The heartland of America burns a special candle for two genres in particular: country music and heavy metal. What’s curious, then, is that there’s not been more cross-breeding between the styles. On a cartoon level, this can be attributed to one being God’s music and the other, Satan’s, but you’d have thought that would only encourage determined, disenfranchised teenagers in Lexington, Kentucky, or wherever.

Although the cover of the 19 May 1979 issue of the music weekly Sounds was dominated by a photo of American rocker Ted Nugent, attention was also grabbed by a trail for a feature on “Heavy Metal…The New British Bands”. The two-page article it related to was headlined If You Want Blood, You’ve Got It. Under that were the words “The New Wave of British Heavy Metal: First in an Occasional Series”.

Concluding a trilogy of releases that began with the EPs Not the Actual Events (2016) and Add Violence (2017) – Bad Witch is being called an LP despite its six tracks clocking in at only 30 minutes, a discrepancy that reportedly led an exasperated Trent Reznor to sound out a pernickety fan in an online forum. 

Since Glastonbury lies fallow this year, Download is the biggest British green field festival of the summer. 100,000 souls gathered to celebrate the canon of metal on the land around Donington Park racing circuit.

Sometimes music reaches a point beyond which there's no point in going. Thus it is with Napalm Death who, 30 or so years ago, hit on a formula for furious noise generation, and though they've shifted line-ups many times since then, continue to make more or less the same racket to this day. OK, there are aficionados who will be furious at this allegation.

Al Jourgensen is pissed off with Donald Trump. Really pissed off. So pissed off that he’s dragged the latest incarnation of mighty industrial metal originators Ministry back into the studio for the first time since 2012’s Relapse to produce an album made up solely of songs of resistance against the 45^th President of the USA and his alt-right junta.

Without further ado, let’s cut straight to it. Below theartsdesk on Vinyl offers over 30 records reviewed, running the gamut from Adult Orientated Rock to steel-hard techno via the sweetest, liveliest pop. Dive in!

VINYL OF THE MONTH 1

Zoë Mc Pherson String Figures (SVS)

Many hard rock aficionados say that Motörhead’s greatest work was all with the “classic” line-up of Lemmy, drummer Phil “Philthy Animal” Taylor and guitarist “Fast” Eddie Clarke (who died last week aged only 67 - this review was written before that news came through). While there’s no denying their 1976-82 output was storming, Motörhead’s later career contained multitudes of gems that were its match. The band’s guitarist for this period, for 31 years from 1984 until Lemmy’s death, was Phil Campbell. He now releases the debut album by a band he formed with his three sons shortly after his legendary frontman’s passing.

So where was Campbell to go next? Judging from The Age of Absurdity, a return to the classic rock template, but fuelled with Motörhead’s desire for high velocity impact. Campbell is staunchly Welsh, a taciturn individual (I interviewed him once: polite, dryly funny, but making him say anything of consequence was blood-from-stone stuff). He’s also an amazing guitarist, able to inject squiggly blues-lickin’ solos with a furious zest. His sons Todd, Dane and Tyla are up to the task of surrounding him, while Neil Starr, once singer for Welsh rockers Attack! Attack!, is on vocals. They go at it with vim. There’s enough juice to make this more than a post-glory novelty.

They’re at their best on raging rock-punk assaults, somewhere between The Ramones and early Lostprophets, with numbers such as “Skin and Bones”, “Gypsy Kiss” and “Step Into the Fire” roaring out of the speakers. Campbell’s impeccable guitar work provides the centrepiece of some songs – the single “Ringleader” and the tasty harmonica-led blues jam “Dark Days” – while those looking for Motörhead-alike kicks should turn to the rock’n’rollin’ “Dropping the Needle”. Quibbles: too much filler, and sometimes I found myself wishing Starr had a more characterful, less mainstream rock voice (but then sometimes he comes into his own, notably on the epic six-and-a-half minute closer “Into the Dark”).

There’s a straightforward rerun of Hawkwind’s “Silver Machine”, featuring that band’s leader Dave Brock, as a bonus track. It’s OK, but probably more fun live, which is where I suspect this lot come into their own. In the meantime, their debut album is feisty hard rock worth cherry-picking.

• More new music reviews on theartsdesk

Overleaf: Watch the video for "Ringleader" by Phil Campbell and the Bastard Sons

As well as creating a true American musical phenomenon, led by from the front by Nirvana, the early-to-mid-Nineties grunge explosion opened a window of opportunity for multitudes of bands on its furthest fringes. South Carolina punk-metallers Corrosion of Conformity hit a career peak at the time, mingling an old-school hard rock sound with something bluesier and spacier, the whole thing marinated in the guitar and vocals of Pepper Keenan. He left to concentrate on his role in metal supergroup Down, featuring members of Pantera and others, but now returns for his first album since 2005 with the band that made his name.

The good news is that, after a patchy couple of albums without Keenan, Corrosion of Conformity’s 10th is an atmospheric beast, with an undertow of southern boogie, southern gothic and, as per its title and moody downtempo title track, a certain southern focus on religion. It also contains a decent selection of rolling riff-monsters, notably the slow-starting but epic “Nothing Left to Say”, the sludgy six-minute closer “A Quest to Believe (A Call to the Void)” and the hefty “Old Disaster”.

The showcase guitar work is also a treat. Corrosion of Conformity don’t go in for hyperspeed shredding, and give their fret-wrangling room to breathe. The stoned jam interlude on “Wolf Named Crow”, a song about Keenan’s dog, is especially rich in this vein. Unlike many metal outings, No Cross No Crown paces itself, dropping in occasional short instrumental interludes between tracks, and the band is happily not afraid of a proper tune either, with songs such as “Forgive Me” boasting an unlikely catchiness among the blues-squall assault absorbed on first listening.

To non-metallers, the cover art and nomenclature may be off-putting but Corrosion of Confomity’s latest demonstrates there’s fierce, authentic and enjoyable hard rocking to be had with this band.

• More album reviews on theartsdesk

Overleaf: Watch the video for "Wolf Named Crow" by Corrosion of Conformity

The music business is about to disappear on holiday wholesale and we won’t see hide nor hair of it until mid-January. There’s just time for one last 2017 vinyl celebration. Regular readers should be warned that theartsdesk on Vinyl becomes rather easy-going at this time of year – must be all the Baileys – and prone to making allowances for the odd sliver of cheese and office-party silliness.