The FADER Magazine F2 Issue 2 May 2008

Metral Murals
Russian Circles overwhelm instrumental rock

Only a certain kind of dude decides to start a band without a singer. Russian Circles’ Mike Sullivan seems comfortable being that dude. Bored with playing in punk bands and having already done guitar work in Chicago instrumental outfit Dakota Dakota, Sullivan and bassist Colin DeKuiper continued on without vocals once that band dissolved. “That’s just how I’m used to writing,” Sullivan explains. “I like taking a song wherever it need to take itself. We just didn’t leave room for a singer. We tried to fill up the voids with ourselves.”

After adding Sullivan’s high school friend Dave Turncrantz on drums, Russian Circles spent a year writing and rehearsing before recording Enter, a debut album that caught the ears of more than just metalheads and punks with steadfast attention spans. Now they’ve returned with Station, a sprawling mural painted in circular guitar riffs, concussive polyrhythms and lengthy melodic tangles. It’s also meant to be played very, very loud. “Volume is such a huge part of music,” Sullivan says. “Our record [playing] low sounds pretty mundane to me. But once you turn it up, you’re going to get an experience of what it’s really supposed to sound like.”

And while Station may ebb and flow with the same cinematic, chest-beating crescendos you’d find in most instrumental rock anthems, it’s Sullivan’s relationship with his guitar that lends the songs their heart and their attack. During live pummelings—when Sullivan claims the band’s strengths are all but inescapable— you can find him frozen above his pedal board, lost in the noise he started creating back when he was “just a little turd trying to learn AC/DC riffs.” It might just cause you to start sobbing at the hands of a metal riffs. As if life isn’t heavy enough.