Of all the years to have ever yeared, 2024 was certainly one of them.

I can’t even say it was the 2024th of them, because then we’re reducing time to exclusively Christian terms, and… nah, dude. Time existed long before Mary and Joe’s kid and will exist long after folks (someday?) (maybe?) awaken to the fact that he’s much more — though, okay, not exclusively — a mechanism for control and subjugation than a spiritual symbol these days.

I digress. In any case, 2024! Some stuff happened, as it tends to do. I wasn’t a fan of a lot of it, as I tend not to be. But, also, a whole buttload of new metal came out, and here’s where my tendencies fail me: I actually took a more active role in listening to and participating in that stuff throughout the year than I have in… at least five years, if not longer.

By my count, I reviewed 19 albums and EPs for the site this year — including a Retrocution and a Receiving the Evcharist post. That’s certainly not a lot compared to some of my colleagues here at Nine Circles, but represented a huge jump for me. If you were to count back my previous 19 review-related posts, you’d land in July 2019. Of course, I’ve stayed involved in other ways since then (Cursed Imagery, EOY wrap up posts, etc.) but if we’re talking in terms of our bread and butter — review content — well, this is the most the blog has seen of me in real-time in… half its lifespan. (This is all to say nothing of the amount of music I just listened to this year — also a significant jump from years’ past.)

Because, oh yeah, hey! 2024 marked a full ten years of us doing this stuff. Somehow. Wild. Ten whole years since Corey and I grabbed our buddy Kevin, made a half-assed bracket competition to anoint the biggest heavy metal dipshit, did a Google Hangout (remember those?) about it, and decided “hey, maybe there’s a podcast to be had in there!” Peak mid-2010s white male hubris if ever there was any.

Not to get all big dad energy here or anything, but I wouldn’t change a single thing about it all. (Okay, that’s a lie: I’d probably not have started my short-lived Unassuming Metalhead column if I could do it all over again.) The music we’ve come to know over the last decade, and the friends we’ve made in coming to know that music, have all been completely life-changing.

We’ve navigated staff conflicts and come out stronger. We’ve handled touchy subjects around the artists and records we cover — sometimes well! — and grown as writers and people. We’ve even carried on inside jokes for half-a-decade and then some. (If you haven’t seen the Queen of Bee’s end of year post yet, I highly recommend you give it a look!) And through it all, we’re still going strong; believe it or not, Nine Circles had its highest-traffic year to date in 2024!

No, you can’t see the numbers, because yes, they’re still hilariously small compared to some of our peers, but also no, we’re not really doing any of this for the clicks anyway, so who cares. If we get some page views out of all this, great, but the site is primarily, and will likely remain, a labor of love. We love this music, and we love to write about it.

I had a better time writing about all of it this past year than I’d had in quite some time. So now, with all this word vomit out of the way, let’s jump into my list. As always, the usual caveats — I loathe rankings; these are my favorites; I don’t harbor any delusions that they happen to be some completely arbitrary “best;” etc. — still apply. Are they ranked? Who’s to say? (Oh wait, actually, I am. They’re not.)

In any case, if you enjoy reading about the following selections even half as much as I enjoyed listening to them, I’ll have done well. So, leggo!

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The Faves

[otherwise known as “awwwwwww yeah this the good shit right here”]

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Ryujin — Ryujin

Y’all probably know how I am about playing favorites in general — in case you don’t, I’m generally not for it! — but I’d be remiss not to include a special call-out for Japan’s Ryujin this year. The band’s self-titled “re-debut” following their rebranding from previous moniker, Gyze, was one of the year’s earliest releases, but wound up scarcely leaving my ear holes this year. Is it power metal? Melodeath? Folk metal? Some sort of hybrid of all three? Whatever it is, it’s fuckin great. An absolutely exhilarating trip through Japanese musical lore. Special shout-out to the catchy-as-all-get-out, early-album track “Raijin & Fujin,” which was probably my most-listened-to song across any genre this year.

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Blood Incantation — Absolute Elsewhere

I generally try to avoid being swept up in hype machines, and also wasn’t totally nuts about the last big Blood Incantation opus, so… I approached Absolute Elsewhere with caution. But you know what? Fuck me and my caution. The Coloradans thoroughly leveled my expectations on album No. 3. With effortless shifts between prog, ambient, krautrock and — yes, it’s still there — good, old-fashioned death metal obliteration, it’s a more ambitious, forward-thinking, and highly listenable album than they’ve ever done previously. Hat is all the way off to the fellas on this one.

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Order Ogan — The Order of Fear

This will be the third opportunity I’ve had this year to absolutely empty my tank over the eighth Orden Ogan album. Given how much additional writing this post will contain, I’ll spare you further sploogage and refer you to the previous two posts. If you’ve hit peak laziness and don’t wanna click on them, I’ll just say this: The Order of Fear is fuckin’ great and you should listen to it. K bye.

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Ulcerate — Cutting the Throat of God

Okay. So. I didn’t listen to Cutting the Throat of God as much as I had Stare Into Death and Be Still. But, here’s the thing: 2024 was not 2020. I wasn’t dealing with a life-suffocating pandemic this year the way I had been last time out, so Ulcerate didn’t quite become once again the utterly perfect soundtrack to existence that they were before. But here’s the thing: Cutting the Throat of God still fuuuuuucks. Very few bands out there can find beauty in destruction and desolation and okay-what-about-a-little-more-destruction quite like these New Zealand heavyweights do. The latest entry to a, to-date, unimpeachable discography absolutely held serve.

