Second Circle

Second Circle: Boris and The Halo Effect

Chris1 Comment
Boris - Heavy Rocks 2022
The Halo Effect - Days of the Lost

In Dante’s Inferno, the second circle begins the proper punishment of Hell, a place where “no thing gleams.” It is reserved for those overcome with Lust, where carnal appetites hold sway over reason. In Nine Circles, it’s where we do shorter reviews of new (ish) albums that share a common theme.

Good things come in threes…or is that celebrity deaths? Let’s go with the former, since despite being relatively skeptical of all things mystic and supernatural I don’t want to put out any bad karma and hear that tomorrow there’s a pile up and we lost whoever was on the most recent season of The Celebrity Dating Game. Instead for this edition of Second Circle let’s take a look at the latest from Boris, who this week release their third entry in their Heavy Rocks series, and The Halo Effect, who solve the equation of In Flames + Dark Tranquillity on their debut.

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Second Circle: Nechochwen and Predatory Light

Vincent3 Comments
Second Circle

In Dante’s Inferno, the second circle begins the proper punishment of Hell, a place where “no thing gleams.” It is reserved for those overcome with Lust, where carnal appetites hold sway over reason. In Nine Circles, it’s where we do shorter reviews of new (ish) albums that share a common theme.

Black metal continues, as it has from the first time I got my ears around it, to be my favorite genre of metal. For all the trappings and headaches it can offer, there is truly nothing like black metal when it is at its best, so I’m always happy to talk it up when I find stuff that speaks to me, and today we’re having yet another two-for-one sale on this here website. Nechochwen‘s Kanawha Black and Predatory Light‘s Death and the Twilight Hours are very unlike each other in style and ethos, but bound together under the sign of the black mark.

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Second Circle: Hath and Egregore

VincentLeave a comment
Second Circle

In Dante’s Inferno, the second circle begins the proper punishment of Hell, a place where “no thing gleams.” It is reserved for those overcome with Lust, where carnal appetites hold sway over reason. In Nine Circles, it’s where we do shorter reviews of new (ish) albums that share a common theme.

Within the last two years or so, I’ve come to enjoy taking a long, hard look at my own biases when it comes to music I like and don’t like. I have a long-form rambling manifesto on the topic of progressive metal from a while back to that effect, but that is not where this self-interrogation begins or ends. I have been finding a lot of albums lately that I love despite their being played in a style of metal that I don’t generally gravitate towards, and this brings me another chance to shine a light into the cobweb-strewn corners of what’s left of my brain and grill myself about two albums that could each conceivably be called ‘blackened death metal’, although both choose to do something wildly different with that prompt. With that, I bring you something old, and something new…

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Second Circle: Rotborn and Tormentor Tyrant

ChrisLeave a comment

In Dante’s Inferno, the second circle begins the proper punishment of Hell, a place where “no thing gleams.” It is reserved for those overcome with Lust, where carnal appetites hold sway over reason. In Nine Circles, it’s where we do shorter reviews of new (ish) albums that share a common theme.

Time files, but one thing remains constant: death metal will flow and I will apparently do a Second Circle around the middle to end of January. This time of year I’m usually still recuperating from EOY List syndrome, but ever since digging the Necrophagous album I reviewed a few weeks back I’ve been bitten by the death metal bug. So this one is a bit off the cuff: two new death metal EPs that I haven’t listened to yet. You’re getting this review fresh off the old brainpan. Let’s turn the volume up and do this.

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Second Circle: An Evening with Imperial Triumphant and Phanerozoic Live

IanLeave a comment
Second Circle

In Dante’s Inferno, the second circle begins the proper punishment of Hell, a place where “no thing gleams.” It is reserved for those overcome with Lust, where carnal appetites hold sway over reason. In Nine Circles, it’s where we do shorter reviews of new (ish) albums that share a common theme.

I miss live shows.  I have been to exactly one in the last two calendar years, and that is far, far below the quota I normally like to hit.  Granted, there are some very good reasons for not partaking in live shows even when they happen, but I’ve still got an itch that I need to scratch, and while I generally don’t gravitate towards live albums, this is the time when I find them hitting the nicest.  Two bands that I have never had the pleasure of seeing live are Imperial Triumphant and The Ocean, and when I saw that both of them have live albums coming out today (An Evening with Imperial Triumphant: Live at Slipper Room and Phanerozoic Live, respectively), I knew I had to take the opportunity to talk about them both.

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