Screamo Squares

Circle Takes the Square
Circle Takes the Square

If Rob Zombie happens to remake The Lord of the Rings trilogy, he could do worse than to hire Circle Takes the Square to provide the soundtrack. Hailing from Savannah, Ga., this assaultive group lays down a cathartic catapult of noise that is migraine heavy and druidic weird. Circle Takes the Square’s new album, Decompositions: Volume Number One, is a non-stop barrage of hammering beats, pitched vocal screaming and grinding, squealing guitars, occasionally relieved by medieval moments of slowed-down chanting and neo-classical harmonic interludes. This is not music for the weak of heart; five minutes with this band will blow out the pipes.

Variously described as screamo and a progressive fusion of post-punk, emo and grindcore, the music created — or rather, concocted, from cauldrons of boiling aggression — by CTS recalls the glorious shit-fits of Austin band Scratch Acid, the late-career metalized work of Black Flag, as well as the elephantine thump of the Melvins, fed through a Moorish haze of fantasized antiquity. CTS doesn’t fuck around: With song titles like “Way of Ever-Branching Paths” and “Singing Vengeance Into Being,” they partake of a kind of Wagnerian narrative that shrouds their music in mystery, giving it the unified thrust of myth-building (think of bands like Sabbath and Maiden). At the same time, they are simply a rock band, louder than bombs. This is music for adrenaline junkies, folks who happily subject themselves to sonic storms that leave their necks spasming and their knuckles dragging on the floor.

Circle Takes the Square plays with Carrion Spring, Wretched of the Earth and Senza 7:30 pm Wednesday, April 23, at The Boreal, 450 W. 3rd; $8, all ages.