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Schammasch — The Maldoror Chants: Old Ocean

Schammasch is one of those bands that, I think, people are starting to take for granted, and that’s a damn shame. For more than 15 years, the Swiss quintet’s been breaking new ground with its blend of progressive, avant-garde, bleak metal. (And no, that’s not a typo. While there are elements of black metal throughout the Schammasch discography, their music is profoundly bleak, first and foremost.) Old Ocean, the sequel-of-sorts to the band’s 2017 EP, The Maldoror Chants: Hermaphrodite, continued the band’s hot streak of absolutely stellar output, and had some impressive staying power despite releasing well after I’d already started the “homework” (read: relistening, so much relistening) portion of my EOY prep. Emotional decay has rarely felt so good.

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Undeath — More Insane

I wrote about More Insane back when it came out in October, and as with Orden Ogan, I encourage you to take a peek at that review if you want my full thoughts. If you don’t want my full thoughts: More Insane is fuckin’ great, and represents an enormous step forward for Rochester stalwarts Undeath. Sometimes I don’t need my death metal to be profound or forward-thinking. Sometimes it can just be a damn old-school battering. That’s what we got on More Insane, and it’s terrific.

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Gaerea — Coma

Coma was the first album that really got me to sit up and take notice of Gaerea. That’s probably more a “me problem” than a “them problem,” but whatever… most things are. In any case, on this, their fourth album, the Portuguese quartet gave us 50 minutes of dark, melodic black metal that was nothing less than spellbinding. I might have sat out on them before, but I won’t make the same mistake again. Consider me converted.

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Galneryus — The Stars Will Light the Way

Another album you may already have seen my thoughts on. But hey: it’s a big goddamned deal to make our EOY power metal list in even one year, let alone two in a row. But that’s exactly what Galneryus did with 2023’s Between Dread and Valor and this year’s The Stars Will Light the Way. Come for some epic, sweeping, power metal cheese, stay for Masatoshi Ono’s powerhouse vocal performances or Syu and Yuhki’s incredible guitar / keyboard interplay. It was another absolutely exhilarating trip to the office for the Japanese heroes.

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From Dying Suns — Calamity

I love it when a debut comes out of nowhere and absolutely slaps the shit out of you, and that’s exactly what From Dying Suns did. And okay, technically, Calamity wasn’t a “debut” per se — the band put out an EP way back in 2016 — but it’s their first full-length, and whatever… it fuckin’ whips. Some of the tightest, most punishing progressive death metal the year gave us, not to mention a freaking banshee wail performance from vocalist Mathieu Dhani. (Seriously. Picture if Steve Souza and Gollum had a baby. That’s what we’re working with here. It is gnarly and wonderful.) Don’t sleep on these Quebecois upstarts. Calamity’s a fuckin’ ride.

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Honorable Mentions

[otherwise known as “the part of this thing where the review blurbs get shorter because you’ve read enough of my poetic waxing and I didn’t like the following albums quite as much as the ones before them anyway”]

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Opeth — The Last Will and Testament

GROWLS BACK. Also, growls or no growls, there are very few bands that even approach Opeth’s level.

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Oranssi Pazuzu — Muuntautuja

Finland’s masters of all things weird continue their incredible hot streak of, uh… never not totally owning and delivering on their craft.

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Gigan — Anomalous Abstractigate Infinitessimus

I still feel woefully inadequate listening to this album. You can read my full attempt at “thoughts” on it here.

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Piah Mater — Under the Shadow of a Foreign Sun

If The Last Will and Testament was #growlsback, Under the Shadow of a Foreign Sun is #growlsneverleft. Piah Mater sound closer to Old-peth than anyone other than, well… Opeth themselves, and I love it.

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Glyph — Honor. Power. Glory.

Glyph did their power metal excellently and their [navigating-through-a-pretty-upsetting-controversy] even better in 2024. Rooting for them hard in 2025 and beyond.

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Couch Slut — You Could Do It Tonight

Another triumph of chaotic sludge, noise, and utter mayhem from Brooklyn’s finest.

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Bütcher — On Fowl of Tyrant Wing

Stage names like “R. Hellshrieker” and “K.V. Bonecrusher” will never not make me grin like an idiot. And the music whips ass, too! I love Bütcher.

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Castle — Evil Remains

Another outing of solid, well-produced doom rock from Castle. Check out my full thoughts here.

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Chapel of Disease — Echoes of Light

One of my colleagues referred to Echoes of Light as “the Dire Straits of death metal,” and… yes. Very much yes. This thing was heckin’ fun.

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Leftovers

[otherwise known as “stuff I listened to and maybe even liked that, for whatever reason, didn’t make the cut.” you’ll get ‘em next time, tigers.]

• Aborted – Vault of Horrors
• Autumnfall – The Archaic Shadows
• Borknagar – Fall
• Dark Tranquillity – Endtime Signals
• Gatecreeper – Dark Superstition
• Gorgatron – Sentience Revoked
• Hammer King – König und Kaiser
• Ironflame – Kingdom Torn Asunder
• Kvaen – The Formless Fires
• Night Slasher – Night Slasher
• Skelethal – Within Corrosive Continuums
• Skraeckoedlan – Vermillion Sky
• Triton Project – Messenger’s Quest
• Vuur & Zijde – Boezem
• The Wraith – Ghost March

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Welp, that’s the year, I guess! And hooray for me for getting this old year recap done less than two weeks into the new year. Progress!

In any case, thank you all for your continued support and readership of Nine Circles. I’d say “we couldn’t do this without you” or something corny like that, but we quite literally are an entirely self-funded operation, and you don’t want me blowing smoke up your ass anyway, so… I won’t. But we appreciate you all the same! We hope you’ll keep following in 2025 as our humble little blog ventures forth to its next great challenge: middle school. Until then…

Keep it heavy,
—Dan