honorable mentions

Best of 2022: Angela’s Honorable Mentions

Angela Block1 Comment
Best of 2022

This is my first year writing up an honorable mentions list.  I really struggled narrowing things down this year (well, I struggle every year) and thought instead of cutting out albums that deserve praise, I would make an additional list.  This list is not ranked and because it contains artists that I admire, I also wrote up many of the full-length reviews for these.  I have included albums that may not be 100% metal but contain metal elements and are on the heavier side.  I also wanted to bring some attention to albums that my lovely colleagues here may not be writing about so we continue our diverse listings.  I love that the 9C fam has varying musical tastes and we respect everyone’s opinions.  EOY time is our favorite and the lists keep rolling out.  Check them out here.  This list is very much an Angela list (spoiler alert – a lot of doom and a lot of femme power) and I hope others also enjoy and check out these wonderful artists.

Let’s crack into it!

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Best of 2022: Chris’s Honorable Mentions

Chris1 Comment
Best of 2022


I’ve been thinking about Honorable Mentions lately. We differentiate them from our main lists, but in the grand scheme of things every album we call out on the site is an honorable mention: there’s something about the music, about the power the chords and melodies hold over us that warrants notice, that deserves a voice to amplify the message to a wider, often preoccupied world. In a time when we too often use the tools of social media and the internet to confront, to argue, to parrot – even in the name of awareness – toxic behavior, I find myself moving steadily inward, barricading myself from the noise and burying my head in the sonic pulse of drums, guitar, bass, and vocals both sung and shouted, screamed and pitched in ways that insulate me from the static of the world.

But the music, dumbass! It calls for notice, deserves it. And like 2020 and 2021 this is just the start of a conversation, not the end. So once again: 15 records in alphabetical order. Any other day, any other minute from the time I write this it can change. Does that make it any less valid?

Does it matter if I got you to – even for a moment – consider the virtues of these fantastic records?

You decide. In the meantime, let’s do this.

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Best of 2021: Chris’s Honorable Mentions

Chris1 Comment
Best of 2021


It’s the first year I’m at a loss for words. I think I said everything I had to say about lists, and honorable mentions in my 2020 post. It’s really about finding those albums that affected and impacted you, and sharing some sense of why in the hopes they might do the same for someone else. Arguing about what’s missing makes no sense; it wouldn’t change the fact that these 15 records all did something to me to make me include them on this list. Sure, maybe I forgot something, but the fact I forgot it also says something (though it could very likely be saying that my memory is going) – but I tell you what; I’ll make the same agreement with you I always do. Anything you think I might have missed I will listen to again – it might not make my End of Year lists, but it can still make an impact on me, and in the end that’s what’s always the most important.

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