Band's List Melodic Death Circle Of Chaos Two Headed Serpent

I’m going to call Circle of Chaos a metalcore band, regardless of their Spirit of Metal title of melodeath. Their punk-ish take on extreme metal is clear to be seen. The way their music on ther EP Two Headed Serpent occasionally skirts traditional metalcore staples like breakdowns and softer, more melodic choruses to me is more along the lines of Atreyu and Killswitch Engage than Arch Enemy or late Dismember. That being said, they aren’t downright clichéd in their musical style. Their sound does touch on the bombastic blastiness of heavier bands, but mostly their riffs are chuggy, bumpy, contrasted with melodic tangents in bridges and choruses.

The production of the album is pretty polished and clean, all things considered. That’s not to say that this album is sterile. Everything is recorded nicely and together the album sounds quite meaty and dense. Melodic portions in the music sit atop the fury of the underlying fast parts. The vocalist is at a good level, and considering his style it’s a very good thing he doesn’t overwhelm the music. I can point to him as another clear example of why this is more of a metalcore-esque release. His voice is high and screamy with a bit of a wail in it—very similar to bands that are full of that angsty youthful edge of contemporary metalcore like Deadsoil and later Casketgarden. The guitars need a bit of amping up so they can compete with the drums, but aside from that, Circle of Chaos have found a pretty stable metal sound.

The songs are easy to listen to and take a clear path from a structural standpoint, usually keeping away from throwing too many curveballs. Solos come when expected, as do the verse/chorus exchanges, so needless to say the band hasn’t reached their “push beyond the boundaries” stage of creativity yet, but with the presence of some very competent leads and melodies, there’s potential here. I can point to the third track, “Vicious Circle” as an example of a song that has nice forward propulsion, one that changes riffs in a pretty energetic progression with nice licks and solos throughout. The stop-start part of the song rubs me a little the wrong way, but I think that this song is an easy standout regardless. The band is certainly at their best when keeping further away from the bash-your-head-against-the-wall straightforwardness of the chuggy palm-muted riffs and lean towards either more melodic or a combination of both approaches. I find that certain hook riffs in the song “Fate of Brutality”, especially towards the end, do this sort of thing well. While sifting through a couple of forgettable moments in the tracks, it’s not too difficult to come across a catchy riff that has the ability to bring you back to the song later. The chorus on the opening titular track “Two Headed Serpent” was the thing I remembered most about the album on first listen and allowed me to get into the rest of the album. The low points of the songs, all things considered, aren’t as low as they could be. Breakdowns or not, most of the time the band lays another guitar layer over the faceless palm-muted lameness, so there’s usually something else going on during these thankfully short little sections.

I feel that, at the moment, Circle of Chaos is a quite competent band with nice strong moments sprinkled throughout their songs like interspersed supports that hold up a larger structure, but my issue with their output on Two Headed Serpent comes from the way that their music currently doesn’t do much that separates them from their genre peers. I can quickly make connections to other bands and musicians who have done pretty much the same things in terms of style. That’s not to say it’s a bad thing to have gotten inspiration from other bands, but it is a bad thing when such homage renders the band without a ton of originality of their own. As I said before, there is plenty of room for expansion from the band at this stage and Two Headed Serpent has a lot of good worthwhile material on it. If into metalcore, pick this album up to add another new band to your repertoire of music, but don’t expect anything unique. This EP is certainly a good start for a relatively new band and it’s competent, but the surprises are few.