Thursday, August 29, 2024

80s Underground Vol. 4 ~ Experiments with Cassette J-Card Generators

 



I have been sick this past week. I think it might be bronchitis. I’m not diagnosed yet but I went by the color of what I’m coughing up (stop me if this is too much info, lol). It could also be pneumonia too. Woo hoo. I will be seeing a doctor hopefully today. It’s been a week of insomnia, fevers, headaches, and excruciating throat pain due to coughing up my lungs every few minutes. A little bug my son brought home with him from school; he bounced back after a couple days, fortunately, meanwhile a week later and I’m still like the walking dead.  Anyway, being in bed a lot, I’ve been focusing on my mixtape hobby. 

Someone in one of my cassette groups on Facebook was showing off a mixtape he did of obscure 80s music. I was thinking “wow, a kindred spirit, I already have three mixtapes like that”. He went the extra mile by generating a custom j-card, which for those not in the know is the name for those labels on the inside of a cassette case. I decided to be a copycat and make my fourth 80s Underground mixtape using his method. Of course, I’m going to have to wait a while to share it in any cassette groups so I don’t look like a complete copycat of that other person, even though I am. After a bit of searching and checking a few different websites out, I settled on this one



Here is the template of the website. You have to be careful switching tabs in your browser because it will lose all your hard work. Best thing to do is type the track listing out in a word document and then copy and paste it in. I looked through lots of pictures of 80s goths for the cover. The one I settled on is a portrait of Rozz Williams, singer of the band Christian Death. I made sure to include at least one song from the band to justify using it. As for the songs, they’re mostly selections from my YouTube playlist The 1980s in Music. I made sure not to pick anything that was already on the other three tapes. To fit the whole track listing on the cover I had to use a small font. The template seems like it was designed for short album cassettes that only have like ten songs, but you can make it work if you shrink the font down and forgo a few unnecessary additions like what type the cassette is. I can’t imagine using a tape any longer than 90 minutes though, unless you have a lot of long songs on there to bring the track listing down. Another thing to think about if you’re going to do this is that your playlist is going to be pretty much set in stone, you can’t decide to record over a song with another song or else you’ll screw up the J-card. With a normal J-card I don’t mind putting little sticker labels over my writing or white-out when I make an edit, but that wouldn’t work with this. You could just print out a whole new J-card, but that would be a pain. 

Hopefully you can already read the track listing on the cover, but since I still have it typed out I might as well copy and paste it here:

Side A
Fehlfarben - Paul Ist Tot

Dance Macabre - No Answers

The Pulse - Plastic Man

Donación Agnelli - Lo Antiguo

Pornografia - Electrownie Atomwe

The Klinik - Murder

Vomito Negro - Fire Burns

Blood and Roses - Enough is Never Enough 

Blood Fetish - Cause Mistress

Fear Condition - Black and White

Smirnov - Savé


Side B

SigloXX - Sister Suicide

Christian Death - Deathwish

Altar Ego - Altar Ego

Threshold - I Want You

Vivabeat - Working for William

Voodoo Church - Egypt

Lost Loved Ones - The Dark

Magnum - Sacred Hour

A Scanner Darkly - Cigarette in the Rain

XDavis - Window to the World

Kill the Messenger - This is America

Sculpteurs D’Ombres - L’Ange Noir


A nice mix of post-punk, new wave, early industrial, and a little bit of metal. Here is how the spine came out:


It even let me add Armenian letters. Unicode hieroglyphs work too, I tested it out but I didn’t print the results. That opens up lots of possibilities. You can change the text and background colors too. One of these times I’ll use a black background with red letters. But white worked better with this particular photo. 

Here’s the whole happy family, 80s Underground Volumes 1-4:
 



I will have to marathon these tapes again. Plenty of time for that when I have bronchitis and can’t do much of anything else. I’ll be making some even prettier J-cards once I really get the hang of it. But I don’t think I want to do it for every single mixtape, just special themed ones like this. 
 

Wednesday, August 14, 2024

My Top Songs of the Last Year ~ Սուրենի Երգերը 4516 (Suren's Songs 2023-2024)


I have long neglected my monthly Top Songs of the Month blogs, I know. But for a long time I didn’t even have the creative drive to work on my webcomic, which tends to be my first creative priority. I think that happens to writers sometimes, the well just runs dry. Anyway, why don’t I just fill everyone in on what I’ve been listening to these past 12 months? This is my most recently completed Year Tape, to which as I explained in the previous blog post, I add two songs a month to throughout the year, and any extra space at the end of the tape gets the best of the #3 spots. Doing this on a two hour tape allots me ten minutes a month maximum, but your average song is about four minutes long give or take so there’s usually some extra space.






 So many songs I had to use the back of the J-card.

For the convenience of whoever is reading this, I’ll break it down by the Gregorian calendar, even though I did the whole tape by the ancient Armenian calendar. I’ll try to say a little something about each track, and link to it on YouTube (I don’t want to try to embed that many videos). If you follow the links and find yourself liking any if the music please consider supporting the artist and purchasing their music. Might be hard with some of the older tracks. 

Side A


August

  • Sin Razón Zoocial - Crucifixion - Some insane Mexican post-punk from 1990. The singer goes crazy later on in the song and shrieks like Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit when he’s melting due to the Dip. Specific reference, I know.

  • Allie Frost - Abandoned Ghost - An eerie song about death. The whisper at the beginning talking about how ghosts are souls that didn’t walk into the light after death is particularly jarring.

September
  • Trait d’Union - Marche Nocturne - I love how this song just builds and builds. I almost didn’t like it at first but I’m glad I stuck around. It’s like a brewing storm.

  • Mannequin Twin - Threshold -  This song carries a lot of passion as well as darkness and melancholy, which came along at the right time for me last September. 

October
  • Cashiari - Oscura Noche - This song came around just in time for Halloween for me, such a haunting and spooky track. Cashiari is a band out of Peru, and they make lovely music like this along with some artistic and macabre animated music videos.

  • Blurpz - Escape - “Cuts me like a kniiife.” A very moody post-punk track from 1983. At this point in the year I was dealing with a lot of emotions and moodiness, that this song was perfect for. It’s a beautiful and underrated song.

November 
  • Rob Zombie - Phantom Stranger (slowed + reverb) - This one was kind of a passing fad I guess. I liked Rob Zombie back in my early teens, but only his first two albums really, before he, much like the pro-wrestler The Undertaker with a similar undead gimmick, became a patriotic redneck zombie biker, and started to suck. I just thought the intro to this song sounded so badass being given the “slowed + reverb” treatment.

  • Slow Danse with the Dead - Are You Tortured? - This song should have been #1 in November, history has vindicated it. Slow Danse with the Dead is still one of my favorite still-active bands, and made a few appearances on this tape. In this song SDWTD captures their signature “misery goth” style. Sometimes the answer to their question is yes. 

December 
  • FEVR - I’ve Had Enough - A breakup song that I fortunately don’t relate to on a personal level, but it has this cold and dreary melancholy sound to it that was perfect for December. Some great seasonal depression vibes. 

  • Conjunto Vacío - San Benito - Some dark Mexican post-punk from 2022, carries kind of a similar energy as the previous song. Very wintery. It’s in Spanish, which I don’t speak, but I just listen to the sound of the song.

January 
  • Tout Debord - Les Gens Sont Les Gens - Okay, I mostly liked this song because of the cute little “beep, beepbeepbeep boop, beepbeepbeep boop” sounds throughout. It just amused me, and got stuck in my head for days. 

  • Flue - Sometimes - A 1983 post-punk track with vaguely Middle Eastern influences. I couldn’t pass that up. The band Flue was from Holland though. Actual goth bands from the Middle East are sadly pretty rare. If only this song had started a new sub-genre. 

February 
  • Obsidian - Night Director - I saw this band live in Tampa a couple years ago opening for Twin Tribes, and they seem to be doing just fine, I liked this track even better than the songs on their previous album. They have been improving.

  • Metawave - Ausencia - Oh goody, another Middle Eastern-sounding goth song. It sounds more authentically Middle Eastern than Flue, although the band is “Franco-Portugese”. It’s a song about how fleeting life is apparently. But very dancey regardless. Great for goth bellydancing. And that ends Side A. Made it over half the year on one side; that means a whole extra ten minutes to spare, and bonus tracks!


Side B


March
  • Tango Mangalore - Re-Vamp - This little-known band fronted by a Greek fisherman who sings about how much he craves the sea and hates living on land released a new album early this year and it was great. This is the title track off the album. It’s about, of course, craving the sea and hating living on land.

  • Scary Black - The Fallacy of Worth - A therapeutic goth song with a positive message. “Don’t believe them if they say you’re not worthy.” I have wrestled with the fallacy of worth myself in the past. Don’t let your self-worth be determined by the opinions of others, or by capitalism or religion or what have you. Word on the street is Scary Black is going to have a new album soon, which I look forward to. This was released as a single by itself, it could end up on the new album.

April
  • Kalte Nacht - The Last Breath - I had been waiting for this band to come back since 2020. Their new album was a blast, as expected, and this was the lead single from it which got a music video. A very dancey track that makes for a great intro track.

  • Tango Mangalore - Thelema - Another song from their Re-Vamp album. Apparently an anti-Aleister Crowley song, but I didn’t really pay much attention to the lyrics, it’s just catchy. 

May
  • Mekong - Danse Danse - This is just one of the prettiest post-punk songs I’ve ever heard. All the little guitar riffs here and there accenting the song. It even uses the cool spelling for “dance”. Mekong’s other songs on the album don’t quite sound like this, tracks like “Picture of Wrong” on the same album are a bit comical. But I love this song. I would show this to someone who didn’t know what post-punk was, alongside early The Cure.

  • Slow Danse with the Dead - The Hermit - I was shocked that Slow Danse with the Dead decided to write a song about my life. Pretty much every word in the lyrics could be about me. I mean I’m a hermit that somehow managed to get a wife and son, but still a hermit at heart. My bedroom is the safest place to be. 

June
  • Dead on a Sunday - Dammit (After Dark) - This is a goth cover of the song “Dammit” by Blink 182, apparently to the somewhat similar tune of “After Dark” by Mr. Kitty. I am less familiar with the latter song, and Blink 182 was never one of my favorite bands, but I did hear them on the radio a lot back in the late 90s. I knew well the song “Dammit”, or as I probably would have called it, “I Guess This is Growing Up”. It’s a catchy, upbeat, happy pop-punk song that captures the spirit and energy of youth, while perhaps having some melancholy lyrics which you wouldn’t notice unless you were really listening, but it was never really my type of song. It never even made it onto my old mixtapes at the time. But this version. Wow. Suddenly the “I guess this is growing up” chorus feels like it’s being said from the point of view of a jaded 30-something adult who has had all the dreams of their youth beaten out of them, has to work a soul-crushing 40 hour a week job to barely scrape by, has no free time and lost most of their friends. I can’t help but feel both versions of the song capture the spirit of the Millennial generation at two different stages in their lives, even if the original song isn’t my cup of tea.

