Another month, another set of songs that I’m listening to! Peak summer is continuing, although the windows have been largely kept closed in favor of air conditioning due to the heat and humidity lately. That said, I’ve also been in my garden a good bit, and I like to imagine that my plants love music as much as I do.

As a reminder of the format, I’m writing one of these columns and filling it with songs from a variety of genres of music. I don’t expect anyone to listen to all of these songs! Some months, you may even not be interested in any of them, and that’s fine! However, it is my sincere hope that some of you might find some new songs and artists that you like. All of these songs are widely available on streaming services and by doing some quick searching on Youtube and such, and if I want to highlight something harder to find, I’ll include detailed instructions on how to do so.

Here are my picks for this month:

Mama, I’m Coming Home — Ozzy Osbourne

I’m not sure if I even need to explain this one, but here we go anyway: Ozzy has died, and much like a lot of other people, I have been listening to a lot of his music in his wake. I was a bit too young to really grow up with Ozzy the way a lot of people did, but he’s always been lurking in the background — his influence directly resulted in a huge amount of the music I love, and it’s not unfair to say that without him, metal as a genre wouldn’t exist today, or at least it would be a lot smaller and less diverse.

In fact, I’m going to take the opportunity to make this month’s column kind of a tour de metal. I’ve written in the past about how metal isn’t necessarily what the pop culture impression of it is, and I want to really showcase its range in this column. If that’s not your thing — totally understood, and I will be back to providing picks for other genres in August. But this month…this is Ozzy’s month.

For his song…I mean, if you haven’t seen the clip of him singing this song at his farewell concert a few weeks before he died…I can’t recommend it enough. It’s so hauntingly beautiful, and in light of his passing it hits so, so hard. Rewatching it knowing now that he is dead really puts it in the light of Ozzy making peace with his life and accepting his end, right there on stage amongst a sea of people whose lives he made better. Regardless of his flaws and sins, he made a massive impact on the world — and he got to go out on top. We should all be so lucky.

Can You Feel the Love Tonight? — Fellowship

Fellowship is a pretty special band. They’re technically under the metal umbrella, but they’re so dang uplifting and cheery, it really doesn’t feel like you’re listening to anything heavy. Case in point: this track, which is a cover of the song from “The Lion King.” I am genuinely unsure what you might be thinking when I say “vaguely metal cover of Disney song,” but I can virtually promise that it sounds way better than whatever you’re imagining.

It’s like if a sunflower was a song — and that makes it perfect for July. If you like this song, there’s a decent chance you’ll like more of their stuff. They’ve been deemed — both jokingly and also seriously — “unicorn metal” due to how relentlessly cheery, uptempo and hopeful their music is.

Stage 2: The Captive — The Reticent

You’re going to need that uplifting, cheery spirit after this one. Metal, like any other musical genre, is capable of handling some really hard-hitting subjects. This can help broaden the listener’s perspective, and it can also help people who have gone through traumatic events heal. This entire album tells a story from start to finish: the story of a man named Henry, who is an Alzheimer’s patient, and perhaps more incredibly, it’s told from his perspective.

The album accomplishes that by melding together a wide variety of genres of music with the roiling turmoil of metal acting as connective tissue as Henry reels from moment to moment. Interludes of jazz and peaceful guitar strumming punctuate incredible clean-vocal lyrical work and periodic emotionally-charged black metal screams and rasps.

This entire album is handled impeccably and its emotional impact should not be understated. Even if you don’t have a personal history with Alzheimer’s and dementia, make sure you have some ice cream and puppies and kittens ready on the other side of this album if you decide to listen to it — but the emotional journey is absolutely worth the pain.

Parting — Lyriel

After that gut punch, how about something more upbeat again? Lyriel combines a crunchy metal backdrop with lilting, folksy vocals and a centralized, galloping violin. Metal and folk influences combine incredibly well (and is one of my favorite fusions).

For better or worse, a lot of Lyriel’s music follows the same general pattern and vibe, so if you like this track, you’re decently likely to enjoy most of their music. Also, a neat thing is that they like to draw from literary sources for some of their music. For example, this track pulls from 19th century English novelist and poet, Charlotte Bronte — best known for the novel Jane Eyre.

Alone I Stand in Fires — Disillusion

How about something more classic? Disillusion is a highly regarded German death metal band that has been around for quite a few years, and they’ve produced some truly top-tier music. This track, off their first full length album, from 2004, is a great one to get pumped up.

Featuring very complex musical arrangements, Disillusion is very much quality over quantity. The swoops and swells of this track, in particular, really get you into the music with a focus on melodic flow and big moments, while the shifting vocal styles help to keep you engaged. Honestly, their whole body is work is impressive and it was hard to pick just a single track to mention in this genre tour.

Malign Monologues — Diablo Swing Orchestra

Remember that thing where metal is amazing at incorporating other genres? Well, how about swing music? Oh, and jazz, techno, and Big Band are here, too, along with some Gospel, flamenco, and some other stuff that I don’t even know how to explain.

DSO is frequently called avant-garde metal — they exist at the very threshold of musical creativity and refuse to be defined by any genre. However, much like the fluctuating genre work of The Reticent earlier on this list, it’s the metal that pulls it all together and welds the disparate elements into a cohesive whole.

High the Memory — Abyssic

Oh, I’ve spent too much time on weird genre-fusions that aren’t trve metal? Well, let’s finish up with this thick slab of a 20-minute funeral doom song.

The vocals? Incomprehensible.

The pace? Ponderous.

The atmosphere? Oppressive.

Abyssic lives up to its name, with music that sounds vast, imposing and ominous.

Of course, musical taste, much like other tastes, is subjective. I can highlight this as incredible metal, and other people might say “what about Five Finger Death Punch?” — and those people we ask politely, yet firmly, to leave. Joking aside, though, I hope that this little tour through a microcosm of metal has shown that there is far more room in the genre than what many people imagine — and, ultimately, almost all of it can trace its lineage, directly or indirectly, through Ozzy. That’s remarkable, and not something we are likely to see again in our lifetimes.

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Arianna McKee is the Design Editor and Editorial Page Editor for The Express.