Circle Takes The Square are a band that defy genre. Their lengthy songs are chaotic and even confusing on the first few listens. They could be described as the most violent sounding screamo band ever formed but that might undermine the grindcore, post-rock and punk influences that are prominent throughout their two (that’s right, just two) full releases.
This is a point worth highlighting – Circle Takes The Square have a somewhat legendary status that has led to them being cited as an influence for countless screamo and post-hardcore bands over the last ten years. However, until the end of last year they’d only put out one album, 2004’s ‘As The Roots Undo’.
Filled with haunting riffs intercut with manic bursts of aggression and lyrics that sound like they’ve been taken from an H.P. Lovecraft story, ‘As The Roots Undo’ is a record that continues to influence and inspire – and it’s kept people constantly interested in what the band would do next. Fast forward to 2012 after some line-up changes and eight years worth of ideas floating around, Circle Takes The Square finally announce their follow-up – ‘Decompositions: Volume Number One’.
It comes as no surprise that their set tonight mostly consists of older songs, but it’s so rare that the band tour over here that long-time fans may only be getting to hear those tracks live for the first time.
They start with ‘A Crater To Cough In’, the familiar opening riff teasing for a few minutes whilst everybody waits for that devastating switch-up. Strangely, no moshing. The same thing happened for support band, Code Orange Kids, whose highly anticipated UK debut was met by a room full of people in awe, but totally uninterested in going wild. This is in no way a bad sign, it just seemed like the line-up tonight was met with a lot of watching and appreciating rather than crowd-surfing and pushing. Now we think about it, Code Orange Kids are probably the heaviest band we’ve ever seen nobody mosh to.
New tracks ‘Enter By The Narrow Gates’ and ‘Way Of Ever-Branching Paths’ sound tight and you can tell there are a good few years worth of writing and experimenting behind them, but they don’t get anywhere near the same crowd reaction as the oldies. It’s not until ‘Crowquill’, three songs from the end, that we see any real participation from the attendees tonight. Considering the length of some of their songs, it means the last three take up almost twenty mosh-heavy minutes.
They end with ‘Kill The Switch’, a nine and a half minute whirlwind of a tune that climaxes with what is possibly the heaviest riff ever written (7:53 if you need to hear it, which you do).
Circle Takes The Square aren’t a band to churn out new material like there’s no tomorrow, but if the apocalypse is coming it’s going to need a soundtrack and these guys have definitely already written it.
Haunt, Monday 29th July 2013
Words by Chris Biggs
