CIRCLE OF BLOOD INTERVIEW AND ALBUM REVIEW by Mark J."Circle of Blood don't need a dungeon, they've got a guitar tone and the absolute conviction of men who have made a pact with something older and angrier than any of us"
CIRCLE OF BLOOD INTERVIEW AND ALBUM REVIEW by Mark J.
"Circle of Blood don't need a dungeon, they've got a guitar tone and the absolute conviction of men who have made a pact with something older and angrier than any of us"
CIRCLE OF BLOOD — IN PRAISE OF DARKNESS (GRINDHEAD RECORDS)
Opener Casca doesn't introduce itself. It colonises you. It's the cinematic moment in Phenomena where the maggots arrive, and you realise the film was never going to be safe — except it's a riff, and it's in your nervous system now, and there's no Dario Argento to cut away before the worst of it. Then Bastard Child of a Coward God and Grant Me Strength hit, and you realise this isn't a record with a good opener and filler — this thing has no exit wounds. And Dethronement. Jesus Christ. Dethronement rips your insides out, pulverises them in a rusty blender and feeds them back to you via a hole in your skull cut with the loving precision of Sardu himself in Blood Sucking Freaks — except Circle of Blood don't need a dungeon, they've got a guitar tone and the absolute conviction of men who have made a pact with something older and angrier than any of us.
This is Australian death metal worshipping at the twin altars of Sunlight and Morrisound — Morbid Angel's precision, Deicide's contempt, Obituary's suffocating weight — executed by musicians who are genuinely, unfairly skilled. If this record doesn't make you want to sprint through a church with a chainsaw and five grenades taped to your chest, then fucking honestly what is actually wrong with you, go home, check your pulse, reconsider your life choices. You're standing ten metres from them right now and you're wasting it reading a flyer. Put it down. Get to the front. You can feel stupid about doubting them later.
BUY THE RECORD AND ALL THEIR MERCH, AND SEE THEM LIVE ASAP!!!
https://circleofblood.bandcamp.com/album/in-praise-of-darkness
https://www.facebook.com/circleofblood666
https://www.instagram.com/circleofblood/
CIRCLE OF BLOOD
In Praise of Darkness — Interview with Dave By Mark J.
The bio says Circle of Blood rose from the ashes of other bands in 2019 — which bands specifically fed into this, and what was it about that moment that made you want to start something fresh rather than keep flogging the old projects? Was there a specific riff or idea that said, "This is a new entity now"?
Dave:
Prior to Circle of Blood becoming a writing, jamming entity, I’d been playing in Rebirth, which broke up in 2017; Chris had been playing in Ganbaru, which I believe broke up around the same time. At that point we’d both been playing in hardcore bands for around 15 years, but also shared a love of heavier styles. I’d been wanting to form a more metallic band for years, but always came up against the “find a drummer” hurdle. We met Pete at his last show drumming for Boundless in late 2018, and at that point I was already getting more enjoyment from listening to (and, by extension, attempting to write in the styles of) Bloodbath, Pig Destroyer, Napalm Death, Behemoth and the endless stream of Swedish death metal bands Chris would recommend. So it wasn’t a specific riff or idea, per se, but finding ourselves with the time, ideas and members that allowed us to try something new.
Dave, your roots are deep in straight edge hardcore — the ethics, the community, the discipline of that scene. At some point you found yourself playing in a death metal band with a debut album called In Praise of Darkness. How does that arc make sense to you looking back? Was there a moment where you felt the two worlds were incompatible, or did death metal always feel like a natural extension — just a different kind of extremity? And on a practical level, do you find the mentality you built in hardcore — the DIY ethic, the willingness to grind it out — has shaped how Circle of Blood operates as a band?
