So all your fiends and family are either on the brink of redundancy or about to die of swine flu. Your house is worth less than the boat that you’re going to have to by when the ice caps melt and you’ve taken a liking to the new Beyonce track and you’re concerned that this may develop into something more sinister.

Don’t feel so down old chum. Here’s some reasons to be cheerful!

The new Dillinger Escape Plan album Option Paralysis will be released early next year which apparently will sound “dark and evil –very early ’90s thrash-influenced” and not “upbeat and danceable –very Justin Timberlake-influenced” like we were all expecting.

One more instalment of the 4 album odyssey that is the Devin Townsend Project. This one will be heavier apparently, which is nice. Strapping Young Lad will be revisited on the 3rd album apparently. Apparently there are also twitters regarding some possible live appearances next year. A visit to the UK please Mr. Townsend!

The new album New Junk Aesthetic from southern hardcore frontrunners Every Time I Die in September. The first track released from this has backing vocals from Dillinger’s Greg Puciato. Read my thoughts here.

Alice in Chains got a new singer, and have recorded a new album due for a September release. Against all the odds, the first track released off of this opus is actually rather good.

Baroness have finished recording their new album, which is due out in October. If it’s 1/10th as good as The Red Album, then it should kick the arse out of most other stuff released this year.

Apparently Metal is currently the most popular musical genre in the UK. I’ll leave it up to you to decide whether this is a reason to be cheerful or a reason to slit your wrists. If it leads to more unforgivable adolescent nonsense like this, then possible the latter, unless you’re 12, then surely the former.

Feeling happier? No? This should help (mainly because it’s what I’m listening to now, and it’s cheering me up).

This first single on the new Alice in Chains’ new album Black Gives Way to Blue is a 7 minute long sludgefest and can be downloaded for free from the bands website. The dense harmonic undertones are reminiscent of their later work and see new vocalist William Duval’s voice largely obfuscated – there’s scant chance here to see what he’s really made of. Slow, brooding and heavy in every sense of the word, this has an understated chorus that has the potential to grow and grow.

I’m feeling a little less uneasy about this enterprise. Alice in Chains seem neither to be reliving past glories nor forging into new territories – this feels like an evolution.

Unlike the somewhat more lo-fi teasers for the next instalments of the Devin Townsend Project, the Alice in Chains teasers aren’t giving away much. The forboding content backed with heavy grooves are enticing indeed. Only 3 more months of anticipation and creepy ‘teasers’. Comeback albums of this sort rarely live up to expectation; bets on folks.