. 19.8 gbsfranca 33. 20.1 Made 32. 20.5 Bloobird 31. 20.7 nutella 30. 20.9 Frog 29. 21.1 Moose 27. 21.7 Ace Marvel 27. 21.7 Ampharos 26. 21.9 vanity. 25. 22.0 Kane 24. 22.2 staypositivefriend 2...

1st place: soah Flamen - I This is it! This is exactly what I was looking for! I love the melody at 1:40 and the way the two guitars mirror each other over a wall of sound. I love that Drudkh-esque chord progression in the break that follows. I love how the song stays busy in every register. The pr...

2nd place: Zack Exuma - Mama Loi, Papa Loi This is pretty wild. The zombie sound effects at the beginning are... something! I don't think its Caribbean origin is really an inhibiting factor here, because the feel is all the same in primitivism and a sense of the supernatural always dwelling right a...

3rd place: Aladyyn Omnia - Teutates This was the refined approach, pulling no punches and just delivering it superbly. The marching percussion sounds huge under those endlessly droning pipes. The vocals are fabulous. The bagpipes and drums both press in on my head and massage me with their constant...

4th place: Adam Dave Van Ronk - Mack the Knife I thought for sure this had been subbed to me before, but it looks like I must have just picked up on it once in passing, probably in a reveal. Amazing how much it stuck with me through that limited exposure. This guy's vocal performance is absolutely ...

5th place:

Newcomb

Sorten Muld - Mylardatter

This is not how it was supposed to happen.

This was not what I had in mind.

No, no, this can't be happening.

Here I made you a gif:

9.6

TOP 5

Adam
Aladyyn
Newcomb
soah
Zack

6th place: Tangrowth Coil - Ostia (The Death of Pasolini) Yeah this is really great. I love the tone of that guitar. It reminds me a lot of... bands that probably copied these guys, because none of them date back to the 80s. There are so many great subtle moments in this. I love the plucked violin ...

7th place: Zarathustra Attallas Music - Drop the Beat Mlord This is presented like it's meant to be comical, but it doesn't come off that way at all. It's incredibly well done. I'm curious what he used to construct this. The samples feel very nuanced, like the off note on the flute trill at 3:18 fe...

8th place: Marmot In Extremo - Herr Mannelig I remember these guys from waaaay back in the day. I still have some Napster or Audiogalaxy era Sünder ohne Zügel tracks floating around, but it's probably been that long since I've heard them. I was dead convinced when I heard this that it was a Finnish...

9th place: KnightsofCydonia Days N' Daze - Rockabilly Impending Deathfuture You grasped the spirit of the category in a way I hadn't even considered. It's as filthy as the scene and conceivably performed there. These guys even look like they belong. I'm told trumpets were almost as common as synthe...

10th place: tane Zeitkratzer - Salute to Zivojin Misic I'm torn between do I actually enjoy listening to this and it might be the most appropriate sub I received. What in God's name did you send me? This has achieved a level of chaotic garble beyond my capacity to parse, but it appears to be doing ...

TOP 10

Adam
Aladyyn
KnightsofCydonia
marmot
Newcomb
soah
tane
Tangrowth
Zack
Zarathustra

11th place: BLOODYRAIN10001 Idisi - Bad Apple (medieval folk arrangement) TRVE CVLT RENAISSANCE TOUHOU HYPE. The melody they transition to from 0:45 to 0:55 and repeat a few times later reminds me a lot of the R??L sub I got to cat 3 last year. I don't know if there's any connection, but it seems t...

12th place: schadd Eleanor Wallace - Standing by a River I got a couple of these old time Americana songs, and they're hard because they're so vividly something else that I don't know where to plug them in here. With so many category flops, the difference feels pretty insignificant, but I want to r...

13th place: Ampharos Yuzo Koshiro - Shining Dagger, Shadow Blade My desktop is presently littered with obscure Koshiro recordings I still need to sort. I've been on a kick lately. But I've never knowingly heard any of his post-90s material. I was going to get to this inevitably some day, but you be...

14th place: Marcher Jovian Thurnin - Vagrants It's not very often that I hear a song built mostly of acoustic guitar that's capable of really nestling into my background space. It usually feels a bit too porous and leaves me wanting more. This has plenty of come and go accompaniment, but the guitar...

15th place: Owner Old Sorcery - Tears of a Dying Star Finally some actual dungeon synth! The beginning is a little rough with the enunciation and had me concerned that it would go absolutely nowhere, but from 2:23 on this is a delightful ride in just the sort of soundscape I was hoping for. Would i...

TOP 15

Adam
Aladyyn
Ampharos
BLOODYRAIN10001
KnightsofCydonia
Marcher Jovian
marmot
Newcomb
Owner of a Lonely Heart
schadd
soah
tane
Tangrowth
Zack
Zarathustra

16th place: Psycho666Soldier Enslaved - 793 (Slaget Om Lindisfarne) Mmm... I was going to say this was the first sub from my last.fm top 50, but it looks like they fell back to 58. Either way, suffice to say I am a pretty big fan of Enslaved. I love their founding black metal works more than most, ...

17th place: staypositivefriend Virgin Black - Walk Without Limbs This took me back a lot to the Chelsea Wolfe sub at first. The industrial pulse is just very hard to square here at first and feels almost anti-cat, bleak and modern. But I suppose I might say the same about blast beats if the associa...

18th place: Made Igorrr - Oesophage De Tourterelle The Igorrr I've heard is a bit more of an Animetalmaniacs meme amusement than a thing I enjoy independently, maybe because breakcore in general feels rather one-dimensional to me. But I am entertained. It's a cat fit. It held up over repetition in ...

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