It happens every year, without fail, like clockwork, as inevitable as the tide and as destructive to my psyche as a tornado. I get through my Top Albums of the Year List, settle on the order, become happy, make my peace with my favorite albums of the year, and sit back with a nice glass of scotch to wait for the next year's bounty of metal goodness. And then, within seconds of that ball dropping and people screaming "HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!" I find something new. Something highly enjoyable that I should have found earlier, something worth listening to, and occasionally, something that would have changed my year end list. Every. Fucking. Year.
What follows is a list of 2014 releases I've discovered in the opening weeks of 2015, along with a mini-review of each of them and links to any music I could find. Most of these fall somewhere into the category of "Man, I'm just really happy to know these exist!" but the last one probably would crack my Top Five from last year if I re-did my list.
