​Metal United World Wide, the huge metal community effort, goes in the second round. The date is set: 15 June 2019! That's only 4 months to go and preparations are speeding up.

Last year, it was a very long night, starting with Australia and Papua New Guinea with Asia, Africa and Europe joining in and the Americas closing up. There were too many highlights to count but one stand out was maybe the show in the Damaskus bazar. The Syrian capital is more associated with war than with party and it was great to see a metal party going on there. Check out last year's Metal United World Wide in our archive.

Summoning the Spirit of Metal is not an easy task. Already around 40 promoters and organisers have joined forces to get the night of metal rolling. More are about to join. Media, label and PR partners support "MUWW" with announcements and spreading the word. For all those who would like to contribute, contact michael@black-roos.com either for media/label/PR partnerships or if you would like to organise a show or add an existing show to MUWW. Contact Michael also for all other requests regarding contribution and participation. It is a community undertaking so the more the merrier.

So, let's get to it. United We Stand, Divided We Fall! \m/

​Anyone who has met Adam Peach (AxMinister, Python) can attest to his voracious appetite for raw, loud, and bass driven melodics and riffs. The album starts with "Repulsive Appetite" which gives us that bassy opening and leads the listener into a maelstrom of guitar, drums and Adam's iconic scream. I knew from that moment on that this album would deliver edgy yet catchy songs filled with nothing but clobbering sound and awaken the dead-like being inside us all. The second album song, but the first featured single, “Feeling Dead” brings us back to the punk flavour that Adam and Ren Thivierg base their songwriting on. It speaks of how it would feel to be dead, like a zombie who walks but is dead. Perhaps it's a reflection of humans who think they are living but are really more like zombies.

​Doors & Fours are hitting the road on March 23rd 2019 and winding up on April 27th 2019.

I then felt the urge to do a new list and feature some of the albums I heard later on that impressed me.  Some of the honourable mentions are new, some are the same, and some of the honourable mentions from the original list have managed to sneak their way into the main portion in this new list.  See my original list here.

Before we get into the new list, why don't we re-visit some key moments from 2014?  As far as lineup changes are concerned, one of the key moments was in Arch Enemy.  After 13 years of fronting the band, Angela Gossow announced she would be stepping down as frontwoman and becoming the band's business manager.  Another surprising lineup change was early in the year, when Testament announced that Greg Christian had left the band, and Steve DiGiorgio returned, but then Greg started slamming his former bandmates in the press about financial irregularities.  Another key lineup change moment that nobody saw coming was when Exodus announced the return of Steve "Zetro" Souza, replacing Rob Dukes.  I love both vocalists, so I'm not going to pick sides.

However, for me, the most surprising lineup change came at the end of the year when Chris Broderick and Shawn Drover announced their departures from Megadeth simultaneously.  Shawn announced it first, then Chris announced it a few hours later.  This left people questioning the future of Megadeth, but we now have Act Of Defiance with Chris and Shawn and Megadeth have a real solid lineup with Kiko Loureiro and Dirk Verbeuren, and Dystopia is a phenomenal record.

In other events, 2014 saw Motley Crue announce that they would be embarking on their "final" farewell tour.  By now, it's become almost a joke to say any band is on a farewell tour because many bands either pull back from the decision either in the middle of or close to the end of the tour, or disband for a couple of years, then reunite and continue on again.  Very few bands have went on farewell tours and stayed disbanded afterwards.  However, by the looks of it as we sit here in 2019, it looks like Motley Crue are sticking to it (at least the touring part).  I also just have to say that with Alice Cooper being the opening act on almost all of Motley's farewell tour, it's pretty weird when you look at it because Motley were retiring, and the opening act on their tour was Alice, who's got a little over 10 years on them and he's still kicking ass.  Kind of weird, don't you think?

As far as some of the people we've lost in 2014 go, some of the notable losses were Dave Brockie (Oderus Urungus), Wayne Static, Jack Bruce, H.R. Giger, Dick Wagner, Johnny Winter and Shane Gibson just to name a few.  R.I.P. to all the fallen heroes I mentioned here as well as those that I forgot.

Now let's get into the list down below.

"Paradise For Demise" from SYRYN can be sampled and purchased here. 

​Of course, some of these bands would reform a couple of years later and are still going today.  At the same time, some reformations that happened include Decapitated, Faith No More, Gorguts, Accept and Autopsy.

Other events that took place included Metallica's induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, and while we're on the subject of Metallica, the end of the year was when it was officially confirmed that thrash's Big Four would be doing shows together for the first time ever in 2010.  However, probably the most devastating event that occurred during the year was when Ronnie James Dio announced his stomach cancer diagnosis.  Let's also take a moment to remember the fallen heroes that we we lost in 2009.  Notable examples include Mike Alexander of Evile, Jimmy "The Rev" Sullivan of Avenged Sevenfold and Brian Redman, formerly of 3 Inches Of Blood.  R.I.P. to them all.

Many of the albums listed below bring back memories of my junior and senior years of high school, although a couple of albums, I heard a few years later after I graduated.  After listening to primarily metalcore for a couple of years, 2009 was the year I started developing a bigger interest in thrash, death, traditional and power metal, as well as listening to many more old-school bands like Exodus, Testament, Kreator, Cannibal Corpse, Death Angel and so on, which is all what I gravitate a lot more towards these days.  Let's get into it.

Snowmaiden is a conceptual symphonic metal effort composed of a Russian born Canadian soprano Alina Gavrilenko and a Canadian guitarist Lucas McArthur (Solarus).

They are happy to premiere their first single “My Winter Kiss”. This song is a ballad from their upcoming 2019 full length album, which has been written and will see studio production in the new-year. It is a conceptual exploration of the melancholy winter tales of the ‘Snowmaiden’. ​