Circle Of Animals

Destroy The Light

Written by: PP on 25/12/2010 02:28:29

Either it has to be a mixing fail, or a really dumb decision made on purpose, but the beginning of Circle Of Animals has a thumping industrial soundscape looping that makes me check whether my player got stuck every single time. Or it could be just an unexpected idea of genius coming from two critically acclaimed and widely respected experimental musicians Sanford Parker (Minsk, Nachtmystium) and Bruce Lamont (Yakuza), the two masterminds behind "Destroy The Light", the debut album of this unholy union. I'm about 60/40 leaning on the latter, given the hypnotic and complicated nature of the rest of the album, which casts the industrial metal genre in an entirely new, previously unheard light to at least this scribe.

What's interesting to note is that "Destroy The Light" is first and foremost an atmosphere-oriented album. It hasn't been constructed for the sake of awesome riffs, but to create a very specific mood instance, and this is achieved through very unusual means: drumming. While the echoing and pounding industrial effects and the odd vocals are a given in the genre, the drums are out of the ordinary and range from primal batting to tribal sounding patterns, where the resulting soundscape lingers somewhere between pure noise and instrumental genius. Percussion is provided on a turn-basis by Steve Shelley (Sonic Youth), Dave Witte (Municipal Waste), John Herndon (Tortoise), John Merryman (Cephalic Carnage) among others, so you can imagine how varied the sound overall is, ranging from droning shoegaze gone industrial ("Seminal Animal") to death metal inspired industrial pounding ("No Faith") and much more. It's certainly a challenging listen, and one I'm not entirely sure whether it's genius or too strange for its own good. For now, I'll stick with the latter, given how I'm not entirely convinced that the soundscapes work as well as one would hope.

5

Download: Seminal Animal
For the fans of: Deflore, Yakuza, Vverevvolf Grehv, Swans
Listen: Myspace

Release date 12.10.2010
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