iron maiden

The Nine Circles Playlist Vol. 258 (11.19.2022)

Chris1 Comment
playlist - mixtape

I love the phrase “cold comfort”. Taken in its intended meaning, the world may be falling apart, but at least the music’s been good, right? But I also find that with the cold weather comes the deep desire to drown in a wash of the nostalgic, the lived in, the…well, comfortable. So we’re kicking off the 258th edition of the Nine Circles Playlist with the remaster of “Total Eclipse”, rightfully put back in the track listing for Iron Maiden‘s seminal 1982 album, now packaged with the incredible Beast Over Hammersmith live album.

From there we move onto more extreme corners, kicking things off with new Candlemass before going full on throat ripping with Sanguisugabogg, Ribspreader, Psionic Madness, Turbid North, Spider God, and new Nothingness. There are small breaks with classics from Against Me! and Refused before diving back into the filth with Cloud Rat, Wormrot, Falls of Rauros, The Otolith, new Gaupa and a lot more.

Get listening. Stay safe. See you next week.

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– Chris

The Nine Circles Playlist Vol. 229 (4.30.2022)

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playlist - mixtape

Happy Walpurgisnacht. That’s a thing with the metal community, right? I can’t keep up with your predilections. I think I hit the wall a few days ago listening to new music, stuff bouncing off me with little to no connection. Does everyone go through this? I’m sure it will come back, but for now I think I’m going to leave the 229th edition of the Nine Circles Playlist to the staff who have been going slow, hard, and deep into the metals for your weekly listening pleasure.

Vincent takes the lead this morning with some new Terzij de Horde and a little nugget from the last Deafheaven album. Then a surprise appearance from our Literati Overlord who has been over the moon with the new single from Saor. He also throws in some Nite, Dark Funeral, and a cut from site fave King Dude. Have you ever known Josh not to bring the ridiculously heavy? This week he comes in hot with Scepticflesh, Black Void, Unholy Pestilence, and Kanine. Anton can always be relied on to present new music, and he doesn’t disappoint with tracks from Spook the Horses, Final Light and Path of Might. Angela looks to challenge Josh for heaviest music with something from the new Mizmor/Thou collaboration, some Primitive Man (making its second appearance in two weeks), and a buzzing dose of punk and hardcore from the great Fucked Up before wrapping with some Astronoid. Finally Buke takes us home with a bevy of songs, including Iron Maiden, Pharmacist, Power Trip, Tom Waits, UFO, and some new Rammstein to close it up.

Get listening. Stay safe. See you next week.

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– Chris

Best of 2021: Chris’s List

Chris4 Comments
Best of 2021


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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The Nine Circles Playlist Vol. 210 (12.18.2021)

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It’s a week until Christmas. My listening habits have leaned even more into metal than usual, but that’s probably because I’m whittling away on my year-end lists when I’m not editing some of the other you’ll see crop up in here in the next few weeks.

It’s been great seeing the love the latest from Iron Maiden has been getting from the metal community so let’s kick off the 210 edition of the Nine Circles Playlist with one of my favorites from their latest, Senjutsu. Funeral Mist just released a black metal bomb with Deiform, so it feels appropriate to defile the playlist with some of their new music. Elsewhere in the Nine Circles universe Anton maintains the extremity with some furious grind courtesy of Takafumi Matsubara and even more nastiness from White Void and Eximperitus. Josh may be on vacation with his family, but that didn’t stop him from picking some truly nasty music, with As the World Dies, Gingivectomy, and Demiser leading the pack. Vincent flexes his genre muscles with picks from Midwife, Creation Lily, and Yellow Eyes while Buke brings us back to the classroom with killers from King Diamond, Forbidden, and Amon Amarth, among others.

If that wasn’t enough, Angela wraps the week up with Lucy Dacus, Darkher, and a banger from Horrendous. Not sure if we’ll have playlists the next two weeks with the holidays falling on a Saturday, but if we don’t, this feels like a good one to end the year on! So until the unknown “next time,” keep it heavy!

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– Chris

CANTO: Killswitch Engage, Swallow The Sun, Imperial Triumphant, and More

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And as our journey around the flat circle of time continues, we have reached another weekend.

  • As is the case with most Fridays, we have a couple videos to share. And the first one is pretty awesome, featuring a Killswitch Engage performance of “Us Against the World” from their streaming performance at the Worcester Palladium.
  • Fit For An Autopsy have announced a new album, Oh What The Future Holds, which will be out on January 14th through Nuclear Blast. Check out the NSFW video for the first single from that album, “Far From Heaven”, right here.
  • Here’s a cover of Iron Maiden’s “Wasted Years”, brought to you by Beyond the Black. I haven’t listened to it yet, so if you check it out, do share how it went. Please and thanks.
  • It’d be a mistake to leave out Imperial Triumphant news. They announced a new live album, An Evening with Imperial Triumphant, which will be out on November 26th through Century Media.
  • We’ll close out the week with the new video from Swallow The Sun for “Woven Into Sorrow”. Moonflowers is set for a November 19th release through Century Media, and pre-orders for the record officially went live today.

“Ein Bier… bitte.”
– cmb