Nine Circles

Well, we’re here again.  Another deadline looming and another herculean pile of promos and new releases to get through.  Gotta have an opinion on it all, man!  Gotta get your view HEARD on the Net of Inter, the tangled web of social media that serves as the roaring voice of the DISCERNING MASS!  Nuance?  Never heard of it!  Just shout AS LOUD AS YOU CAN ABOUT WHATEVER HALF-FORMED THOUGHT YOU HAVE IN YOUR BRILLIANT HEAD SO EVERYONE KNOWS YOU WERE FIRST! YOU WERE THERE AT THE BEGINNING! NO ONE CAN FOOL YOU!

What the hell…let’s join the Body Eclectic and get our malnourished and quivering need for acceptance and acknowledgement out there.  And since considered thinking is at a premium, let’s keep this edition of Nine Circles ov snappy once again with one-sentence summaries of nine recent releases.

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Deftly mixing modern power metal and progressive rock the hooks are plentiful, the keyboards never too showy, and the vocals magnificent on Meridiem, so much that I almost forgive Tanagra the four years it took to craft this killer followup to their 2015 debut.

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With releases few and far between, it’s best to take the epic heavy metal doom of Altar of Oblivion when you can get it, especially when the production finally matches the punch of songs on The Seven Spirits like “Created in the Fires of Holiness” and the lead-heavy monster of “Solemn Messiah.”

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One sentence can barely do justice to the massive 22-minute epic post sludge mesmerizing track that is Deep from Dwarfcraft spokesman Benjamin Hinz so I’ll let the track speak for itself and assure you that I’ll be talking about this more in-depth come the mid-year point as well as year end because IT’S THAT GOOD.

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After putting out one of the best records of 2018 夢遊病者, aka Sleepwaker, are back with a two-song EP called Ѫ that continues the band’s perfect track record of tying a vast array of sounds together around a crumbling black metal foundation to explode the narrow confines of the genre into the cosmos.

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I really wanted to just chalk Tripsitter up to “what Prosthetic Records thinks blackgaze sounds like” but fortunately the music on The Other Side of Sadness had other plans, namely to throttle me with massive riffs and a suffocating aura of depression that wears its wounds proudly on tracks like “Bury Me” and the churning beauty of “Hollow.”

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I honestly can’t believe no one on the site grabbed the new Dead to a Dying World to review because Elegy was all anyone could talk about and although I’m not super familiar with the band after listening to “The Seer’s Embrace” I intend to change that immediately. (ed. note: Elegy warrants additional coverage, tremendous album)

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All you need to know is that Caligari Records is releasing this, but if that’s not enough for you know that Cosmic Apoptosis is the second demo from Italy’s Devoid of Thought and it is righteously evil old school death metal that is filthy and rotted from the inside and is everything we need in life.

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My ears immediately perk up if something in the promo list has “DSBM” attached to it, and Damp Chill of Life by None is pretty much dead on with its melancholic buzzsaw lines and keyboards emphasizing the despair of life on the title track as well as vocals that sound like someone desperately needs a hug.

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This was totally my bad, as I was supposed to review this a month ago but forgot, so it deserves a second sentence.  After really underwhelming with 2017’s Strike Mortal Soil Wormwitch have made good on all their amazing early work with Heaven That Dwells Within, packed with so many great death/black/thrash/epic moments it becomes dizzying, with “Dancing in the Ashes” perhaps being the best song they’ve done to date.

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I can feel my anger dying down a bit after so many great releases in the last few weeks.  All of these deserve more than a sentence…they deserve your undivided attention to hear what is being imparted, what matters, and what you can take in and make your own.  I hope you do so.

In the meantime, keep it heavy.

– Chris

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