Dave:
It is a bit of a plot twist! I wouldn’t say hardcore and death metal are necessarily incompatible, even if the respective audiences sometimes don’t play well together. I definitely see it as two sides of the same rebellious coin. If you look back at almost any band I’ve been involved with over the years, my contribution has always been the more abrasive and metallic elements, so there’s always been some thread of extreme metal riffage being woven into other styles. I’ve been straight edge for 22 years and counting, and the basis of that has always been rejecting things that I found made my life harder rather than more enjoyable. Playing death metal, and incorporating left hand path ideas and imagery into the lyrics, is just another way of expressing the same core (haha) idea of rejecting the parts of society and culture that feel more like chains.
The DIY mentality of spending most of my adult life in the hardcore scene has played a significant role in how Circle Of Blood functions. All of our recordings have been created in quite a DIY manner; we’ve booked the majority of our own gigs, from contacting bands and venues to providing backline; where we can’t do something ourselves, we enlist friends who have skills that we don’t. It’s just how we’ve always done things in previous bands, so getting our hands dirty on every level is what feels right.
On the Naarm/Melbourne Scene
Melbourne — Naarm — has always had this distinct, filthy undercurrent in its extreme metal, going back to Hobbs' Angel of Death and running through stuff like Fuck I'm Dead, Martire, Ouroboros. Where does Circle of Blood sit in that lineage, and who in the local scene has genuinely pushed you or shaped how you operate?
Dave:
I actually didn’t spend much time in the Naarm metal scene as a youngster – I only really started properly engaging with the scene since Circle Of Blood started; Pete is a Canberra native who missed the golden age of Metal For The Brain and other highlights of that scene. We met through the punk and hardcore scenes and, as noted above, that musical upbringing plays a certain role in how we operate as a band. In that context, I outsourced part of this question to Chris and Reece, whose musical beginnings in metal were in the Naarm and Nipaluna (Hobart) scenes.
Chris’s early influences were bands like Cryogenic, Bowel Mouth, Frankenbok, Damaged, Uncle Chunk, Abrasion, Running With Scissors, Earth, Full Scale Deflection and Psycroptic, and many of those bands and their members supported his early band endeavours. Reece has noted Psycroptic, Mephistopheles, The Scandal, The Ghost And The Storm Outside, On Your Feet Soldier and Sunday Something Ruined as bands he enjoyed during those formative years.
Circle Of Blood is essentially an amalgamation of all the extreme metal we enjoy from home and abroad. The metal scene in Melbourne is overflowing with talent at the moment. Bands like Carcinoid, Black Jesus, Writhing, Munitions, Munt, Vexation, Tumour and Gutless, to name a handful, have really inspired us to play harder and push ourselves to be a better band. It really is an amazing time to be an extreme music fan in Melbourne.
On the Early Demos and EPs
You put out Insania Seorsum, Leviathan, Unholy Trinity, and Crushed before this debut album — that's a lot of material to road-test. Looking back at those releases, what were you consciously working out or trying to prove before you felt ready to commit to a full-length? Was there a moment you knew the sound had locked in?
Dave:
Initially, it was a process of learning how to play and write together in a style we hadn’t really tried before, with quite different musical identities. Insania Seorsum and Leviathan were written and recorded very close together; those two releases were really about finding our feet as a unit. Unholy Trinity and Crushed were also written and recorded within about 3 months of each other, after our first few shows – they were about nudging our sound in different directions to see how the flavour balance worked. It was after about 2 ½ years of performing live – opening the Tumour / Burn In Hell split launch show in 2024 – when we felt like we’d figured out how everyone’s influences fit together and what we were trying to create.
Another moment that really helped cement our sound was when Reece joined on second guitar. Partway through recording, Reece expressed interest in joining the band, and we welcomed him on board pretty much immediately. Once we heard his ideas for adding guitar parts to the songs, I had an honest-to-Lucifer lightbulb moment where the songs felt like they’d been brought to life. That was a real point of excitement and clarity in terms of the sound coming together.
