Last year, Russian Circles unleashed Gnosis, their heaviest album yet. But even by those standards, Audiotree’s Chicago studio had no idea what was in store when the trio dropped by for a three-song live session.
Interspersed with interview segments, the 25-minute video offers a rare intimate look at Mike Sullivan, Brian Cook and Dave Turncrantz’s apocalyptic post-metal onslaughts, delivered across three Gnosis tracks: Betrayal, Conduit and Gnosis itself.
The musicianship is jaw-dropping, but Sullivan’s tone even more so: a spiritually aggressive tone that maintains clarity without ever losing its doom-metal edge.
Full article: www.guitarworld.com
Russian Circles' Gnosis is an exploration of space and time: it’s the bedrock blasted to bits to lay the foundation for another Brooklyn condominium. It’s the Earth pulsating around the mouth of a geyser. It’s the cold front moving in from all directions, dropping the temperature below freezing and changing the way we move through the world. The cover of the album depicts two men, isolated on a cubic column of scaffolding. Devoid of background, it leaves the viewer unhinged, but also suggests possibility: you can fill in the blanks and the structure can become whatever you want it to be. Gnosis is like that: the songs swell and expand, with room to move around. You get the opportunity to fill in those spaces, to wander the hallways of a building that never seems to have an end; to bushwhack through a cold, Northwestern forest, perpetually wet, vision blurred through the fog.
It seems extraordinary to think that RUSSIAN CIRCLES have been playing and creating music for nearly two decades. With seven studio albums and their debut EP going all the way back to 2004, the band have had an eighteen year career that feels like it’s gone by in the blink of an eye. In that time, there’s been a definite development of their style and sound, moulding their heavy, drone soundscapes into monstrous dirges that rage and consume. We caught up with Mike Sullivan about the mindset of the new record Gnosis and getting the barebones of creating music.