  • Slow Danse with the Dead - Today is a Good Day to Die - I was thinking perhaps “The Hermit” would be the best song of the year by Slow Danse with the Dead, but I was mistaken. This song here has such badass energy. It’s almost a metal song, insofar as it’s the first time we hear a metal-growl from the lead singer Johnny Montoya during the chorus. And I wonder if the corridor in this song is the same corridor mentioned in their song “Strangers in the Dark”. Is there a lore I should be following? Anyway, now that SDWTD is an official band rather than a solo-project we are getting a different sound out of them, a little heavier sometimes but more polished.

July
  • Vomito Negro - Bone Cutter - I went on a binge of the extensive discography of Vomito Negro (“Black Vomit” in Spanish, before you ask) this summer and found a lot of great tracks I had been sleeping on previously. Vomito Negro has been around since the late 1980s, one of the pioneering industrial bands. This song in particular is off their 2017 album, Black Plague. It’s very catchy. 

  • Cashiari - Sombrio Reflejo - A song I had overlooked previously from the Peruvian goth band. It has their typical spooky sound and haunting, whispering vocals. Then about a minute and a half in the tone shifts a bit, becoming slightly heavier but not by a whole lot. It’s a darkly psychedelic song like most of their work.

Bonus Tracks
  • Vivabeat - Working for William - The #3 song for June. No idea who William is but this song is super catchy and was stuck in my head for like two weeks. It’s a New Wave track from 1980 that I discovered while building my 1980s playlist. I always have a hard time finding good music from the year 1980 because disco wasn’t dead yet and there wasn’t much goth music, so I get excited when I hear a song I like from that year.

  • Vomito Negro - Chicago Cave - From their 1989 album Shock. I am unaware of any caves in Chicago, and have no idea what the song is about, but it’s so catchy, and I love joining in with the singer and singing “the Cave, the Cay-yave” in a Cookie Monster voice during the chorus.

  • Nemuer - The Gates of Duat - This song got robbed of the #1 and #2 spot because it was September and there was heavy competition. Nemuer is a pagan folk band that up until now mostly did Norse pagan stuff but decided to do an album based on the Egyptian Book of the Dead in reconstructed ancient Egyptian language. The results are incredibly badass, I definitely recommend giving it a listen. It had its fair share of detractors but they’re just jelly (I specifically remember one comment saying “this is what happens when goths watch too much National Geographic”, which was cruel but also admittedly funny). The music video for this song is awesome too.

  • Have a Nice Life - Bloodhail - And this song got robbed in October because of Cashiari and Blurpz. Have a Nice Life is pretty famous in some internet circles but I only recently listened to their 2008 album Death Consciousness, which is a modern classic but very depressing. It’s kind of post-punk mixed with shoegaze and maybe even some emo, but tolerable emo at least. This was my favorite song of theirs. It’s very emotionally deep. 

  • Glis ft. Ayria - Dream Chaser - Ayria came back! Or rather, Jennifer Parkin did guest vocals on this song by Glis. It was good to hear from her again, probably my favorite song I’ve heard from her in a long time, hopefully another new album is forthcoming. 


Anyway, what a year it has been! And at least my list won’t get crowded out with everyone else’s year-end music lists in December. Maybe I’ll write some more about music, even do monthly blogs again. Let’s just see if I can get ahead on that webcomic. I guess the trick to these music blogs is to work on them little by little so it isn’t such a daunting task. Anyway, hopefully someone discovered some new music thanks to my little mixtape here. 

And you know what, because I’m feeling generous, here are the first two songs on this year’s tape!

August 2024/Նավասարդ 4517


  • dreDDup - Garden of Dead Friends - dreDDup is a Serbian industrial band I have been getting into lately, been around since 1997 and still making music. This song came out in 2011, but all their music is new to me at this point. It’s a very spooky tune, I love the melodies in it, very unique. The climax at the end of the song is awesome too. 

  • Damien Hearse - Negative Mental Attitude - Damien Hearse is a darkwave/industrial band from Florida, and I can feel like I can tell, because he sings about very relevant current political topics (“Pro Life Death Camp” is one such song, about the repeal of Roe vs Wade). This song is about how you could technically give into your darkest desires (stabbing your landlord in the neck, strangling a senator and dousing them with gasoline to light them on fire), like it’s always an option, there are just severe consequences. It’s a strangely motivational song. Don’t worry I’m not going to do it 



Friday, August 2, 2024

Creative Mixtaping: My Guidelines for Making an Effective Modern Mixtape


I'm about to give away all my mixtaping secrets. 


I have never watched the 2000 movie High Fidelity all the way through, but there’s a famous scene where the main character discusses his “mixtape rules”, or the subtle art of making a compilation tape. He comes off as kind of snobby, like who calls a mixtape a “compilation tape”, really? But you know, he gets it. He knows that making a mixtape is a very subtle art. Nearly a lost art. Kind of a useless skill in today’s society unless you can make a living being some sort of DJ. And usually your only audience is yourself. It’s a very solitary, almost lonely hobby. With few exceptions, it’s mostly only neurodivergent weirdos like me that are still using cassettes in the 2020s. But that’s okay because it means cassettes are cheap and plentiful, unlike say, vinyl. He also points out that you’re using someone else’s art to make your own art (in a way that I would argue requires more creativity than AI “art”, just to clarify) and that's a very delicate thing, as he puts it. There might be planning stages. Afterwards you might need to make edits. You might want the case to have pretty art on it. The whole process of recording a mixtape might take much longer than the 90-120 minutes that make up the length of the cassette. He doesn't go into his rules too deeply, perhaps because the movie would be too boring for normal people who just slap their playlists together willy-nilly. The movie is based on a book though, that might go into more detail. I should pick it up sometime.

As an aside, making a mixtape takes a lot more thought and creativity than a playlist because you have time limits. It’s like writing a sonnet, you have to be creative within the constraints of the medium, and that pushes you to make choices you might not otherwise make. You have to make sure the best songs make it on the tape, so you eliminate the less-good tracks. And you have to keep in mind that skipping any of the tracks on a cassette takes the effort of fast-forwarding, not to mention the possibility of wear and tear on your equipment and the tape itself, so it's best to make it listenable all the way through, whereas with a playlist, like the mix CDs that preceded them, you can skip around with ease. Now that said, I've made lots of great, very long playlists on YouTube using much the same logic I use to make mixtapes, so I'm not knocking playlists as a medium. But mixtapes are far more concentrated. Even the two-hour ones. 


The mixtape rules from High Fidelity seem to be as follows, and I'm paraphrasing:


1. You start out with a "banger", a hook, something that slaps, that grab's the listener's attention, a high-energy, fast paced track.

2. You follow up with a song that's almost as much of a banger but not quite. Maybe it's just a little slower, a little less heavy, or what have you.

3. The third track has to slow things down. It has to be something more relaxing. You don't want to "blow your wad", as he says. (Gross)

He then goes into how personal it is to make a mixtape for someone else, you really have to know the person through-and-through. I have done that in the past but not often. If I make a mix for someone it’s hard not to just shove my musical tastes down their throat, honestly. He's right about that being challenging. In the movie he’s making a mixtape for a girl he likes, so his approach makes sense, you wouldn’t want to get too experimental with your mix in that case. 


My personal rules are a bit different. This is one way you can start a tape, and I've used this method often, long before ever watching this scene. But you might also want to start slow and work your way up, in a slow burn. If you're already listening to a cassette you're in it for the long haul anyway. Or you can throw some voice samples in there first (easy to do these days if you have a cassette deck with an aux port and can record straight off YouTube), or start with a stirring instrumental opener, whatever strikes your fancy. In fact, my most recent tape "Tropical Twilight" starts with this very scene from High Fidelity, which I recorded onto the cassette, and then I use his method. 


These are my mixtape rules. Or rather, more like guidelines. They can always be broken if the situation calls for it. 


I. The Brainstorming Phase and Types of Mixtapes

So, you've been hearing some great music lately and want to put it on a tape. Or, you noticed some of those new songs have similar themes or sounds to them as older songs you know, and you want to hear how they would sound synchronized back-to-back. Maybe you have a tape series that you add to at the same time every year, or every ten tapes perhaps. Then it becomes something you look forward to, something special


My mixtapes fall into a variety of categories:


1. The Radio Mixtape: 

Ah, the old tradition. How they did it way back in the 1900s. Sitting there for hours waiting for the radio to play a song you like, hoping the DJ doesn't talk over it too much. Nearly impossible to do a Themed Tape this way, except for maybe the genre type (more on that below), you don’t have much control beyond just deciding when to hit record. My first tapes were this type. I must confess I don't really have the patience to do these anymore. I mostly stopped doing these around the time emo got popular and all my favorite rock stations went to crap, leaving me to become a metalhead. Even if I were to find a decent rock radio station around here, it would only be stuff I've heard a million times, and unlike some people my age I always crave new music. 

Now there IS a newer method of doing these that I should mention. There's an app called Radio Garden, which I wrote about before, that lets you access radio stations around the world, some of them internet-based. There are actual goth stations on there, amazingly. If you have a boombox with an aux port, you can record straight to cassette from this app too. I did four mixtapes over the course of a couple years using this method, but again I ran into many of the same problems. Even a lot of the goth radio stations play stuff I've heard a million times, it’s just Sisters of Mercy instead of Nirvana. I would get lucky every now and then, like once I recorded a radio show of nothing but remixes of Velvet Acid Christ songs from a station in Scotland. But it takes more time and patience than I have these days, and for not much payoff in the end. Every time I do another of these I remember why I don’t do them anymore. I like the idea of recording a Radio Mixtape better than actually recording the mixtape. I get all my new music off YouTube anyway. 



Above: The radio mixtape I recorded during my 2015 trip to Armenia. Maybe the most important mixtape of this type that I have ever done. Which amazingly YouTube let me upload without any copyright hassle.


2. The Year Tape: 

At the beginning of the year, I select a two-hour tape, and each month I add two songs to it. My top two songs of that month. This gives me ten minutes a month to work with. Often there is extra room at the end of the tape because two songs don’t usually add up to ten minutes, which I'll then fill with some #3 songs that didn't make the cut previously. I've been doing my Year Tapes in this orderly manner since 2004, before that I wasn't adhering to any sort of rules, they were just tapes I could do whatever I wanted to all year. Anyway, listening to Year Tapes back-to-back can be a nice, abridged retelling of your life. 


Above: My Year Tapes from 1999 to about 2022. I switched from the Gregorian calendar to the Ancient Armenian calendar back in 2010/4502. The first four I recorded sometime in 2005 because the originals didn't adhere to my new Year Tape rules (2003 sorta does so I didn't remake that one)


3. The Theme Mixtape: 

So, you want a tape where all the songs are all about vampires, or the Moon, or the ancient Egyptian afterlife? Or all the same genre, subject, theme, language, mood or time period? Maybe they're all covers, or maybe they all came out in 1984? Then you make a Theme Tape. You're putting songs together that all have something in common, in order to make a statement or tell a story. I've shared many of these on my blog before. These tapes can be loads of gimmicky fun, but they can even be therapeutic, especially if they're mood-based. You might start out with sad songs or angry songs and very gradually work your way into happier songs, leaving yourself in a better mood afterwards. You can also do the opposite, but you probably don't want to (though there's something to be said for ending Side B with beautiful melancholy after an upbeat tape, if you do it just right). Walk yourself through the Five Stages of Grief if need be. It's like alchemy, transmutation magic.


