post-metal

Album Review: Sumac – “Love in Shadow”

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Sumac - Love In Shadow

The music of Sumac seems to always exist in states of perpetual construction and deconstruction. On a macro level, the trio of Aaron Turner, Nick Yacyshyn and Brian Cook frequently conjure up some truly giant apocalypses. And yet on a micro level, there’s all kinds of jagged and uneven sonic qualities brought to the surface that create a texture of crumbling brittleness. Picture a skyscraper heavily damaged, still standing but with huge swaths of rebar exposed. In this metaphor Love in Shadow, Sumac’s most recent 2018 album, tries to patch up the crumbling sections without losing its distinctiveness.   Continue reading →

Album Review: Flood Peak – “Plagued by Sufferers”

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Flood Peak - Plagued By Sufferers

Whenever I listen to an album, I try to see what I can gain from it, and that usually depends on how I am feeling week to week. It’s sometimes the reason why it takes me some time to listen to new music – it’s not the right time for me to dive in. Now, post-metal has been making a comeback in my listening rotation, and I am surprised by the melody it has implemented since I last heard some of it many years ago. In the case of Flood Peak, they have managed to blend post-metal with elements of drone and sludge to create a haunting record that recalls the inconsistency of life and its routines.

For someone who has been experiencing a lot of upheaval these last couple of months, Plagued by Sufferers is a balm to my weary soul. Continue reading →

Album Review: Khôrada – “Salt”

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Khôrada - Salt

The impressionistic artwork that adorns the cover says it all: a being, stitched together from the bones, blood and sinew of many things.  The semblance of something recognizable, but also out of joint.  Dark and disturbing, but backed by a pastoral beauty.  Art is subjective, and whether I’m looking at the image painted by Cedric Wentworth or listening to Salt, the debut from Khôrada, I’m left with the same impression, of recognizing frameworks and influences even as the whole defies easy categorization.  In other words, the best kind of music to my ears. Continue reading →

Nine Circles ov…2018: A Mid-Year Report

Chris1 Comment

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 →

Nine Circles ov…Vince’s Post-Metal Catch-Up

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If you’re a regular reader of my columns on this website, it’s been pretty easy to see the kind of pattern I fall into with my metal listening habits.  I’ve made no secret that I like my metal on the more extreme side, in particular the realms of funeral doom, black metal, death metal, and the intersections thereof.  Recently, though, I’ve felt like I needed to break out of my rut and see what else has been out there that I’ve been missing out on.  Prior to this article, my experience with the diverse world of post-metal was limited to my hometown heroes, Russian Circles and Pelican, with a Red Sparowes album thrown in for good measure.  When talking about this with my Nine Circles colleagues, I was bombarded with a slew of highly recommended albums that I had somehow missed out on over the years, and it became clear that this was the avenue I needed to pursue to broaden my metal vocabulary, so to speak.  Thus, the seed for this piece was born.  Some of these albums are classics that I never got around to visiting, some are more recent releases that simply flew under my radar, but all of them helped rekindle a love for a subgenre that I had been sorely missing out on.   Continue reading →