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 catch up on the loud and heavy from October 2026.

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Deafheaven have become one of those bands who have nothing left to prove; they can follow their muses as time and passion allow after the culmination of styles that was Lonely People With Power. Turns out there was unfinished business, and At Work In the Fields of the Bomb dives ferociously back into black metal aesthetics. Opening track “Hunter” is already in the running for my favorite Deafheaven track of all time, but the dizzying 13-minute “Sorry Laid the Hearth” is so in bed and at home with the second-wave vibe that I’m bowled over.

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Dense, shrouded atmospheric black metal…that was what struck a chord when I first met Hænesy through 2021’s Garabontzia. Now Esentia is here to admonish me for not checking in with the Hungarian outfit since then. Seven moody songs taking a shoegaze wall-of-sound approach in a way that can’t be called blackgaze. It’s refreshing to hear songs like “Limned Echoes Wending” and closer “Salient Apathy” take melancholy to such melodic and furious levels.

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Confession time: I always confuse Insomnium with Swallow the Sun. And sometimes Sentenced, but not usually. I’m also that guy who, when I do remember who Insomnium are, remembers them for the earlier records with the cooler metal logo. But something pulls me to Netherworlds in a way nothing from the past decade or so of solid releases has. Is it that the keyboardist from Swallow the Sun has joined the band, further reinforcing my confusion? Perhaps, but the band lean into their melodic side to accentuate their songs’ epic scale, taking Sámi mythology to heights typically reserved for Amorphis, who fittingly make an appearance on “The Hour Grows Late.”

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Twin-guitar leads? Check. Kick-ass cover art? You bet your just-kicked ass. Have we really waited seven years for RAM to…well, ram into us again? Against immediately lifts you off the earth with “Ghost Emperor”—a song title so good I suspect no one ever had a song worthy of the name…until now. “One Vs. All” continues the Maiden gallops, and vocalist Oscar Carlquist has the perfect amount of grit and sneer in his delivery to make it all resonate.

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Listen to that guitar riff on “Over the Violent Sun,” the opening cut on From the Dark, the new solo album from the legendary Tony Iommi, here partnering with Jørn Lande, who contributes vocals and lyrics. No one but Iommi is creating and recording that riff. No Andrew Watt needed here, just killer heavy metal riffs from the man who invented the form. Do some songs veer a little too close to the Sabbath template (looking at you, “Black Times”)? Sure, but when you have a vocalist like Lande, who can conjure shades of Ozzy and Dio with a modern, low, and powerful set of pipes, sky’s the limit. I’m going back in for another taste of “Death Wake.”

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Obligatory stoner recommendation, and fittingly in the same spot I had Green Lung last month. Towpath feels a bit more special because, if Bandcamp is to be believed, its creators are a duo based in Glens Falls, my old stomping grounds from, uh…decades ago? Dammit, I’m old, but Adirondack Fuzz Theory remembers one of the key things so many bands in the scene forget: be w e i r d, man. Listen to the triptych of “Horicon” to “Rising Sky” to “Geology Rock”—most bands would leave out something as woozy and odd as “Rising Sky,” but those 32 seconds perfectly set up the quirky bowel rumbling of “Geology Rock.” Great new discovery…so good I’m including it here even though it came out at the end of September.

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I’m just now realizing how black-metal-centric this month’s column is…it’s like I’m channeling Colin! I have no idea who Urarv are or how long they’ve been around, but I will tell you the rock-and-roll moments of “Dødsheimgard,” which opens Nychta Psychis (roughly Night of the Soul in Norwegian) shouldn’t have worked as well as they did against the alien keyboards and restless bass lines. But joke’s on me, because of course this is the project of Bjørn Dencker Gjerde, aka Aldrahn, of Thorns fame and the voice on a bunch of classics, including two bangers from Dødheimsgard themselves. The title track gets even weirder, and I love it.

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I don’t know why France’s Witchthroat Serpent aren’t a bigger name in the doom/stoner world. Each album sinks a little deeper into the depths of the planet while maintaining a healthy relationship to the greenery above. Maybe things are a little dusty and tattered on Demons Left to Roam, evoking Dust Bowl towns as much as forest ritual magic. If you like it slow and low, centerpiece “Silver Bell of Satanic Ritual” has you covered, but I could say that about each of the six tracks of squealing feedback and low-end worship.

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All hail Alicia Cordisco. I understand the burst of creativity in the wake of leaving Judicator and coming into her own identity: Transgressive, Project: Roenwolfe… but what fascinated me was Wraithstorm, an honest-to-goodness funeral doom project. So yeah, I was a tad morose when it was announced that follow-up Revenant would be a melodic death metal record instead. Except…it appears Cordisco is teaming up with her friends and bandmates in Transgressive, Owlbear, and Soulmass to create a CRUSHING melodic death metal record.

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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