ENCIRCLE: “LOST CHRONICLES”

(TheMadIsraeli reviews the new album by a one-man Floridian band named Encircle.)

Anthony DiGiacomo has been my friend now for a couple years in some capacity or another even though we didn’t really get close until last year. I have to admit, I’ve never seriously listened to his music under the moniker Encircle until recently. With that said, I am giving full disclosure here: I am reviewing the music of a friend. Some bias may be unavoidable.

However, that doesn’t mean that the music under the Encircle name isn’t great. It is. It’s also exactly what I like, which is very hybridized music. Anthony mixes the best aspects of more modern tech death, technical metal core, and a bit of some big dumb death core skull-smashing to taste. Lost Chronicles is a pretty beastly record if what I just described sounds appealing to you.

The album is half-instrumental, half-vocalized. There’s a pretty huge array of styles, tempos, and influences at work, but the music definitely has a solid identity — it’s distinctive enough to say, “that sounds like Encircled“. There are hints of Nile, Misery Signals, Lamb Of God, In Flames, and Gojira, among others. The variety of influences that go into Anthony’s compositions may come across as contradictory on paper, but boy does it work when the music starts.

I’m not going to sit here and circle-jerk my friend, but I will tell you this album is worth your time. It’s free (pay what you want) on Bandcamp, and if you don’t like the songs with vocals on them, Anthony was kind enough to include instrumentals of those songs as well. The guy is an immense and underrated talent in the realm of one-man bands, and it’s truly a shame he doesn’t get more publicity. I’d like to see what you, the NCS readership, think. I think this record is pretty fucking killer.

http://encircle.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/EncircleProject