Above: Nosferatunes, the aforementioned vampire tape. I included voice clips from the 1932 Dracula and the Castlevania anime throughout. There’s a corresponding playlist too if you want to hear it. And those missing videos on the playlist are still preserved on my tape, yay physical media.


4. The Audiobiography: 

The soundtrack to your life. My life has a soundtrack, it just happens to span over 300 cassettes (I've been doing this for 25 years). These could be "current hits" or songs you were into over the last month or two, or it could be the music that got you through a significant life event, good or bad. You can do them for events that happened years ago too but it's better if it's fresh. That said, I've made some tapes about my childhood that really captured my nostalgia. Put some songs you haven't heard in years on there, it's like a time machine. 


Above: Audiobiography: The 20s - Part II. I wrote about this series of tapes before. This is a specific type where each 90 minute tape covers five years of my life, that’s 18 minutes for each year. I’m doing the next one when I’m 40. 


5. The Random Mix:

 I usually do these as CD mixes for the car, but I've done a couple tapes like this too. Just throw whatever random songs you have into a blender and see what comes of it. Record from an MP3 player or very long playlist and hit shuffle. You might even get some accidental synchronicity. Thing is, the end result probably won't be something you'll want to go back and listen to very often. Radio Mixtapes can fall under this category too sometimes. I've started to do another sub-type too in recent years, where if a song has to be eliminated from a mixtape for time I put it instead on a Random Mix. I might finish the tape over the course of two to four months, only adding a few songs each sitting. These end up being a lot more listenable.


Above: Heart-Shaped Casket, my most recent of the latter type. I found out when you slow Alvin and the Chipmunks down they sound like either post-punk or sludge metal depending on the song, but I still felt like keeping it off my mainline mixtapes.


6. Not Really a Mixtape:

This covers the other stuff you might record on a cassette; bootlegged live shows, full albums, dictation, etc.  


Once you’ve chosen what type of mix you want to make, you can start planning the track listing. For the modern cassette enthusiast, it might be a good idea to make a playlist on your streaming website of choice, listen to it few times, perfect it and decide what songs go best together, and time all the songs to make sure they’ll all fit on the tape and nothing gets cut off mid-song. But there’s also something to be said for the little surprises you get by just going in blind. Sometimes I’ll start with a batch of 30 or so new songs, knowing they’re not all going to fit, and just go with what song sounds good after the previous one until I’m done. And with this method, I even be inspired to hunt down a song I hadn’t thought of during the planning stages that would go perfect after another song. Patterns will emerge sometimes that I hadn’t anticipated. Sometimes it will start to tell a story.



II. Choosing a Cassette to Record On

Once you've decided on what you want your tape to be, you'll need to select a cassette. This can be more complicated than you think. You'll need to decide on the length you want (the standard lengths are 60, 90, and 120, with some more rare lengths out there). You'll hear people caution against using the 120-minute tapes. Just be careful with them and don't needlessly rewind or fast-forward them, and make sure the heads in your tape deck are clean, and you'll probably be fine, I've rarely had issues with them. You do kind of sacrifice quality for quantity though. 90 minutes is a good length for an average mixtape, you don’t want to pick a tape that’s too long and end up using filler songs to finish it. 60 minutes is too short in my opinion, you might as well make a mix CD which is 80 minutes, but I do use those tapes for things in the "Not Really a Mixtape" category. 


If your supply is low, then you might not have much choice. But I've amassed enough recorded blank cassettes from thrift stores and other places to keep me busy for years, even at two mixtapes a month like I usually do, and I have tons of variety. These days because no one really makes them anymore it's cheaper to record over used cassettes from a thrift store, as sealed blanks can be expensive online. You can digitize them first if they have anything interesting on them (like I found a wrestling show from the 1970s once), but usually it's grandpa’s old country gospel music or something lame like that. If you're lucky enough to have some sealed blanks though, you'll want to save them for special occasions, not just any old mix. 


You might also make choices based on appearance. For instance, the Memorex dBS always gives me nostalgia because they were the first tapes I ever recorded on, so mostly I use those tapes for nostalgic mixes (see below). But sometimes a certain brand of cassette just has the energy you're looking to evoke with your mix. Cassettes come in Type I, the standard, Type II, which has better sound quality (but can be harder to record over unless you erase it completely with a magnet), and the mythical Type IV metal tapes with the best sound quality; if you find one of these, treasure it. They're rare and expensive. I have only found two in all my years of collecting. (Not sure what happened to Type III). As for brands, stick to the well-known ones. Avoid Tonemaster, or anything else that looks cheaply-made. And be careful recording on the really old tapes. The best quality tapes are from the 80s to early 90s, during the cassette’s heyday. I'm too nervous to record on anything older than the 1980s myself. Which brings me to another point: make sure your tape is intact and mold-free before you jeopardize your equipment. Make sure the little spongey pad on top is there. If the magnetic tape has white stuff on it or looks crusty, it's moldy and best throw it away unless it was important, because if it gets in your cassette deck the mold will spread to every tape you play in it thereafter. It's not impossible to clean but not usually worth it either. This happens more with VHS tapes, but I've seen it happen to audio cassettes. None of mine of course, because I wouldn’t store my tapes in a damp basement for 40 years only to give it to a thrift store, like some people.




Above: One of my most recent mixtapes, Allstars Գ, on a Memorex dBS. Yes, I'm on Armenian numerals now, this is the third tape in a new series. I started with positive numbers, then negative numbers, and now Armenian numerals. I'm a nerd. I do an Allstars tape every ten tapes. The music on it is mostly new or at least new to me, but between the songs I wedged old radio station bumpers from the 90s that I got off my old tapes so it sounds like I recorded it off the radio. Fun times were had. 


III. Picking a Title


Now you might have already gone into this with a title in mind, or you might be flying blind and only decide on a title once you're done, so this step is flexible. I find it best to go into it with a title already in mind, because that will give you a direction you want to take the mix in, like the thesis statement in an essay. I always try to come up with something catchy and creative, something that rhymes or uses alliteration or wordplay. Some common inspirations include the weather, the time of year, something going on in my life. Foreign titles are good too; everything sounds cooler in German. You can also name it after a song on the tape, which is less creative but effective nonetheless if you think it's a good title for the whole tape. I came up with "Allstars" when I was 12 and have kept it out of tradition, even though it's not a terrific title and makes me think of that song by Smash Mouth. Some good titles I've come up with for my mixtapes over the years include "Tropical Twilight", "A Gothic Romance", "Black is Not Dark Enough", "The Hermit", "Eclipse" (recorded during the eclipse in April 2024), "Cold Caress", "November Embers", "Humid Gloom", "The Forest of Ghosts", “Dreamweaver”, “Instrumental Illness”, "Nosferatunes", "The Abyss", “The Gates of Duat”, “The Style is Death”, "WelTraum" (Weltraum is German for universe, but it also contains the word "traum" meaning dream, I always just thought that was cool). 


Naming it something like "(Insert your name here)'s Mix" or "Awesome Mix" like in Guardians of the Galaxy is amateurish, if I may be so blunt. Not that I don't have my share of old mixtapes with bad titles myself (yeah I know, Michael's Music/Suren's Songs), but they're from my teen years, when I was an amateur.


A sampling of titles from my cassette drawers. Which one would you pick first?

IV. Building the Track Listing

Now we’ve finally caught up with the guy from High Fidelity. You can use his “hook, follow-up and chill out” method for the first three tracks, if you want, but the possibilities are endless. You may have already gone through most of this process if you built a playlist first. Here are my personal dos and don’ts:

1. Repeating a Band

Ideally you want to wait at least three tracks minimum before repeating a band, and that’s pushing it. Overcrowding a mixtape with one band is bad form. That is, unless two songs from the same band are just perfect together or fade into one another in a way that makes them hard to separate, that’s why these are guidelines and not rules. Another exception can be made if you use a really long song in between two songs by the same band. It also can be done, obviously, if you’re making some sort of “Best of” mix (which I guess would be a type of Themed Mixtape). But typically, if a band you like releases a new album and you just have to have a bunch of their songs on your mixtape, space it out at least, and save some for the next mixtape.

2. Maintaining Tone

Imagine, listening to calm, relaxing meditation music, and all the sudden a black metal scream pierces the air and gives you a heart attack. If you want to change the tone of the tape, you need to transition. This is an extreme example but you can have meditation music and black metal on the same tape, as long as you work your way up to it. The trick is finding those transitional songs that bridge the gap. It might take several songs but you’ll get there. I’ve noticed putting voice samples between the songs can speed up the process a bit though, causing a kind of energetic soft reset. And the transition from Side A to Side B can be a good point to change tone, but you don’t want too drastic of a change or it will be like two different tapes. 

3. Editing in Post

You can always edit the tape if you come across a song later that would have been perfect for your Themed Mixtape if only you had known about it, or if you decide you don’t like a song or just want to rearrange the track listing, but remember to time the song you’re recording over so it doesn’t go over the next song too (the easiest way is to just look the song up online so you don’t have to sit there with a stop watch). Unless you’re just going to rerecord the whole rest of the side after that point (happens sometimes). I would caution against doing this on a Type II tape or a Type IV tape, because often the eraser head on your cassette deck won’t be strong enough and you’ll still hear the song you recorded over faintly in the background (this is why I purchased a magnetic bulk tape eraser, to record over used Type IIs; even then though it erases the entire tape, which you might not want to do if you’re just taping over one song).

Only go against these guidelines if you think you can get away with it.


V. Utilizing Your Space


Some people will leave several minutes of blank space at the end of the tape. I find this maddening. Very lazy and wasteful. It might be unavoidable for there to be a minute or so of blank space at the end, not quite long enough for a full song, but I like to find filler when this happens. Look for a really short song, an instrumental track that you don’t mind being cut off, maybe some rain sound effects, or some sort of voice sample. If you have a cassette voice recorder you can even put your own voice on the tape and pretend you’re a DJ. People leave blank space on their tapes to solve the opposite problem though, having a song cut off at the end of the tape when you run out of room. I try to be mindful of how much tape is left as I record so this doesn’t happen. You can bridge a song from Side A to Side B if worst comes to worst, but it’s not ideal and should be avoided. If you take the effort before recording to add up the times of all the songs so that you know what will fit on the tape this problem can be easily avoided, but keep in mind sometimes the times on the tapes aren’t exact, you might even find them to be a minute or two longer than they say they are. I don’t always plan my mixes out so meticulously because sometimes I like to be spontaneous, but it does work. 

VI: Cataloging and Decorating Your Mixtape

The label on the inside of a cassette case is called a J-Card, and will usually feature rows of lines for you to write down your track listing, maybe a space for the recording date and the method of recording, and space for your title on the spine. This is the standard, but sometimes I’ll draw something on them instead. See my Wizard of Oz Character Study tapes for an example. You can make your own J-Card too if you want it to be more artistic. If you’re really tech-savvy and good at graphic design, you can even print something out and make it look professional. The titles should be written in a legible font. I like to do fancy fonts on mine sometimes, or even create my own sort of logo for the tape and incorporate little drawings. 

