Review: Stellar Circuits – Ways We Haunt

Style: progressive metal, djent, alternative metal (clean vocals)
Review by: Jonah
Country: North Carolina, United States
Release date: 9 November, 2018

NOTE: This album was originally included in the November 2018 issue of The Progressive Subway

There’s this huge stigma against djent in the prog community right now, and often it’s somewhat well-deserved. In the early 2010s djent exploded, and a swath of underwhelming periphery copycats flooded the scene. Many of these bands were as non-progressive as could be, but got lumped into the umbrella anyway because of the djent elements. This is where much of the current contention lies, I believe, and unfortunately it means that a lot of people avoid djent-tagged bands principle. In the case of Stellar Circuits this would be a real shame, as the band has put out a pretty stellar release in “Ways We Haunt”.

I don’t bash djent as much as most of the community, but I do tend to get quite bored of the bands that rely on that singular guitar sound as only defining feature of their music. Stellar Circuits does a fantastic job of layering in the djent when needed, and then pulling back for some absolutely lovely melodic sections. This formula has been done before, for sure, but something about the way these guys pull it off just seriously impresses me. It might be the guitarwork, which when not djenting is focused on finger-picked leads and some surprising acoustic layering which was easily one of my favorite bits of the album. The vocals are pretty standard djent/core fare, utilizing a high tenor tone and an ethereal and flightly tone, but they work very well. The vocalist even dips close to some more traditionally baritone notes which caught me off guard after mostly sounding like Dan Tompkins twin brother for most of the album. The harshes on the album are all heavily fuzzed up and pushed back in the mix, which is a somewhat strange but ultimately effective stylistic choice. They never overpower the sound, and instead just layer in with the riffs to create a wave of heaviness. The bass is also quite audible, and provides some killer grooves for a few tracks that I was pleasantly surprised by. I have no complaints about the instrumentation or the songwriting on this album, really.

In fact, the only critique I have of this band is incredibly minor. I’d love to see a tad more experimentation from them. They have the djent formula down pretty tight, and they deviate from it occasionally, but I’d love to see them pull a full Caligula’s Horse and incorporate those djent sounds into something entirely their own. Otherwise, I fully recommend this album to anyone with an open enough mind to listen to a djent band for 48 minutes, as it’s absolutely worth it.

Recommended tracks: Fell Under a Spell, Sleepless Goddess
Recommended for fans of: TesseracT, Textures, Opus of a Machine
Final verdict: 9/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | RYM page

Label: Independent

Stellar Circuits is:
– Ben Beddick (vocals)
– Andrew Mericle (guitars)
– Tyler Menon (drums)
– Jesse Olsen (bass)