Greetings fellow metalheads!

Our favourite holidays are over, no matter if you celebrated Halloween, Samhain, Day of the Dead or any other version of it, and we're getting ready for inevitable arrival of the biggest horror of all, beginning with the dreadful "I don't want a lot for Christmas". That is unless Andy Stone's lawsuit is successful. In the meantime I suggest a dose of King Diamond's "No Presents for Christmas" in case you suffer from nausea or headache or earache or extreme irritation of your whole being, caused by the most BS lyrics ever written, being played over the next two months. Or maybe you have some other favourite antidote in your musical library, whichever works for you. Or maybe you don't mind it, you'll just embrace the cheerful mood or go through this flood of cheap marketing techniques without a scratch because you've already developed immunity to it.

Anyways, back to the subject of our favourite subgenres and we've had a lot of good music to check out in October, and as usual I would like to mention some full-length releases first. The Metalbite crew has presented you with their thoughts on their favourites, I obviously encourage you to read them while you play the albums in the background: Cirith Ungol (reviewed by Vladimir), Hegeroth (two reviews - by Fernando & Vladimir), Asagraum (Michael), Sorry... (TheOneNeverSeen), Eternal Evil (Felix), The Magus (Fernando), Malokarpatan (Felix), Tardigrade Inferno (TheOneNeverSeen), Comaniac (Michael), Endseeker (Michael), Tower Hill (Vladimir), Blessed Curse (Felix), Sorcerer (Michael), Autopsy (Michael), Heavy Load (Vladimir), Doro (Vladimir) and Display of Decay (Vladimir). I have definitely enjoyed listening to latest Carnifex, which actually might have sneakily entered as my second favourite album of the year (with Fange being number 1). Eradikated surprised me with the energy which made thrash interesting to me again, the latest albums from Impalement and Krieg have some earworm potential and I'm definitely happy with the latest Prong. And my favourite Unique Leader Records release last month is probably The Voynich Code. I encourage you to give each one a chance and maybe some other position will be your perfect farewell to the spooky season:

October has been one of the months where we saw slightly higher amount of EPs released and to get through all of them you would need over 5 hours of spare time. The bands which decided to choose this format last month are Amongst the Ashes, Carnation, Cosmic Jaguar, Endarken, Foul Body Autopsy, Gåte, Houkago Grind Time, Impure Wilhelmina, Rage of Light, Sardonic Witchery, Sentinels, Sinnery (although Spotify tells me it was probably a premature release as only 3 songs from it are available now, but if you use it you probably know by now that some releases appear then disappear from this service; it was available about 3 weeks ago, so if you were lucky you already heard it in whole), Soulmass, Stagewar, Tausendstern, Torture Pig, Ufomammut, Valar Morghulis and Varang Nord:

Now, the singles. The playlist I like to use as some sort of music radio station, but a good one. No boring chats or ad breaks and definitely no songs repeated 20 times a day. OK, I'm old and I remember what radio stations were. Anyway, from the tracks listed below we've had a premiere of Tweedledead's track on our website, we also have some singles which come from albums already reviewed by our panel of experts: Xoth (reviewed by Adam M), The Color of Rain (Michael), Aeternus (Michael) and Hinayana (Adam M). The other notable artists on the list are Alice Cooper (Dead Don't Dance from "Road" album with two extra tracks), Allegaeon, The Breathing Process, Cloak (with Samhain cover), Crust, Dimmu Borgir (with their version of Venom's "Black Metal" from the upcoming compilation with cover songs), Job for a Cowboy, Judas Priest, King, Lamb of God, The Ritual Aura, Sadus, Shylmagoghnar, Skeletal Remains, Suffocation, Therion and many more. Have fun browsing:

I've found only two splits for our playlist in October - Stranguliatorius/Attaktix and Dream Unending/Worm. Both can be found under the link below:

Quite an increase in the amount of released material recorded live can be seen in October. We have Amorphis, Apocalyptica, Benthos, Bernth, Conjurer, CoreLeoni, Drowned, Epica, Gaupa, Hei'An, Helleruin, Lacrimosa, Obscura, Orphaned Land, Plasmodulated, Sahg, Voracious Infection and Watain (full album already released on 3rd November). A mix of full live albums and shorter productions can be found here:

Some refreshed material written and already released at least once in the past came from Bewitcher, Black Sabbath, Crisix, Entheos, Fires in the Distance, Harvest Gulgaltha, Ion Dissonance, Mortajas, Motörhead, Nunslaughter, Opprobrium, Paradise Lost, Psychonaut, Sahg, Sorcier Des Glaces, Vektor and Vindalf. Remasters, remakes and re-recordings from all of the above are on this playlist:

And last but not least, the shortest playlist from October on our profile - "Spiritism" from Spiritus Mortis, described by the band as "Compilation of Albert years" - when Sami Albert Hynninen was the band's vocalist:

Have fun checking out all of that music, let the artists know how much you like their creations, share some money with them, so they don't have to look for alternative sources of income, like having a cover band which for the upcoming holiday season would have to practice that horrible song mentioned at the beginning of this summary to make ends meet. And obviously mosh responsibly. And keep an eye on our profile on Spotify to keep up with the latest sounds. At least as soon as I find time to create and update the playlists.

Your fellow metalhead \m/,

Maciek