between the buried and me

Best of 2021: Buke and David Stepanavicius of Atræ Bilis share their favorites and more!

January 7, 2022January 1, 2022opethbodom1 Comment

David Stepanavicius of Atræ Bilis is no stranger to the podcast as he and Buke discussed Apexapien at length back in November and it was such an electric discussion that Buke reached back out to have David on again to discuss all things Best of 2021. The two catch up a bit since last time then launch into their biggest disappointments of 2021, their Honorable Mentions, and their collective Top 10. They also discuss Best of lists in general and how an artist / band views list season, how music usually finds David and how much labels play a part in it, whether Chris Barnes or memes are better, upcoming things for Atræ Bilis, and so much more. You’ll definitely want to keep a pen and paper handy as they cover a ton of great albums, forty in total. No surprise here at all, this is an excellent discussion!

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Best of 2021: Ian’s List

December 30, 2021December 29, 2021IanLeave a comment

Alright, the moment you all (read: maybe three of you) have been waiting for, although with the lists that are already up, I feel like this is going to be underwhelming. We’re really good at writing, people, and it’s been really awesome to not only be a part of the site but also be a fan at the same time. So now, the top; the cream of the crop. Say whatever you want about the year in general (except, you know, that the state of the world was overall pleasant), but as far as music goes, it was pretty sensational. Maybe that’s because I got to spend another year in the fortunate position of being able to sit and write about music that I love so much. In fact, that’s almost definitely it, so let me say how humbled and thankful I am to continue to be a part of this family. Now, on to the goods:

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Best of 2021: Chris’s List

December 29, 2021December 22, 2022Chris4 Comments

The beginning is the end. Literally, in this case. I started this post with the entries for my list a few weeks ago, wrote my 1,000 word review (sorry) on my Album of the Year and concluding paragraph right before Christmas, and now here I am in the vaporous ether before the new year pondering the introduction.

And there are no words left.

I’ve wrangled with the why, trying to make sense of the music I consume and what it says, and I hit a point where trying to find an answer was…pointless. Not because it’s unimportant to know, but in the last two years the rest of the world became so much harder to deal with, life became so much harder to deal with, something in my brain went into emergency mode and just shut down the logic circuits, sending one single message over and over again:

“Stop thinking, stupid. It’s just music.”

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All In: Nine Circles ov 2021 — The Staff’s Combined List

December 22, 2021December 20, 2021ninecirclesadmin3 Comments

Greetings everyone, and welcome to Best of 2021 season! News to no one, this year was a flaming bag of feces everywhere else except for the land of metal. We definitely had a pop off valve for releasing all the pent up frustrations in the form of every single kind of metal available and from all across the globe. Bands were bigger, madder, and grander than ever before and made believers out of all of us in one way or another. We’ve already kicked off some Honorable Mentions lists, but before we roll into our individual MAIN lists, we’re kicking the season off with our combined staff list. First a reminder of how this all works…

But, first; this is typically a Tuesday post for the one of you paying attention. However, it’s EOY season so who cares. NOW, like last year and previous years, each member of the Nine Circles staff (well, most of them), chose their nine favorite albums (inclusive of EPs), listed in order, and up to nine honorable mentions. Obviously, branding counts. A scoring system was applied to the rankings. For example, one person’s first place album received 10 points, the second received 9, so on and so forth… and all honorable mentions received 1 point. Then, combining the scores between everyone’s lists, we have ourselves a Nine Circles ov 2021, brought to you by, well, everyone.

We’re keeping the thing we did in previous years, which is: crowning a label of the year, using the same scoring process as above. Clearly the highest honor in the industry. Who claimed this title for 2021? You’ll have to wait until the very end.

Anyway, that’s all simple enough, right? Right. Enough reading, let’s get into it…

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CANTO: Exodus, Aborted, Between The Buried And Me, and More

August 20, 2021August 20, 2021CoreyLeave a comment

This might have been the longest work week of my life. As a result, this beer tastes even better than usual.

As always, we have a ton of new songs… album announcements… videos… to get through this Friday. So let’s start with Between The Buried And Me, since Colors II (Sumerian Records) was one of the more anticipated albums that dropped this week. Check out the new video for “The Future Is Behind Us” here.
And then we have Aborted, who dropped the third single (and video) from ManiaCult. Check out the clip for the title-track now. That album drops on September 10th through Century Media, and can be pre-ordered on all the formats right here.
Let’s stick with Century Media for a bit. Vildhjarta have announced some more new things. Their next effort, titled måsstaden under vatten, will be out on October 15th, and you can already check out visualizers for two new tracks: “kaos2” and “toxin”.
On this wonderful Friday, we also need to include new Exodus. Persona Non Grata will be out on November 19th through Nuclear Blast. The video for the (awesomely named) new single, “The Beatings Will Continue (Until Morale Improves)”, is available right here. Let’s party.
And we may as well wrap up with the new video from The Absence, for “Faith In Uncreation”. That track is taken from Coffinized, their fifth studio album, which dropped back on June 25th through M-Theory Audio.