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: VoidCeremony’s Entropic Reflections Continuum: Dimensional Unravel and HopTea’s The White Tea One.  

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The Tunes: VoidCeremony’s Entropic Reflections Continuum: Dimensional Unravel

If the album name didn’t clue you in as to the batshit insane ride that California’s VoidCeremony have crafted on their debut album, then maybe the artwork might have.  And even if the artwork didn’t give you any hints, you’ll find out within a very short time that Entropic Reflections Continuum is not your average death metal album.  Like a poison dart frog from the Amazon, everything in the presentation of this album warns you that you’re in for something that captures the sounds of…well, dimensions unravelling I guess.  VoidCeremony paint death metal with an absurdist brush, at times playing what feels like death metal as a caricature of itself, with parts so on-the-nose with respect to genre tropes that you’re not sure if these guys are trying really hard to ape the sound of classic acts or if they’re trying to poke some fun at them.  But the real irony here is that what made Entropic Reflections Continuum fully click for me was when I stopped thinking about it as a death metal album at all.  The sublime fretless bass work, the “everybody solos at once” mentality, the ever-shifting themes and moods, which are all the real musical backbones here, feel to me to have more in common with the likes of Weather Report and The Mahavishnu Orchestra than anything else.  Entropic Reflections Continuum is jazz fusion with death metal aesthetics.  It’s Pat Metheny wearing a Morbid Angel shirt onstage.  It’s…one of my favorite albums from this year?  Very possibly so.

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The…Beverage: HopTea’s The White Tea One

We’re going alcohol free again this week, which gives me an opportunity to revisit one of my favorite beverage obsessions of late once again.  Previously on this column, I extolled the virtues of Hoplark Brewing Company’s HopTea empire, in particuar The Calm One, the company’s proprietary mix of Citra hops and chamomile herbal tea.  Today’s pick is The White Tea One, which as the name suggests combines White Peony tea with Simcoe and Lemondrop hops.  The resulting beverage is fruity and light while still having a complexity to it.  The Lemondrop hops give The White Tea One a flavor reminiscent of the kinds of 99 cent two liter bottles of lemonade my family would buy from the corner store when we were having people over for grilling (not a detraction in any way), and the tea and Simcoe hops provide the tropical fruit and floral notes in the background.  The White Tea One is a pretty versatile drink, not too hoppy or ‘tea’-y, not too much caffeine, and certainly no alcohol which all means this is great for almost any time of day or situation.  I’m enjoying this in front of a window while the sun is breaking through a morning of clouds and I gotta say, it feels quite right.

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Cheers, and be good to each other,

– Vincent