Joining together the righteous forces of Obsequiae and Inexorum for some Gothenburg-style melodeath throwback, it's been nearly two and a half years since the release of Majesties' debut album Vast Reaches Unclaimed (20 Buck Spin) and it's still a favorite amongst some of us here at Nine Circles. A follow-up may not (yet) be upon us, but myself and a couple others had the utmost privilege of catching their incredible live debut at this year's Fire in the Mountains festival on the Blackfeet Nation in Montana. I had asked the core trio of Tanner, Carl Skildum, and Matt Kirkwold if they were down for an interview at some point during the festival; naturally it's hard to arrange such a meeting with no cell service and schedules all over the place (not to mention not wanting to miss a ton of killer bands), but Tanner and I were able to set aside some time to record on the shore of Two Medicine Lake right near the festival grounds. We discussed how the show went, nerded out about classic melodic extreme metal (a lot), and more. Check back in the not-too-distant future as more from Majesties is on the horizon!

HUGE thanks to Tanner for the time and audio assist!

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Another year down -- okay, another year and a couple of weeks, give or take -- and that means another whole buttload of new music released in genres other than our beloved metal. Just sit with that for a second and ponder. There was punk! There was indie! There was shoegaze! And that's just in the rock sub-categories. What about jazz? Hip-hop? Electronic?

"Whoa. I need to sit down for a minute," you're thinking to yourself. No you don't, you big dummy! Dan and Chris have you covered!

Well, okay, they couldn't -- and, to be fair, don't -- even pretend to have you fully covered on all the myriad 2024 things that weren't metal. But bless their hearts, they do try on this, their... fifth or sixth annual end-of-year NON-metal podcast. It's a wide-ranging, two-plus-hour convo about all the best stuff they listened to from outside the heavy realm. Wanna catch up with 'em? Grab a (+/-) alcoholic beverage of your choice and get listening!

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Once again the gang comes forth with candidates, this time under the watchful gaze of Ian. But although strong arguments were put forth for the raw black metal conceptual piece by Ungfell, the morose progressive post-doom of Crippled Black Phoenix, and whatever insane caterwauling The Body did in the month of American Thanksgiving and apocalyptic elections, the rose could only be gifted to one. And that one was Hera with her pick of Thy Catafalque and their progressive world stew that is the unwieldy titled XII: A Gy​ö​ny​ö​rü Álmok Ezut​á​n J​ö​nnek, which I’m sure is fantastic since I pre-ordered the vinyl but in all honestly haven’t had time to listen to it yet.

But that’s okay because the crew talked about it and a lot more, so unwrap your audio gift and check out what else the group was listening to in November!

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