The Midweekly is our column from Mike Jeffers; lead singer of Chicago punk stalwarts SCRAM, music junkie and all around righteous dude.
Close your eyes and visualize great armies of monsters, or fleets of space ships colliding into each other in slow motion. This of course needs a soundtrack, and Russian Circles is always ready to provide. The metal trio from Chicago has done it again with their eighth LP Gnossis. It’s been said that vocals help connect the listener to the music because of the shared human experience through lyrics, even in a genre where the words are incompressible. But RC routinely deliver a style of impressively produced instrumental rock that holds your attention. Seemingly standard breakdowns that’ll break your brain when the polyrhythms invade. Most of the progressions are filled with dread and frenzy, although they do switch it up with beautiful melodies, like reflecting on the destruction the chugga chugga unleashed. If riffs could snarl, these tracks would be mean mugging all day.