Album review: Russian Circles – Geneva

Post-metal is still sufficiently nascent a genre that even its biggest names are still relatively unknown beyond that sphere. While that’s not so great for the bands themselves (what more could you wish for a band you love than adulation and a steady income of reasonable size?), it appeals to my perpetual inner elitist – I don’t have to share them with the plebs, you see. But it can’t last forever… and if I were to put money on my preferred contender for the mainstreaming of post-metal, I’d probably plunk it on Russian Circles, whose new album Geneva has plenty of beefy power alongside a breadth of texture and mood that could entice new listeners across from the slightly less rugged pastures of post-rock.

For those as yet unfamiliar, Russian Circles stand somewhere on a loose parabolic curve sketched between Pelican and Minus The Bear, with a little vector-bending bit of These Arms Are Snakes thrown in for good measure – the latter courtesy, perhaps, of bass player Brian’s post in that very band when not working in the Russian Circles camp. Geneva feels like an evolution from 2008’s Station; it’s good to hear a band progressing within the scope of their own sound, and Russian Circles seem determined to use heavy riffs as a starting point for their adventures rather than a basecamp to return to repeatedly. Their pallet is now more diverse, their canvasses broader in scope.

While Geneva is a more contemplative offering as a whole, it still packs in some moments of solid power and aggression; the scraped-chord thrash rhythms of the title track are menacing, military, and the compressed drums of the outro explode like handgrenades locked in the room next door. But it’s the way Russian Circles resample and loop their own instruments that enables them to mark out their own unique sonic turf: “Melee” sees spacious jazz-tinged drumming underpin bass and guitar drones being redeployed like moody string pads pinched from Lustmord’s synth collection before everything goes a bit post-rock around the middle, and closer “Philos” brings the strings as well, along with faint washes of cymbal and drums-in-the-distance that meander on out to a few last fizzing minutes that sound like the the audio equivalent of astral projection, your mind wandering out of the room and into the sky like a wisp of smoke.

It’s impossible to ignore the sense of space that Russian Circles are so adept at conjuring, and they get better at it every time – Geneva pulses with cyclic pulses of melody against a dark background of satiny tones and wide perspectives, huge dynamic changes propelling you through these light-shot nebulae of sound like waves pushing you steadily up the beach of probability. I’m going to stick to my guns as regards having described Russian Circles as a uniquely liquid band in a very earthy genre; there’s something about them that is of the ocean, of the river. They flow.

You can take it as a mark of respect that I have little more to add here; some albums are so good at standing on their own merits that to go into detail seems pointless, like flapping your lips for the sake of the sound of your voice (which is something that I’m usually pretty fond of, to tell the truth). So just for once, I’ll shut up quickly – right after I recommend Geneva as one of the best post-metal offerings of the year. Go buy it.