Montreal retro-rockers Priestess bring the proto-thrash riffola and seventies melodics back to heavy metal on their second album, Prior To The Fire.

Until We Are Outnumbered sees Danish bruisers The Kandidate combine the simple and punchy elements of thrash and hardcore to neck-shattering contemporary effect.

Gibraltar-born nu-metal survivors Breed 77 deliver their fifth album, Insects; the music is pretty decent, though the lyrics are somewhat lacking.

Oakland stoners Saviours have been indulging in some Accelerated Living, a slightly cleaner take on their blend of heavy thrashy metal’s aesthetic high points.

Paradise Lost invented and ruled a genre, and then seemingly wandered away. Now they’re back for the goth-metal crown with Faith Divides Us, Death Unites Us.

The New Wave Of British Heavy Metal has seemingly never stopped washing over the Midlands; take a trip Into The Volcano with retro-thrashers Last Stop China Town.

Ludicrous levels of technical skill and complex songwriting are the order of the day on In the Shadow of Gods, a homegrown extreme metal début from No Consequence.

VR shows that dreadfully-named retro-rockers Fury UK have got the stylistic licks, er, licked. Shame about the massively cliched songs, though.

From some Hertfordshire heroin-pit (their words, not mine) come UK metalcore bruisers Scar My Eyes; let’s hope they bring their producer with them on tour.

German thrashers Grantig – it means “angry”, apparently – hide quality thrash riffage behind monotonous gravelly vocals on label debut Medizin.