I had this enormous amount of words set to open this thing but opted for… not that. We’ve all lived through another year so there’s no need to reiterate. Instead, I’ll say that 2022 was great for me. It’ll be one of those years I’ll look back on as one that changed things for the better and I’ll have extremely fond memories of it for reasons I can’t mention here. But, I’ll also look back on it as a tremendous year for metal. And it doesn’t matter what strain you dig as pretty much all of it had a banner year. I know it seems like we’re a broken record saying that every year, but 2022 was damn strong. If you don’t feel the same, please rewind and revisit and get back to me. Otherwise, welcome to all the things that made a huge difference for me throughout the year and what was my 2022 soundtrack, what made the biggest impact…whatever, you get the idea. This list of 18…, wait…you ask “why 18?” Well, branding of course. We’re Nine Circles so you’ll get my top 9 and my 9 honorable mentions… and a few special mentions. 9C, as it was. So, let’s do it…
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Album Review: Gaerea — “Mirage”
I still think that one of my favorite, if not my actual favorite, moments on the Audio Thing is the episode we did way back in 2018 (back when I was just a fan as opposed to a contributor), where Vince made everyone listen to Gaerea’s Unsettling Whispers, and everyone else on the call ruthlessly clowned him for it. Okay, maybe my memory is exaggerating it a bit, but I still think about that episode for a lot of reasons. Not least of which is, despite the fact that I like to see Vince get clowned on, it prompted me to check out Gaerea for the first time, and I was actually quite impressed. Needless to say, this is a band that has only gotten better with time, and Mirage proves that unquestioningly.
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