The Bandcamp bio says "undeterred by pandemics or conflagrations" — which is a hell of a statement. What did those early years actually look like in practice? Did the lockdowns change the way you wrote or recorded, and did they push you toward or away from the OSDM sound?
Dave:
Thank you, we do appreciate a little hyperbole. We managed about 8 months’ of practicing before Covid hit. The reality was that we just kept in contact as best we could – the internet is good like that - and each time lockdowns lifted, we would squeeze in as much practice or recording as we could before the curtain dropped again. Insania Seorsum was recorded in four separate sessions across three months, in three different locations, just out of stubborn insistence (mostly mine) that we had to be producing something. The isolation meant that we were able to spend more time sending each other music recommendations, which meant more ideas in the riff bank, but we hadn’t sorted out the technical infrastructure to be able to write collaboratively from our own lounge rooms yet (that came later). The lockdowns and the varying levels of madness that resulted certainly fed into the vibes of the early recordings – it added a sense of gnawing desperation to things – but I wouldn’t say it had a significant impact on the overall musical style (but I’ve been wrong before).
The album title is a strong, declarative statement — almost philosophical. Is this a conceptual record, and if so, what does "darkness" mean in this context? Is it literal occultism, existential, political, or something more personal?
Dave:
In Praise of Darkness is absolutely a conceptual record – it was written with the idea of all ten songs being tied together with a narrative arc, which turned out to be harder than I thought. As you’ve noted, there are a range of lenses through which the idea could be interpreted – existential, political, personal or literal – and the answer is a bit of all of them.
On a personal level, I’ve had an interest and a level of identification with Luciferian thought for some time now. I haven’t engaged in any formal occult study, I don’t have an altar for ritual magick or other practices, and I’m certainly not in a position to debate the finer points of Luciferian texts; but it is an intellectual and spiritual world view consistent with my own, and indeed inspires me to grow as a person. So the album – the lyrics, the artwork, the concepts – are definitely explored through what you could describe as a non-practicing occult lens.
On the Recording Process
Earlier material had R. Hickey handling everything on the music side essentially — guitars, bass, mix, master — alongside Noke-Edwards on drums. Was In Praise of Darkness approached the same way, or did the process evolve for the full-length? What does keeping it in-house do for the sound and the vision? Does the debut album sound as fierce as the classic OSDM classics?It is a consistently aggressive album, and every track is a ripper. What are the album's highlights for you?
Dave:
In Praise of Darkness was approached in an even more in-house fashion; Reece Hickey, who also joined the band on guitar early in the recording process, recorded all of the instruments, and handled all of the editing, mixing and mastering duties; a mammoth task! By keeping things in-house – and in the hands of someone who is both a long-time friend and a member of the band – it allowed us the time and space to really explore song structures and production ideas with someone who knew exactly what we were aiming for.
Thank you for the kind words, I’m glad we hit the mark with the aggression and the sound. For me, the highlights change every time I listen to it – kind of a cop-out answer, sorry! Some days, it’ll be the slower riffs, like the end of “Casca,” or “Bastard Child of a Coward God;” other days, it’ll be Reece’s solos, which I can’t hear without grinning. The heavy grooving riffs in “Immolation” and “Tentacular Invasion” always get me – the early versions of those songs were written around the same time as Insania Seorsum, so it’s exciting to see them to find a home.
On the OSDM Sound
Dave:
That’s an interesting one! I think it tends to come out in the songwriting and in the influences a band brings to the table. I think when you listen to a band and how they structure their songs – what sort of rhythms, what type of riffs, what sort of delivery their aim for – you can hear whether they’re a through-and-through death metal band, or a band playing another heavy genre that has signature aspects of death metal (the double kicks, the trem picking guitars, the extreme vocals) but doesn’t feel like death metal. There was a trend a few years back for bands, especially with younger members, to label themselves as death metal, but when you listened to their songs, it was clearly a beatdown hardcore band with Obituary riffs. That’s not a dig, I do enjoy a handful of bands who play that style, but it’s not what I’d call death metal personally.
