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 correct the second third egregious error of missing a month and dive into this edition of Nine Circles ov… and catch up on the loud and heavy from April AND May 2026.

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There’s an extra sting in the fact that Tomas Lindberg’s final trip with At The Gates is the best thing they’ve done since reuniting. The Ghost of a Future Dead brings Anders Björler back into the fold for some of the most intense, ripping metal anyone’s done in some time. Tracks like the gut punch of “The Fever Mask” and “Tomb of Heaven” have a desperation in the guitar attack, and Tompa’s strained voice brings an urgency I wish wasn’t there, because it would mean more At The Gates albums would arrive some day…

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Everyone kept telling me I would dig into The Cosmic Dead, their brand of groovy stoner doom being right up my alley. I tried a few times with 2024’s Infinite Peaks, but it didn’t click as a whole until Beyond the Beyond, which adds a trance-like motorik groove I never picked up on before. You get a post-punk sneer and drive on the massive 16-minute freakout of opener “Further” before moving into the brash swagger that is my new intro music in the short “Stronger.” Two more lengthy jams balance the album nicely, and yeah—I went back and picked up the entire catalog, including Infinite Peaks, which is wonderful.

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Oh Crown Lands…will you never escape from under the blanket of “Rush Clone”? I hope so, because Apocalypse continues to show a growth and development that sure, owes a huge debt to ’70s era Rush in all its glory, but also sears with a modern rock flavor that gets into glowing classic rock on tracks like “Through The Looking Glass” while shades of My Chemical Romance color the anthemic chorus of “Foot Soldiers of the Syndicate.” Truth be told, I do miss some of the more riff-centric music from 2023’s Fearless, and I never actually listened to the entirety of the pair’s dual instrumental releases from last year. This, though? It fits the bill nicely.

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Hey, another band I only had a passing interest in until they knocked it out of the park. On paper Frozen Soul should embody everything that brought me into the OSDM fold: lots of chugging riffs, nasty vocals, and dive bombs galore. But it took No Place of Warmth for me to put aside my Obituary and Morbid Angel CDs and spin the band more than a few times. Also, speaking of My Chemical Romance, the emo/comic book king himself Gerard Way actually makes a guest appearance on the opening title track, and it’s appropriately sick. I’m in.

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Did you think there wasn’t going to be any stoner rock on here? Do you know who writes these catch-ups? Did you see the Cosmic Dead entry? We need some vocals to go with our down-tuned desert vibes, and Gozu amply supplies the goods with the accurately titled VI. “Corinthian Leatherface” is just too good a name to pass up for your opening track, and the band puts their boogie feet first throughout the album’s 45 minutes of boozy, bluesy rock. You gotta have the right kind of voice for this music, and guitarist/vocalist Marc Gaffney brings a gruff, near-foundational tone to the songs. I can listen to this for days…

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I really want to like the second chapter in this trilogy of albums from Green Carnation. I dig the first one quite a bit, and the juicy organ (sorry) that opens A Dark Poem, Part II: Sanguis is a really good start. Since Light of Day, Day of Darkness the group has trafficked in music that always felt delicate and fragile, embracing romance even as the distortion would turn up. Maybe the balance is just the slightest bit off here, particularly with the vocals. A song as good as “Sweet to the Point of Bitter” should have a voice to match its power. I don’t hear it yet, but I haven’t given the album up yet—the music’s too good.

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Have Jungle Rot ever gotten their due as the consistent death metal machine they are? Never included in the list of great American death metal bands, the band have a few bona fide classics in Kill on Command and Order Shall Prevail (reviewed here), and continue the trend of killer death on Cruel Face of War. Their second album on Unique Leader Records, tracks like “Apocalyptic Dawn” and the staccato fire of “Radicalized” keeps things from tipping into tech-death territory (a problem with a lot of releases from Unique Leader) and holds enough rhythm and groove to make everything sound like it did over a decade ago when I first discovered them.

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Everyone wants Opeth to go back to their death metal roots, which makes no sense when you think about the plethora of bands aping their style. I’ll give this to Ordh, though: they’re aping a style few others are, mainly the first three albums. I hear a lot of My Arms, Your Hearse in Blind in Abyssal Realms, and that’s not a bad thing for the Vermont band. “Bull of Apis” is a stunning first track, with woozy harmonized leads and bog-drenched vocals that perfectly match the sinister vibes the whole album puts forth. Each of the five tracks is thick and viscous, with lengthier epics like “Phlegraean Fields” really hammering home the more diabolical aspects of the band.

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How the heck did no one here review the latest from Panopticon? Half our staff goes dizzy at the mere mention of Mr. Austin Lunn, and I’m still on a few folks’ naughty list for daring to say on our debut podcast that The Scars of Man on the Once Nameless Wilderness suffered from bad production, not great sequencing, and a lack of focus on the metal tracks in favor of the acoustic ones. I still stand by that, just as I stand by the fact that The Rime of Memory made my Top 10 the year it came out, and Det Hjemsøkte Hjertet looks to continue that trend. I feel like this is the most cohesive integration of Lunn’s passions yet, and his musical partnership with Charlie Anderson of Weft (goddamn that album is great) continues to grow and evolve. Some people might be a little put off by the expansion into more orchestration—we’re moving past Americana heartland and into Copeland-style arrangements—and I’m loving the way Lunn not only embraces it, but is more and more open to putting his voice and lyrics up front and out there for folks to get even closer to the message.

Loving this record, and expect more about it over the next few months.

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No more false promises—”Life moves pretty fast,” a famous person once said, and I know for me it’s practically speeding. Still, I love doing these broad stroke looks at worthy albums, so fingers crossed we’re back to monthly in June! 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 time, keep it heavy…keep it safe.

— Chris