Perhaps the most immediately apparent characteristic of the fifth Russian Circles album, ‘Memorial’, is its wide range of emotion.
Vacillating from somber-yet-soaring melodies on one track to pummelling metal heft on the next, ‘Memorial’ sounds like an album with split personalities.
“We’ve always tried to balance our metal-influenced sounds with more nuanced, pretty, orchestral elements,” Cook says.
“But this time, it’s far more polarized in that the heavy parts are much more blown out and exaggerated while the pretty moments are far more restrained, delicate, and atmospheric.”
“We set out to make a straightforward, intense, heavy record,” Cook explains.
“We subconsciously gravitated toward darker and more somber sounds.
We wanted to get away from the overtly flashy.” In search of such a streamlined sound, the trio focused on each individual song having its own emotional and musical characteristics.
As such, ‘Memorial’ almost feels like stages of grief.
That notion might be aided by 1) the album’s clever structuring, in which it ends in the same place as it starts, and 2) special guest vocalist, Chelsea Wolfe, lending her hauntingly somber vocals to the album closing title track.
To a degree, the monolithic, juxtaposed moods on ‘Memorial’ is the band’s reaction to the proliferation of iPod culture affecting how bands write music.
Today, most musicians are trying to mash together disparate elements with results sounding as unpalatable as cooking a meal blindfolded.
Russian Circles wisely and deftly sidestep the trappings of genre amalgamation.
“I want to hear a band with a broad palette,” Cook says.
“But it should find that weird balance with breadth and width.
We wanted to make a record with more extreme peaks and valleys.
I’m hoping that we can get away with making a schizophrenic record.”
