apocalyptica – Nine Circles

CANTO: Yob, Maul, Tanith, and More

March 9, 2023March 9, 2023CoreyLeave a comment

This week weirdly flew by. Also, Kamelot sucks.

NYC’s Tanith announced a new album, Voyage, which will be out on April 21 through Metal Blade. The video for the first single, “Snow Tiger”, can be seen here.
Epica launched a new video for “Rivers, (Live At The AFAS LIVE)”, which features Apocalyptica. That recorded footage is from a January performance at the Amsterdam venue. They’re on tour together until basically the end of March.
In all the tour news yesterday, I managed to stupidly miss this one. Yob is hitting the road with Cave In and Pallbearer this coming May and June. Yeah. Can’t miss that one.
Maul, the death metal crew out of North Dakota, have signed on with 20 Buck Spin. Better yet, they have a mini release coming later this year and a ton of live dates between the start of April and the end of June.
Emma Ruth Rundle has some live dates coming up as well, and in advance of that she released a new video for “In My Afterlife”, which you can check out below. That track is from Engine of Hell, which is available through Sargent House.

“Ein Bier… bitte.”
– cmb

The Nine Circles Playlist Vol. 249 (9.17.2022)

September 17, 2022September 17, 2022ChrisLeave a comment

You know what it is. I’m too tired and too hung over to get a more pithy introduction out for the 249th edition of the Nine Circles Playlist, so let’s just get to the music, huh?

A lot of new music out this week, but I keep finding myself drawn back to the latest from Mork, who kill it with their raw, atmospheric black metal. We also have the debut from Sonja finally in our hands, and I may have more to say about that next week, pairing them off with the wicked retro thrash of Transgressive. We also have new music from Lorna Shore, Wolfheart, Trocar, the Anitchrist Imperium, Dream Unending, Woods of Desolation, AWS, Behemoth, and Psychonaut, not to mention a killer classic of post punk from Pink Turns Blue.

Get listening. Stay safe. See you next week.

—

– Chris

Scholar of the First Sin: Hera’s Best of 2020

December 31, 2020December 27, 2020Hera1 Comment

If you remember from last year, I had this to say as I closed my 2019 EOY list:

In the meantime, 2020 looks to be tumultuous as well, but things are looking up, as I have music to look forward to and scream about at some point. Maybe, at the end of the year, I can tell you if I have succeeded in making more selective choices in music.

2020 gave us a roundhouse kick to the collective bollocks, didn’t it? In my case, it kicked me in the face and didn’t let me listen to anything – this pandemic has been bad for my mental health, and it didn’t help that grad school has continued to essentially take all my time and joy away from me. After September of this year, I just went off the radar musically and I found – much to my detriment – that I could only listen to albums I had originally invested a lot of time in. As such, my favorite albums this year are all touchstones of comfort, albums that I enjoyed heavily throughout the year. However, there is an album that made its way through these touchstones and was able to move to a spot that I didn’t think it would reach.

Welcome back to the pit of despair that has exacerbated my depression EOY list season!

Continue reading →

The Path to Paradise Begins in Hell – Neoclassical Metal

July 7, 2020July 6, 2020HeraLeave a comment

The Path to Paradise Begins In Hell

It’s been a while since I wrote something for the column, but I have been doing a lot of work and studying behind the scenes, which explains why there hasn’t been a lot of music writing lately. However, now that I have some time before grad school restarts, I can start talking about music again.

Blessed be thy gods.

For this episode of the column, I wanted to talk about a genre that combines both my love for classical (read: orchestral) music and metal, as I spend a lot of time listening to both genres. While symphonic metal tends to focus more on the vocal and operatic aspects of what we consider classical music to be, we tend to talk about instruments and instrumentation in accordance to their sound in a specific genre or in how they add texture to a song.

It’s time we talked about Neoclassical Metal. Continue reading →

CANTO: Imperial Triumphant, Enslaved, Epica, and More

April 8, 2020April 8, 2020CoreyLeave a comment

Imperial Triumphant

Another quiet day in the world of Nine Circles. No matter, there’s always news to share.

Imperial Triumphant have announced a new album scheduled for a July 31st release. It will be titled Alphaville and will be released through Century Media Records. You can check out some behind the scenes footage as well.
For those anticipating the release of Utgard, the next installment in the Enslaved legacy, you’ll probably be interested in the new details/background info the band shared about the album. It doesn’t drop until this fall (Nuclear Blast), but I am already getting excited.
Epica dropped the third vlog from their studio sessions for their next album. This one focuses in on the guitar and bass recording and you can check it out here. For the fans in Europe, there’s a tour with Apocalyptica you can look forward to.
Finally, here’s a new music video from The Night Flight Orchestra for “Golden Swansong”. Aeromantic is out now on Nuclear Blast.