Chicago-bred post metal trio RUSSIAN CIRCLES will release a new album, “Nine”, on August 28 via Sargent House.
The official music video for the LP’s first single, “Empath”, can be seen below.
“Nine” continues RUSSIAN CIRCLES‘ unhurried evolution and disciplined refinement, leaning into their strengths while pushing at the boundaries of their sound. This is a band with no hit songs. No fan consensus on their best album. Just a reputation of consistency and quality that built one of the biggest heavy instrumental rock bands in the world.
While RUSSIAN CIRCLES insist their music is a confluence of broad-ranging influences — the formidable Touch & Go artists of the Midwest, the prog giants of late ’60s and early ’70s England, the hypnotic motorik and kosmische grooves of West Germany, the international underground’s most caustic strains of metal — it is fair to say the band’s adventurous diversity has evolved into its own distinct sound.
Although the band is now spread across the country — guitarist Mike Sullivan in Los Angeles, drummer Dave Turncrantz based in Chicago and bassist/keyboardist Brian Cook living in Vashon Island, outside of Seattle — the band triangulate their relative positions for “Nine”. Its seven seismic tracks act as long-form oriented soundtracks to the trials and tragedies of life in the modern age.
The band comments: “The music we make is a collective process of reconciliation, navigation, and reflection upon aging both as individuals and as a creative entity. Life has created very real distances between us, but the band continues to be at the center, and this creative collaboration is a way of charting the passage of time while also giving us a reason to look to the future.”
Today’s “Empath” launches the band into a ferociously concise overview of metal battle tactics — where a GODFLESH-style bass crunch and tornado siren drone ushers in trash-inspired guitars, venomous black metal attacks, d-beat forays, a deliciously knuckleheaded hardcore breakdown, and a final scorched earth war metal riff, all in just under five minutes. The accompanying video was made by Madeline Hampton.
For “Nine”, RUSSIAN CIRCLES adhered to their strategy from “Blood Year” (2019) and “Gnosis” (2022) by teaming up with engineer Kurt Ballou (CONVERGE, MASTODON, HIGH ON FIRE). Basic tracking took place at Electrical Audio in Chicago, where they’ve recorded as far back as their debut album, “Enter” (2006),while the finishing touches occurred at Ballou‘s GodCity Studio in Salem, Massachusetts. The relationship with Ballou began with the band’s sixth album, “Guidance” (2016),owing to his ability to highlight the weight and entropy of metal and hardcore bands in their natural environment while enhancing the clarity and articulation often lost in walls of distortion.
Reinvention is unnecessary when the path forward has always been an open horizon. When it comes to RUSSIAN CIRCLES, you can go back through their catalog and find a vast array of moods, stylistic shifts, and timbral experiments across any given album, yet there has been a noticeable progression. Whereas earlier albums were almost playful in their traversing of territories, “Nine” is a document of a band that knows the lay of the land and is fortifying their dominion over the varied terrain.
This fall, RUSSIAN CIRCLES will bring their “pure metallic catharsis” (Guitar World) across North America. A full list of dates can be found below, and tickets go on sale this Friday at 10 a.m. local time.
“Nine” track listing:
01. Borehole
02. Empath
03. Eluvial
04. E2
05. Meridian
06. Arletta
07. Seventh Seal
RUSSIAN CIRCLES tour dates:
Sept. 25 – Whitefish Bay, WI @ The Argo *
Sept. 26 – Chicago, IL @ Bohemian National Cemetery *
Sept. 28 – Detroit, MI @ El Club *
Sept. 29 – Toronto, ON @ The Opera House *
Sept. 30 – Montreal, QC @ Club Soda *
Oct. 01 – Boston, MA @ Royale *
Oct. 03 – Queens, NY @ Knockdown Center *
Oct. 04 – Philadelphia, PA @ Union Transfer *
Oct. 05 – Baltimore, MD @ Soundstage *
Oct. 07 – Carrboro, NC @ Cat’s Cradle *
Oct. 8 – Charleston, SC @ The Music Farm *
Oct. 9 – Orlando, FL @ The Beacham Theater *
Oct. 10 – Atlanta, GA @ Variety Playhouse *
Oct. 12 – Nashville, TN @ The Basement East *
Oct. 13 – Indianapolis, IN @ The Hi-Fi *
Nov. 04 – St. Louis, MO @ Delmar Hall $
Nov. 06 – Denton, TX @ Rubber Gloves $
Nov. 07 – Austin, TX @ The Far Out Lounge $
Nov. 09 – Phoenix, AZ @ Walter Studios $
Nov. 11 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Belasco $
Nov. 12 – San Francisco, CA @ Great American Music Hall $
Nov. 14 – Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom $
Nov. 15 – Seattle, WA @ The Showbox $
Nov. 16 – Boise, ID @ Treefort Music Hall $
Nov. 17 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Metro Music Hall $
Nov. 19 – Englewood, CO @ The Gothic Theatre $
Nov. 20 – Omaha, NE @ Slowdown $
Nov. 21 – Minneapolis, MN @ Varsity Theater $
* with PELICAN
$ with PRIMITIVE MAN
Photo credit: Chris Strong
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source blabbermouth.net ’
