cave in – 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. 267 (1.21.2023)

January 21, 2023January 20, 2023ChrisLeave a comment

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…

—

– Chris

Best of 2022: Dan K.’s Favorite Heavy Stuff

January 13, 2023January 9, 2023Dan1 Comment

Woohoo! I actually recognize some of the albums in that picture!

Yyyyyyep, I’m still here, y’all. And hey! I actually made a good amount of time for heavy stuff this year. I think the phrase “heavy stuff” is pretty key, here. Not all of the stuff on my entry* will be “metal,” per se. Is that in keeping with the site’s general aesthetics? Perhaps not. Do I care? Also, perhaps not.

^{_{* It’s not a ranking. You know how I feel about rankings.}}

For, uh… almost as long as this site has existed, if we’re being honest… I’ve been putting together these end-of-year recaps and kinda struggling for things to say in any of them. I mean… I love the team we’ve got here at Nine Circles. I like metal (I think). I’m neutral on making-sure-I-listen-to-all-the-important-albums-in-a-given-year. Most of the time, I don’t like justifying my opinions on said albums. And of course, I fucking hate ranked lists.**

_{^{** Now you really know how I feel about rankings.}}

So, where does that leave me? And why do I keep bothering with these kinds of posts?

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Best of 2022: Chris’s List

December 30, 2022December 30, 2022Chris1 Comment

We’re going to keep the intro brief on this one. Year after year I struggle to find the words to open this post, where I ostensibly count down my favorite 25 metal albums of the year. Typically the first thing I do is check out the previous year’s entry…read and see if the themes are still relevant, if there’s anything I want to refine or emphasize for the current year. And for the first time, I didn’t find anything worth changing. Yes…I may have finally nailed it with my 2021 Best Of introduction.

By now you’ve (hopefully) read my post talking about nine albums that didn’t make my but could have, and my 15 Honorable Mentions and how the very concept of an honorable mention seems to contradict itself when the music is so good. I would usually say that was all prelude to this, but that’s a lie. You know, and now I do as well. In the end, all we can do is recount the things we love, and hope it inspires something in you.

So if you will, a request: go back and read that intro to 2021. And then check out the albums listed below for this year. Don’t worry about rankings, don’t worry about omissions. Just check out the music, and let it hopefully inspire something in you.

All of these albums did that for me.

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Best of 2022: Ian’s Medium Heavy Picks

December 28, 2022December 28, 2022IanLeave a comment

So, I had an idea for a new list this year. Because, obviously, I don’t write enough of them. It just so happened that a lot of my favorite things I listened to this year didn’t really feel like heavy metal in a technical sense, but they definitely felt like they were on the fringes of it. They’re definitely not metal albums, but they’re also not non-metal albums, you know what I mean? What’s that? You don’t? Yeah, I uh…I don’t think I know what I mean either but let’s just go with it. Like a nice medium roast coffee, these albums straddle the nice fine line between heavy and not without leaping back and forth from one side to the other, and they happen to also be some of my favorite listens this year.

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