![Appendage Appendage](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125400056/276635837.jpg)
Listen to Blue Sky Noise [Deluxe]by Circa Survive on Slacker Radio, where you can also create personalized internet radio stations based on your favorite albums, artists and songs.
Review Summary: Oh Anthony, you will never disappoint me, right? With every Circa Survive album I go through the same ol' cycle: not liking it at all, enjoying a couple of songs, loving the whole thing to death. With The Amulet it went straight to the last stage for me. It's beautiful without being cheesy, it's ambient without being boring, it's cohesive without being monotonous.
I consider Descensus a bit empty and Violent Waves too ambitious, both had theirs moments, but overall left me wanting more. So the latest album is a balancing act, a ventriloquist trick: it shows too little, but offers so much. In the end, you either get fooled by it or pass it by uninterested. And I think it's the sole essence of the band and it's been like this from the very beginning.
In a nutshell, Circa Survive is a paradox, always an alien in a hostile environment: prog rock in a hardcore moshpit, post-hardcore playing in an elevator. But sadly, it's still a decline. I would be so surprised ten years ago listening to On Letting Go if someone said to me: it's gonna be all downhill from here for this band. But the truth remains. Like it or not, identity crisis for Anthony Green and friends has become the identity. Juturna was a blistering moment in time forever carved into subconscious that makes you embarrassed at night, Amulet is a distant memory half of which isn't even true anymore, and other half is filtered so much it doesn't have any taste or smell.
Substance is missing (pun intended) and the band is in a dire need for a substitute. It's not here, but they will find it, eventually. In the meantime, the shell will remain as beautiful as ever.