Playlist Postscript: The Best Heavy Songs of 2018

Burning rubber on the road to burnout

And so we come to the final entry in our mini-marathon through playlists past. We conclude with a playlist I assembled at the end of my first and only full year as the head editor of Invisible Oranges. I chose to feature this playlist for the final entry in this mini-series rather than my generalized “best songs of the year” playlist because 1) that playlist is 87 songs long and I do NOT have the time to write about that many songs and 2) because I think this list better represents my state of mind in 2018. Running a heavy metal site took up a remarkable amount of my mental real estate in 2018. I’d read promo emails, edit copy, wrangle writers, and get into heated Slack debates while at my day job, then I’d come home, strap on headphones and write until I passed out long after midnight. I was miserable. Not only was editing eating away at all of my free time, my social life, and the time I could have spent working on my own music, it also poisoned my relationship with heavy music itself. As a result, this letter will be noticeably less enthusiastic than previous Playlist Postscripts. The tunes that do stand the test of time will receive the coveted Lamniformes Shark Emoji of Approval (🦈) and the scant few that will factor into Drumming Upstream will receive the Drum Emoji of Destiny (🥁).

2012 through 2018, the years covered in the Playlist Postscript blitz that we’ve gone on for the last two months, were the years when I thought of myself as a semi-professional music writer. Since then I’ve retrained my brain to think of myself as a musician first and foremost and a writer second. Though I’ve occasionally winced at my youthful pretensions, I’ve enjoyed revisiting these old playlists to see how my taste has evolved over time. I hope you’ve enjoyed the trip as well, or at the very least found it insightful. Maybe you’ve even found a few songs that missed your purview in real time during those six years. In either case, thanks for coming along. In January we’ll return to the year 2019 to continue our month-by-month progress through The Last Good Year. See you then, and take care.

Playlist Postscript is exclusive to my paying subscribers. You can read this series along with other mysterious bonuses by joining for just $5 a month or the screaming deal of $40 a year.