People of the Black Circle: Dark and intense music
People of the Black Circle come out swinging. The band from Athens released their first, self-titled album and introduce themselves to us! A new band is popping up in the circles of the Doom Metal scene!
By Dimitris (Bari) Polyzois
We're talking about People of the Black Circle, who released their self-titled album under Red Truth Productions.
A few words about the band
The People of the Black Circle were founded in the first months of 2021, in Athens. Their music aspires to bridge the Stoner/Doom of Electric Wizard, Windhand and Reverend Bizarre with the vocal melodies of Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, but also the Horror Synth sound of John Carpenter, as established by soundtracks for films like In the Mouth of Madness, Halloween and Prince of Darkness.
The above sound provides the musical backdrop for the poems of Clark Ashton Smith, Howard Phillips Lovecraft and Robert Ervin Howard (from whose eponymous novella the band itself was "baptized"), which the People set to music on their first record. If you're a fan of horror fiction and especially its Cosmic Horror variant, it's almost certain you'll find something of interest in the band's music and aesthetic.
Based on the mythology
The band creates an atmosphere that fits its music incredibly well. Listening to it, I feel the fog pressing against the windowpanes of my house! Something grim is stirring all around! Heavily influenced by mythology and full of creatures of the imagination, People's self-titled album is the perfect music to accompany an intense, emotional evening. Sure, we're not talking about a romantic evening here, since intensity and darkness will overwhelm you.
Melodically, the tracks move within doom's characteristic slow style. All of this, combined with the otherworldly vocals, creates an environment that's the stuff of nightmares at the edges of imagination. Especially notable is the fact that the vocals aren't front and center in the tracks. They bring to mind siren songs calling us to lose ourselves in the lyrics and melodies.
Editor's Choice: 'Alchemy of Sorrow'
Listening to this grim quintet of tracks, two of them stood out to my ears. These are 'Alchemy of Sorrow‘ and ‘Ghosts in Agartha‘, with the first cutting the thread right on the dot and being Fuzzy Hound's proposal to the readers. With the repeating melodic motif stretching throughout its entire duration, this track makes you feel that something bad is coming. Here too the vocals sit a bit more 'behind', with the guitar taking the lead just before the end. An important element are also the eerie sounds – sirens (from the keyboards), which betray a completely different aesthetic.
‘One with his fervor shall inform
The world, and one with all his sorrow
One sees a glad, unsetting morrow,
One hears the whisper of the worm.
Hermes unknown, whose hand assists
My toil, and fills my dreams with fear,
Through thee I am the mournful peer
Of Midas, first of alchemists.’
In conclusion
The People of the Black Circle is here with a very special effort. Five tracks which have different aesthetics and give us different types of emotions. They shouldn't seem few in number to you, since the tracks are quite substantial in length! It's worth dedicating some time though to enjoy this effort, which will surely conjure up very intense images for you.