Cataloging your mixtapes is important for organization. I keep a notebook to jot down the track lists of my tapes, so if it ever gets lost or eaten up I can remake it. Some people make spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel, but nothing beats pen and paper. You can also note where the tape might sound warped, or where it was eaten up in the past (assuming it survived the ordeal). I also number my tapes, so I know what chronological order they were recorded in at a glance. Some of the old blanks give you a space on the spine of the J-card for a number, but most don’t. 

You will probably want to stick to normal Arabic numerals, but I like to overcomplicate things. My numbering system might be strange to outsiders but I’ll explain. When I was a teen, I vowed that after I reached 100 mixtapes, I was going to stop. This happened in 2004, and I did stop for about a year and a half. But I just couldn’t stay away from mixtaping. So in 2006 I started going into negative numbers, to sidestep my earlier vow. I was a lot less prolific in my 20s, doing one tape every two months on average, so I didn’t reach -100 until 2018. You could say I had 0 mixtapes at that point since the negative numbers cancelled out the positive ones. I had no plans on stopping this time, so I started using Armenian Numerals after a short break. I reached 100 (Ճ) on that series just a few months ago after five years, but I’m going to just keep going with the Armenian Numeral series until I die at this point. I thought about switching to Roman numerals, Ancient Egyptian numerals or cuneiform numerals, but they take up too much room. 

Here are a few of my prettiest J-cards: 


Top two (The Masquerade and Coffin Classics) came from fliers I found at a gothic nightclub, The Castle in Tampa, Florida, and cut and folded into makeshift J-cards. Then we have Satan from the movie The Adventures of Mark Twain on the cover of a tape where every song is Satanic (fun times were had), Music Nonstop with the Goddess Hathor (as she appears in my webcomic of course) and the God Nehebkau, and a doomer on the cover of a tape of Russian post-punk.



After this step, you’re pretty much done. I wait at least three days before giving it the first listen-through, so it’s still fresh in my mind, but not entirely. That’s when you might do your edits too. So the tape is not really complete until after the first listen.


I often ponder the question of who is going to be listening to these tapes after I’m gone. Where will these cassettes be in 100 years? Are they destined for a landfill? Will they get erased in a gigantic solar flare? Detonated in a nuclear blast? Or will they become family heirlooms? Sold off to collectors? Maybe even fossilized and discovered by future archeologists. Probably not the latter two, at least some of them if not all of them are probably destined for the landfill after enough years go by, and it will be like I never existed, but I can dream. I feel like I have uploaded my consciousness onto these tapes. They contain my memories. If I were to lose them it would be like having amnesia. But if someone plays them after I’m gone, I will live again. 

Tuesday, June 18, 2024

The Decades in Music ~ Full Playlist

 I’ve been hearing rumors about YouTube randomly deleting people’s playlists for being child unfriendly and denying their appeals, so rather than wait and have that happen to me I have painstakingly typed up the entire thing. A little inconsistent with whether it’s band name or song title first, but it will be enough to aid me in rebuilding it should worst come to worst. This was based on earlier, very outdated notes I had from back when the playlist was a series of mix CDs, where I was doing song title first for some reason. I didn’t feel like fixing it. The songs set apart from the others at the bottom of the list aren’t currently on the playlist as it is right now but I may change my mind and add them at a later date. A lot of research went into this thing, finding out what year a song came out can be surprisingly tricky sometimes. And don’t get me started on how hard it was typing out the Spanish, French, Slavic and especially the Russian ones, since I don’t speak those languages. I would hate to have all that time I spent on it wasted, at the mercy of the whims of a greedy corporation and their mindless AI bots. Anyway, this is how the playlist is as of now. The songs are supposed to flow together, where possible anyway. I will keep adding, and maybe subtracting songs as time goes on. 


If you somehow made it to this entry and don’t know what I’m on about, you can start listening to the playlists here, if they’re hopefully still there. I did one for the 1970s too but it’s very sparse right now. A work in progress.


The case to my DVD version of the playlists, that I recorded off YouTube with a DVD Recorder. I’m beginning to think I have a problem. 


Year Mixes - Updated Version


1980


  • The Cure - Seventeen Seconds
  • Joy Division - Passover
  • Siouxsie and the Banshees- Paradise Place
  • Marching Girls - True Love
  • The Bad Poets - Crash Sweet Crash
  • The Sound - I Can’t Escape Myself 
  • Threshold - I Want You
  • Vivabeat - Working for William



1981


  • Heimcomputer - Kraftwerk 
  • Minustry - I’m Falling
  • Native Tongue- Speaking in Captions
  • Queen - Under Pressure
  • Blue Oyster Cult - Burnin for You
  • Who’s Crying Now - Journey
  • Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime 
  • New Order - Dreams Never End (Peel Session)
  • Direct Lines - The Electronic Circus
  • Laser - Laser
  • The 57th Parallel - In This Light
  • Sport of Kings - The Same Breath
  • Unit - Logic System
  • Amanda - Panoramas
  • The Maze - Silent Scream
  • Stunt Kites - Lebensraum
  • Treatment Room - Awayday
  • Charlotte Sometimes - The Cure
  • Scars - All About You
  • Outline - Maybe it’s a Game
  • Der Blaue Reiter - Lights Off
  • The Samples - 1984
  • Dorian Gray - Grad 
  • The Visions - Paper Kids
  • Ex Kurs - Warten
  • Holocaust- The Small Hours




1982


  • Temptation- New Order
  • Hard Times - The Jetzons
  • Don’t Go - Yazoo
  • Ministry - Same Old Madness 
  • Wanna be Starting Something - Michael Jackson
  • Mesopotamia - The B-52s. 
  • Voodoo Church - Egypt
  • El Último Suẽno - No Debiste Asustarme
  • I Ran - A Flock of Seagulls
  • See You - Depeche Mode
  • Cold - The Cure
  • Sad Lovers and Giants - Things We Never Did
  • Foreign Press - Climbing
  • Spray Pals - Dead Sea
  • A Night in June - Autumn 
  • Mofungo - Where do we get the money to save our souls?
  • The Cry - Desert Child
  • The Names - This is Harmony
  • A Formal Sigh - No Hell
  • Christian Death - Figurative Theatre 
  • Diamond Head - Am I Evil?
  • Twisted Nerve - Never Say Goodbye 
  • UHF - Concerto
  • Qua Dance - A Heart
  • No More - Stereo
  • Never Say Never - Romeo Void
  • Safety Dance - Men Without Hats
  • Middle Class - The Call
  • Fox in Socks - The Lonely House
  • The Chemicals - Landing Strip
  • Rigid Desire (The Thinking Man’s) Deception
  • X.K.I. - I Hate Everything
  • Blessed are the Dead - Prosper
  • Luna - Povratak 
  • Soft Cell - Tainted Love
  • Human League - Don’t you Want Me
  • Various - Hours


1983


  • Separate Ways - Journey
  • Sunglasses at Night - Corey Hart
  • Love in Itself - Depeche Mode
  • Nobody’s Diary - Yazoo
  • Automatic Man - Michael Sembello
  • Leave Me Alone - New Order
  • Nightmares - A Flock of Seagulls 
  • Here Cones the Rain Again - Eurythmics 
  • Let Me Go - Heaven 17
  • Blurpz - Escape
  • Day After - Ticking Away
  • Spellbound- Siouxsie and the Banshees
  • Modern Love - David Bowie
  • Rebel Yell - Billy Idol
  • Metallica Seek and Destroy
  • Institutionalized- Suicidal Tendencies
  • Blood Fetish - Cause Mistress
  • Luna - Vila
  • Garden of Delight - Glory
  • Vulpess - Me Gusta ser una zorra
  • Flue - Sometimes (in Arabia)
  • Polanstk y el Ardor - Cruzando el Rubicon
  • Paralisis Permanente - Caja de Ritmos
  • Tröckener Kecks - Mokerslagen
  • Ministry - Revenge
  • Deafear - Death Bizarre
  • Aquila - No Point
  • Dachau Choir - Dying Man, Faithful Priest
  • Bauhaus - The Sanity Assassin 
  • Asmodi Bizarre - Credible Est
  • Dobri Isak - Čombri Kuća
  • Panjandrum - A Grey Landing
  • The Waterboys - A Girl Called Johnny
  • Kraftwerk - Sex Object (demo version)
  • The World Service - Celebration Town
  • Los Monaguillosh- Voca en las Jungas
  • Boytronic - You
  • The Taxi’s - Suez (album)



1984


  • Magic - Mick Smiley
  • In a Manner of Speaking - Paparazzi 
  • Colour Radio - Adrianna Dreams 
  • Altar Ego - Altar Ego
  • Green River - New God
  • Metallica - Ride the Lightning 
  • Scare Crow - Concrete is my Pillow
  • Paralisis Permanente - Nocidos para Dominar
  • Garden of Delight - Blessed Minutes
  • Every Day is Halloween - Ministry
  • The Dark - Lost Loved Ones
  • Skinny Puppy - Far Too Frail
  • Tones on Tails - Christian Says
  • The Killing Moon - Echo and the Bunnymen
  • Somebody’s Watching Me - Rockwell
  • Savin’ the Day - Alessi Bros.
  • All the Same - A Drop in the Grey
  • Total Eclipse of the Heart - The Expression
  • Metro Decay - (Greek letters)
  • The March Violets - Walk into the Sun
  • Horrible Sexy Vampires - Crystal Tears
  • Passions - Therese Rocket
  • Better and Better - Scent Merci
  • False Illusion - Obscurity Age
  • Borghesia - Nocne Setnje
  • You’re Not There - Log 10
  • Grey Days - Turquoise Skies
  • A Woman Like You - Obscure by Degrees
  • She Loves by Numbers - Edge by Wedge
  • Play - In my Mind
  • The Pulse - Plastic Man
  • Ret Marut - Spleen
  • White Door - Flame in my Heart
  • Pagan Myth - Repossessed 
  • Skeletal Family- Promised Land
  • Persona Non Grata - The Clawning
  • Broken Silence - Night Stalking 
  • League of Nations - Fade
  • S-Haters - Solitary Habit
  • The Cars - Heartbeat City
  • Grc - Crne Rukavice 




