This year, I’ve been writing fortnightly posts about bands that are grouped by their band name’s starting letter. It started with the A list and logically ended with the Z list—that’s generally how the alphabet starts and ends. The entire series is conveniently grouped under this 26 playlists tag group.

Back when I wrote the article for the M fortnight of this series, I started with Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm … which represented the number of M bands in the article as well as the tastiness of a playlist with that much variety. If I was to follow that same approach for this final playlist, the result would be Zzzzzz.

Yep. Six bands. That’s how many Z bands I could come up with—with a little help from friends. This will be one sleepy little article.

I thought the letter Y would be difficult. And it has been. On the bright side, it hasn’t provided fewer tracks than the letter X did. Sadly, it has not provided more either. It’s going to be another fortnight of repetition for this playlist.

Excellent, exceptional and exceedingly brilliant are all words that do not start with the letter X. Finding descriptive words that start with an X is a difficult task.

So is finding band names starting with the letter X. But here we are.

My last entry in this fortnightly series of alphabet-driven playlists of heavy/metal bands was rather late. To make up for that and to get back on track (in a manner of speaking), I thought I’d add the W entry one day early. Mixing things up like a boss!

Very, very late. That’s how I’d describe this fortnight’s entry for the alphabet playlist of metal. I guess in my case, V is not for virtuous.

Uh oh. That starts with the letter U and also perfectly depicts my feelings for how the rest of this year’s article series on an alphabet themed playlist is likely to pan out. How many bands can start with the letters U, V, W, X, Y or Z?

Not too many I suspect. For now, let’s see how many U bands I managed to find. This could be a short and simple read for you. Or for U.

I’ll just get straight to it. Tool finally released a new album. So, yes … Tool is in my fortnightly series of bands that start with the same letter. But, and I know it’s poor form to start a sentence with the word but, is the track that’s chosen for Tool from the latest album? Well, you’re going to have to read a few more paragraphs to find out.

Or scroll down to the list. You could always do that.