Friday, August 31, 2012

Circa Survive: Violent Waves

For those of of you who are interested in Circa Survive, I'm sure you're as excited as I am about the new album, "Violent Waves." Circa produced this album completely on their own, no record labels were involved, nobody to interfere with their writing process. This is a completely unique album in comparison to the rest of their recordings so far; they wanted an album that captured the sound of their live performance, so the entire thing was recorded in only one week.

Violent Waves opens with a 7 minute long journey titled "Birth of the Economic Hit Man," the album as a whole reminds me of Juturna in a lot of ways; spacey and eerie. There is a lot of reverb being used constantly throughout the album, more so than in their previous works; you can definitely pick up on this in their second song "Sharp Practice." Some find it off-putting at first, but don't let it dissuade you from the entirety of the album, it definitely works together.

There is still that aggressive attack in the music that we've seen in previous Circa Survive albums, "The Lottery" pulls no punches in that area. But there are also songs like "Suitcase" and "My Only Friend" that seem to have a quality --lyrically-- similar to Anthony Green's solo albums, a nice touch indeed. In the same line of his solo albums, Phantasmagoria seems almost like it was written for an Anthony Green offshoot song, but with a taste of Circa mixed in to give it a very grooving feel.

If you're still excited to get your hands on the album, I highly recommend it. Even if at first you aren't too into it, give it time; it grows on you. Be prepared for a journey of thoughts and imagination, Green's lyrics have a way of speaking to people in ways no other vocalist can. In "Brother Song," for instance, it's almost as if the sole purpose is to give you a feeling of nostalgia and reminiscence.

All things said and done, Circa is in definite need of some praise for a job well done on the new album.

No comments:

Post a Comment