1985


  • Eighties - Killing Joke
  • Back in Time - Hewey Lewis and the News
  • Running up That Hill - Kate Bush
  • The Smiths - How Soon is Now?
  • Take On Me - A-Ha
  • Black Planet - Sisters of Mercy
  • XDavis - Windows to the World
  • Close to Me - The Cure
  • Don’t Come Around Here No More - Tom Petty
  • Dramarama - Anything, Anything 
  • Donación Agnelli - Lo Antiguo
  • Tulpä - Crosses on the Berlin Wall 
  • Gray Parade - Flags are Bruning 
  • Modern Dance - A Day’s Wait 
  • You Spin Me - Dead or Alive
  • Dare to be Stupid - Weird Al Yankovic 
  • Rock Me Amadeus - Falco
  • Ninth Column - Bela’s Box
  • Sleepless - Fear is your Friend
  • Morticia - Rotting Corpse 
  • Unknown Gender - Tragedy
  • Death in June - The Calling
  • SS-Say - Care
  • Clan of Xymox - A Day
  • THC - Leve Impulso
  • Perfect Kiss - New Order
  • New Gate - The Ocean 
  • Homoham - Harlequin Tears
  • Coka - Amarfio
  • Cold Dance - Petrified 
  • Antiheroes - Tu Sufrimiento


1986


  • Sledgehammer- Peter Gabriel
  • Soft Rains of April - A-Ha
  • Bizarre Love Triangle - New Order
  • The Affordable Floors  - The Sounding 
  • Indians Fall in Love - Stitch
  • Ministry - All Day
  • Stripped - Depeche Mode
  • Nasty Boys - Janet Jackson
  • Itchy Bitchy - KMFDM
  • Siouxsie and the Banshees- Cities in Dust
  • Metallica- The Thing that Should Not Be
  • Sex Object- Kraftwerk 
  • Until December - Mirrors
  • West End Girls - Pet Shop Boys
  • As the World Falls Down - David Bowie
  • Weekend at Waikiki - Perfect Punishment
  • Basic Scream - Rites
  • Two Helens - Heaven and Hell
  • Easterhouse - Whistling in the Dark
  • Club de Rome - Murder
  • Auscult - S/T
  • Blue Kremlin - Te Quero
  • Indust Bag -  Puščava 
  • Bigoti - Belka
  • Fear Condition - One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest 
  • Mensen Blaffen -  Krengen
  • The Chameleons - Swamp Thing
  • Azmodi Bizarr - The Bride 
  • Pieces of Dreams - The Velvet Hand 
  • Dorian Gray - Touch
  • Picture Book - Scarlet Everywhere 
  • Clan of Xymox - Back Door
  • Fecal Matter - Class of ‘86 ( Punk Rocker)
  • Smog - Dream of Sand
  • Liikkuvat Lapset - Sinut Haluan 
  • The Gentry - Mutual Distrust
  • Smirnov - Savé
  • The Fact - Always There
  • The Mission - Severina 
  • Aviador Dro - La Zona Fantasma 
  • Feudales - Puttrefacción (Peru)
  • Shot in the Dark - Ozzy Osbourne
  • A Shadow of Light - Play Your Joker



1987



  • Temptation’87 - New Order
  • Behind the Wheel - The Cure
  • Hall of Mirrors - Siouxsie and the Banshees 
  • Tim Curry - Anything Can Happen on Halloween 
  • Time Will Crawl - David Bowie
  • Learning to Fly - Pink Floyd
  • Slide - INXS
  • Leave Me Alone - Michael Jackson
  • What Have I Done to Deserve This? - Pet Shop Boys
  • On the Moon - Beyond Words
  • Just Like Heaven - The Cure
  • Sweet Child o Mine - Guns n Roses
  • Cry Little Sister - Gerard McMahon
  • Tuesday Knight - Running from this Nightmare 
  • Dokken - Dream Warriors
  • Tiistai - Tuhansien…
  • The Klinik - World Domination 
  • Gestalt - Movi Mundi 
  • Siglo XX - Sister Suicide 
  • Trash Groove Girls - Trash Beat 
  • Advanced Art - You’re a Pretender
  • Immortal - Syn
  • Dyplomatic - Ou est L’amour?
  • Euroshima - Matando Sueños
  • Альянс - На Заре
  • Trivalia - Poreklo
  • Sculpteur D’Ombres - L’Ange Noir 
  • Kill the Messenger - One Night 
  • The Paradox- A New Rain
  • Clocks of Paradise- Sandra 
  • Married Body - Ta Stvar 
  • Bojler - demos
  • Rosengarten - demos 
  • Broken Toys - Little Bells




1988


  • Under the Milky Way - The Church
  • Kino - Spokonaya Noch
  • One Life - Never Sleep Again
  • Suedehead - Morrisey
  • Cold Hearted Snake - Paula Abdul
  • Weird Al Yankovic - Fat
  • I Would Walk 500 Miles - The Proclaimers
  • New Anger - Gary Newman
  • Stigmata - Ministry
  • Vomito Negro - Yellow Fever 
  • Sustain Upright - Frontline Assembly
  • Testure - Skinny Puppy
  • Volumes of Madness - Four More Years 
  • Bela Luna - In a Manner of Speaking 
  • Slow Motion - Deserts of the Night 
  • Fields of Nephilim - Moonchild
  • The Unersattlichen - How do you spell relief? 
  • Excés Nocturne - Cauchemars Blafards
  • Put - Morbidi I Mnoći
  • Arde el Mar - Los Ostros 
  • Renzo Teflon - Dos Extraños 
  • Flleciste - 
  • Soundgarden - Beyond the Wheel
  • Metallica - Eye of the Beholder
  • Danzig - Mother



1989


  • About a Girl - Nirvana
  • Janie’s Got a Gun - Aerosmith
  • Epic - Faith No More
  • Down in It - Nine Inch Nails
  • Flip City - Glenn Frey
  • Tom Petty - Running Down a Dream 
  • Gin Blossoms - Hey Jealousy demo
  • Father Time - Shark Island
  • Robbi Robb - In Time
  • Lullaby - The Cure
  • Every Little Step - Bobby Brown
  • Round & Round - New Order
  • Asylum Party - La Tourmente
  • Phantasmorgia - Boje
  • Pornografia - Elektrownie Atomowe 
  • El Sueño de Nemo - Oraciones
  • Mary Goes Round - Clouds and Clouds
  • Olga Voskonyan - Cars
  • Candy Stripe - Missing Words
  • Mask For - True Love
  • Red Flag - Pretty in Pity
  • Skinny Puppy - Worlock
  • And One - Body Project demos
  • Vomito Negro - Chicago Cave
  • Spiritual Sky - Escoutez et Repetez 
  • Tragic Error - Tanzen 



1990


  • Man in the Box - Alice in Chains
  • Pantera - Cemetery Gates 
  • The Salaminizer - Gwar
  • Social Distortion - Story of My Life 
  • Pennyroyal Tea (demo) - Nirvana
  • Enjoy the Silence - Depeche Mode
  • Escapade - Janet Jackson
  • Disappear - INXS
  • Turtle Power - Partners in Krhyme
  • 9.95 - Spunkadelic 
  • Leather Strip - Leather Strip Part II
  • Dance or Die - Dance or Die
  • Alien Sex Fiend - Now I’m Feeling Zombified 
  • Vomito Negro - Black Power 
  • L’An III - Artistes
  • Наумахиjа - Спокаj 
  • Crucifixion - Sin Razon Zoocial
  • If I Never - Ex Voto
  • Brotherhood of Pagans - Resurrection
  • The Drowning Dolphins - Never Mind 
  • Promise - Every New Dead Ghost.   
  • Trivalia - To Smo Mi
  • Peter  Murphy - Cuts You Up
  • Dreamgrinder - Deeps and Shallows
  • Pink Turns Blue - Identity House
  • You’re Always Guilty - Vellum Stairs
  • Asylum Party - Pure Joy in my Heart 
  • Little Nemo - Seconds
  • Switchblade Symphony- Mine Eyes
  • Revenge of Nephthys - Rain (demo)
  • Lima 13 - Tratando de Escabar
  • From the Hip - Xorcist 
  • The Martyr- Eternal Paradox 
  • The Prophetess - Avalon
  • Phantasmorgia - Someday
  • Tanz Waffen - Stiletto
  • Melopee - Lyelle
  • The Cure - Close to Me (1990 Version)
  • X-Machina - Queen of Hell
  • Jaquy Bitch - Cimetiere des Ange



1991



  • Something in the Way - Nirvana
  • Black - Pearl Jam
  • No More Tears - Ozzy Osbourne
  • Mr. Bungle - Travolta 
  • Metallica- Sad But True
  • Oni Koji Gani Pozar - OKGP
  • Temple of the Dog - Hunger Strike
  • Alice in Chains - Brother (demo)
  • You Could Be Mine - Guns n Roses
  • Outshined - Soundgarden 
  • City of Angels - Red Hot Chili Peppers
  • Who is It? - Michael Jackson
  • Second Voice - And One
  • Vomito Negro - The New Drug 
  • Das Ich - Die Propheten 
  • Dream Deciples -  Veil of Tears
  • Every New Dead Ghost - Cages 
  • Extremaunción - Sin Nda Que Esperar
  • Deine Lakaien - Dark Star
  • Computer Love - Kraftwerk 
  • Where the Streets Have No Name - Pet Shop Boys
  • Lestat - Pray for the Living



1992


  • Would? - Alice in Chains
  • Creep - Stone Temple Pilots
  • Rsiohed - Creep 
  • Gin Blossoms - Hey Jealousy 
  • Welcome to Paradise - Green Day
  • No Rain - Blind Melon
  • Johnny Clegg - Life is a Magic Thing 
  • Dave Grohl - Alone + Easy Target demo 
  • Sisters of Mercy - Temple of Love
  • Passion Noire - Every Day
  • And One - Years 
  • Vomito Negro - Wake Up Smell the 90s
  • Midlife Crisis - Faith No More
  • Aneurysm- Nirvana
  • Thunderkiss 65 - White Zombie 
  • Ministry - Just One Fix 
  • The Wake - Sideshow 
  • Type O Negative- Scream Because I Can’t 
  • Revenge of Nephthys- No Way Out
  • Garten Kirkhoff - Le Dormeur
  • 13 Candles - The Traveler 
  • yelworC - Curse
  • La Guillotina - Invovco a Dios
  • This Love - Pantera 
  • Killing in the Name Of - Rage Against the Machine 
  • Come Together - Terracon 
  • London After Midnight- Black Cats
  • Forthcoming Fire - Feuer




1993



  • Heart-Shaped Box - Nirvana
  • Right Turn - Alice in Chains
  • Hey Jealousy- Gin Blossoms
  • Sober - Tool
  • Low - Cracker
  • New Order - Regret
  • Porno for Pyros - Pets 
  • And One - Life Isn’t Easy in Germany 
  • Walking in My Shoes - Depeche Mode
  • Disarm - Smashing Pumpkins
  • Collective Soul - Shine
  • Weird Al Yankovic - Jurassic Park 
  • Candlebox - Far Behind
  • Alice in Chains - What the Hell Have I 
  • Korn - Blind (demo)
  • Das Ich - Sonne Mund und Sterne 
  • Girls Under Glass - The Heart in my Heart
  • Nostferatu - Dark Angel
  • Car Crash International- Paradise Lost
  • Block Out - Necki Moji Drugovi 
  • The Prophetess - Avalon
  • The Angina Pectoris - In Time of Fall
  • The Flowers of Romance - Amaradina
  • Nirvana - Where Did you Sleep Last Night? 
  • Summer Girl - Type O Negative 
  • Hammerbox - When 3 is 2



