Nine Circles

This month’s Third Circle is all about energy. You’ll need it to suffer through the holidays, and suffer you will, because that’s always how it goes. So here’s just over an hour of November’s primo Bandcamp finds.

First up, we have some Jake Howsam Lowe, who some of you may know from Plini and The Helix Nebula. He delivers a blast to start your day. The mix rolls into Iapetus, easily this year’s dark horse when it comes to end of year lists. Energetic and creative, layered and deep, I’m giving you a long deep draw of what their new album has to offer. Next up we hear the most upbeat track from the new Abigail Williams, which has that Astronoid drive to it.

Shifting gears with some anachronistic time travel via Obsequiae’s unique take on medieval metal, their latest riff-laden fantasy romp delivers. Schammasch’s fantastic goth-rock track from their latest album follows. It starts slow, but it slaps. If this were a real mixtape I would absolutely blend it in starting at 3:23. Yeah, three minutes in, so what? It’s a black metal album, and at this point you’ve already listened to a 13 minute tune on this tape. Then you can enjoy some Liturgy, which isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I think the new album is a return to form. And this one has harps and chorals, so you can pretend it’s Christmas music! (It most definitely is not.)

Bridging the gap to the outro tunes is some quality screamo from Earth Moves. Then you get to ride out with the calming influence of the Mono live EP that dropped last month paired with the sludgy post-rock of Brunt, which just so happens to be the last thing I listened to as I wrote this.

Hopefully this’ll help you survive the crowds and stress of Christmas madness. But if not, at least you die before we can find out what kind of hell 2020 will bring.

Happy Holidays!

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(Two of these albums are Name Your Price, and the total for the rest is just shy of $50. To create this album would cost about $22. Support artists!)

See you in 2020…

-Charles