Week of Oct 05 – Oct 11 · 2026
Forty-one tracks over four heard days, the thinnest week on the record by far, and the shape of it is contraction. The weekly totals have been falling for a month, from two hundred and fifty-five in mid-September to this, and the listening has moved almost entirely past eleven at night. What is left is concentrated. Monday is built around Rivers of Nihil, every other song. Tuesday is fast technical death metal a track apiece. Then, after a blank Wednesday, two nights are given to one record, Blood Incantation's Absolute Elsewhere, played two and a half times through. The weekend is blank from Friday night onward. Fewer days, fewer bands, and more attention for the few that remain.
The same week as numbers
| Day | Tracks | First play | Last play | Mean heaviness |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 12 | 23:01 | 01:33 | 7.9 |
| Tuesday | 12 | 23:45 | 01:51 | 8.1 |
| Wednesday | 0 | silence | ||
| Thursday | 10 | 00:12 | 02:21 | 8.0 |
| Friday | 7 | 01:13 | 02:03 | 8.0 |
| Saturday | 0 | silence | ||
| Sunday | 0 | silence | ||
The Arc
The week opens at a steady pace and then narrows to a point. Monday and Tuesday are hours of many bands, though Monday already orbits one of them. Wednesday is blank. Thursday and Friday contract to a single album, eighteen of the week's forty-one plays, and after Friday's last tablet the record goes dark for the whole weekend.
The Map
The week is overwhelmingly American, and most of that is one band: Blood Incantation's eighteen plays from Denver, with Rivers of Nihil's six behind them. Around those two sit a handful of single tracks from Sweden (At The Gates, An Abstract Illusion), Britain (Slugdge, Winterfylleth), Canada (Archspire) and New Zealand (Ulcerate). The map has never been this small.
The Subjects
The subject is the cosmos, pressed harder than ever. Absolute Elsewhere is a record about contact from beyond, ancient visitors and messages left in stone, and Monday's companions lean the same way, Slugdge's slug-gods and Blood Incantation's stargates among them. When the record narrows, it narrows toward the largest subject it has.
The Turn
The turn is Thursday after midnight, when the week stops choosing. Monday had alternated one band with its peers and Tuesday had moved a track at a time; Thursday picks one record and plays it through, then again, then on Friday once more in perfect order. It is the immersion habit at its purest, and it arrives in the quietest week yet, as if there were only room left for one thing.
Of the 19 artists heard this week, 12 had never appeared on the record before. The longest he stayed with one name: Blood Incantation, 10 tracks unbroken.
Who spanned the week
What followed what
| Hushed | Low | Mid | Heavy | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hushed | ||||
| Low | ||||
| Mid | ||||
| Heavy | 37 |