Nine Circles

Too many albums, too few reviewers…that’s the problem with all the metal blogs, not just this one. What do you do? How do you get a sense of what’s out there if you’re only listening to a fraction of what’s getting released? How do you open yourself up to new music? I’ll tell you how: you jump into all the unpicked promos each month and devote a sentence or two giving a sense of what you gleaned from it.

That’s right: we’re back for another round of “The Month That Was…” so enough preambling…let’s dive into this edition of Nine Circles ov… and see what’s been stewing in March 2024.

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I don’t think I’ve seriously listened to Aborted since 2005’s The Archaic Abattoir. And “Deadbringer,” the first track off new album Vault of Horrors didn’t fill me with the greatest confidence that I missed anything is the last 20 years. And then things started to click, and by “Brotherhood of Sleep” I was hooked by the band’s ability to craft this kind of technically precise death metal that’s razor sharp yet doesn’t sound remotely synthetic. There’s a punch to the drums and the assorted guest vocalists make this ode to cinematic horror a thrill when it’s on, even if it might not be the most memorable sound in the universe.

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A Sinner’s Past is the second album from L.A.’s Early Moods, and the vibe is once again very heavy Candlemass excavates the grave of vintage Black Sabbath and offers the bones in worship to Witchfinder General. If that doesn’t immediately make you want to check these guys out, we can’t be friends. The guitars are nice and grimy, the bass filling the space with a fog-like dread. Vocalist/keyboardist Alberto Alcaraz not only has a killer name, but he is on fire vocally throughout A Sinner’s Past. Just drown in the fuzzed depths of “Blood Offering” or rage to the metal stack of “Walpurgis” and you’ll see why this might be my AOTM for March…

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There’s extremity in metal, and then there’s heavy. Mastiff sit firmly in the second category, and I’ll take their brand of punishing blend of death and hardcore any day of the week. With nary a tepid metalcore trap in sight, Deprecipice is a brilliantly evocative album title, and one that perfectly captures the turmoil and anguish this kind of music can not only channel, but cleanse. Opener “Bite Marks” serves up everything you can expect from a band clearly never resting on their laurels, and the frenzied chaos of blitzkrieg tracks like the 1:32 of “Skin Stripper” show that all the modern production of big “metal” bands can’t help but be choked by the suffocating fury Mastiff have brought on full-length #4.

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Sometimes you just know looking at a cover an album is going to speak to you. French black metal veterans Merrimack have been putting out demos and splits since the mid 90s, but sixth full length Of Grace and Gravity is my first experience with the band, and I’m instantly reminded of all the reasons I fell into this kind of music: the icy melodies and near constant bussing of the guitars on “Sublunar Despondency,” the ominous tremolo picking and half-time lurch of “Dead and Distant Clamors;” the band knows how to push and hold back, allowing the music to press against the chains of its confinement in interesting ways. It takes a lot for me to bring in a new black metal band, but based on this I need to go back and give more of Merrimack my attention.

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What else does one expect from Midnight at this point except total Hell? You can’t be more on-the-nose with the opening track from the outfit’s six full length (though they’re over 30 releases at this point) Hellish Expectations. “Expect Total Hell” is both a rallying cry and a signal of what the listener has in store for over the course of the album’s 26 minutes. Brevity is key as Athenar, aka Jamie Walters, plows through an almost merciless onslaught of blackened rock and roll on tracks like, well, “Mercyless Slaughter” for one. It’s hard to pinpoint a standout track – everything is amped to 11 and there’s nary a breath of space in sight, but you’re not coming to Midnight for expansive post-anything; you’re there to revel and raise hell, and Hellish Expectations does that for me in a way that’s been missing from the last few releases.

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Italy’s The Moor is a band I was unfamiliar with before hearing Ombra, but being the resident prog nerd I was glad to take on the discovery. The band’s Apple profile mentions Death’s Symbolic, Opeth’s My Arms Your Hearse, and Scar Symmetry’s Pitch Black Progress as touchstones/favorite albums, and that last one looms large over the very heavy and anthemic choruses that permeate tracks like “The Overlord Disease” and “The River Spoke.” It’s also refreshing to see a band labeled progressive metal and NOT sound like a Dream Theater clone, or mistake progressive music for a lot of djent starts and stops. The music on Ombra feel more precisely arranged, with almost classical influences embedded in its very metallic delivery. There’s also a preponderance of heavy vocals, and they’re both ferocious and – surprisingly – understandable! Lately I’ve been wading into the back half of the album which is a little less in your face and more expansive in its approach. Good stuff, and worth your time if you’re looking for a new progressive metal fix that’s actually, you know…progressive.

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The fist-pumping, retro hard rock of Australia’s Neptune Power Federation is back in full force on new album Goodnight My Children. I jumped on board with 2019’s Memoirs of a Rat Queen and haven’t looked back. The band knows exactly what makes a song like this work: the riffs are super catchy, the beat drives everything forward, and it all comes together thanks to the utterly sublime vocal prowess of Imperial Priestess Screaming Loz Sutch, who imbues each song with the perfect amount of swagger and passion. Songs drift in and out of AOR style rockers and more psychedelic charmers, but when they want to get heavy they can do it with aplomb, as current favorite track “Woe Be Father’s Troubled Mind” can attest to. I haven’t heard a more fun, sing out loud album than this in 2024.

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2018’s Devouring Mortality was one of my death metal highlights of the year, but since then I admit to having lost track of Skeletal Remains, listening to but not really absorbing their output since then. Fragments of the Ageless is doing a good job of remedying that, however. As cleaned up as their old school death metal sound is, they still manage to find that deep, dark pocket of groove on tracks like “Cybernetic Harvest” and “To Conquer the Devout.” We’re at a point now where every band and their cousin can play at three times the speed of light, and honestly at that pace individuality becomes harder and harder to highlight, so it’s great to hear Skeletal Remains work to ensure the riffs are memorable and stick with you – opting for sharp songwriting rather than blaze past in a fury of double kicks and solos that never really line up to the music backing it up. Also hey: when you have openings as good as the one on “Forever in Sufferance” or “…Evocation (The Rebirth)” you’ve more than got my attention. Also the utter malicious bile on closing track “Messiah of Rage” is just *chef’s kiss*.

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As someone who literally started making music because of what he heard in the frigid strains of the second wave of black metal (all hail to the glory of the Most Holy Fenriz and Ted) I also love what bands are doing in the more modern, melodic atmospheric realm. Vorga hail from Germany and their decidedly SF take on black metal comes to beautiful fruition with Beyond the Palest Star. There’s no denying the bones of what’s here come from the cold and dark of black metal, but the use of dynamics, a truly huge drum sound and chord changes that don’t rely on simple triads or simply moving the fifth to a minor sixth (you know, like all of my music) make for some captivating music: check out the rolling drums on “The Sophist” or the solemn opening to “Tragic Humanity” to get a sense of how Vorga are doing more than just same old when it comes to push the notoriously fickle genre in new directions.

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Another month down, a new season upon us. The surprises and discoveries continue to pile up, so let me know what we missed and what we should be on the lookout for and we’ll see you in April.

Until next month, keep it heavy…keep it safe.

— Chris