Over the next few months Nine Circles is very pleased to bring you a new series of book reviews written by musicians throughout the metal scene. As much as they love to write their own blast beats, discordant riffs and swirling maelstroms they also love to read and, for all of our benefit, discuss. The first post in this series features Tom Coles from the progressive sludge metal band Sail with his thoughts on Surfacing by Margaret Atwood. Continue reading
There’s a certain Catch 22 that comes with being a reviewer: You rely on promo sheets to give you at least a rough idea of what to expect for a release, only to find that the material at hand has very little to do with the accompanying hype. Any promo write-up needs to be taken with a grain (fine, a pillar) of salt –– after all, the point of promotion is to cast something in a positive light –– but sometimes, nothing can quite prepare you for what you’ll endure. In the case of the UK-based sludge/doom outfit Pensevor, their debut Klothod is a head-scratcher; a few songs show shreds of potential, but the album as a whole has too many negative points to make it noteworthy. Continue reading
Today’s black metal exploration takes us to the United Kingdom. Since its early days in the 1990s, the genre’s seen plenty of quality and diversity arise out of this scene. And even today, bands like Winterfylleth, Saor and—as we touched on yesterday—Crom Dubh, have done their part to ensure the isles remain a vibrant, consistent source of black metal that is consistently on notice. Terra, however, is a recently developed project out of Cambridge that has only just emerged onto the scene with their impressive debut EP, Untitled. I’ve gotta say, calling an album “Untitled” is awesome; after all, what’s the most brutally dark gift ever? NOTHING. Plus, my curiosity’s automatically piqued at anything that remains nameless, as the potential contents that lie within are infinite…
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