Memorial (Sargent House) by Russian Circles is a confident beast. It slithers low on its belly on a dark, deep, moody journey, the songs running into each other to provide an ebb and flow that doesn’t exist within the songs themselves. As with all the good music it finds that balance between disparate and opposing elements, like the lone half bar of stick click leading to thumping, flailing drums, end to end with no percussion at all. There’s a heap of skill in the composition and the execution, making this one of the better post-rock/post-metal releases so far this year.
Despite comments by bassist Brian Cook about bands that sound like copies of Explosions In The Sky, these songs aren’t a million miles away either in their slow burn and atmospheric approach, especially in tracks like ‘Cheyenne’, which relies on subtle variations and contrast with its adjacent tracks rather than dramatic crescendocore, dynamics and a procession of short and ever-changing elements. Yes the tracks are shorter, much heavier and use oils and palette knives against the brush and watercolour of EITS, but each track explores one emotion at a time as opposed to a range. Add the fact it’s recognizably Russian Circles, and you realize Memorial doesn’t stretch boundaries or redefine post-rock and post-metal
As with their two previous records, there’s a wonderful raw quality and both riffing and tremolo guitar are more likely to play second fiddle to bass and drums than you normally find with this style. It gets very intense at times. Actually strike that – some passages are even more intense than others even when light. A case in point is ‘Ethel’, which is the sunrise that breaks through the bleak, murderous night time of ‘Burial’ and provides one of the most beautiful transitions I’ve heard in post-rock and post-metal. All the while it retains that thumping, fat bass you can feel and see as well as hear, and those powerful but restrained drums, despite being a far more gentle track. Then there’s that perfect guitar only used in Ethel – some other instrumental bands could learn a trick here about avoiding effect overuse.
The transition from opener ‘Memoriam’ into ‘Deficit’ is severe, unpleasant, jarring and harsh as fuck. It will annoy a lot of listeners and that’s what I love about it – create discomfort by throwing a hurdle in nice and early that gives the listener no clue as to how this thing is going to pan out. It only makes sense if you listen to the record as a whole (as most fans will) and not to the tracks in isolation though. Once again, a quiet introduction giving way to a thunderous attack in track two is nothing new, particularly in metal and post-metal, but as with the rest of the album the execution is brilliant.
A record of this quality will have many talking about how it’s at the cutting edge of instrumental experimental rock, but it’s not, and it doesn’t matter. This really is one long, epic song that takes you through a range of emotions without losing identity and without losing your attention. It’s far from the first instrumental rock album to do this, but it is one of the best. In the end that’s what matters.
8.5/10
Gilbert Potts