Russian Circles - Blood Year

By Justin C. When I reviewed Russian Circles’s last album, Guidance, I noted that there seems to be a certain obsession with the band’s heaviness, with each new album cycle prompting folks to declare that the instrumental trio is at their “heaviest yet.”

By Justin C.


When I reviewed Russian Circles’s last album, Guidance, I noted that there seems to be a certain obsession with the band’s heaviness, with each new album cycle prompting folks to declare that the instrumental trio is at their “heaviest yet.” The fact that I see statements like this referring to every album makes me think a lot of people are missing the point. In fact, here’s my HOT TAKE: By most measures, I’d say the heaviness quotient* of any given Russian Circles album, including their newest, Blood Year, is pretty close to their baseline level of heaviness.

How closely Russian Circles adheres to metal adjacency might be a way to help clarify their genre, but in reality, the band’s a bit more subtle than that. The basic elements of their style are rock and metal based, and for sure, there are always some truly crunchy moments on their albums. On Blood Year, “Milano” ebbs and flows with some doomy/sludgy flavor, and album closer “Quartered” is pretty much fire from beginning to end. But that said, you need to listen a little more deeply to understand their magic.

I said that Guidance had some of their most delicate work, and going back further, Memorial saw the band pushing their limits even further, going so far as to include guest vocals from Chelsea Wolfe. Compared to those two albums, Blood Year is one of their leaner, more muscular albums. To my ear, they’re working more with their basic elements than on other recent records. It’s heavy in its own way, but it doesn’t lack the nuance that they always bring to their work. “Kohokia,” for example, plays with subtle shifts between light and dark, leaving you unsure as to whether you’re being uplifted or weighed down. And “Ghost on High” is another short gem that the band seems so good at--a fleeting interlude with an almost Baroque feel.

Is Blood Year a game changer for the band? Not really, but on the other hand, it doesn’t need to be. Thirteen years after their first album, Russian Circles remain as beguiling as ever, and they remain the standard bearer for how to do instrumental rock/metal.

*Most of our sophisticated readers of course know that the heaviness quotient is calculated thusly: