May I take this opportunity to welcome you to 2010. No? Well, I’m going to anyway, and what a year it promises to be. Stryper are coming to Australia, which would be excitement enough were it not for the fact that 2010 is a World Cup year AND an Ashes year – one is already clutching one’s breeches with excitement, and one hasn’t even taken into account the fact that the boy Sko is getting married this year, with all the inherent ‘buck’s’ madness that that will entail…

Will there be a sober day in 2021? I mean 2010, sorry – I’m typing this, in the middle of a heatwave, already several cans to the good although it isn’t even halfway through the first Dog Watch, and the digits occasionally lag behind the brain.

But enough of this expectant salivation. In the hurly-burly of 2009’s end, with its tales of seed-fuelled anarchy in the skies and all the other standard-issue goodwill to all men going on roundabouts, your correspondent completely neglected to tell you about a remarkable album that had been seeping into his brain since before he’d commenced his epic sojourn in the motherland; to whit, Revisions by American prog-metallists 3. Not, of course, to be confused with the popular mobile communications providores, 3 are actually a monstrous confection centred around guitarist/songsmith Joey Eppard, and Revisions is a fresh look at some of their earlier work in a newly-recorded light (hence the title – keep up!). Now as regular consumers of this column will know, I’ve been listening to music for more years than any of you care to remember, and I can’t think that I’ve ever heard the likes of this before. In terms that the young people will unnerstan’, this is an album that comes on like a snakier, sleeker Coheed and Cambria (which shouldn’t come as a surprise, I suppose, when you discover that Eppard’s percussive sibling, Josh, played drums for said progressive maestros): but that only goes some way to filling you in on what’s going on here. Opener Anyone Human proves that you can, remarkably, combine Tool with Toto to devastating effect, whilst its follow up, the insanely divine The Better Half, nicks the chorus from Blink 182’s All the Small Things and tacks it on to another gorgeous piece of ‘80s teen-flick soundtrackerama in a way that’ll have you rolling up your jacket sleeves to the elbow and gyrating, Thriller-like, in the streets.

There really aren’t words enough to describe the splendiferocity on offer on Revisions. Like Kerplunk – or indeed any board game from the Milton Bradley stables – there’s something to appeal to all comers, whether they be aged eight or 80, and lovers of the good stuff all over the Nation’s Capital should be heading to their music emporium of choice NOW to partake of its Ambrosial goodness. Don’t miss out. And once again, please accept my apologies for the tardiness of this information.

There. I’ve nearly made it through to the end of 2010’s first instalment of AAT, and all without a drop of the booze sullying the keyboard. Is this a good omen? I’m no Delphic purveyor of prophecy but I’d like to think so. And so, with the percussive, flamenco stylings of 3’s Lexicon of Extremism providing a suitably hard driving, not to say dramatic soundtrack, can I just welcome you once more to the first year of a new decade. It’s going, I think, to be massive. Let’s go to work!