Throwbacks

Retrospective: Immortal — “At the Heart of Winter”

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Do you ever revisit an album that meant a lot in your formative years and find that it hasn’t lost any of its luster? Not just because it holds great nostalgic value, but because it still aligns well with current musical tastes? Painkiller and Hatebreeder are two albums that might still fit this criteria for me, but within my favorite genre of black metal there’s one album above all others that still hits just as hard in 2024 as it did when I first heard it circa 2009: Immortal’s 1999 opus At the Heart of Winter. This blackened Blashyrkh blizzard was not just a turning point in Immortal’s discography personnel-wise — with Abbath taking over axe duties from Demonaz — but saw the band’s sound reinvigorated with melodic, thrashy, and almost progressive (for Immortal, at least) riff and songwriting choices. Today marks the 25th anniversary of the album’s release, so let’s journey to colder times and grimfaced realms and rediscover some of the magic that makes this album so great.

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Nine Circles ov… a 1993 Black Metal Retrospective

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2023 has now come and gone — a year which brought us a number of incredible metal albums — and many of us surveyed the heavy music landscape to put together our albums of the year. Not content with just that, I decided to go back further and reflect on some of the formative albums of my favorite genre: black metal. As we all know the genre had roots in the 1980s, but it wasn’t until the ’90s that it really came into its own and started to become the genre we love (or hate) today. Since 2023 was my first full year as a part of the 9C crew and most grim and frostbitten season has been in full swing, there was no better time to reflect on some black metal albums that celebrated their 30th anniversary last year.

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Nine Circles ov… Panopticon: A Retrospective

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In the pantheon of American black metal bands that have cropped up over the past 15-20 years, there’s one band that rises above all others in my mind. Austin Lunn himself would be the first to say “no gods, no masters,” but if there’s one artist that’s demonstrated a mastery of black metal (and beyond), it would be Panopticon. Incorporating bluegrass and Americana into such a genre might come across as a gimmick, but as Austin has demonstrated time and again the banjo, fiddle, and slide guitar are just as genuine as the blistering trem picking, ferocious blast beats, and those roaring vocals — the result is black metal that’s uniquely American, unparalleled in the genre (besides contemporaries Wayfarer, perhaps). These elements are all brought together by an unbridled sense of honesty and dedication by a musician who is by all accounts (my own included) a dude just as genuine as his music. In anticipation of the upcoming full-length The Rime of Memory tomorrow(!), Ian and I have teamed up to revisit the discography of one of metal’s finest. Grab a beer (undoubtedly not as good as anything that came from Hammerheart) and enjoy.

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Album Review/Retrospective: Agalloch — “Pale Folklore (Deluxe Reissue)”

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When revisiting albums that were highly formative — either on a personal level or to the development of a certain sound — there’s always the chance that they don’t hold up to your own memories, or the pedestal they’re put on by the scene at large. One such album that fits both types of formative is Agalloch’s 1999 debut full-length, Pale Folklore. I recall that this was always my favorite Agalloch release, and it was definitely a big first step in defining their signature blend of black, folk, and doom before post-metal became the standard. It’s been a bit of a dry spell for new music catching my ear recently, so when this hit our promo list, I figured there’s no better time to revisit this album for the first time in well over a decade. Does it hold up in the ways I thought it might? Not necessarily, but it was still a nostalgic and refreshing listen.

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Retrospective: Enslaved — “Below the Lights”

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When recollecting the histories of some of the greatest metal bands there’s often a sink or swim moment following lackluster albums or a musical dead end, where it was a necessity to reinvent themselves in some way (or quite simply release an incredible comeback album) — Metallica went more commercial with The Black Album after the excesses of …and Justice for All, Judas Priest made their glorious return with Painkiller, and Megadeth’s opus Rust in Peace simply blew the rest of their material out of the water. Even if it’s easily the most red-headed stepchild of metal genres in terms of general musical approach (and non-musical controversy), black metal has a number of artists that followed a similar trajectory. Bathory took things in a mythological and epic direction with Hammerheart and beyond, Darkthrone has been inspired by heavy metal and crust punk for nearly two decades now, and Ulver abandoned the genre once they had nothing more to offer it.

This leads us to Enslaved in 2003. After releasing classic albums of black metal’s second wave with Vikingligr veldi and Frost, they began incorporating more and more progressive elements beginning with Mardraum and Monumension; increasingly dynamic song structures and technical playing as well as largely abandoning the relentless blast beats and trem-picking that characterized the early material. However, some of the experimentation on Monumension fell flat in several ways, thus deeming it necessary for the band to take a big next step. After abandoning unnecessary baggage in their lineup Enslaved crafted Below the Lights, an atmospheric, technical, yet beautifully dark and heavy album that defined progressive black metal and paved the way for what might be the most consistent string of releases in extreme metal history. Today is the 20th anniversary of its release, so let’s revisit what makes this monumental album so special.

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