Greetings fellow metalheads!

The holiday season is behind us (booo!), Blue Monday is behind us (yay!) and generally the whole month of January is behind us. So it's time to see which bands were there to join us in either celebrating the brand new year, because it's finally going to be your year and everything is going to be different and great or sharing our disappointment that the world has gone to shit and every day is the same. And as usual I've been collecting info on both Devil's work and God's work and whatever other forces are at play when music is being created, as long as it's in the neighbourhood of headbangersville. And I've gathered some sounds almost as varied as Earache catalogue (minus hip-hop, though, sorry folks) to remind you that it's time to fill your ears and empty your wallets. And obviously to get you clicking frantically to find out who those artists are, using their vocal chords and instruments to play on your emotions.

The first batch of sounds consists of long-plays, which are not always long actually, but most probably it took long to get everyone in the studio at the same time and record all parts, then get it mastered and after that put it in a nice CD case with some booklet to complete the package. Among those complete packages few definitely unblocked quite a few chakras and therefore need mentioning: Silhouette, The Mist from the Mountains, Wiegedood, Dark Millenium, Det Eviga Leendet, Ereb Altor, Aethereus, Wilderun, Shadow of Intent, Abyssus and Druid Lord. January also brought us new material from Battle Beast, Dawn of Solace, Enterprise Earth, Fit for an Autopsy, Hegeroth, Infected Rain, Krosis, Tony Martin and Worm Shepherd. And if these recommendations are not enough, you can find a lot more here:

The second batch of sounds I've put in a playlist has EPs, which usually are a result of the fact that artists from the same band can't stay together in the same studio for too long or the studio has risen the prices too much or there's been a power cut or one of the artists got carried away and smashed the last available guitar in the middle of recording the album. Or just because and it's none of our business. The artists who gave us extended plays in January are Aegrus, AngelBlast, Begravement, Black Mass Pervertor, Darkened, Fiat Nox, Hanging Garden, Ilium, Infirmum, Malefic Throne, Neuropsy, Oceans, Post Luctum, Rotborn, Terrorform and Tormentor Tyrant. Enjoy!

Now, time for tracks which just prove that this year is going to have some real milestones in metal music, obviously as soon as the full albums are out. Or which prove that sometimes one person says "Nah, it's too shitty track to be released, that's why it didn't make it to the album" and then the other person says "**** ***" and clicks 'upload'. The most notable names here are Abbath, Abhoria (full album on February playlist), Abysmal Dawn (EP on February playlist), Agathodaimon (returning after 9 years since their last full album), Allegaeon, Amorphis, Annihilator, Caliban, Centinex, Cult of Luna, Dagoba, Dark Funeral, Deserted Fear, Evil Invaders (bringing back metal ballads), Fallcie, Ghost, HammerFall, The Hellacopters, Hell Militia, Ibaraki (Matt Heafy and Ihsahn), Immolation, Ingested, Keiser, Konvent, Kvaen, quite a few singles from aforementioned Matt Heafy (who definitely likes The Witcher series), including the song composed for this year's Mystic Festival with guest appearance of Chuck Billy, Meshuggah, Midnight, Nite, Once Human, Pure Wrath, Sabaton, Schizophrenia and two singles from Voivod. And that's not even the full list. To check them all out you just have to click the list below and find out for yourself:

We also got some releases which usually go well with the comments like "oh, he missed that note there" or "LOL, he forgot the lyrics" or "I can't remember a thing, completely blacked out during that show, it was awesome". Anthrax released their performance from 1993 in Fitchberg, Carnation "The Galaxy Sessions", Kreator released massive "Bootleg Revolution" with tracks from few different live performances, we also got Ross Jennings "Acoustic Shadows", Sonata Arctica "Acoustic Adventures - Volume One" and live singles from Black Rainbows, Týr and Wardruna. If you were there, check if you can hear yourself shouting "Freebird!" by clicking the link below:

Some of the "blast from the past" releases appeared on Spotify in January, too. Atrocity gave us remastered demo "Unspoken Names" from 1991, Belphegor - two albums "Blutsabbath" and "The Last Supper", Bhleg remastered "Draumr ást" album, Despised Icon gave us remaster from 2006 (with bonus live track) of "Consumed by Your Poison" (so basically a re-release of a remaster) and an alternate mix of "The Healing Process", also with extra live tracks. King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard decided to release a remixed (yes, like 2000s remixed, with DJs and scratches and stuff) version of their "Butterfly 3000" album from 2021 and Vildhjarta decided to do 'forte' (meaning "loud" or "strong") versions of their album "Måsstaden" and "Thousands of Evils" EP. Also, Mors Principium Est decided to re-record their "Valley of Sacrifice, Pt. 1" track and Rage had their track "The Age of Reason" remixed (yep, another remix, done by DJ Zardonic). Re-listen to those re-songs by re-clicking the re-below:

I found only one compilation on Spotify in January - it's Vile Ritual with their "Tongues of the Exanimate" which has 3 brand new tracks and re-mixed and remastered 3 tracks from their self-titled demo:

Thank you for reading all these paragraphs (if you did), remember to share your favourites with everyone everywhere, let the artists know that we admire them for ther persistence in creating new music in these difficult times and... toss a coin ;-)

And most of all - remember to mosh responsibly \m/