Ghost - Meliora

Genre: Heavy Metal, Hard Rock, Doom Metal, Pop Rock

Release year: 2016

Ghost is known as a satanic band, and I've heard some people describe them as pop rock, or scooby doo music lol. Ghost is one of my all-time favorite bands!! I first heard their music when this album came out. It just so happened to be the year when I was graduating high school, when I was just starting to become an adult before college. The first song I've heard from them was Cirice, meaning "church", and I was hooked instantly.

This album is very important to me and my personal identity. I discovered how I could be my own person independant of how I grew up. I honestly think this band is for people who have religious trauma. I grew up Lutheran, which came with catholic guilt over the very basic human feelings and urges I had. The song From The Pinnacle To The Pit, which quite frankly has similar themes to Lucifer being casted out of heaven, resonated so deeply with me.

If I were to order every Ghost album by favorite, this would be at the top. Then their second album, Prequelle, their first album, and the newer ones would be behind those. As much as I love the band, I feel a little sad that their newer albums haven't been my favorites. BUT I STILL LIKE THEM!!

Everything Everything - Get to Heaven (Deluxe)

Genre: Alternative/Indie

Release year: 2015

Everything Everything is a british band, and this is the first album I've heard from them! When I was in the animation meme community on youtube, there was a meme of Blast Doors from this album. Usually when I find a banger, I try to listen to the full album. And what do you know, this whole album IS SO GOOD!! I honestly love the weird nonsensical lyrics in every song, and sometimes even mildly aggressive style of the music. According to the wiki, the themeing of this album focuses on tensions and political happenings of 2014.

Personally, I get the vibe of wanting to go back in time, being scared of the future, and being under control of an overarching being.

Sadly, I cant display their music from bandcamp...

Listen to the album playlist on youtube!

Linkin Park - A Thousand Suns

Genre: Alternative Rock, Rap Rock, Electronic Rock

Release year: 2010

Linkin Park has been a band I've loved since I was an angsty depressed pre-teen. The death of Chester (the original singer of the band) devistated me. This band kept me company and gave me the oppritunity to shut out the world and be in my own space.

This album is a healing journey of any kind. When I heard it sometime in 2011, I felt like I was on a journey of finding control of my life, walking through my emotions while I was listening to it. When you listen to the full album in order, every song blends in with each other. It's the first time I discovered how an album can intertwine and flow within each-other seemlessly. It feels like I'm in a movie when I sit down and listen to this album.

When They Come For Me is an all-time favorite from this album. I feel so empowered and energized when I listen to it.

If I were to put the albums in order from favorite to least favorite, this one would be first of course. Following that would be Minutes to Midnight, Hybrid Theory, Meteora, and Living Things.

Listen to the album playlist on youtube!

Mystery Skulls - Ultra Rare Vol. 1

Genre: Dance, Electronic

Release year: 2012

Mystery Skulls is (usually) a one-man band! I first heard his music on someone's tumblr blog, playing Money from his first EP. Then I saw this Pheonix Wright fan animation and discovered a new ear-worm. The guy who animated the video is a buddy of Mystery Skulls! Following after that, he made the Mystery Skulls Animated series that features his music. Ghost was the one that started it all, and thats how I got to listening to more of the band! I was also utterly obsessed with the video and the characters, and was just as engrossed in hyperfixation as tumblr was at the time. I even cosplayed Lewis (the skeleton guy)!

It is so hard for me to pick a favorite Mystery Skulls album. I love so many of his albums so very much. However, I featured this one because I feel nostolgic over it. I feel like it's lifted me up in my hardest moments when I needed a pick-me-up.

However, my all-time personal favorite song is In My Sleep. It allows me to feel a little cocky as a creator.

Gorillaz - Plastic Beach

Genre: Hip-hop, Alternative rock, Pop music, Electronic music

Release year: 2010

Gorillaz is another of one of my all-time favorite bands!! I discoverd them in my mid-teens shockingly enough. I was always familiar with the fictional characters on the surface level. I used to find the art style odd or scary when I was younger. However, when I got older and allowed myself to look them up and listen to them more, I became a fan of their entire discography tbqh.

So much of the music is comforting to me in more ways than just soothing me to sleep at times. It honestly opened the door for me to listen to more hip-hop. The more I listened to them, the more of the world I could see. I honestly feel like this band broadended my perspective of the music world.

It's hard to pick a favorite album, and even harder to pick a damn song!! Damon's collaborations always kicked so much ass. However, I think I'm drawn to this album due to the beach theme. I love water oh so much. Even if the theme of the album is pollution of the oceans lol.

The music of this band felt like I was sitting at some sort of cookout of mixed cultures, hanging with people who were different than me and listening to their stories and struggles. I hold all of their albums close to my heart, as they are lovely time-capsules of nice music from different time periods in the beginning of the 2000s.

Listen to the album playlist on youtube!

Dorian Electra - Fanfare

Genre: Alternative/Indie, Metal, Dance/Electronic, Pop

Release year: 2024

I...fucking love this gender-fluid queer twink so much like you wouldn't believe. I first discovered them through drag kings, which is a queer performance art I admire the hell out of as a trans-masc.

