After a three year absence it's great to welcome back Zak Stevens and Circle II Circle with their sixth studio album Seasons Will Fall. It's also great to find the band returning to their classic heavy metal roots, after the curious, slightly subtle, experimentation with alternative metal on their previous effort…
After spending years away from music to renovate buildings and make films and visual artwork, Adult.'s Adam Miller and Nicola Kuperus couldn't have picked a better time to return. During the years between 2007's Why Bother? and 2013's The Way Things Fall, the kind of dark, spiky, synth-driven sound they'd been honing since the early 2000s – back when it was called electroclash – finally rose to prominence, making them seem less like outliers and more like trailblazers. That distinction seems even more fitting considering that Adult. have moved on from the wild-eyed noise-punk of their previous album on The Way Things Fall, which wears its accessibility as boldly as the duo took no prisoners before.
CIRCLE II CIRCLE, the band led by ex-SAVATAGE frontman Zak Stevens, will release its sixth studio album, "Seasons Will Fall", on January 25. Formed in 2001, CIRCLE II CIRCLE has always reinvented itself throughout the years, constantly maintaining the signature sound that fans around the world love. "Seasons Will Fall" is CIRCLE II CIRCLE's strongest album to date from both a musical and production standpoint. It blends Stevens' history and unique "SAVATAGE style" with the fresh sounds he developed with his current outfit. From the howling guitar riffs on "Diamond Blade" and "Killing Death" to the energetic sound of "Never Gonna Stop", it contains everything you want from a heavy rock album.
After a decade flirting with shoegaze and dream pop textures, Ulrich Schnauss has returned to his IDM roots with A Long Way to Fall. On his first album (fourth overall) under his name in six years, the German producer almost fully focuses on the synthesizer, nearly abandoning the layered fuzz and tempered haze of his last two solo releases, while eliminating the slow-burning, buried vocals of his work with Mark Peters and A Shoreline Dream. Stretching each song past the five-minute mark, Schnauss lets his work gestate on A Long Way to Fall, letting simple, sometimes nonexistent refrains repeat and recur until some sort of unshakable melody is revealed…