asunojokei

The Nine Circles Playlist Vol. 400 (08.09.2025)

ChrisLeave a comment
playlist - mixtape

The 400th edition of the Nine Circles Playlist is kind of in awe we made it to 400 episodes, if I’m being honest. So let’s celebrate with a bevy of tracks old and new, including the news of my beloved Howling Giant releasing a new album in October, as well as cuts from the forthcoming Amorphis, Author & Punisher, and Asunojokei who go full anime theme song on the majority of their ridiculously fun new album Thinking of You.

That was a lot of bands that begin with “A” so I made sure the rest of the 9C crew varied the rest of the playlist with tracks from Pustulant Flesh, Man’s Gin (RIP Erik Wunder), new music from Chevelle and Revocation, as well as cuts from I Promised The World, Panopticon, and Crypt Sermon covering Mayhem.

Get listening. Stay safe. See you next week.

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– Chris

The Nine Circles Playlist Vol. 393 (06.21.2025)

ChrisLeave a comment
playlist - mixtape

The 393rd edition of the Nine Circles Playlist is in recovery mode. Grief and loss never go away; they just change shape, hopefully in a way you can live with. Again: please take care of and watch out for each other. In other news, although I try to emphasize the extreme here (we ARE a metal blog, after all), holy JEEZ the new video from Jack White. Love it, couldn’t start the playlist without it. I balance that with a vicious cut off the new Malevolence and some fuzzed out stoner metal courtesy of the wonderfully named Margarita Witch Cult.

The 9C staff go their own way, but damn Beloved and Fearless Editor™ Josh is back from vacation and full of the fight, bringing new Revocation and Malthusian in his batch of brutality, while the rest of the group contributes the likes of Darkenhöld, Valdrin, Bask, Marriages, and a lot more.

Get listening. Stay safe. See you next week.

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– Chris

The Nine Circles Playlist Vol. 390 (05.31.2025)

ChrisLeave a comment
playlist - mixtape

The 390th edition of the Nine Circles Playlist finds itself groggy and tight this morning. Maybe he needs more water – he definitely needs more coffee. He also needs more music in the vein of the latest from Vader and The Haunted, which don’t expand their respective genres but rather execute them with such precision I think any liquid I do pour into my body will spill out, Loony Tunes-style. And the welcome return of the original lineup of Wormrot only adds to the carnage.

The 9C crew come bearing their own garlands of bloody May flowers this week, with the welcome return of Asunojokei and Psycroptic, some more grinding death with Celestial Sanctuary, groovy stoner with Miss Lava, vicious black metal from Onirik and a whole lot more, including a closer from Camel which I note because I swear it wasn’t me who added it, but I love it just the same.

Prog forever, my nerds.

Get listening. Stay safe. See you next week.

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– Chris

Missed Connections: Looking Back on 2022

IanLeave a comment
Best of 2022

Writing this list in particular is always one of my favorite points in the year.  It’s the time where I get to look at everyone else’s list and go “hey, I should have included that too!”, and it gives me a chance to go back and look at all the stuff that I have missed out on listening to in favor of obligations, lack of time, lack of brainpower, or simply not being able to turn off Origins like I know I need to.  It’s always good to take one last look back on everything before we properly usher in the new year and new releases with it, so let’s jump into some of the things that I am currently kicking myself for not giving more attention to.

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The Nine Circles Playlist Vol. 267 (1.21.2023)

ChrisLeave a comment

playlist - mixtape

I’m still recovering from the drunken mayhem that was our first ever Album Ramble – I hope you dug it, we plan to punish our livers monthly for your entertainment. Anyway, as if a new GREAT Katatonia was enough to drop this week, we have the second single from the mighty Metallica’s 72 Seasons, so we’re kicking off with that – and the newest video from Katatonia backing it up.

After that it’s a gaggle of new and classic heavy hitters, including cuts from The Ocean, Bodyfarm, Polymoon, Turbid North, Ulthar, Nite, Asunojokei, Coheed & Cambria, Full of Hell, Cäina, Black Country New Road, Fvnerals, and Miserable.

Get listening. Stay safe. See you next week…

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– Chris

Best of 2022: D. Morris’s List

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Best of 2022

2022: The Year I came back… to writing about music that is. When the year started, I had no plans to write about anything and now I’m writing for Nine Circles. It feels good to write about music again, especially heavy music. Putting together a best of list felt like cramming for an exam, especially since I just started here. There’s excellent albums, not on here, that I purposefully left off because my fellow Nine Circles writers would mention or because they were similar to albums I simply loved more. Here are 15 heavy (and heavy adjacent) albums I loved in 2022 in alphabetical order.

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