We premiered Russian Circles' "Malko" on the first day of this month, ushering in fall with a lot of technical playing. Not quite metal—that's a winter genre—but just the tip of it, stuck somewhere between raucous summertime rock and stadium riffing. Now, just before the month containing Halloween, their label Suicide Squeeze has put up a stream of the entire album, Geneva. It's a crunchy record, much of it darker (if not always heavier) than "Malko," but it's when they're at their heaviest that they're at their best. The title track sounds like they were trying to play the piano theme for Jaws on all their instruments simultaneously and just seeing where it led. And it led, unsurprisingly, to a shark attack. If a shark was all their instruments. Or they were sharks and their instruments were what got attacked. So basically what we are saying is something getting attacked by a shark is what Russian Circles sounds like. But only in autumn. Just in case that isn't clear.
Stream: Russian Circles, Geneva