1994


  • Nutshell - Alice in Chains
  • Aurelio Voltaire - Underground
  • Nine Inch Nails - Hurt
  • Fell on Black Days - Soundgarden
  • Slide Away - Oasis
  • Plowed - Sponge
  • Offspring- Self Esteem
  • Basket Case - Green Day
  • Dreamspace - Stratovarius 
  • Infected - Bad Religion
  • Weird Al Yankovic - Headline News
  • Everything But the Girl - Missing
  • Madaur - I Feel Good
  • Korn - Predictable 
  • Rammstein - Schwarzes Glas
  • Summer Dying Fast - Cradle of Filth
  • Covenant - From the Storm of Shadows -(demo)
  • Dimmu Borgir - Inn i Eveghetens Mørki
  • Carrion - Project Pitchfork 
  • Das Ich -Der Schrei
  • Velvet Acid Christ - Killing Me 
  • Body Nerv - And One
  • Steril - Overgod
  • Suspiria - Allegedly, Dancefloor Tragedy
  • Lupercais -  O Homem das Costas Pesadas
  • Kontrabanda - Pilki Vakarai
  • Voyseryo - Del Instante 
  • Paralysed Age - Bloodsucker
  • Diary of Dreams - Shattered Disguise 
  • Witching Hour - Slave to the Night
  • Deviate Ladies - Liturgical Obsession 
  • Age of Heaven - The Providence
  • Duendes de Teatro - Simples Rastros
  • Elegia - Black Rain
  • Candlebox - Far Behind
  • Digital Factor - Falling Down




1995


  • Tonight, Tonight - Smashing Pumpkins
  • Silverchair - Tomorrow 
  • Don’t Look Back in Anger - Oasis
  • Counting Blue Cars - Dishwalla
  • Name - Goo Goo Dolls
  • The World I Know - Collective Soul
  • Local H - Bound for the Floor (demo)
  • You Learn - Alanis Morsette
  • We’re Not Gonna Make It - Presidents of the USA
  • Polris - Hey Sandy
  • All Mixed Up - 311
  • Coffee Shop - Red Hot Chili Peppers
  • Scream - Michael Jackson 
  • The Offspring- Gotta Get Away
  • Comedown - Bush
  • Alice in Chains - Again
  • Laichzeit - Rammstein
  • Chateau Royale - Voodoo
  • Rob Dougn - Clubbed to Death 
  • Switchblade Symphony - Sweet
  • Covenant - Through the Eyes of the Raven
  • Troll - Trollberg 
  • Witches Rune - Twilight
  • Midnight Configuration- The Wake
  • The Wake - Christine
  • Brotherhood of Pagans - Halloween 
  • The Horatii - That’s My Girl
  • Corpus Delicti - Treasures
  • Abscess - Delusion 
  • Mad Season - Long Gone Day
  • System of a Down (demo tape 1 and untitled demo disc)
  • Rancid - Ruby Soho




1996



  • Alice in Chains - Frogs (unplugged)
  • Tool - Aenema
  • Pepper - Butthole Surfers
  • One Headlight - The Wallflowers 
  • Freshmen - Verve Pipe
  • I Was Wrong - Social Distortion
  • Follow you Down - Gin Blossoms 
  • Trippin on a Hole in a Paper Heart - Stone Temple Pilots
  • Devil’s Haircut - Beck
  • Eddie Vedder - Local H
  • Nada Surf - Popular
  • Collective Soul - Precious Declaration 
  • Sell Out - Reel Big Fish
  • Counting Crows - Long December 
  • The Cure - Numb
  • Calling in Sick - Weird Al Yankovic 
  • Tomorrow - Stratovarius 
  • Stabbing Westward - What do I Have to Do?
  • Sneaker Pimps - 6 Underground 
  • Be My Druidess - Type O Negative 
  • White Zombie - I’m Your Boogieman 
  • Korn - No Place to Hide
  • Troll - Mirror
  • Velvet Acid Christ - Fade Away
  • Bush - Greedy Fly
  • Theatre of Tragedy - And When he Falleth
  • Apoptygma Berserk - Nonstop Violence
  • System of a Down - Soil (demo)
  • Dimmu Borgir - Alt Lys Er Svonnet Hen
  • Cradle of Filth - Dusk and Her Embrace 
  • Diary of Dreams - End of Flowers
  • Deceptión Azul - Sin Repuesta 
  • Extremaunción - Extremaunciónh
  • Giant’s Cuseway - Forever
  • Malaise- Son of Heaven 


1997


  • Semi-Charmed Kind of Life - Third Eye Blind
  • White Town - Your Woman
  • Song 2 - Blur
  • Sex and Candy - Marcy Playground 
  • Why I’m Here - Oleander
  • Clumsy - Our Lady Peace
  • Deeder - High
  • Blink 182 - Dammit
  • Goldfinger - Superman
  • Freak - Silverchair 
  • Everlong - Foo Fighters
  • It’s No Good - Depeche Mode 
  • Michael Jackson - Morphine 
  • This Vale of Tears - Maniac
  • Firestarer - Prodigy
  • Digital Factor - Falling Down 97
  • And One - Sometimes 
  • David Bowie - Afraid of Americans
  • Last Cup of Sorrow - Faith No More
  • Bitch - Sevendust
  • GWAR - Hate Love Songs
  • Lav Eli - Your Eyes
  • System of a Down - Marmalade 
  • Sehnsucht - Rammstein
  • Bizarre Cosmic Industries - Covenant 
  • Spellbound- Dimmu Borgir 
  • The Undertaker - Dark Side
  • Dornenreich - In Die Nacht
  • Mankind - Ode to Freud
  • Velvet Acid Christ - Malfunction
  • Korn - Kick the PA
  • Ultimo Descenso  -  Miserable
  • Silentium Noctis - Ore
  • In My Rosary - Room No. 6



1998


  • Sugar - System of a Down 
  • The Living End - Prisoner of Society
  • Leech - Eve 6
  • All the Kids are Right - Local H
  • The Kids Aren’t Alright - The Offspring 
  • Fuel - Shimmer
  • Goo Goo Dolls - Iris 
  • Matchbox 20 - Push
  • Blue Monday - Orgy
  • My So-Called Life - The Ataris
  • One Week - Bare Naked Ladies
  • The Ghost of Stephen Foster - Squirrel Nut Zippers
  • Heeding the Call - Hammerfall
  • Wisdom of the Kings - Rhapsody of Fire
  • Lorelei - Theatre of Tragedy
  • Voltaire- Ex-Lover’s Lover
  • No Man’s Land - Blazh
  • Placebo - Pure Morning 
  • And One - Under Wieder
  • Jerry Cantrell - Dickeye
  • Das Ich - Destillat 
  • In Strict Confidence - Sad But True
  • Dragula - Rob Zombie
  • Ad Vitam Aeternam - Escape
  • The New Creatures - Clownhead 
  • The Baroness and Love Lies Bleeding - House of Pain 
  • Troll - Sits and Sews
  • Stabbing Westward - Save Yourself 
  • New Noise - Refused
  • Metallica - The Small Hours
  • Filter - One 
  • Godsmack - Voodoo
  • Freak on a Leash - Korn



1999


  • Korn - Falling Away from Me
  • Wait and Bleed - Slipknot 
  • Bled for Days - Static X
  • Kittie - Brakish
  • Bloodhound Gang - Yummy Down on This
  • Alien - Pennywise
  • My Own Worst Enemy - Lit
  • Little Black Backpack - Stroke 9
  • All Star - Smashmouth
  • Everlast - What It’s Like 
  • Juice - Something (Adema demo)
  • Reveille- Phoenix 
  • Grotesquery Conceiled - Dimmu Borgir 
  • A Sequel of Decay - Tristania
  • Kamelot - The Fourth Legacy
  • Everything Dies - Type O Negative 
  • Mannequin - The Kovenant
  • Marilyn Manson - The Dope Show
  • Stale Bread - Broken Chains 
  • Wolfago - Stagnola
  • Morbid Poetry - Train
  • Lahka Muza - Plac Siren
  • Stages of Cruelty - Contamination 
  • Seraphim Shock - Little Gothic
  • Bush - Letting the Cables Sleep
  • Get Born Again - Alice in Chains
  • Clan of Xymox - Jasmine and Rose
  • Reanimat - Das Ich 
  • Digital Factor - Decisions
  • Primal Scream - Swastika Eyes
  • Velvet Acid Christ - Fun With Drugs
  • KMFDM - Adios
  • Underworld - Bruce Lee
  • VNV Nation - Savior 
  • Hybrid - Dreaming Your Dreams
  • Germs - Weird Al Yankovic 
  • Nobody’s Real - Powerman 5000
  • Dope - Everything Sucks
  • Anthem to the Year 2000 - Silverchair 




2000


  • Stupify - Disturbed 
  • Papercut - Linkin Park 
  • Kryptonite - 3 Doors Down
  • Teenage Dirtbag - Wheatus 
  • MXPX - Responsibility 
  • VAST - Free
  • System of a Down - Snowblind 
  • Frontier Psychiatrist - The Avalanches 
  • Dreams in Digital - Orgy
  • Digital Bath - Deftones 
  • How to Disappear Completely - Radiohead
  • Lysergia - Velvet Acid Christ 
  • Mindless Faith - Descent 
  • Grand Theft Audio - Stoopid Ass
  • Dope - You Spin Me 
  • Panzermensch - And One
  • Detroit Grand Pubahs - Sandwiches 
  • Let’s Go All the Way - Insane Clown Posse
  • Diary of Dreams - Butterfly Dance
  • La Devoción- Mirando al Vacio
  • Diva Destruction - Enslaved
  • Out of Reach - Voltaire 
  • Apartment 26 - Backwards
  • Godsmack - Awake
  • Union Underground- Turn Me On Mr. Deadman
  • Primus and Ozzy Osbourne- N.I.B.
  • Saffron’s Curse - Cradle of Filth 
  • Millennium- Stratovarius 



2001


  • Toxicity - System of a Down 
  • Alien Ant Farm - Smooth Criminal
  • New Order - Crystal
  • 19-2000 - Gorillaz
  • Crystal - New Order
  • Fuck Authority- Pennywise
  • Drowning - Adema
  • Mein Herz Brennt - Rammstein 
  • Puritainia - Dimmu Borgir 
  • Tender Trip on Earth - Tristania 
  • Karma - Kamelot 
  • Bring Her Down - Rob Zombie 
  • Pain for Pleasure - Sum 41
  • Gets Me Through - Ozzy Osbourne 
  • Gorillaz - Tomorrow Comes Today
  • Superheroes- Daft Punk
  • Parasite God - Mortiis
  • Deep - Nine Inch Nails
  • Insane Clown Posse - Every Halloween 
  • Timekiller - Project Pitchfork
  • Rock Solid - Conker’s Bad Fur Day soundtrack 



