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Concert Fri Feb 08 2008
Russian Circles' New Notes From the Underground
While the world has waited for the release of Chinese Democracy, metal has undergone a lot of changes. It's responded to the backlash against its hair-hopping halcyon days by absorbing influences and ideas from across the rock spectrum, splintering off into a number of enclaves that probe the perimeters of the genre's creedal heaviness.
Case in point, the Chicago instrumental trio Russian Circles. The band's 2006 album Enter received a lot of glowing praise via print and online venues that cover the heftier ends of the musical spectrum, and it sent critics scrambling for labels to sum up the the band's sound. If you were to string all the resulting desciptives together, then Russian Circles are reputedly a math-/prog-/post-rock metal trio with melodic, neo-Mahlerian shoegaze affinities. Or something like that.
But amidst this barrage of ciphers and sobriquets, it was funny to see how often Russian Circles prompted critics to employ a word not often associated with the metal genre -- that word being "beautiful." Fitting enough, given Enter's musical sweep. Threaded on tangling and uncoiling tensions, it led the listeners through storm and stress and sublimation and back again, all the while keeping much of the genre's heavy-handed bombast and baroquisms at a cool distance.
In recent weeks, Russian Circles has announced the pending arrival of a new album. Entitled Stations, it's due for release on the Suicide Squeeze label in May. As a precursor, Russian Circles is embarking on a series of national tours. Intriguingly enough, they'll be touring with the experimental hip-hop duo Dälek -- who seem to enjoy sharing the bill with adventurous new metal bands whose heaviness complements their own. The tour with Dälek kicks off from Chicago, and they'll be playing at Subterranean on Tuesday, February 19. Young Widows open. 2011 W North Ave. Show starts at 9:30pm, tickets are $10.
