album review

Album Review: Birdflesh — “Sickness in the North”

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Birdflesh - Sickness In The North

You eat with your eyes first, as they say.  I believe this applies to listening as well.  Good album art sets the tone for what you’re about to get yourself into.  Hell, even “bad” album art can be appreciated, as Dan Kaplan’s monthly gallery wall so perfectly shines a light on.  When you take a look at the cover art for Sickness in the North, I believe that you get…some idea of what you’re in for.  Birdflesh have always been known for their irreverence and bizarre sense of aesthetics, but it seems to be working for them after all these years.

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Album Review: VoidCeremony – “Threads of Unknowing”

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VoidCeremony - Threads Of Unknowing


Well, after listening to Buke’s interview with Garrett Johnson, mastermind/guitarist/vocalist of VoidCeremony, I think I’m actually quite nervous about writing this review.  Of course, Johnson was completely affable and gregarious, but he was quite specific about how much he detested most of the reviews of Threads of Unknowing and VoidCeremony’s previous work, positive reviews included.  So, in the spirit of that conversation, I am going to take advice from Johnson: I will list out the things I like about Threads of Unknowing, I will list out the things I don’t like about it, and I will leave the final decision up to you, the listener/reader.  Although, spoiler alert, there are a lot more things I like than things I don’t.

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Receiving the Evcharist: Tribulation and Mango Jungle

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Receiving the Evcharist 2018

Good tunes just deserve good beer.  It is the way of the world, and we here at Nine Circles LLC are not ones to disturb the natural order of things.  Receiving the Evcharist is our (somewhat) weekly feature where we pair choice albums with our favorite libations.  Drink from the cup of heresy.  This week’s offerings: Tribulation’s Hamartia and Boulevard Brewing Company’s Mango Jungle.

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Album Review: Aara — “Triade III: Nyx”

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Astute listeners of the site will remember that my first ever album of the year pick was Aara‘s En Ergô Einai, an album that captivated me from the moment I first threw it on.  Since then, it has been an absolute whirlwind of momentum for the Swiss trio, with no less than four major releases since 2020, including Triade III: Nyx, the closing chapter of their trio of albums in tribute to Charles Maturin’s 1820 novel “Melmoth the Wanderer.”  Nyx may mark the culmination of the story the band are trying to tell, but in terms of what they have to accomplish musically, they appear to only be getting started.  Warning: there will be spoilers for “Melmoth the Wanderer” so if, uh, that’s something you are trying to avoid, read carefully I guess.

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Album Review: Fange — “Privation”

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Fange are a band that I have been championing for a while.  Not since their inception, but at least since the first time I took a chance on them when I saw their name in our promo planner.  Their signature and self-styled blend of “industrial death/harsh sludge” has always intrigued me due to their highly addicting blend of harsh noise and bone crushingly heavy riffs.  Privation, the band’s fourth full length (and my third review of theirs for the site) zeroes in on what I really appreciate about them, though, and what I think sets them well apart from their contemporaries: despite the fact that they have a genre they fit in, they refuse to make the same album twice.

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