(Un)Focused Definition Ep. 30: Best of 2024: Metal Honorable Mentions

Last playlist of the year is all metal. On Thursday I released my Nine Circles Honorable Mentions, and it’s a beast: 25 albums that moved and rocked me in some way. So similar to last week’s (Un)Focused Definition this is going to focus on those albums, with the final, “official” best of metal list coming in the first year of January, and then my “all-in” playlist accompanying the year-end round up post here, sometime in mid-January. I want to say I’m looking forward to getting back to older albums again, but the truth is there were so many great records released this year I’m having a blast going back and revisiting them all. So grab your denim vest, don your spikes, and let’s get heavy for round #2 of great 2024 metal.

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(Un)Focused Definition Ep. 28: Death (Metal) From Above

It’s been a week. I found myself when it was all done slumped on my couch in my den, a pile of cassettes I’ve accumulated over the past year, blasting scuzzy death metal to chase away the fog and stress and depression. It worked (to a degree), and I started to think about doing a playlist of just the cassettes I’ve amassed. That’s probably make a future playlist, especially once I start getting down to the business of actually reviewing them, and thinking about why I started collecting cassettes again (nostalgia I’d guess). For now I want to focus on music that’s loud, fast, and filled with filth.

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a picture of the records, CDs, and cassettes I either bought or came in over Labor Day weekend, 2024

It Was A Good Haul (Labor Day Edition)

I’m starting to think through what comes next after wrapping up my Flower Kings series (should be done this week), and make sure it doesn’t interfere with the other big series I have coming up – that’s the 11th annual Hooptober marathon over on Letterboxd, where an ever-increasing amount of folks band together over the course of late September into October watching way too many horror films based on a set of strict rules. My list is here, and I expect to summarize my reviews here to make up for the lack of consistent content until the marathon wraps up on Halloween. And so I looked over at my carefully arranged futon at all the vinyl records, cassettes, and CDs that came in and, uh…yeah. I’m pretty well sorted for the next month or so.

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