The first song of our medley today comes from one of the founders of melodic death metal, In Flames. This song hails from the album that many fans consider the final "classic" In Flames album, that is, featuring their classic pure melodeath sound (before they made the gradual transition to a Nu-metal infusion): Colony. Among the highlights of this track is a ridiculous Jesper Stromblad guitar solo. This is "The New World."

This next song is from a band I just got into recently, Caladan Brood. They're listed as "atmospheric black metal," while I'd describe their style as something like extreme fantasy metal. Think DragonForce, if they slowed down, experimented with more complicated sonic textures, and got a vocalist who could growl. What's that you say? That's nothing like DragonForce? Well, sure, and maybe that's why I like them. This is "City of Azure Fire."

We're going to take a bit of a detour to the Altai Republic in south-central Siberia for this next song. I first discovered the band Altai-Kai while searching for examples of throat singing on Youtube. Altai-Kai's calling card is the mixture of traditional Altai folk instruments and throat singing with more modern musical compositions and sounds. This song, "Koionok" is a great example of that, where Altai-Kai essentially attempts to create an Altai version of hiphop.

Our last song is a traditional Farsi wedding song, common in both Iran and Afghanistan. I was first introduced to this song from Khaled Hosseni's marvelous book "The Kite Runner," where he uses it to frame a pivotal moment of the plot, where the main character marries his wife. It's supposed to be a beautiful and happy moment, but there are undertones of the darkness that's yet to come. Similarly, to listen to this song, in this cased performed by Haidar Saleem, you're struck by how somber and even mournful the instrumentation and vocals are. This stands in stark contrast to most wedding songs in most cultures, which tend to be merry, even sappy.