2002


  • The Chasm - The Kovenant 
  • Lord of the Rings Soundtrack- Gollum’s Song
  • Thoughtless- Korn
  • Linkin Park - Points of Authority (remix)
  • Innervision - System of a Down
  • Otep - Blood Pigs
  • Union Underground - Across the Nation
  • Primer 55 - Tricycle 
  • You Know You’re Right - Nirvana
  • Over - The Birthday Massacre 
  • Lord of Eternity - Kotipelto
  • Where’s the Girl? - Voltaire 
  • I Would Be Your Slave - David Bowie 
  • Engel - Das Ich
  • This World - Funkervogt
  • Snuff Machinery - [:SITD:]
  • Unicorn - Apoptygma Berzerk
  • K16 - The Cure
  • Two Months Off - Underground 
  • Carbon - VNV Nation
  • Traumtänzer - Diary of Dreams 
  • Heathcliff - Diva Destruction
  • La Devoción - Isabel
  • Camila Sombrio - Dark Revenge
  • Чудная Долина - Mr. Credo 




2003


  • Vitamin - Kraftwerk 
  • Linkin Park - Easier to Run
  • Mercury - Ayria
  • Krieger - And One
  • Rose-Colored Skies - [:SITD:]
  • Crawl - Velvet Acid Christ 
  • Diva Destruction- Black Heart
  • Acid Theater - The Kovenant 
  • I Don’t Wanna Be Me - Type O Negative 
  • Right Now - Korn
  • Violent J - Yellow Brick Alleyway 
  • SS Deathstar Supergalactik - Hanzel und Gretyl
  • Tanz Mit Laibach - Laibach
  • Deathstars - Syndrome 
  • Mannequin- Cradle of Filth 
  • Progencies of the Great Apocalypse- Dimmu Borgir 
  • Type O Negative- Out of the Fire
  • Kamelot - Center of the Universe 
  • Find Your Own Voice - Stratovarius 
  • I Stand Alone - Godsmack 



2004


  • Wall of Pride - Voltaire 
  • Anniversary- The Cure
  • Return to Oz - Scissor Sisters
  • Singular - Mindless Faith
  • Uterus - Das Ich
  • Reign of Chaos - Diary of Dreams
  • Tanz mit dem Feuer - Unheilig 
  • Sakrileg - Eisbrecher 
  • Way too Wicked - Mortiis
  • Metalspürhunde - Blut und Spiele
  • Diskofire Sheiss Messiah - Hanzel und Gretyl 
  • Finger Eleven - Slow Chemical 
  • Moskau - Rammstein 
  • Blue - The Birthday Massacre 
  • The Organ - Brother
  • Enigma - Atrocity
  • Slave to the Parasites - Hypocrisy 
  • Karl Sanders - Contemplating the Endless Abyss 
  • Nemesis - Cradle of Filth 
  • Back to Times of Splendor - Disillusion
  • Kamelot - Soul Society 
  • Far Away From Me - Morthem Vlade Art



2005


  • System of a Down - Holy Mountains 
  • Rosenrot - Rammstein 
  • The Hand that Feeds - Nine Inch Nails
  • Suffer Well - Depeche Mode 
  • Lovely Day - Ayria
  • Birthday Massacre - Blue 
  • London After Midnight - Your Best Nightmare
  • Haus der Stille - Diary of Dreams
  • Fleischverstärker - Project Pitchfork
  • Crusade - [:SITD:]
  • Perpetual - VNV Nation 
  • Dare - Gorillaz
  • Arminka - Ancorde
  • Guardian Angel - The Frozen Autumn



2006


  • Nahe - Das Ich
  • Machine - Velvet Acid Christ 
  • Taktical Sekt - Chosen One
  • Metalspürhunde - -196 C
  • Diva Destruction- Run Cold
  • The Frozen Autumn - Guardian Angel
  • Stand the Pain - And One
  • Moonspell - Luna
  • The Negative Sex - IAMX
  • Tear You Apart - She Wants Revenge
  • Play God - Deathstars
  • Bleeder - Zombie Girl
  • Vergissmeinnicht - Eisbrecher 
  • Theatre of Tragedy - Storm 
  • Crows - Gothic Archies
  • Scarps - Self Command
  • Lacrimas Profundere - Again It’s Over
  • Promised Land - In Strict Confidence
  • Temptation - Cradle of Filth 
  • E-Shock - De/Vision
  • Under the Wire - Clan of Xymox 
  • Korn and The Cure - In Between Days
  • Warmonger - Frozen Plasma
  • Skraelings - Leaves Eyes



2007


  • Hell in a Handbasket - Voltaire 
  • Kamelot - Rule the World
  • Serj Tankian- Emoty Walls
  • Have a Nice Life - Bloodhail 
  • Silver Bombs - [:SITD:]
  • Bound - Mindless Faith
  • Nemesis - VNV Nation 
  • Wumpscut - My Dear Ghoul 
  • Creature of Night - Zombie Girl
  • Underdog - Mortiis
  • Nine Inch Nails - Survivalism (Velvet Acid Christ remix)
  • Septeber Sun - Type O Negative 
  • The Serpentine Offering - Dimmu Borgir
  • The Plague - Diary of Dreams 
  • Binary - Assemblage 23
  • Living Dead - Din A Tod
  • Moonsoell - Dreamless
  • Distonia - Douxe Torture 
  • Última Dança - Epitáfio 
  • Invisible - Voz Propia 
  • Looking Glass - The Birthday Massacre 
  • Alive ! - Omnia
  • November - Faun
  • Sad Kermit - Hurt 



2008


  • Aurelio Voltaire- Accordion Player
  • Scarlet Leaves - Fate 
  • Unheilig - Puppenspeiler 
  • Atrocity - Deutschmaschine
  • Eisbrecher - This is Deutsch
  • Ayria - Six Seconds
  • Nane Yesayan - Khorodig-Morotig



2009 

  • Das Ich - Kannibale 
  • Metalspürhunde - Bose Wetter 
  • Behemoth- Lucifer 
  • She Wants Revenge - Sleep 
  • Velvet Acid Christ - Black Rainbows 
  • Rusty Nail - Deborah
  • Alice in Chains - Your Decision 
  • Rammstein - Ich tu Dir Weh 
  • Deathstars - Death Dies Hard
  • Psychostick - This is not a Song It’s a Sandwich 
  • Inga and Anush - Menk Enk Mer Sarere 
  • Depeche Mode - In Chains
  • Rotersand - First Time 
  • Magenta - Darkest Dream 
  • Resplandor - Drownfall 
  • Rendez-Vous - Na Skirzyzowaniu Ulic
  • Jardim do Silencio - A Minha Tragedia 
  • VNV Nation - Tomorrow Never Comes
  • Ilegales - Enamorados de Varsovia
  • Human Tetris - Baltic Sea
  • Catharsis (Heal Me Control Me) - SITD


2010


  • Borders Are - Serj Tankian
  • Closer to the End - Mortiis
  • Empty- Theatre of Tragedy 
  • Bombe - Eisbrecher 
  • I Disappear - Buzz Kull
  • Time to be Alive - De/Vision
  • MySpace Hero - Terminal Choice
  • Comedown - Mono Inc.
  • Detatch Me from my Head - Feeding Fingers
  • The Deenjes - Togh u Gna
  • Bat Nouveau- The Cry
  • Black Hole - Nosferatu
  • Orange Sector - I Hate You
  • Vomito Negro - Move Your Body 
  • Silver Bullets - In Strict Confidence
  • The Demiurge Molecule - Dimmu Borgir 
  • Deceiving Eyes - Cradle of Filth 
  • Burnout - F.O.D. (Couldn’t find on YouTube)



2011


  • Oh Lord (Wake the Dead) - Aurelio Voltaire
  • From the Sky - Brighter Fires
  • My Machine - The Breakup
  • Totally Tot - Lebanon Hanover 
  • Diary of Dreams - Grey the Blue
  • Vomito Negro - Evil Eyes
  • Soft Kill - An Open Door
  • And One - Only Your Dreams
  • Mephisto Walz - Cupid Arrows
  • Lotus Feed - King for 2 Days
  • Follow Me Not - To Lose Friends 
  • European Super State - Killing Joke
  • Angels of Liberty- Blood Thief



2012


  • The Sun - And One 
  • Occupied Tears - Serj Tankian 
  • Narine - Hay Em Yes 
  • IPC - Light Asylum
  • Die Antwoord - I Fink You Freaky
  • Grendel - Timewave Zero 
  • Herz Aus Eis - Eisbrecher 
  • Soviet Trumpeter - Katzenjammer 
  • Avalanche - Lebanon Hanover
  • Toads - Kat McKyte
  • Evoked - Velvet Acid Christ
  • Chris Benoit- Insane Clown Posse 
  • Mutually Assured Destruction- Mindless Faith
  • Vomito Negro - Emerging Souls
  • Dead When I Found Her - No More Nightmares 
  • Engel der Dunkelheit - Stahlman 
  • Panzer - Zavod
  • The Last Mistake - Assemblege 23
  • Lost Control - Buzz Kull
  • Linea Aspera - Malarone
  • Nine Circles - Mercy
  • Lifeless Past - Embryonic Sonancy
  • And One - Missing Track



2013


  • Gallowdance - Lebanon Hanover
  • Daniel Guerra Caballero - Dear Rosie (South Park Goth Kids)
  • Big City Lullaby - Ayria
  • Project Pitchfork- Rain
  • Minuit Machine - Agoraphobia 
  • Silent Em - Cold Decade
  • Echo Planes - Buzz Kull 
  • Vomito Negro - Enemy of the State 
  • Secret to the End - Depeche Mode
  • The Dead Souls - Falling 
  • Soviet Soviet  - No Lesson
  • Antiguo Regemen - Anoche Escupí Azul 
  • Depeche Mode - Secret to the End
  • Tanz mit Mir - Faun
  • The Devil put Dinosaurs Here - Alice in Chains
  • Insane Clown Posse - Hate Her to Death 
  • Tokyo Rose - Midnight Chase
  • Diary of Dreams - A Day in December 
  • Opale - Sparkles and Wine
  • Serj Tankian - Garuna



2014


  • And One - Nyctophiliac 
  • Vomito Negro - Time 
  • Velvet Acid Christ - Barbed Wire Garden
  • Werner Karloff - Atemporal 
  • Falling From Grace - Hante
  • La Peste Negra - Miedo 
  • William Control - Cemetery (acoustic)
  • The Night - Aurelio Voltaire 
  • Tigran Hamasyan - Apple Orchard in Saghmosavank 
  • Earth Warrior - Omnia 
  • Chamich - Noro 
  • This Cold Night - First Class Citizen 
  • Winter Severity Index - Ordinary Love 
  • Mania - Pretty Addicted 
  • Eurovision- Laibach
  • Du Bist Es Night Wert - Melotron 
  • Dreams - Buzz Kull 
  • Gloria - The Midnight
  • Echoes - Timecop 1983



