Greetings fellow metalheads!

It's been a while! You've had your vacations, summer festivals and sightseeing trips, now I'm back to give you your homeworks since the school is back. I obviously hope you've been revising from time to time by checking our profile on Spotify, and if not then you definitely should. I've tried my best to keep them up to date, adding the latest releases from old and new bands and I hope it helped you find your new earworms.

I'm just going to provide a short summary of August material, hoping you'll have a peek at July and June as soon as you're done with browsing the last month's set of sounds from the area of metal music and its neighbours. There are guttural growls, glass-shattering shrieks, clean singing, operatic vocals, raspy screams and the only way to find out which one is which is to listen to them. You can't even tell from the album covers nowadays as some of them are really misleading. Nevertheless, it's always worth checking them out as the variety is always something that can be guaranteed here.

Starting with albums, as usual. I've definitely been excited to hear the new material from Humanity's Last Breath, knowing my tendency to check out the latest from the deathcore area first. The other titles worth mentioning are the releases from Crypta, Besta, An Autumn for Crippled Children, Werewolves, Megaherz, Kataklysm, Worm Shepherd, Skálmöld, two albums from Dethklok (full songs as well as original motion picture soundtrack), Urfaust, U.D.O., Knife, Incantation, Graveripper and Blut Aus Nord. I would probably add Hetrem as a band worth checking out, quite a few interesting ideas there. But obviously there are more sounds to provide a wide spectrum of experiences while turning up your volume to 11. The link to the playlist:

The list of EPs to check out is quite short so here's the full list of bands: Necronomicon Ex Mortis, Induction, Exmortus, Thamnos, Drowning the Light (2 EPs), Corners of Sanctuary (cover songs), Sargassus, La Nausée, Exhumed (including some live material), Godslave (tribute to Status Quo) and Tadheit. And here's the link to follow:

The singles, little samples to get you excited for the upcoming bigger materials or just to keep you interested, came from Nervosa, Doro (with Rob Halford), Prong, Marduk (full album already on September's playlist), Genus Ordinis Dei, Cryptopsy, Lacrimas Profundere, Shining, Krieg, Dying Fetus, Cannibal Corpse, Mantar, Massacre, Vildhjarta, Thy Art is Murder, Oomph!, Wolves in the Throne Room, Primordial, Harms Way, Ministry, Gruzja, Erra, Brujeria, Alkaloid, Myrkur, In This Moment, Empire State Bastard (new project with Dave Lombardo, definitely for fans of his more experimental stuff, full album on September playlist as well), Sodomisery, Profanatica, October Tide, KK's Priest (yes, you guessed it right, it's K.K. Downing and Tim "Ripper" Owens, who used to be in Judas Priest), Forever Still, Décembre Noir, Carnifex, Hegeroth, Damnation's Hammer, On Thorns I Lay, Job for a Cowboy, Hinayana and many more. This line-up defintely got me excited and I hope you'll get (healthy, obviously) increased heart rate when you're listening to the playlist as well:

Splits are always quite difficult to track as it seems that even though some bands decide to release something together, their approach to appear on streaming services is not the same. So, we've got a full split from Lipoma, Fluids and Trocar, another split from Digest! and Feaces Christ, all 3 bands from split Crown of Madness, Stench of Death and Entity, followed by a split by Full of Hell and Gasp, but from Extraterrestrial Warfare we have only Vault, no Divinite Hive and no Parasitic Infection tracks. Obviously, sometimes they appear on Spotify later and I'll make sure to add them as soon as they are ready. Here's the link:

Two full live albums have caught my attention in August list of releases - Devin Townsend and The Prophecy 23, but we also got some live singles from Madrost, Obscura, Mayhem, Sahg, Hei'An, Amorphis and Epica. Enjoy the sounds of people being entertained outside of the comfort of their homes by following this link:

And we've got two re-releases in August - Destruction "The Butcher Strikes Back" and remaster of Borknagar's "Universal" album (with two extra tracks). If you would like to remind yourselves why you love these two, here's the link:

Remember to work on your Spotify wrap-up playlist, don't forget to show the artists your appreciation by sharing some of your extra income and visit our profile on Spotify to find even more artists to obsess about. Mosh responsibly! \m/

Your lazy summarizer (but not using AI support, YET! ;-)

Maciek