Beyond the Gate featuring Russian Circles / Pelican

Empty Bottle Presents Beyond The Gate @ Bohemian National Cemetery All Ages | Doors 5PM Russian Circles Halfway through the four-year touring cycle for their eighth full-length record Gnosis, Chicago-based instrumental trio Russian Circles hit the two-decade anniversary of their formation. One might expect a band to capitalize on such a major milestone. Instead, guitarist Mike Sullivan, drummer Dave Turncrantz, and bassist/keyboardist Brian Cook spent 2024 unceremoniously touring in support of their most recent album across Australia, South America, Europe, and North America. After all, this is the work ethic that built Russian Circles into one of the biggest heavy instrumental rock bands in the world. This is a band with no hit songs. No fan consensus on their best album. Just a reputation for consistency and quality. Not that things havent changed in the last 22 years. The band is now spread out between Chicago, Los Angeles, and a rural island off the coast of Seattle. While the trio insists their music is a confluence of broad-ranging influencesthe formidable Touch 60s and early 70s England, the hypnotic motorik and kosmische grooves of West Germany, the international undergrounds most caustic strains of metalit is fair to say Russian Circles adventurous diversity has evolved into its own distinct sound. As one of the notoriously press-shy members anonymously mentioned, the music we make is a collective process of reconciliation, navigation, and reflection upon aging both as individuals and as a creative entity. Life has created very real distances between us, but the band continues to be at the center, and this creative collaboration is a way of charting the passage of time while also giving us a reason to look to the future. On their latest album, Nine, the band triangulates their relative positions into singular seismic long-form album-oriented soundtracks to the trials and tragedies of life in the modern age.