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Best of 2016: Dan’s List

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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 →

The Nine Circles Podcast: MARYLAND DEATHCAST 2016

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The guys are back from MDF 2016 and ready to recap all of their shenanigans on this special Maryland Deathcast! To do that, they walk through all four days of the festival and highlight their favorite sets (including Dragged Into Sunlight, Horrendous, Claudio Simonetti’s Goblin and more), then share some field recordings they gathered with Corey’s fancy new mic on Sunday. Plus, as always, a Heaven and Hell portion.

All that and…not all that much more in Episode 44, but check it out anyway!

Also available on:

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Keep it heavy,
Dan

Best of 2016, Q1: Dan’s List

Dan1 Comment

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So, yaeh…where the hell did the first three months of the year go? It’s April already? Really? Time flies when you’ve got a lot of good music to get through, and man, did we ever have that in Q1. All the death metal, and black metal, and death metal, and sludge, and death metal. Seriously, it was a good three months for death metal, y’all.

Corey and I already got started on our lists earlier this week in Episode 37 of the podcast, but now it’s time for my full breakdown. Same deal as usual from me — a Top Five, followed by five honorable mentions — so let’s dig in. Here’s my best of Q1 list: Continue reading →

CANTO: Guns N’ Roses announce their opener, a new video from Tombs, and more

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Soulfly-Tour

“The hills meet like wax at the presence of power, behind a facade controlling with fear. No comfort, no home or self importance.”

“Ein Bier… bitte.”
– Corey

Nine Circles Ov… February 2016

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Photo courtesy of our Dæmoness of Design, Jaci Raia. For more of her beautiful work follow her on Instagram.

It’s not just rumor that I listen to an asinine amount of music. Previewing almost every single promotional album that comes through the door fits in with my obsessive personality. February 2016 really tested me. No less than one hundred and forty-two albums came through our rotating doors. And one hundred and forty-two is the number of albums I clicked play on to test them and suggest for review. So I’m a bit tired in an auditory sense. But I digress. In today’s post we will run through a bunch of larger releases that I hope no one missed and then feature nine smaller releases that are top notch. February was a great month. And another sign that 2016 is headed in very much the right direction. Continue reading →