RUSSIAN CIRCLES - Nine

There are bands that, after a few years, change their formula: Russian Circles, on the other hand, have become a unit of measurement, the yardstick by which we gauge just how far instrumental post-metal, noise and tension can be pushed without losing the overall sense of extreme metal's form. "Nine" (in name and in fact) is the ninth album from the Chicago trio. It arrives without fanfare and without any need to reinvent the wheel. Seven tracks, thirty-nine minutes, and one certainty: these three musicians still know exactly how to make the foundations shake.

Mike Sullivan, Brian Cook and Dave Turncrantz seem to play with a kind of telepathy earned on the road, after years spent turning the stage into an assault machine. Recorded at Steve Albini's Electrical Audio and once again entrusted to the hands of Kurt Ballou (Converge), "Nine" preserves that dry, massive and almost physical dimension that's part of the band's heritage. Every instrument has its own space, but when everything collides, the impact is monstrous.
"Borehole" opens the record like an organism moving underground: anxious guitars, hammering drums, riffs that dig slowly toward an explosion. Then comes "Empath", and here Russian Circles simply stop being heavy and become ferocious instead. An electronic hum paves the way for one of the album's most brutal riffs, while bass and drums turn the song into a kind of war ritual. "Eluvial", meanwhile, introduces a more suspended, almost sci-fi dimension, with synths and atmospheres that seem to come from an alien city seen through the rain. The track grows slowly until it becomes monumental, proving the trio still knows how to build a crescendo without falling into post-rock rhetoric. "E2" continues along electronic, industrial lines, while "Meridian" returns to that more familiar language of accumulation, anticipation and detonation. Here Cook's bass and Turncrantz's drums become almost a single animal.
"Arletta", a brief acoustic interlude, finally offers some breathing room before "Seventh Seal" throws the gates of hell back open. Incandescent guitars, primordial drums, a gigantic breakdown: the finale is a lash that leaves the ensuing silence strangely full.

We're in the presence of a decidedly inspired, atmospheric and immensely heavy album, capable of bringing back to the surface a rage that seemed to have gone dormant. But it rarely truly surpasses its own perfection. There are no weak moments, and yet it lacks that unpredictable spark, that one track able to break the magnificent balance and turn it into something memorable.
You don't need to know the whole Russian Circles discography to grasp the strength of "Nine": the record stands on its own. But it also leaves the sense that we're facing a band so thoroughly in command of its own language that it's almost stopped taking risks. Is that a limitation? Perhaps. But when the machine sounds this good, it's hard not to be swept away.

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03/09/2026