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 beating the heat in June 2025.

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After seven long years the Santa Rosa, CA blackened doom band Barren Altar return with their sophomore full length, and Bound By Impermanence is a blistering slab of metal that is relentless in plumbing the depth of despair to find a spark of catharsis and redemption. This one was completely off my radar, but when I got the notification I couldn’t click that Bandcamp link fast enough based on how good previous effort Entrenched In The Faults Of Our Earth was. Check out “A Landfill of Molted Flesh” for evidence they haven’t lost a step in the intervening years.

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It’s no secret we’re big fans of Jordan Olds in his other guise as Gwarsinio Hall and Two Minutes to Late Night. It was only a matter of time before Olds took the dive into a real band after years of amazing covers to help get us through the pandemic, but I wasn’t prepared for the blend that is Die Close, the debut from his band Blood Vulture. Heaping does of Alice in Chains and Type O Negative bring the gothic and the 90s alt scene but it’s liberally dosed with death metal and pockets of gloom that are so lush and catchy you’d think he was doing this for years. Well, he was…just not like this. Incredible debut.

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Am I cheating by including the return of West Virginia’s mighty Byzantine after we already featured them in a profile? Maybe, but give me a second to tell you why I don’t care: Byzantine were one of the bands that got me back into extreme metal, way back when I used to turn on the Music Choice television and set it to the metal station. They would endlessly feature the band’s debut The Fundamental Component and even then Chris “OJ” Ojeda & co. were churning out some of the best, twisted metal around. Since their return they’ve laid out banger after banger of an album, and Harbingers is no different; “Floating Chrysanthema” is a shining example of how high they’ve continued to hold the torch for modern American metal.

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We’ve talked about how sometimes it’s the label that drives you to new music, and that’s certainly the case with Gösta Berlings Saga, a Swedish progressive instrumental outfit not afraid to inject horns and piano into their unique brand of post-rock. Forever Now came to my attention because it’s on Pelagic Records, and I’ll always give a band on that label a chance. Good thing I did, because I really like what this group is putting down: after the warm up of opener “Full Release” the band gets down to business on “Through The Arches” and its not like anything else I’ve heard on the label in a long time. I love surprises, and this is a damn good one.

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Speaking of giving bands a chance based on the label, Blues Funeral Recordings continues to nail it with their PostWax Unlimited series, this time giving us the glacial stoner doom of In The Dawn Of November, the fourth full length from Phoenix, Arizona’s Goya. Don’t be fooled by the icy blue of the cover art; this thing is stinky green in the weediest way, and the rumbling thrum of tracks like “I Wanna Be Dead” and the title track evoke bands like Electric Wizard and Cathedral in their prime while maintaining a distinct homegrown flavor. Be prepared to have your eyes unfocused and your mind taken on a trip to the inner reaches, my friends…

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Behold that cover art, ladies and gentlemen. THAT is how you do it if you’re going to traffic in lightning fast, in-your-face heavy metal. We recently featured Helms Deep in a profile, and I wrote about their debut Treacherous Ways over on my personal site, so yeah – there was no way I wasn’t going to talk about Chasing the Dragon. The brainchild of guitarist/vocalist Alex Sciortino, this is heavy metal of the highest order, steeped in the traditions of the past yet beholden to nothing and no one. Tracks like “Black Sefirot” and “Flight of the Harpy” certainly show Sciortino’s proficiency in both his areas, but when you’re backed by folks like Raven’s John Gallagher on bass not only are your bonafides even more, uh…bonafide, but you also get the incredible bass work on something like “Red Planet”. Pure metal joy abounds here.

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When critics talk about an album being muscular, I think they’re talking about Where Only The Truth Is Spoken, the sublime fourth album from Sheffield, UK’s Malevolence. Another first time listen band for me, the group’s groove/slam/death beatdown pulverized me. The brutal sections are INCREDIBLY brutal, the melodic passages are INCREDIBLY melodic without sacrificing an ounce of heaviness. My brain turns to a more brutal Lamb Of God on tracks like “So Help Me God” and “In Spite” (which coincidentally features Randy Blythe) but when they go full out on songs like “Blood To The Leech” and “Imperfect Picture” it’s a marvel.

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Saving the more black metal oriented material for the end (though that’s also how it ended up alphabetical-wise anyway), Outergods I only knew from the staff’s recommendation on our weekly playlist. Hailing from Nottingham, Dethroned & Devoured plays with a bevy of sonic textures to create a dynamic sound that doesn’t sound like much else I’ve heard this year. Songs like “Mortal Gateway” and “Cosmic Abomination” throw the usual death metal on top of the band’s black metal foundation, but repeated listens discern industrial and electronic elements to lift certain sections in. But this isn’t Illud Divinum Insanus revisited; everything is in service to band’s vision, and by the time of “A Mausoleum At The End Of Time” I was hooked but good.

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Hmmm…Cascadian black metal with an emphasis on lengthy tracks and folk/spiritual elements that embrace the natural world…of course it’s on Bindrune, and of course I’m going to check it out (surprised Colin didn’t immediately nab this one for a formal review). Returning hail from Olympia, Washington, and their second album Numinous is everything you’re probably thinking of when you imagine the archetype of this kind of music. The black metal is furious rhythmically, with subtle tremolo chords and melodic lines lifting the music up, and the folks elements mesh beautifully, with tracks like “Sacred Decay” and “Ancestral Shadow/Portal Endless Dance” being particularly effective. As a bonus, the production allows the vocals to mix nicely with the metal, something not every band doing this thing (even on Bindrune) gets right, and since discovering Returning I’ve been playing it late in the evenings on headphones, happy to get lost in its twilight ruminations.

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June was a bundle of surprises – both musically and otherwise – and as we round into the second half of 2025 metal proves to be as strong as ever. As always the surprises and discoveries continue to pile up, so let me know what we missed and what we should be on the lookout for.

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

— Chris