Nine Circles

Receiving the Evcharist is our weekly feature where we pair choice albums with our favorite libations. Drink from the cup of heresy. This week’s offering: Turia’s Degen van Licht and Modern Times Brewing Company’s Mythic Worlds.  

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The Tunes: Turia’s Degen van Licht

I’ve gotten really into Thai food lately.  I watch a lot of recipe videos on YouTube and I now own a cookbook I’m pulling recipes from.  What I really love about Thai food is the balance that the best of it strikes.  It’s not always in-your-face spicy like people tend to think.  There’s quite a few dishes that are variations on the theme of Three Flavors: sweet, sour, and spicy, and the balance therein is key to a good dish.  I like to think if we extend this analogy to black metal, its “three flavors” would be aggression, melody, and atmosphere.  All this is to say that listening to Turia is like eating Thom Yum soup at a Michelin Star restaurant.  With only vocals, one guitar, and drums at their disposal, Turia manage to tap into the minimalist spirit of black metal’s past and shape it into something that lights the way towards its future.  Degen van Licht, the band’s third full-length album, is a tour-de-force of Dutch black metal, with songs like “Met sterven beboet” managing to incorporate moments of stately melody, feral instrumentation, and lofty atmosphere in the form of nature samples and rustic (I do mean this in a good way) production value.  It’s every element you know and love about black metal presented in a way that sounds unique, refreshing, and wholly memorable amongst the veritable sea of new black metal acts.  This won’t be the last you hear of my love affair with black metal from the Netherlands this year either, so stay tuned…

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The Booze: Modern Times Brewing Company’s Mythic Worlds

Frequent readers of this column will know the drill by now: I see a Modern Times beer, I buy a Modern Times beer.  I’ve had great luck with all this brewery’s hazy IPA’s so far, and their newest offering, Mythic Worlds, keeps that streak alive.  Syrupy, but not quite as sweet as some of Modern Times’ other offerings, stone and tropical fruit fight it out on the palette this time courtesy of a Galaxy, Motueka, Mosaic, and Sultana hops, fading into a pleasant bitterness in the finish.  Three different kinds of malts give both body and backbone to support all the high fruit notes, resulting in something like a fruit cup your mom used to put in your lunch box as a kid, only this one makes you fall asleep on the couch.  Another winner from a brewery that doesn’t seem to be able to do any wrong by me.

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Cheers, and be good to each other,

– Vincent