mid year

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Anyone feel oppressed by the ridiculous heat blasting through the Northeast? It almost makes you want to take a month off of writing for a website. I kid, but in truth I needed some time because the amount of quality metal that has been coming out this year has been INSANE. Label faves like Season of Mist and Gilead have been routinely hitting it out of the park, but great music has been crawling out of every nook and cranny, and it’s dizzying to be caught up in the middle of it. I had a list of about 14 I wanted to throw on here, but in keeping with the nature of the column I stuck to nine, all released this year before 7/1, and all on Bandcamp, because dammit let’s support artists with dollars, not fractions of pennies (plus it makes the formatting nice).

So here’s a glimpse of where my head is currently at. We’ll see where these land come end of year, but right now they’re red hot and in constant rotation in my ears. Onward. Continue reading →

2018 mid year report

We’re about to hit the mid-point of the year, and as ever the amount of quality releases seems to increase with each passing breath. I’ve spent some portion of attention to 183 metal releases so far, and in a year where I find my personal tastes drifting more and more away from metal there’s always something that manages to pull me back in. So far there doesn’t seem to be a particular genre or style pressing its nose against the Trend Window™ (unless you count the amount of sax going on I guess…) and I’ve been surprised at the sheer variety of music pulling at my nerve endings these past six months.

So similar to last year, consider this edition of Nine Circles ov… a snapshot. It’s a measure of a point in time, personal to me and indicative as to where my head’s at halfway through the shitstorm that is 2018. And since that’s probably all the justification I’m going to give, so let’s do this. Continue reading →