After some well-received demo tracks did the rounds, the crew at Unity Worldwide have taken the plunge and given French Hardcore band Circles their first official release. The Nantes-based band owe their style in no small part to the Revolution Summer movement that originated in Washington DC in the mid 1980\’s. Members of some of the first wave of Hardcore bands were spreading their wings both musically and lyrically, and Circles follow suit.

Instead of just pounding out angry blasts with a simple direct message, they slow the tempo down a touch and add in some variation in the time structure and break away from wall-to-wall power chords to explore that fretboard on the guitar a little bit more. The DC brigade will no doubt have been have influenced by anything from Gang Of Four, The Ruts, The Damned right through to Cat Stevens or Neil Young. So Circles in turn take their foundations from the likes of Rites of Spring or Dag Nasty. Well you\’ll find absolutely no complaints here as for me those bands were a driving force for musical change and progression.

Circles build their tunes based around a solid interplay between drums and bass, with the guitars either grinding out harsh chords or switching to more delicate melodies. Honestly when bands get creative like this I\’d be happy enough with instrumental versions of the songs. On here, the vocals sit perfectly on top and work well as a combination of the two DC bands mentioned earlier – taking the melody of Wig Out At Denkos era Dag Nasty and inserting the fragility of Guy Picciotto\’s Rites of Spring. This ticks all the boxes for me and delivers on all fronts. As a nice bonus the download code that comes with the EP chucks in all their demo recordings, giving you a twelve song collection.   Tom Chapman