Circle Of Contempt
Structures For Creation
Release Date: 1 July 2016
Review by Rod Whitfield
I absolutely love bands that are both brutal and highly progressive at the same time. Bands that blister your skin with their intensity, but also offer up something highly interesting, musically. The ‘tech’ scene is offering up some of the best of this, and Finland’s Circle of Contempt are a growing force in the worldwide tech metal sub-genre.
Structures for Creation is ten short, ultra-sharp tech-metal tracks, but they pack such a massive wallop and so many creative musical ideas into a three-minute song it fairly makes your head spin. Their songs get in, throw the kitchen sink at you (although doing so in a completely cohesive, intelligent and structured manner) and then get the hell out. It’s all about economy of expression for these guys, with not a wasted note to be heard anywhere, and it’s all class.
That said, whilst this album is choc-full of insane tech-metal mayhem, Structures for Creation is at its absolute best when it opens out and gets all grandiose on our arses, such as on the album’s best cut, Redefine. It’s quite exhilarating.
This, of course, is the essence of dynamics in HEAVY music, and bands like Circle Of Contempt have an absolute grasp of this concept. They know how to smash you in the face with brutality, slash you open with a million blistering notes coming at you at a million miles an hour, when to open up and when to pull back to a sweet, tasteful ambient moment. But in the context of this band’s music, it all slips past you and is gone in the blink of an eye.
Add in slick, punchy, powerhouse production, and you have yourself a damnably accomplished tech-metal release. This scene is throwing up the most inspiring sounds and bands in HEAVY music at the moment in this humble writer’s opinion, and these Finnish maniacs are a massive part of it.
