IoMP 184: What Have You Been Listening to? – September 2026
Fall is creeping into Southern Ontario, pumpkin spice is everywhere, and Collin and Tom are gathering around the metaphorical campfire once again to answer the most important question of the month: What the fuck have you been listening to?
The September edition of What Have You Been Listening To? is packed with new discoveries, anticipated releases, listener recommendations and one brand-new rule that could completely shake up the monthly countdown.
That's right: welcome to the Dickinson Rule.
After some huge albums arrived just a little too late to make the August WHYBLT, Collin and Tom have officially created a way to correct that problem. Once per year, each host can revisit a previous month's #1 when an album released during that month missed the recording cutoff. And it doesn't take long before someone decides to use it.
But before getting into their own favourites, the guys hand things over to the listeners—and once again, you brought absolutely everything.
Death, Megadeth, Night Demon, Magna Carta Cartel, DARKSTXR, My Chemical Romance, Slipknot, Avenged Sevenfold, Children of Bodom and even the Bee Gees are among the artists getting some love this month. There's even an unexpected introduction to city pop and a couple of listener recommendations that Collin and Tom sample for the first time on the show.
Naturally, that also leads to a detour into the latest Slipknot material. It goes great! … Okay, that's a lie, but we can’t be bothered to say nice things about “Arsenal” (sorry not sorry).
Then it's time for the main event as Collin and Tom count down their favourite listens of the month.
September sends them bouncing across metal's genre map, with progressive and technical death metal, melodic death metal, stoner doom, progressive metal, thrash, folk metal, metalcore and plenty more represented. There are discoveries neither host expected to love as much as they did, bands continuing impressive runs, albums already threatening to appear on year-end lists and one late-August release so good that the newly created Dickinson Rule immediately becomes relevant.
There's even the increasingly bizarre development of Collin continuing to put thrash metal on his WHYBLT lists. This follows the weird trend of Tom liking metalcore. We're monitoring the situation closely.
And after spending most of the countdown travelling down very different musical paths, something happens at the top that doesn't happen very often on WHYBLT.
No spoilers.You'll have to hear that one for yourself.
Click play to hear Collin and Tom reveal their favourite albums of September, discover what the listeners have been spinning, witness the birth of the Dickinson Rule and find out which releases are already fighting for a place on their best-of-2026 lists.
Then tell us: what the fuck have YOU been listening to?
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