Week of Oct 12 – Oct 18 · 2026
Seventy-eight tracks over five heard days, and the week ends the way the last one did: Friday night, then nothing for the whole weekend. Inside those five days the paired-night habit returns, this time on grunge: Wednesday and Thursday are two hours of Alice in Chains and nothing else, the band's whole career on the first night and its two most freighted songs bracketing the second. The week opened with a roll call of the season's names after the silent weekend, then slowed into doom on Tuesday. It closed on its biggest day, Friday, which held the two ends of heavy music at once: a morning of the slowest doom there is and a night of grindcore, the career of Lee Dorrian run backwards. Dan Swanö threads Monday into Tuesday, Cathedral threads Friday's morning into its night, and the week reads as a set of lines drawn between bands rather than a set of bands.
The same week as numbers
| Day | Tracks | First play | Last play | Mean heaviness |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | 11 | 22:26 | 23:34 | 7.8 |
| Tuesday | 10 | 00:27 | 02:01 | 6.0 |
| Wednesday | 10 | 22:02 | 23:02 | 5.5 |
| Thursday | 9 | 21:14 | 22:19 | 5.9 |
| Friday | 38 | 10:39 | 01:08 | 7.4 |
| Saturday | 0 | silence | ||
| Sunday | 0 | silence | ||
The Arc
Monday is attendance, one track apiece from the names of the last two months. Tuesday sinks, the tempo dropping into doom after midnight. Wednesday and Thursday hold still on one band. Friday is the widest and loudest day, thirty-eight tracks at both extremes of tempo. Then the weekend is blank, the second in a row.
The Map
America leads, with Alice in Chains' nineteen plays from Seattle at the centre and the Melvins, High On Fire and Brutal Truth in Friday's doom and grind. Britain supplies the week's argument, Cathedral and Napalm Death, the two bands Lee Dorrian made, alongside Carcass and Warning and Workshed. Sweden threads the early week, At The Gates on both Monday and Tuesday and Dan Swanö behind Edge of Sanity and Moontower.
The Subjects
Despair is the through-line, in more than one accent. Alice in Chains sing about addiction and ruin in close harmony; Warning and Cathedral make it slow and funereal; grindcore makes it a minute long and furious. The week is darker in subject than in sound: Wednesday and Thursday are among the softest hours of the month and among the bleakest.
The Turn
The turn is Wednesday night, when the habit of taking one band whole across two nights lands on grunge. It had held dissonant death metal, then Porcupine Tree's prog, then Blood Incantation; now it holds Alice in Chains, ruin sung in harmony. The method is unchanged. The register is the softest it has been.
Of the 45 artists heard this week, 11 had never appeared on the record before. The longest he stayed with one name: Alice In Chains, 10 tracks unbroken.
Who spanned the week
What followed what
| Hushed | Low | Mid | Heavy | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hushed | ||||
| Low | 4 | 3 | ||
| Mid | 5 | 19 | 8 | |
| Heavy | 9 | 25 |