It’s getting colder. The days are getting shorter, the nights are getting longer, and everyone is so full of Christmas cheer, it makes you want to burn down a church. Worse than that, you have to spend precious beer money on… gifts. Well, whether you have metal buddies who are seriously expecting something this season, or whether you want to give Aunt Mabel something so heinously inappropriate that she will regift it right back to you, you might want to take a look at this list.

Here’s the 2015 Metalhead’s Holiday Gift Guide…

No Life ’til leather, we’re gonna kick some ass tonight…

So says Metallica, on “Hit The Lights,” the opening track of their 1982 demo No Life ’til Leather, which, after over three decades, is finally getting an official release for this year’s Record Store Day.

The mighty Metallica will be releasing the 1982 demo No Life ’til Leather as a re-mastered limited edition cassette tape for Record Store Day this April. This offering will contain the original demo recordings for the seven songs that went on to make up the bulk of the thrash metal legends’ first album, 1983’s Kill ‘Em All, including the popular “Seek & Destroy.” The demo tracks were performed by the band’s original line-up of James Hetfield (lead vocals and rhythm guitar), Lars Ulrich (drums); Dave Mustaine (lead guitar), who went on to form fellow Big 4 thrash band Megadeth; and Ron McGovney (bass). (For Kill ‘Em All, current guitarist Kirk Hammett replaced Mustaine, while Cliff Burton, who died in 1986, stepped in as bassist).

The limited edition Record Store Day demo tape release will have a re-mastered version of the original 1982 mix, and this will be the first time the demo is being offered commercially ever.

See cassette art and track listing here below (image above is of the aforementioned original line-up, but is not an official photo for the limited edition cassette release and was not included in the press release).

Today’s Thrashback Thursday is a two-for-one deal. Metallica‘s Lars Ulrich and King Diamond (aka Kim Bendix Peterson) are Danish countrymen. The two have been close friends for some time. Metallica even recorded their breakthrough second album, 1984’s Ride The Lightning in the studio owned by King Diamond and his band Mercyful Fate.

So strong is Metallica’s reverence for Mercyful Fate that they have, for many years, been performing a medley consisting of several of the band’s songs (“Satan’s Fall,” “Curse of the Pharaohs,” “A Corpse Without Soul,” “Into the Coven,” and “Evil”) which they simply call “Mercyful Fate.” A recorded version of the tribute appeared on Metallica’s Garage Inc.

When Metallica made a stop in King Diamond’s adopted hometown of Dallas Texas in 2008, they invited the King himself to join them onstage to lend his iconic lead vocals to the medley. Check out the footage of that performance here below.

Diamond Head may not be the same sort of household name that their contemporaries such as Judas Priest and Iron Maiden became during the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, but their influence is every bit as strong, if not more so. Diamond Head were among the first bands to experiment with marrying the raw power and speed of punk to heavy metal. The resulting sound would provide the building blocks of the thrash movement that lay just a few years away with Mercyful Fate, Metallica, and Slayer. Such was the influence of Diamond Head on this fledgling scene that Metallica would cover Diamond Head’s classic “Am I Evil?” on their very first album.

Check out this promo clip for Diamond Head’s original version of “Am I Evil?” from their landmark 1980 debut album Lightning to the Nations.

“Puppets and metal, they can be a thing,” sings the lead singer of Lintallica, a Sock Puppet Parody band, in their new video for the song “Master Of Puppets,” and I’m incline to agree.

The new “concert” video, from the geniuses behind Immortal Christmas, features four headbanging sock puppets made to resemble the four members of Metallica from their 1980’s Master Of Puppets era, complete with tiny replicas of the late Cliff Burton’s Rickenbacher bass and Kirk Hammett’s Frankenstein guitar. While Metallica’s 1986 song dealt with the perils of drug addiction, Lintallica’s truncated parody is more about the hazards of laundry day and the dreaded thought of becoming a mismatched sock.

Check out the video here below.