Initially, this month’s theartsdesk on Vinyl began with the sentence after this one, but it's so dry readers might drowse off, so I started with this one instead and would advise moving through the next one, just picking up the gist quickly... Discogs, a key hub for global record sales in physical formats, recently presented its Midyear Marketplace Analysis and Database Highlights for 2018, which reckons vinyl sales are up another 15% over the last year. Very boringly stated but good news, right?

In recent years there’s been an explosion in feminised self-empowerment anthems, perhaps best epitomised by Rachel Platten’s “Fight Song” (This is my fight song/Take back my life song/Prove I'm alright song). For those in need of a masculine equivalent, Dee Snider’s latest album may prove a tonic. A word of warning, though: where the feminine self-empowerment anthem can sometimes veer into the trite and solipsistic, this male version is simply a preening strut of preposterous bravado. Once that’s understood, however, there’s much to enjoy.

Arriving back onstage for an encore a broadly smiling Gary Numan bathes in roared football chants of “Numan! Numan!”. He tells us it’s just over 40 years since he released his first single, “That’s Too Bad”, but that he and his tight four-piece band are going to make a “bad attempt” at playing it. He’s wrong. It’s one of the best-delivered songs of the night, sounding Seventies punky to the delight of the crowd, many of whom clearly recall the era. It’s not a song he usually plays and not typical of his set, but it has a freshness.

System of a Down guitarist and vocalist Daron Malakian isn’t going to let a little thing like his band going on an extended hiatus get in the way of releasing new music.

Summer’s here and the time is right for dancing in the street. To vinyl. Only theartsdesk on Vinyl doesn’t just cover music for dancing, it covers every style of music imaginable (with a good showing for pop this month). Whatever your taste, from the heaviest rock to the lightest ambient music, theartsdesk on Vinyl will review it along the way. Enough intro, though. More juice.

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.