Now to the last part – I’d like to think we’re on the side of the line that lives death metal and isn’t just wearing the uniform. We all know our death metal history, we all have our favourite death metal albums from the classic OSDM eras, and we can ramble about them at length given the chance. When we write, we know the influences we’re drawing from and can identify the flavour of death metal that has inspired it – it should come as no surprise that some of the early songs had working titles such as “Bloodbath Riff” or “Deicide Worship.” But between the four of us, there’s a pretty wide array of other musical interests – prog, grindcore, funk, industrial and trip hop to name a few – so no doubt somebody will read that and declare we’re not really death metal because I like Aphex Twin.
On Lyrics and Themes
Death metal lyrics can go in a lot of directions — gore for gore's sake, occult philosophy, misanthropy, political violence. Where do Circle of Blood's lyrics actually live, and how much thought goes into the words versus the riff being the primary vehicle?
Dave:
I find the lyrics are the hardest part, and they generally come last in the writing process. In terms of subject matter, the majority of the lyrics address a social or political issue – that’s just what feels natural to write and scream about. The lyrics on the early releases were quite direct in this regard – have a look at the Unholy Trinity lyrics and see how unambiguous they are!
We’ve evolved as a band, and I’ve gained more confidence as a vocalist and lyricist over time. When it came to In Praise of Darkness, I wanted to have a narrative arc that tied the songs together with an overarching concept, one which communicates through a Luciferian lens. If you take each song individually, they still articulate specific social or political ideas, but with more heightened, Lovecraftian language to help give the songs a more epic and expansive feeling. That said, if you can’t understand the lyrics, that’s fine too – plenty of time went into the riffs too, so hopefully they stick with you.
On Grindhead Records
Grindhead is one of the oldest and most respected extreme labels in Australia — been doing it since 2002 and running Slaughterfest for years. How did that relationship come about, and what does it mean to be releasing your debut through a label that's so embedded in Australian underground history?
Dave:
That was actually a happy accident! Jake (Choof / Ratlord / Meth Camp Death Squad / Soma Productions) handles Grindhead’s bookings in Melbourne; when Grindhead brought Anti-Sapien out from the USA in 2025, Jake invited us to open one of those shows, which I think got us on Grindhead’s radar. Once the album was done, I contacted some labels that I felt would be a good fit for our particular sound, and Ryan at Grindhead was the most enthusiastic and supportive.
It’s pretty wild to me personally that a label with Grindhead’s pedigree are releasing our album. They’ve been pushing extreme music from Australia out into the world for decades – I still have a few of their early 00’s releases on CD somewhere in my collection - and are still just as passionate and hardworking as ever.
On the Launch Night: Soma Productions and the After Party From Hell
The launch at Last Chance isn't just a gig — Soma Productions are running what they're billing as the after party from Hell, with horror classics on the projector and a DJ set from Mikey Nolan. That's a deliberate aesthetic choice to extend the record's darkness beyond the music itself. Whose idea was it to bring Soma in and shape the night that way? How important is it to you that a launch event feels like a total experience — something nasty and immersive — rather than just four bands and a bar tab? And do you think the horror film tradition and death metal share the same core impulse, that desire to look directly at the stuff most people turn away from?
Dave:
When we were putting together the idea for a launch show, we knew we wanted to do something bigger and more immersive. We were chatting with Jake about early logistics for the launch show, and he came up with the idea of putting the Last Chance projector to good use. I’ve always loved when bands go the extra distance to make a gig into more of an experience, it demonstrates a dedication to the art and a willingness to try something beyond the bread-and-dripping basics. To have the opportunity to celebrate the release of this album, and present these songs in a format where it’s something more than four guys making a racket on a stage, is pretty special to be honest.
