Memorial
Over the years, Chicago’s Russian Circles have honed their craft of creating brash, instrumental rock music that can be intimate and subtly emotive—not an easy feat without vocals. They diffuse what can be a disconnect in instrumental music with an organic warmth balancing beauty and beastliness, chaos and serenity. *Memorial* offers listeners the chance to naval-gaze in a variety of atmospheres: a soft gale of brooding, distorted guitar cedes for echoes of acoustic notes; avalanches of tumbling floor toms roil under staccato guitar shards; classic metal riffs chew up postapocalyptic scenery, letting rays of light stream through. The circling riff of urgency on the monstrous “Deficit” spools out in layers: a regal, elegiac opening shifts almost imperceptibly with a muted buzz of ominous guitar before a stack of drum rolls announces a stream of corrosive, metronomic guitar shards. They change tone slightly, but their intent never waivers. Russian Circles keep raising the bar on their own mixology.
Chicago instrumental trio Russian Circles' fifth album, Memorial, builds off 2010's Empros, but these songs, one featuring Chelsea Wolfe, feel bigger and more polished, and somehow more intimate.
Their albums don't bite down as hard as they used to, but Russian Circles still wield the ability to compose beautiful, thought-provoking pieces of music.
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Varied textures and technical proficiency are just about as common as a big chap grunting into a microphone in the modern metal world, but Chicagoans Russian Circles continue to break new ground. Over four previous albums they’ve stretched the boundaries of the genre and moulded it as their own with some breathtaking arrangements and instrumental skill. Memorial adds further weight to their reputation.
Russian Circles' fifth studio album has a bolder, more polarizing sound than previous efforts.
Russian Circles' latest album of immersive post-rock is full of thrilling moments, writes <strong>Dom Lawson</strong>
[xrr rating=3.5/5]Appropriately named after a hockey drill, Russian Circles has staked their claim over the course of four previous albums as a post-metal enforcer, consistently demonstrating both raw power and nimbleness.