Are you all enjoying the Memorial Weekend? I was so excited to get out of the hellscape that is my job I ran into the woods without doing this week’s playlist…something I promised myself I’d take care of early. So here I am, tin foil and wire hangers concocted in such a way I can bend the bandwidth gods just enough to tell you about the new Horrendous and more in this, the 285th edition of the Nine Circles Playlist.
That means I’m going light with my picks and letting the staff speak for the site with a bevy of heavy, so to speak. We’ve got tracks from TheBleeding, Krocophile, Anchoret, Phlebotomized, Allfather, Pallid Veil, Panopticon (cannot wait for their vinyl remaster of Kentucky which is en route), KillingJoke, and a whole lot more.
I’m not sure what the Venn Diagram looks like for metal fans, video game fans, and zealots fawning over the just-released new chapter in the Zelda franchise, Tears of the Kingdom but I know for a fact we have staff firmly in that cross section, which is why I am kicking off the 283rd edition of the Nine Circles Playlist not with my picks, but with Dan K’s. You’re welcome, Dan. I hope you’re playing your heart out today.
From there we kick things off proper with new music from Danava and a quartet of “S” bands: Sunrot, Shodan, Sisyphean, and Sarmat. Then it’s brutal fun from the likes of Werewolves, Jesus Chrüsler Supercar, A Pregnant Light, Spectral Wound, Body Count, new music from Blackbraid, a classic Opeth track finally brought to life live, and of course the new Paul Cauthen. Plus more than a few surprises.
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…
For those of you who celebrate it, welcome back from the throes of mass turkey consumption, of stuffing annihilation, and of pie decimation. For the rest of you, simply welcome back. I got a huge Thanksgiving gift when I learned Elder released their latest album Innate Passage a day early on Bandcamp, and then it just kept coming when I finally got to hear the totality of the new Spiritworld album. Both albums are putting serious crimps in my already drafted end of year list, so let’s kick off with them for this, the 259th Nine Circles Playlist.
The rest of the gang managed to pry themselves off the couch and offer up the usual assortment of metal maladies to get your body in shape for the holiday rush. We’ve got Jade, Fvnerals, live Der Weg Einer Freiheit, new Nothingness and Shedfromthebody. We’ve got a big ol’ epic from The Otolith, tracks from Esquela Grind, Intranced, and Reeking Aura. You want a little more moody and a little less extreme? Okay: we’ve got you dialed in with some Kathryn Mohr, some Silversun Pickups, and for the countryheads out there even a little slinky funk courtesy of Paul Cauthen. And one of the best bands in the world to close it out.
Weird random though for the morning: although we’re often nostalgic for things from our youth, sometimes the things from our youth are not things from our youth, you catch me? I don’t know; I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. Maybe it’s the music, so many new albums coming out that capture so succinctly the signatures of the sounds that came before it (*cough* Ghost) I’m caught in a revelry of the past. Don’t fear, though: I won’t let it influence the 222nd edition of the Nine Circles Playlist too much…
…but I will a little, kicking it off with a certain massive popular band who finally went all in on the hard rock/pomp of the 80s (*cough* Ghost). But man, if you haven’t also heard the latest from Drug Church get thee to a computer and rectify that post-haste. Hits the 90s indie hardcore rock so good, and they’re from my old stomping grounds of Albany, NY to boot. Elsewhere Anton brings up Siberia, Vital Spirit, and Autarkh III to get the nasty flowing. Vincent continues to champion site favorite Absent in Body and throws in some new music from Devil Master and Egregore as well as Bootblacks. Josh takes a break from his non-stop listening of Impera to get down with the OTHER site favorite Zeal & Ardor but also manages to make room for Corpsessed, King Dude, and a pair of outlaw country tunes, including the latest from Paul Cauthen. Buke can always be counted on with some choice classic cuts, and he does not fail this week, serving up some vintage KISS and Rainbow, but also hits with new cuts from Rammstein and Deathwhite (there’s some Anvil in there, too). And Angela comes in to remind that if the first quarter of 2022 was already stacked tooth gills with great music, we just got the new Messa, a new single from Conjurer, and the latest from Chelsea Wolfe.
Nine Circles 