1. Eternal Winter - Nightmare
I’ll never forget that utterly mundane moment in my life, when I was cutting vegetables in the kitchen, and Eternal Winter started playing through my headphones. Jo Amore’s powerful voice sang of humanity’s despair, desperation, and mistakes, and I actually listened to the eerie words describing a frightening, dark future.
Eternal Winter was released in 2009 - but I wasn’t aware of Nightmare at the time. Back then I was in high school, and my metal literacy wasn’t amazing. But now? Nightmare is one of my favorite bands - yes, throughout all their varying eras.
Back to my kitchen - I’m only partially focused on the veggies, feeling like I’m sucked into the abyss of a world described in Eternal Winter, and then the first chorus hits like a punch in the gut. I found myself standing in the middle of the kitchen with a thousand-yard stare into the void of the countertops, with tears rolling down my cheeks.
This was a pure emotional response in the best way possible. I couldn’t control this reaction, it came from somewhere deep within me, some guttural place of the soul where I’m afraid to think of humanity’s future and what a world I leave my children. So I stood there, surrounded by this dark blanket of fear, and let the tears roll.
After the song ended, I stopped the music and took a few minutes before I returned to cutting vegetables.
Cannot replicate this; starting strong with five tears: 💧💧💧💧💧
2. Under Your Tree - Sonata Arctica
Under Your Tree is a song I've known since the moment it came out. Well, mostly. I used to be such a diehard Sonata Arctica fan back then that I ordered a physical copy of the album Unia, and waited until it arrived overseas to listen to it. It’s still my favorite Sonata album.
Under Your Tree didn’t stand out too much for my teenage self in 2007, who preferred the heavier headbangers. But now I’m an adult, and I still love the heavier headbangers, but I’m also a cat mom who now understands the fear of saying goodbye to my beloved fluffy friend - and this is exactly what Under Your Tree is about.
At some point after I adopted my adorable Cassie, whom I wrote about here, I heard Under Your Tree like a different tune, with tears in my eyes.
Pets are little fluffy angels who bring us joy for a limited number of years. We adopt them knowing we’ll have to say goodbye. Even Sonata Arctica knew this, and made this metal ballad about it.
Niche for pet pawrents, but feels personal. Three tears: 💧💧💧
3. Reason To Believe - Arch Enemy
Anxiety, self-doubt, impostor syndrome. I know I’m not the only person dealing with these, but it’s difficult to find someone who understands what you’re going through, and helps you out of a self-sabotaging black hole. And sometimes, that’s what music is for. Finding solace in a song is a universal human experience, and I found it in Reason To Believe.
At the time I first heard this song, I was misrable and confused, watching some of my biggest dreams slip through my grasp. But the first time I listened to Will To Power, Arch Enemy’s album from 2017, and got to Reason to Believe - it felt like someone was shouting at me to fight my self-hatred and get my life together.
The tears it brought to my eyes were a strange combination of anger, apprehension, and relief. This song was the motivational shock wave a person in a low point needed the most. Arch Enemy was, and still is, one of my favorite bands - but I didn’t realise how much a song by them can mean to me.
Very powerful experience, but won’t speak to everyone on the same level. Three tears: 💧💧💧
4. Doorway To Salvation - Beyond The Bridge
Is it smart to list a song from a concept album, made to be listened to front-to-back to get the entire picture? I don’t know. But I do know that Doorway To Salvation brought some existential tears to my eyes.
In short, the album The Old Man & The Spirit tells the story of an old man on his deathbed, when a spirit from the beyond appears to him and offers a deal: your life for your humanity. The old man will not die, but his entire human experience, that the spirit craves so badly, will no longer be his.
In Doorway To Salvation, the man reflects on his life from beginning to end, right before the spirit and he will battle in the next song. But this reflection, of all that makes us human - love, lies, freedom, fear - can break a heart if really listened to.
It’s not only a powerful song, with two amazing performers who “play” the characters, but it’s part of an album that I wholeheartedly recommend as an experience. Give it a listen regardless.
Needs some priming; it’s an emotional rollercoaster nonetheless. Four tears: 💧💧💧💧
5. Doomsday - Architects
Doomsday, probably the heaviest song on this list, is lyrically sad enough, sure - but I don’t think it can actually bring someone to tears when disconnected from its context.
Initially written, but never finished, by Tom Searle - Architects’ former guitarist who lost the battle to cancer at 28. His brother and the band’s drummer, Dan Searle, finished writing Doomsday after Tom’s death, inserting the trauma of such a loss into the lyrics.
But I wasn’t tearing up listening to the song because of that. Mostly. I actually came to know Doomsday from its a-capella cover by Choir Noir. It was such a good match by my Spotify algorithm, that after a few days of loop-listening, I googled the song to reach the source - I just didn’t expect that song to be a literal gut-wrenching heavy hitter, both in music and lore.
It’s not just the behind-the-scenes story; it’s the boulder-heavy music that feels like it’s dragging you into a pit of mourning and madness that made me well up when listening to it for the first time.
One of my favorite songs; crying is very context-dependent. Two tears: 💧💧
6. Take It Back - Miracle Of Sound
If I was just talking about context dependency for emotion evoking just before, then Take It Back takes this category in stride. You see, Miracle Of Sound is a one-man show of a creative powerhouse for geeky songwriting, composing, and producing. It’s pretty amazing what Gavin Dunne has made himself to be in the past 15 years.
