A long year has passed since Chicago post-rock outfit Russian Circles visited Australian shores, but with their fantastic new album Empros under their belt, the trio decided to celebrate their release with another national tour.
Bringing their show to Adelaide’s legendary hardcore venue Fowler’s Live, Russian Circles managed to attract a much larger attendance than their 2011 showing.
With prominent Australian post-rock bands so few and far between, it was a treat to have one of our best opening the night. The Sydney based sleepmakeswaves played to a young crowd, but the majority of those watching were stunned at what they were witnessing.
Playing just four songs, all off of their debut album release …And So We Destroyed Everything, the four-piece managed to capture the attention of everyone in front of them in their short 30 minute set.
Up next was Adelaide’s own Hydromedusa. While coming quite close, the self-proclaimed ‘stoner sludge heavy metal’ five piece managed to just fall under the standard that sleepmakeswaves had just set.
Nonetheless, their combination of catchy riffs, intense vocals and tight sound managed to interest a great deal of the crowd.
Main openers Eagle Twin were, by far, the most unique band of the night. The Salt Lake City duo, simply comprising of guitar and drums, managed to produce more noise than any other band on the bill despite their size. Led by acclaimed metal composer Gentry Densley, the group fused their Sunn 0))) and Earth styled drone with hard riffage, layered under screams about mythical creatures.
Their set didn’t flow as well as the previous acts, and their songs were not as diverse, but with the biggest crowd of the night thus far, the duo succeeded in reeling a great deal of attendees in.
With the room packed to the brim, it was finally Russian Circles’ time to blow away the crowd. Starting their set with a suspenseful, but extensively long intro sample, the trio walked on to cheers and began with Empros’ opening track “309”.
Immediately following the head banging piece, drummer Dave Turncrantz drove into the introduction of fan favourite “Harper Lewis”, which was met with a great deal of audience excitement. The track, surpassing 7 minutes in length, was worth the chunk it took out of the band’s set time.
After another extensive interlude sample, the brutal track “Geneva” came out of nowhere at full throttle. Throughout the instrumental, the crowd grew less and less fixed until the majority were moshing and head banging. This continued through their set, where numbers such as “Carpe”, “Youngblood” and “Mladek” were met with masses of crowd activity.
As Russian Circles were without a vocal mic, they were unable to interact with the crowd. This meant that the set as a whole was more of a full performance than just a band knocking out tunes. This also meant that no matter how appreciative the crowd could have been, they would have always received nothing more than a wave of acknowledgement from each member.
Nonetheless, it was very easy to tell that both the crowd and Russian Circles were extremely happy with how the show turned out.