I think the link between extreme metal fandom and horror film fandom is pretty well established at this point, and there’s probably something psychological to it. For me personally, death metal has a kinship with the horror genre, in that both are vehicles for exploring aspects of the human experience – how many different styles, how many different ideas, philosophies, ways of thinking and experiencing the world have been explored in death metal? Horror as a genre has always been uniquely placed at the vanguard of social commentary, and exploring social anxieties, in a way that most other genres often don’t have the creative freedom to explore. And at the same time, horror cinema is equally free to be sheer spectacle, devoid of any particularly deep meaning, just like death metal can be if that’s where a band wants to take it. While there’s been more of an embrace of both horror cinema and death metal in recent years, I think both also are fundamentally attractive to people who want something different from their art, and that challenges them in some way.
On the Bill: Circle of Blood, Reaper, Bog Monster, Slime Dimension
Dave:
The way we put the lineup for the launch show together – and many of the other shows we’ve booked over the years – has always been with a range of styles in mind. I love a strictly death metal show as much as the next guy, but if I’m putting a lineup together, I want something where each band stands out as something special. That’s one of the joys of mixed bills – you get to see three or four (or more) bands playing different flavours in one show, rather than hearing multiple different versions of the same thing. I learned playing in hardcore bands and booking hardcore shows, but watching six bands who are all imitating Trapped Under Ice gets pretty tiresome, even if they’re all good at it. I’d rather people go home (or on to the next adventure) feeling like they’ve had a four-course meal, rather than filling up on pancakes.
On Ambition
In Praise of Darkness is the debut album — it took you from 2019 to 2026 to get here. Where does this record need to take the band? Are you thinking globally — getting onto international touring circuits, European labels picking up the vinyl — or is the mission still fundamentally rooted in building something real here in Naarm first?
Dave:
This year, In Praise of Darkness is taking us interstate – it took until February this year for us to finally play outside our own state. We have launch shows in NSW booked for April, and are working on getting to other states throughout the year; we want to make the most of this release and get in front of as many new faces as we can. We also love Naarm, and the incredible range of bands and sounds here, so we have hometown shows in the works too.
Ideally, we want to see the album pressed and/or distributed overseas, and get our hands dirty playing overseas – Europe and Southeast Asia are high on the goal list. We’ve also started demoing ideas for our second album, so whether overseas touring happens as part of the In Praise of Darkness era, or after the second album is released, remains to be seen. Grindhead are releasing the album on CD, and we’re cooking up something special for the launch shows, so if a label overseas approached us wanting to release the album on vinyl, that’s certainly something we’d be open to.
What's the record you'd put on for someone who's never heard Circle of Blood as a "this is what we're aiming at, this is our reference point" — and what does In Praise of Darkness do that that record doesn't?
Dave:
That’s a tough one, if only because there are so many different influences at play on the record – it’s a death metal record, but there are flavours of grindcore, black metal and sludge all mixed in. If I had to pick one, I’d say Nightmares Made Flesh by Bloodbath – big call, and I know I’ll cop some flak for even mentioning our album in the same breath as the Swedish kings. We aim for songs that are catchy and hooky, but also energetic and brutally heavy, with enough dynamics and variation that it’s not just 40 minutes of being beaten with a clawhammer – and by all of those metrics, Bloodbath are the high bar against which all others are measured.
What our album does which makes it different is the fairly clear overarching narrative in the lyrics which makes listening in its entirety satisfying in a different way. Nightmares Made Flesh gives you twelve brutal, gory short stories that all stand alone, like watching a full season of “Masters of Horror”; In Praise of Darkness gives you a season arc that all builds in steps towards the climactic final episode, like a Mike Flanagan series (OK, or maybe one of the later seasons of “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”). Both are a great time, depending on where the darkness wants to take you.
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THANKS DAVE AND CHECK THEIR SOCIALS FOR ALL THE CURRENT DATES!!!
catch them at Brutefest in Melb on Sat 25/4/26 at the Tote
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