Joy to the world! It’s the return of our favourite festive tradition, the Joyzine Advent Calendar, back for its 22nd consecutive edition, which as far as we’re aware makes it the longest running on the net.
As always, every track is completely free to download and we don’t require you to sign up for a mailing list (though you can if you want to) or hand over your personal data – it’s our way of saying thank you to everyone who’s visited the site during 2025 and to hopefully bring a few more listeners to some very deserving artists.
However, if you do enjoy the tracks we would love you to consider making a donation to our chosen cause, which this year is HOPE not hate, and their stirling work researching, campaigning, and supporting communities to build HOPE and oppose far-right extremism. You can make a donation here.
Today’s track comes from Cheshire quintet Salt The Snail, whose heady mixture of post-hardocre, surrealist humour and professional wrestling has made them firm favourites here at Joyzine ever since we first crossed paths at Portals Festival a few years back. Their 2025 single ‘Matador’ (which appeared in an earlier form on our 20th birthday compilation – still available here) was an absolute blast and bodes extremely well for their forthcoming new album Go Too Far, due for release early next year along with another single ‘Big Dog’, which they describe as “packed with big riffs and whistles”.
And on top of that plans are in the works for Snailmania VII, the latest installment of their celebration of music, wrestling and spandex.
We caught up with the band for a festive q&a session:
Tell us a little bit about your track please
This is a sneak peek at one of the tracks off the record and exclusive to you guys! It’s got some punk and funk vibes in there. The lyrics are about people who spend too much time in their bedroom. It’s short, sharp and full of riffs.
What have you been up to in 2025?
Keeping it real, making videos, playing music in wrestling rings, learning new recipes. We took a step back from gigging so much to let our bodies recover and just became a bit more creative. Wrote a handful of new tracks and went back and finished old ones we had brewing but never completed. So overall it was a nice year.
And what are your plans for next year?
Our bodies have somewhat recovered now so I guess it’s ruin all the good work we did recovering. But we have so much new music to release so our plan is to do a run of shows, take them far and wide and just have a great time doing it! We want to go over to mainland Europe again for our Euro homies
What have been your musical highlights of the year from other bands/artists?
Alpha Male Tea Party’s new album Reptilian Brain was a beautiful new record. What legends, what riffs, what nice people. So, they deserve a mention. I was also a huge fan of the new Callous Daoboys new album I don’t want to see you in heaven. If you are a fan of The Dillinger escape plan, that is deffo an album you want to sink your teeth into.
Also as King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard Fan boy, Phantom Island was a joy.
Christmas: The most wonderful time of the year or a big bag of humbug?
Christmas is literally the main event of the year. Top of the bill. The only big bag of humbugs we want is a literal big bag of humbugs for our gobs. We are down for all the festive vibes. Mince pies, daytime drinking, Xmas specials, Celebrations (The chocolate and the celebrating) all that. Friends, Family and frolics… It’s a beautiful thing
Stream and download ‘Exister’ below
Make a donation to HOPE not hate
Salt The Snail: Facebook / Instagram / Bandcamp
Check out more fantastic free music on this year’s calendar:
1: Piney Gir & Parenthesis Dot Dot Dot
2: Syd Howells
3: The Happy Hollow
4: Stephen Evens
5: Ombudsmen
6: The Scaramanga Six
7: Dextro + Rubber Oh
8: Craig Fortnam
Check back tomorrow for another free festive download!
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