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Best of 2016: Dan’s List

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Nine Circles Best of 2016 Standard

So yeah, this year sure sucked in a lot of ways, didn’t it?

On a personal level…where to begin? My family said goodbye to our beloved dog, Bailey. I had a rough breakup at the end of April. I got into a deeper rut in my professional life than I’d ever experienced before, which culminated in me quitting my job and leaving New York. I also, briefly, quit Nine Circles. (You didn’t think I’d stay away for good though, did you?)

And that’s just my stuff! Beyond that…well, for starters, pretty much everyone died. Prince, Alan Rickman, Phife Dawg, Craig Sager…I mean, you kind of had to know 2016 was going to be shitty on that front after we lost David goddamn Bowie when the year was scarcely a week old. And that’s all to say nothing of the other shit: escalation of racial tensions across the country, continued apathy toward a changing climate, Christmas Eve / Day and New Year’s Eve / Day both falling on Saturdays and Sundays…it was a lot, man. Oh, and we also elected the personification of an Internet comment section to the presidency. That was neat.

In spite of all that, 2016 wound up being a goddamn banner year for metal. When I first started thinking about this list, I was envisioning maybe a Top 15 – but that quickly grew to a Top 25, and then to its current incarnation: a Top 50, with 20 “ranked” albums and 30 honorable mentions, not to mention EPs. It was just impossible to whittle it down any further; that’s how good metal was this year. Hell, I had a number of albums that featured in my mid-year list that didn’t even make it into the honorable mentions section of this one!

Make no mistake, this year would have felt exponentially shittier without all of those records. In times like these, cueing up a metal record that’s driving you bonkers, throwing your head back and howling at the moon kind of becomes essential to maintaining your sanity. And you know what? Sanity was maintained. (Well, mine at least…I dunno about America’s. All the more reason for America to start listening to more damn metal.)

This year may have thrown every possible pile of feces it could at us, but you know what? We made it through anyway. We’re still here and it’s not. And that’s nothing to turn our noses at. Here are the records that helped make that happen for me:  Continue reading →

Best of 2016 So Far: Dan’s List

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It’s been a busy half-year. After promising myself in January that I’d take it easy in 2016 and be more selective with the music I listened to, I proceeded to listen to roughly 125 albums in the first six months of the year. (You know, after listening to 170 all of 2015 and thinking that was too much.)

At any rate, I’ve done enough of these over the years for you to know the drill. I’m doing a Top 10, followed by 10 honorable mentions. A full sixth of my album listening in one post? So be it. As always, I’ll keep the blurbs for each album brief so as not to become tedious. Yada yada yada. Now let’s jump into the list…

Continue reading →

Best of 2016, Q2: Literati Overlord’s List

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With June winding down (already, somehow), it’s time to start looking back at the past quarter and highlight some of the better albums that have dropped. I suppose another way to look at this is by way of a mid year recap. However, with the abundance of quality albums that have come out in the past few months, going back any further than that is just a bit too arduous. (You can only imagine what year-end does to me.) Regardless, allow me to usher in the end of Q2 with my highlights from the last few months. Continue reading →

Nine Circles Ov… April 2016

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April 2016 Metal
Photograph by our Dæmoness of Design, Jaci Raia. For more of her beautiful work follow her on Instagram or Twitter.

April was another insane month in what is fast becoming the greatest year in death metal in recent history. Some stellar releases include, Ihsahn, a debut LP from Nucleus, an LP from Moonsorrow, an absolute fire-breathing ripper from Swedish D-Beat legends Victims, an EP from experimental black metallers Lord Mantis, some traditional heavy metal from Occult Burial, UK purveyors of doom Allfather, some exciting black metal from Greek band Kawir, an LP from tech death metal legends Aborted, some progressive black metal from Holws of Ebb, some super cerebral black metal from Goetic Equivalent and whatever that genius Dalek release is. It’s going to be a really, really great year. Continue reading →

The Nine Circles Podcast: Episode 39

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We got us a good ol’-fashioned CONCERT POD here, kids! The guys talk about their different experiences with the Decibel Magazine tour (seeing Tribulation, Skeletonwitch, High on Fire and Abbath) as well as their shared experience at Behemoth‘s Blasfemia Amerika tour stop in New York City! Plus, a recap of Sig:Ar:Tyr and some of the albums we’ve been listening to over the past few weeks!

All that and much, much more in Episode 39, so check it out!

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Keep it heavy,
Dan