fuath

The Nine Circles Playlist Vol. 173 (3.20.2021)

VincentLeave a comment
playlist - mixtape

Welcome to another Saturday morning mixtape playlist from your friends at Nine Circles. This week, we’ve got new videos from Svalbard, Wristmeetrazor, The Lion’s Daughter, and a whole lot more. Plus, we have a smattering of St. Patrick’s Day appropriate content for you. Take a listen down below.

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– Vincent

CANTO: Fire In The Mountains, Wilderun, Fuath, and More

CoreyLeave a comment

Thankfully, there is a lot more to share today than there was yesterday.

  • Genghis Tron helped me open my day on a good note. They shared a new single, “Ritual Circle”, which is taken from their new upcoming full-length. Dream Weapon drops on March 26th through Relapse Records, and here is that pre-order link that you obviously need.
  • Yo, check out this Wilderun video for their cover of Iron Maiden’s “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son“. That was released as a bonus track from 2020’s Veil of Imagination, out through Century Media Records. And it appears that Wilderun is working on their follow-up to that record, which is more good news!
  • Fire In The Mountains, my favorite festival on the goddamn planet, has made the decision to postpone one more year. Understandable, but obviously a bummer. As I’ve said throughout this year, I would rather hold out a little longer and get to experience the full version of something like a festival, than force the issue and rush an abbreviated (and potentially unsafe) version of it. That said, it looks like the festival planners have something in the works for us sooner than 2022, and that’s definitely worth keeping an eye on.
  • Finally, to end on a higher note, we have a new video from Fuath to share this evening. Check out “Into the Forest of Shadows” below. That, of course, is taken from II, which is out on March 19th through Season of Mist. I already pre-ordered it, did you?

“Ein Bier… bitte.”
– cmb

CANTO: Fuath, Dvne, Kankar, and More

CoreyLeave a comment

I feel like something important happened today…

  • Kankar have set the release date for their debut through Eisenwald. Dunkle Millenia will be out on March 19th. Check out “Zerfall des Lichts” right now. I’m under the impression that this is going to be a black metal kind of day…
  • Remember when Fleshgod Apocalypse released that cover of Eiffel 65’s “Blue (Da Ba Dee)”, “Blue (Turns to Red)”? Yes, that was in fact a thing. And, if you want more incredible content like that, here’s a drum paythrough of the track.
  • A couple more March 19th releases to share today, and the next comes from Dvne. Their sophomore album, Etemen Ænka will be out through Metal Blade Records. A new single, titled “Sì-XIV”, along with pre-order information, is available here.
  • Fuath, the atmospheric black metal project from Andy Marshall (Saor), revealed that II will also be released on March 19th through Season of Mist. Check out the video for “Prophecies” below. Spoiler alert: it’s really freaking good. Pre-orders are available here.

“Ein Bier… bitte.”
– cmb

Best of 2016: Dan’s List

Dan1 Comment

Nine Circles Best of 2016 Standard

So yeah, this year sure sucked in a lot of ways, didn’t it?

On a personal level…where to begin? My family said goodbye to our beloved dog, Bailey. I had a rough breakup at the end of April. I got into a deeper rut in my professional life than I’d ever experienced before, which culminated in me quitting my job and leaving New York. I also, briefly, quit Nine Circles. (You didn’t think I’d stay away for good though, did you?)

And that’s just my stuff! Beyond that…well, for starters, pretty much everyone died. Prince, Alan Rickman, Phife Dawg, Craig Sager…I mean, you kind of had to know 2016 was going to be shitty on that front after we lost David goddamn Bowie when the year was scarcely a week old. And that’s all to say nothing of the other shit: escalation of racial tensions across the country, continued apathy toward a changing climate, Christmas Eve / Day and New Year’s Eve / Day both falling on Saturdays and Sundays…it was a lot, man. Oh, and we also elected the personification of an Internet comment section to the presidency. That was neat.

In spite of all that, 2016 wound up being a goddamn banner year for metal. When I first started thinking about this list, I was envisioning maybe a Top 15 – but that quickly grew to a Top 25, and then to its current incarnation: a Top 50, with 20 “ranked” albums and 30 honorable mentions, not to mention EPs. It was just impossible to whittle it down any further; that’s how good metal was this year. Hell, I had a number of albums that featured in my mid-year list that didn’t even make it into the honorable mentions section of this one!

Make no mistake, this year would have felt exponentially shittier without all of those records. In times like these, cueing up a metal record that’s driving you bonkers, throwing your head back and howling at the moon kind of becomes essential to maintaining your sanity. And you know what? Sanity was maintained. (Well, mine at least…I dunno about America’s. All the more reason for America to start listening to more damn metal.)

This year may have thrown every possible pile of feces it could at us, but you know what? We made it through anyway. We’re still here and it’s not. And that’s nothing to turn our noses at. Here are the records that helped make that happen for me:  Continue reading →

Best of 2016, Q1: Literati Overlord’s List

CoreyLeave a comment

9_header

I can’t really decide how I feel about 2016 in terms of new metal just yet. The albums that have impressed me — and I mean really impressed me — are among some of the best works I’ve heard in years. But then on the other hand, those were rather limited in number and much of the rest was ‘good-not-great’. Regardless, quarterly recap time is always a blast, so I’m excited about the end of Q1 either way.

The one thing I will note before getting into my list is the diversity in quality metal from the past few months. While 2015 saw black metal rise to the top for the majority of the year, I have already been more impressed by various death, doom, and folk metal outfits, making 2016’s Q1 list far more diverse than last year’s. And that’s just good fun for everyone. Anyway, I don’t want to ramble anymore than I already have. Let’s get on with it. Continue reading →