Best of 2018: Chris’s List

EOY 2018 Header 9C

What does music do for you?

In the end, it’s the only question that matters.  An admittedly hard question to hear, what with the screaming of every opinion in every corner of the internet, but in the end when you step away from the noise and muck of screen shouting and scene guarding it’s your opinion in the end.  Every year that I’ve written an end of year list for Nine Circles it’s been a variation of the same theme: when we write about music, we’re writing about ourselves.  What matters is what the music does to you, and only for you.

But what’s the point, if you’re really only writing for yourself? Continue reading

Album Review: King Witch – “Under the Mountain”

king witch - under the mountain

A lot of bands lumped in the throwback circuit of 70s nostalgia rock (I’m thinking bands like Witchcraft, Kadavar, and the recently reunited Graveyard) takes their cues from the Marshall stacks and searing solos of the progenitors of the field, but there’s a smaller component often missed.  Listening to Under the Mountain, the debut album from Scottish classic rockers King Witch I discovered they realized that gap as well, and made sure to cover it on a powerhouse collection of tunes I’ve been spinning a lot these past few weeks.   Continue reading