Arguably a hard rock song, Take It Back is about the final installment in the Mass Effect video game trilogy (a TV series adaptation is underway). Mass Effect 2 and 3 are by far two of my favorite games. By the final choice of Mass Effect 3, I was bawling my eyes out, which continued for 40 minutes after the end credits started rolling. This is the emotional gravitas this sci-fi action-RPG has.
Now, take all this context and shove it into a 4:30 minutes of music, and you’ve got Take It Back - a song about Commander Shepard, the main character, leading their squad to take Earth, and the rest of the galaxy, back from the clutches of… spoilers, sweety. I got chills just writing these lines, so imagine me taking it all in when listening to this song.
Context-dependent like The Normandy’s calibrations depend on Garrus. One tear: 💧
7. Is There Anybody Out There? - Beyond The Black
Let me start with stating a fact: this is quite a simple song, both lyrically and musically. Yes, I like it, but for most people, Is There Anybody Out There will probably be a filler song on the playlist. And this is what it was for me.
But given the right time, right theme, and right mood when I first heard it - this song hit my feels. And honestly, when you really listen past the simplicity, it can touch any darkened metalhead’s heart.
Is There Anybody Out There mirrors some of the themes that resonated with me when I listened to Reason to Believe, mentioned above. Specifically feeling alone in a complicated situation, when thoughts you cannot translate into words hinder you from basically fixing yourself. It’s hard to reach out for help when you don’t know how to word what’s wrong.
Was there anybody? Yes. But did I feel alone with my thoughts once? Also, yes. That’s when this song’s cry for help touched me and made me tear up a little.
The sub-genre might be less relatable musically, but the lyrics have some tear-jerking potential. Two tears: 💧💧
8. Tuuleton - Korpiklaani
Look, if you told me a few years ago I’d cry from a Korpiklaani song, I’d laugh at your face and tell you you’re too dr*nk from Korpiklaani songs to think with more than two brain cells combined. But here we are, aren’t we?
If you’ve been living under a metal rock (hah), you have to understand that Korpiklaani look and sound like they’ve been living under a rock themselves, deep in Finland’s wilderness, writing music while performing shamanic rituals with bears. Some of their song titles consist of Vodka, Jägermeister, Beer Beer, Bring Us Pints of Beer, Happy Little Boozer, and the rest are probably pagan spells in Finnish or something.
This is why Tuuleton is so different. Even listening without knowing a single Finnish word (besides “perkele”, because every metalhead knows this one), you can hear that this song stands out. And this is exactly why I had to understand… why?
According to Google Translate, Tuuleton means “Windless”. The translated lyrics talk about a bird that couldn’t fly south and migrate with its flock in winter. This bird’s feet are stuck in the snow, ice covers its face as it watches other birds fly above, but no one hears its cries. Little Windless is doomed to die in the cold, alone.
I’m not joking when I say I’m welling up right now, as I write this description. It’s such a horrible feeling, being so isolated and forgotten, symbolically embodied by Windless, the bird who was left to its awful fate.
Darn, I’m crying again; taking off one tear only for the language barrier. Four tears: 💧💧💧💧
9. Center Of The Universe - Kamelot
It seems that the utter loneliness and abandonment theme is what shreds on my heartstrings the most. This is what I felt when I was old enough to understand most of Center Of The Universe.
But let me tell you what I did not understand: Epica, the album this song is on, is actually a concept album re-telling Goethe’s Faust. I was way too young to understand that. For me, Kamelot made bouncy metal songs, and Roy Khan’s voice was a war angel incarnate. I don’t know, I was a kid.
I looked at every song as a standalone piece, and this one, describing what I can only understand as a plea of a man for God, if he exists, to give him purpose - made my thoughts stir fast like the double bass drums in this song.
I never read Faust, so I don’t know if my interpretation is correct. But I do know that the young-me imagined humanity, Earth, and all of our existence, as a tiny speck of dust in the infinite dark void of time and space. I was never a big believer, but the thought that nothing matters can still haunt the strongest of atheists from time to time.
The subject itself is definitely melancholy-inducing; not sure the song will evoke it universally. Two tears: 💧💧
10. Fiddler On The Green - Demons & Wizards
I finish the list with yet another song that didn’t tickle my eyes before knowing its lore, like Doomsday mentioned above. Demons & Wizards were always a filler band for me, and to be fair, it is a side project of Blind Guardian’s singer and Iced Earth’s guitarist. No offence, but “filler band” is a fair descriptor in my opinion.
But sometimes, gems are hidden where you don’t expect them, and Fiddler On The Green is such a song. As far as the great World Wide Web told me once, the song was inspired by two fatal car accidents that Hansi Kürsch, the singer, witnessed. They took place in the same junction, a week apart, and took the lives of two children - a boy, and a week later, a girl.
The story starts as-is from the girl’s parents' POV, but quickly changes its perspective for what makes it so special. Most of the story is told from the Reaper’s POV, who explains to the girl that he took the boy too early by mistake. The boy and the girl were destined to be soulmates, but now that the boy is gone, the Reaper must take the girl’s life too, so their fate is fulfilled.
There’s something so jarring about the contrast of how naïve the made-up part of the story is, and how horrible reality was. I welled up after understanding that.
It needs context to be fully understood; the real story is horrible regardless. Three tears: 💧💧💧
If you'd like to listen to all these songs back-to-back, I made a Spotify playlist.
