Doors at 7:00pm Main Room $29.50 Advance/$34.50 Day of Show Facebook RSVP All ages show. Check entry requirements at http://theslowdown.com/All-Ages About Russian Circles Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Bandcamp | YouTube | Spotify Across the span of their previous seven studio albums, Chicago-based instrumental trio Russian Circles traversed a diverse topography of sounds, moods, and approaches with their limited armory of drums, bass, and guitar. It’s difficult to chart an evolution in their sound when their records have always felt like well-curated playlists. It wasn’t uncommon to hear drone-heavy meditations, dazzling prog exercises, knuckle-dragging riff-fests, haunting folk ballads, and tension-baiting noise rock all within the span of one album. Still, it’s difficult to ignore the progression from the pensive and intricate melodies of Enter (2006) to the layered distorted dirges of Blood Year (2019). It’s been a gradual sonic shift owing to the band’s rigorous tour schedule and a predilection towards playing their more authoritative material on stage. But with their latest album, Gnosis, Russian Circles eschew the varied terrain of their past work and bulldoze a path through the most tumultuous and harrowing territory of their sound. As was the case for so many artists in the age of COVID, the obstacles of geography and isolation forced Russian Circles to reevaluate their writing process. Rather than crafting songs out of fragmented ideas in the practice room, full songs were written and recorded independently before being shared with other members, so that their initial vision was retained. While these demos spanned the full breadth of the band’s varied styles, the more cinematic compositions were ultimately excised in favor of the physically cathartic pieces. Gnosis was engineered and mixed by Kurt Ballou. Drums and bass were tracked at Electrical Audio in Chicago to maximize the natural room sounds of the rhythm section. Guitar and synth overdubs were conducted at God City in Salem, MA to take advantage of Ballou’s vast inventory of amps and effects pedals. Despite the entirety of the album being written remotely, the songs were recorded with the full band playing together to retain the live feel of the material. Owing to the climate of the times and a new writing method, Russian Circles created their most fuming and focused work to date—an album that favors the exorcism of two years’ worth of tension over the melancholy and restraint that often colored their past endeavors. About Pelican Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Bandcamp | YouTube | Spotify Pelican is a dreamlike art-metal institution, a band whose kaleidoscopic melodies and ocean-dredging riffs have now hypnotized audiences for more than two decades. Emerging from the frozen tundras of Chicago, Pelican were early adopters in blending post-rock’s majestic repetition with sludge metal’s skull-vibrating bluster, adding their own singular sense of keening emo-psychedelia and heavy-metal motorik. Since then, their prismatic instrumental mesmerism has rippled across six critically acclaimed studio albums, soundtracked episodes of CSI: Miami and True Blood, and could even be spotted on MTV during the waning days of music video. Pelican will once again be hitting the road in 2022, emerging from the shadows of the pummeling bleakness of 2019’s Nighttime Stories. Following the departure of long-standing guitarist Dallas Thomas, the band will be joined on upcoming dates with founding guitarist Laurent Schroeder-Lebec, reuniting the classic Pelican lineup behind albums like 2005’s landmark The Fire in Our Throats Will Beckon the Thaw. That album — along with Pelican’s spiraling debut Australasia (2003) and their bludgeoning breakthrough City of Echoes (2007) — are getting the deluxe vinyl reissue treatment thanks to Thrill Jockey, re-illuminating the band’s first three albums with rarities, unreleased outtakes, demos and remastered audio.