2015


  • David Hasselhoff - True Survivor 
  • Diary of Dreams - Endless Night
  • Eileen Khatchatouryan - Titernig 
  • Done Yar - Gata Band
  • Ari Yar - Iveta Mukuchyan
  • Wild Love - Timecop 1983
  • Broken Wing Recital - The Wasteland Wailers
  • Dark Horse - Anthony Vincent
  • Telling the Daffodils - Forever Grey 
  • The Moor - Lebanon Hanover 
  • Enigmatic Individual - This Cold Night
  • Masquerade- Panic Paranoia 
  • The Deenjes - Երեւանի Գիշերներում
  • Lifeless Past - Deceived
  • Black is my Anger - Minuit Machine 
  • Velvet Acid Christ - Barbed Wire Garden (Assemblage 23 remix)
  • Under the Rain - Sitting in the Dark
  • Cashiari - Oscure Noche



2016


 

  • David Bowie - Lazarus 
  • This Cold Night - Holding On
  • The Style is Death - Forever Grey 
  • Hørd - Lines 
  • The Deenjes Մոռանալ
  • La Scaltra - Neverland
  • The Midnight - Synthetic
  • Fading From Me - Ayria
  • Heathens - Anthony Vincent
  • Insane Clown Posse - Falling Apart
  • Dan Deacon - When I Was Done Dying 
  • Virgin in Veil - In the Name of God
  • Mortiis - Demons are Back 
  • Infact - Fatal Error
  • Azhdahak- The Vengeful Winds of Artsakh 
  • Little Big - Fucking Asshole 
  • Pretty Addicted - Choose Your Poison
  • Sunset - The Midnight 
  • Running in the Dark - Timecop 1983
  • Running in the Night - FM-84



2017


  • My Love Grows in Darkness- Glaare
  • Felix Marc - Liar
  • Velvet Acid Christ - Wrack
  • Vomito Negro - Inside Your Brain
  • Statiqbloom- Black Walks Eternal 
  • Hante - Empty Space
  • Diary of Dreams - Decipher Me
  • Nadia Kodes - Anesthesia 
  • Hante - Le Point de non retur
  • Jrimurmurner - Anharma im Mej 
  • Ssshhhiiittt! - восемр 
  • Tango Mangalore- Mort Marin 
  • This Cold Night - Run Away, Simon
  • Selofan - The Basement 
  • Circuits - This Cold Night
  • Vestron Vulture - Shades of Violet - 
  • Dancing Plague - Cataracts
  • The Endless - Hex Me 
  • Tanks and Tears - Life is a Show 
  • Roofs - Molchat Doma
  • Marilyn Manson - Say 10
  • Ave Satanas - Gaywire 
  • Suicide Commando - Chasm of Emptiness 
  • Twiztid - Kill Somebody 
  • Masquerade- Too Depressed to Dance 
  • Mystic Priestess - Small-Minded World 
  • Brotherhood - Damned 
  • The Projectionist - Aurelio Voltaire 
  • Tomorrow’s Ghost - Buzz Kull 
  • Letting Go - Timecop 1983
  • Drab Majesty - Dot in the Sky
  • Holygram - Still There
  • River of Darkness- The Midnight 




2018


  • Alien - Lebanon Hanover 
  • Blood Moon - Syzygyx
  • Boy Harsher - Pain
  • Hørd - Lrn 
  • Foreign States - Silent Em
  • Thin Hidden Hand - Statiqbloom 
  • Avoiding the Light - Buzz Kull
  • We Are Temporary- Medication 
  • Volny - Molchat Doma
  • Nemuer - Descent to the Realm of the Dead 
  • Omnia - Alive Until We Die 
  • Gunship- Dark All Day
  • Back to You - Timecop 1983
  • Still in Still - Twin Tribes
  • Cabaret Grey - Almost Frantic 
  • Chaos - Stolen
  • Enzo Kreft - Disobedient 
  • Accumortis - Coldwave Kids 



2019 


  • In Pieces - Syzygyx
  • No Rest - Silent Em
  • DRGS - Minuit Machine 
  • Fantasmas - Twin Tribes
  • Katil - Kuzim 
  • [:SITD:] - Revelations (Solitary Experiments Remix)
  • Waiting for a Hurricane- Hante
  • Scary Black - Stay in Your Lane
  • Methuselah - Mortiis 
  • The Endless- If One Coffin Lid Shuts Another Shall Open (demo)
  • Alone in my Room - Rain Man
  • Idles - Mercedes Marxist 
  • Avarayr - Vahagn 
  • Tears for the Dying - Shadows
  • Virgin in Veil - Of Tears and Poisons 
  • NNHMN- Special
  • dreDDup - Designed to Die 
  • Orange Sector - I Spit on You
  • Yung Cortex - STFU 
  • Досьидошь - Паранойя 
  • REIN - Off the Grid
  • Skynd - Tyler Hadley
  • Crisis Actor - Orange Man Bad
  • Coldkill - We Believe 
  • Velvet Acid Christ - Conviction 
  • Molchat Doma - Sudno 
  • The Deenjes Նունն է
  • Christian Death - Spiritual Cramp (Halloween 2019)
  • My Own Burial - Upon the Grave
  • A Transition - Runaways 
  • She is Lost - The Foreign Resort 
  • Wires & Lights - Sleepers
  • Ace Morino - Summer
  • Drab Majesty - Oxytocin 
  • Let Go - Kalax


2020 


  • Alert Level - Ministry
  • Trapped Inside - Pitch After Dark
  • The Last Thing - Lebanon Hanover 
  • Node - Infection 
  • IC3PEAK - Плак - Плак
  • Kalte Nacht - Humans Are Mistakes
  • Velvet Kills - The Key
  • Leonora Post-Punk - Eternis
  • ЕЛЕКРОЦОЙ - 
  • Бумажнуые - Мечты 
  • Перемотка - Супермарио 
  • Ötzi - Scorpio 
  • Idles - Carcinogenic 
  • Calaverx - Uná chica mas 
  • Death Loves Veronica - Lies
  • Selofan - Absolutely Absent 
  • Don’t Run from the Fire - Minuit Machine 
  • Genocidal Humanoidz - System of a Down
  • Jrimurmur - Es Kendani Em! 
  • Ladaniva - Oror 
  • Undead - No Man Cry
  • So Obnoxious- Slow Danse with the Dead
  • Desmond Doom - Tomorrow Comes Today 
  • Coor-Brow Obles - I Can’t Sleep 
  • Ascending - E Tu Reagisci 
  • Scry - Inhibition Exhibition 
  • Carnal Machinery - Voices
  • Claustraphobia - Broken 
  • Lost in a Moment- Forever Grey 
  • 90 Degrees - This Cold Night 
  • Black Lava - Statiqbloom 
  • Zvezdy - Molchat Doma 
  • Monster - The Midnight 
  • Vacíos Cuerpos- Reflejos



2021 


  • Schröttersberg - Keter 
  • Aboulia - Manticore Kiss
  • Bleib Modern - Sleep
  • Mortal Boy - Passion Dance
  • Skynd - Michelle Carter
  • Old Karambit - Syzygyx
  • Metal Disco - Vile 
  • Let Me In - Vincas 
  • Fist of the Hanged Man - New Cross
  • Molchat Doma - Utonut
  • Candelabre - Ceasefire of Love 
  • Old Providence - La Muerte 
  • Vestron Vulture - Cemetery Cowboy 
  • Your Hellbound Heart - Glaare
  • Alone in the Hollow Garden - Aeon of Set
  • Qyburn - Rain in a Grave
  • ЕЛЕКРОЦОЙ - Обрекены
  • Slow Danse with the Dead - Cold Caress 
  • Скубут - Акт Самоубийстьа
  • Morosinthe- Tatiana 
  • Tout Debord - Rester lá
  • Tragic Black - Broken Believers
  • Poison Dreams - Faustian Glow
  • Молчать - Divid
  • Gata Band - Basen Bari
  • Rendez-vous - I’m Leaving Away
  • 3AK - Obelisk 
  • Potochkine - Eros 
  • Urbandoned - Only Heartache
  • Nation of Language - This Fractured Mind
  • Cold Cave - Night Light
  • The Black Veils - Rabbits 
  • No Man Cry - A Calm Evening 
  • Tears of Ozymandias - 683280 Hours 
  • Catharsis - Hante
  • Desmond Doom - The Dissociation Song
  • NNHMN- Magic Man
  • Node - Colours 


2022 


  • Slow Danse With The Dead - Strangers in the Dark
  • Trait d’Union - Marche Nocturne 
  • Man + Machine & Emke - Room to Cry (Velvet Claw Remix)
  • Damian Hearse - Pro-Life Death Camp
  • Rodja - Empty
  • Cabaret Grey - Subconscious
  • Guerra Fría - Afuera Esta Lloviendo
  • Calaverx - Tenochitlan 
  • Minuit Machine - Lion in a Cage
  • Ayria - We Can’t Love Here Anymore 
  • Make Tears - D3ALER
  • Desmond Doom - I Hope I Never See Your Face Again
  • Yung Cortex- Time Won’t Stop
  • Dead in a Sunday - Dammit (After Dark)
  • Bax Taylor - Allstar
  • Devoted Sinners - Everything I’ve Ever Loved is Dead 
  • Tabgo Mangalore - Son of Adam
  • Forever Grey - Nothing Ever Changes
  • Fearing - A Single Stem
  • Скубут - Бутылка 
  • Vestron Vulture - Toxic Spider Spear 


2023


  • Lila Ehjä - Bats
  • Pretty Addicted - Heather
  • Grimmel - 7 Days
  • Opera Multi Steel - Les Soleil est Oarti
  • Naut - 8 in 3
  • Vestron Vulture - American Nightmare
  • The Blood Pact - Secrets
  • Rubbertankboy - Pure As Water
  • Bax Taylor - Dukkha
  • Devoted Sinners - Of Dreaming
  • Guerra Fría - El Miedo en tus Ojos
  • Joao - Girls in My Room
  • French Police - Hildago
  • Shallow Graves - Memory Lane
  • Human Tetris - Fade
  • Sirusho - Donik
  • This Cold Night - Circuits (remix)
  • Грань - Кассета 
  • Ломакинский - Всё по кругу 
  • Скубут - Insasis
  • Nemuer - Gates of Duat
  • Slow Danse with the Dead - Are You Tortured?
  • Damian Hearse - Mickey Mouse Holocaust 
  • Moonvampire- The Veil
  • Antaios Nocturne - Don’t Forget to Smile
  • FEVR - I Can’t Do it No More
  • Good Riddance - Thrills


2024


  • Obsidian - Night Director 
  • Raw Desire - Avaricia
  • Metawave - Ausencia 
  • Tango Mangalore - Re-Vamp
  • Scary Black - The Fallacy of Worth
  • Anja Huwe - Exit
  • No Man Cry - Qo Achkery 
  • Kalte Nacht - The Last Breath
  • Damian Hearse - Bad Luck Charm
  • Скубут - T’Ma
  • Selofan - Love’s Secret Game
  • Guerra Fría - En Mi Tumba
  • Mekong - Danse Danse
  • Slow Danse with the Dead - Today is a Good Day to Die
  • Alone in the Rain- Amore Malato
  • Aven Graph - Bloody Kisses
  • Melancholy Rat’s - No sé bailar
  • Molchat Doma- Сон
  • Voild Palace - Inside
  • Glis - Dream Catcher
  • Statiqbloom- Separate Worlds