Nine Circles

I’ve said this a couple of times since hearing the tragic news of Chris Cornell’s passing: you never stop long enough to realize just how ingrained in the fabric of your own life an artist really is until it’s too late. Badmotorfinger came out when I was 17, a time when I was 10 feet tall and bulletproof but really just trying to figure it all out. What I gained from Soundgarden and the soulful, visionary vocals of Cornell was a safe place away from it all. A place I could just…be, tune out everything and escape. Throughout the years and other projects, solo or otherwise I’ve always been able to find that safe place, that frequency that allowed me to get lost in his music. Today it hits even harder. We’ve lost so many good ones but because of that time and place, being 10 feet tall and not knowing anything and hearing that voice, this one really hit home. Chris “Outshined” them all…rest in peace. Nine Circles offers heartfelt condolences to family, friends, bandmates and fans across the globe that were touched in any way by his music.

This week gives us yet another escape and it couldn’t have come at a better time: Steve Von Till’s project Harvestman returns with Music For Megaliths, the fourth full length of folk inspired ambient drone and its one you cannot miss (but if you’re a Von Till fan you already know that). Vancouver’s Device gives us their next — and unfortunately last — full length Good Things Never Last, an album full of classic and classy traditional heavy metal. We need this right now so do yourself a favor and pick this one up, trust me. Somnium Nox offers up their menacing take on atmospheric black metal with debut full length Terra Inanis and Abkehr suck every bit of air out of the room on their dark and sinister black metal debut EP In Asche. So there you have it, a week I wish we could do over with different results and new releases that give us somewhere to find some sort of comfort and escape. Please, be well friends.

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Harvestman – Music for Megaliths (Neurot Recordings) – folk, drone, psychedelic

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Device – Good Things Never Last (Independent) – traditional heavy metal [feature review]

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Somnium Nox – Terra Inanis (Transcending Obscurity) – atmospheric black metal [full review]

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Abkehr – In Asche, EP (Sentient Ruin) – black metal

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Also on tap:

Ampütator – Deathcult Barbaric Hell, Vinyl Reissue (Greyhaze Records) – war metal

Beastmaker – Inside the Skull (Rise Above) – psychedelic doom metal

Biters – The Future Ain’t What It Used To Be (Earache Records) – hard rock

Blackosh – Rvouchi Vichry, 7″ (Eternal Death) – black metal

Blisterhead – Border Control (Cramada) – punk, ska

[ B O L T ] and Biblo – S/T, Collaboration (Wolves and Vibrancy) – drone

Clustersun – Surfacing to Breathe (Seahorse Recordings) – psych gaze

Enslaved – Roadburn Live (By Norse Music) – black metal

F41.0 – Bürde (Geisterasche Organisation) – atmospheric black metal

Fractal Generator – Apotheosynthesis (Everlasting Spew Records) – death metal

Funeral Hearse – Heralding the Death Winds (Independent) – black metal

Godhunter – Codex Narco (Battleground/Baby Tooth) – doom metal

Grid – Human Collapse Syndrome (Discouraged Records) – grindcore

Higher Power – Soul Structure (Flatspot Records) – hardcore

Highland – Loyal To the Nightsky (Independent) – black metal

Idre – Unforgiving Landscapes (Wolves and Vibrancy) – doom, sludge

Incontinence – Prey For Us (Ultimate Massacre Productions) – death metal

Kalopsia – Angelplague (Horror Pain Gore Death) – death metal

Kollapse – Angst (WOOAAARGH) – post hardcore

Loss – Horizonless (Profound Lore) – funeral doom metal

Mastercastle – Wine of Heaven (Scarlet Records) – heavy, power metal 

Miss May I – Shadows Inside (Sharptone) – metalcore

Morass of Molasses – These Paths We Tread (HeviSike Records) – sludge, doom

Panphage – Storm, Reissue (Nordvis Produktion) – black metal

Panphage & Thul – Ginnheilagr, Reissue (Nordvis Produktion) – black metal, ambient

Postvorta – Carmentis (Third I Rex) – black metal

Red Moon Architect – Return of the Black Butterflies (Inverse Records) – funeral doom metal

Sektarism – La Mort de l’Infidèle (Zanjeer Zani Productions) – black metal

Shivered – Journey to Fade (Sensespirit) – gothic doom metal

Steak – No God To Save (Ripple Music) – stoner rock

The Bleeding – Rites of Absolution (Independent) – thrash metal

The Monolithic Deathcult – Versus 1 (Hammerheart Records) – occult metal

The Wizards – Full Moon In Scorpio (Fighter Records) – 70’s style hard rock, occult

Thomas Andrew Doyle – Incarceration Ceremony (Yuggoth Records) – experimental

– Josh