I saw them live in the fall of 2024, and god I AM SO HAPPY THEY VISTED ME NEAR THE "CORN BELT"!!! They are AMAZING live just as much as in their videos and music. They have queer masc realness in their music, playing around with gender in amazing performance. One of my all-time favorite songs and music videos by them Gentleman / M'Lady, which they're serving neckbeard/nice guy/incel realness but in a super queer and eccentric way.

Also, did you know they did a song with Rebecca Black?? Well, now you do lol. My absolute favorite song from this album is Touch Grass. Whenever I play them in my car, I always play them at such high volumes.

Honestly their earlier work is great too, but it's hard for me to order my favorites!

RQ (Halley Labs alias) - ♞

Genre: Electronic

Release year: 2013

I've been listening to Halley Labs' music since my early internet years. They're a queer furry music artist with many many aliases. They use a lot of samples from many different video games and other songs, but they were easy for me to miss most of the time lol.

When this album came out, I had a sense this was also when this person was coming out. The album cover gives a theme of letting out their true self in a sense.

Even though being femme doesn't line up with my personal identity, I still related to the themeing of this album of discovering your true self. The song NICE C☹NFUSION gives me a feeling and visual of having an identity flow out of you that you couldn't hold back anymore, yet it comes out of your flesh and leaves behind a squirmy, itchy feeling..

My other favorite alias is Mayhem (that shark made me gay).

Lorn - Ask The Dust

Genre: Dance, Electronic

Release year: 2012

Ah yes, the anxiety album of my college years. Lorn has some pretty good music outside of this album too, but this one wrapped around me like an itchy wool blanket while I was traversing in a dirty unknown city.

I don't know much about this artist other than his songs, but the music speaks to me enough to include it here.

Moving to a city I don't know, living on my own for the first time, sharing my room for the first time, having to have my work be judged by art professors and peers to the very core. These college years weighed down on me, making my body feel heavier, itchier, smellier, and so much harder to carry. My social anxiety was awful, I couldn't connect to my fellow creative peers like I thought I could. However, when I felt like I was alone, this album kept me company. Despite the powerful and sinister feeling these songs give me, it comforted me when I needed it the most. It felt like my feelings were heard and felt, expressed in music I can listen back from my thoughts.

I Better was a song I visualized a specific narrative with these two ghosts/spectators that write down and record what they see around the city.

Puscifer - V is for Vagina

Genre: Alternative rock, Trip hop, Industrial music, Post-industrial music

Release year: 2007

Ah yes, out of Manyard's three bands. If Tool was the mind, A Perfect Circle the heart, then this band would be the CROTCH!

Don't let that scare you off, the music from this band isn't only about the sex. However, I feel like it was important for my sexual identity and growth. The age of this album perhaps, or the sound it has, feels nostolgic to me, yet it was brand new to me when I was 17.

The band's mascot, a thick demon woman... god bless.. Ahem uh, I mean this music has good sound. I first discovered them from the song The Mission before I started listening to more of them. As far as I'm aware, this band was made for Manyard to play around with sound more I believe?

The Humbling River is another good track of theirs outside of this album.

Listen to the album playlist on youtube!

I Monster - Neveroddoreven

Genre: Alternative, Electronic, Experimental, Psychedelic

Release year: 2003

You may have first heard them from their song Daydream In Blue. They're a duo british band, and gets the name of their band and record label from horror movies.

I can't remember how I first discovered them, but I definetly remember first hearing Who Is She? from the time it started getting popular. The song sounds so haunting and yearnful, over a person who's possibly not real.

I often get a feeling of walking through an old film, while being in a field full of fantasy mushrooms, surrounded by tall trees with creatures peeking through them to look at me. Yet I feel like frolicing. However at some points of the album, I feel like staring out a window while it's raining outside.

Their music is incredibly imaginative, and it's hard not to daydream while listening to their oddball yet fantastical music.

Creature Feature - The Greatest Show Unearthed

Genre: Rock, Indie, Alternative

Release year: 2007

This was the first album I ever bought on iTunes, if that says how this band means to me.

This band's music is as if you're listening to Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, or Goosebumps. It's the halloween music of all time!! The singer Curtis RX, with the biggest sideburns you'd ever seen. The music is accompanied by...an electric piano? What a spookingly amazing combo tbqh.

I love how every song tells a tale of some sort, it always puts me in the mood to creep around with my back hunched. My friend showed me this band when we were teens, blasting the music out loud on my ipod touch while we walked home from school.

Curtis RX's other band, or a solo spin-off, Rufus Rex, is also worth checking out! Also, did you know they did a cover of that one Billie Elish song? I honestly can't think of a better song for them to cover.

They make at least one song every year for halloween, although I do miss them releasing full albums...

Lemon Demon - Spirit Phone

Genre: Indie Pop, Synthpop, and Indie Rock

Release year: 2016

Ooooh, what a crime for me to miss this gem when it first came out. This is one of those albums I had to listen to again to really get into it. Honestly, I heard a few bangers from this album before giving the whole album a go. So many artists and animators have made content to his music, and it's hard to not see why!!

Soft Fuzzy Man is my absolute favorite of his. I honestly got into it from this fan-animated music video, with how good the animation is, it also invited me to interpret my own visuals!! I'm honestly so in love with this song. Did you know it's based off of this tumblr post?

I honestly haven't seen one queer on the internet who wasn't a fan of Lemon Demon. The kooky internet man who's made well known meme content?? Thas crazy...