As the Roots Undo | ||||
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Studio album by | ||||
Released | January 6, 2004 | |||
Recorded | May 2003 | |||
Studio | Rockstudio (Brunswick, Georgia) | |||
Genre | Screamo, [1] grindcore, post-rock | |||
Length | 44:01 | |||
Label | Robotic Empire HyperRealist | |||
Circle Takes the Square chronology | ||||
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Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
Chronicles of Chaos | 9.5/10 [2] |
Ox-Fanzine | 8/10 [3] |
Punknews.org | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Sputnikmusic | ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Stylus | 6/10 [6] |
As the Roots Undo is the debut studio album by screamo band Circle Takes the Square in 2004. It was released on CD and vinyl by the Robotic Empire and HyperRealist labels respectively. The album would later see a repress on the LP format in 2014 through GatePost Recordings
The album is a contender for the most celebrated screamo record. Noisey called it "one of the most critically acclaimed cult classics in modern hardcore" which has "long garnered praise from both the press and fans alike for its forward-thinking blend of 90s screamo, fractured grindcore, and experimental post-rock." [7] On June 11, 2010, Sputnikmusic placed it at number 3 on its list of the 100 best album of the decade. [8]
The CD is packaged in a four-fold flap with artwork along each side; the artwork was done by band member Drew Speziale.
When asked about his influences at the time of writing As the Roots Undo, Drew Speziale referred to bands that were innovating punk and hardcore through incorporating a lot of melody, including their tour-mates Majority Rule, Pg. 99 and City of Caterpillar and bands who had "really dark melodies going on underneath [an] overtly pretty brutal sound" such as Orchid and His Hero Is Gone, besides less intense artists such as Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Modest Mouse and Built to Spill. [7]
All tracks are written by Circle Takes the Square
No. | Title | Length |
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1. | "Intro" | 0:55 |
2. | "Same Shade as Concrete" | 4:28 |
3. | "Crowquill" | 2:44 |
4. | "In the Nervous Light of Sunday" | 6:17 |
5. | "Interview at the Ruins" | 5:09 |
6. | "Non Objective Portrait of Karma" | 6:46 |
7. | "Kill the Switch" | 9:33 |
8. | "A Crater to Cough In" | 8:13 |
Emo is a music genre characterized by emotional, often confessional lyrics. It emerged as a style of hardcore punk and post-hardcore from the mid-1980s Washington, D.C. hardcore scene, where it was known as emotional hardcore or emocore. The bands Rites of Spring and Embrace, among others, pioneered the genre. In the early-to-mid 1990s, emo was adopted and reinvented by alternative rock, indie rock, punk rock, and pop-punk bands, including Sunny Day Real Estate, Jawbreaker, Cap'n Jazz, and Jimmy Eat World. By the mid-1990s, Braid, the Promise Ring, and the Get Up Kids emerged from Midwest emo, and several independent record labels began to specialize in the genre. Meanwhile, screamo, a more aggressive style of emo using screamed vocals, also emerged, pioneered by the San Diego bands Heroin and Antioch Arrow. Screamo achieved mainstream success in the 2000s with bands like Hawthorne Heights, Silverstein, Story of the Year, Thursday, the Used, and Underoath.
Screamo is an aggressive subgenre of emo that emerged in the early 1990s and emphasizes "willfully experimental dissonance and dynamics". San Diego-based bands Heroin and Antioch Arrow pioneered the genre in the early 1990s, and it was developed in the late 1990s mainly by bands from the East Coast of the United States such as Pg. 99, Orchid, Saetia, and I Hate Myself. Screamo is strongly influenced by hardcore punk and characterized by the use of screamed vocals. Lyrical themes usually include emotional pain, death, romance, and human rights. The term "screamo" has frequently been mistaken as referring to any music with screaming.
Circle Takes the Square is an American screamo band from Savannah, Georgia. It is composed of founding members Drew Speziale and Kathleen Stubelek, as well as Caleb Collins. Their debut release was a 6-track self-titled EP released in 2001, followed by a 7" split with Pg. 99 in 2002. In 2004, they released their debut studio album As the Roots Undo on Robotic Empire, which released the CD, and HyperRealist Records, which released the gatefold LP. The album gained them considerable acclaim and the band toured extensively to promote it during the year. This included a six-week east coast tour that took the band into Canada for the first time, supported by Arkata and Raise Them And Eat Them. The band's second album, Decompositions: Volume Number One, was released after an 8-year silence on December 21, 2012, as a digital download; physical editions of the album were released in April 2013.
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Decompositions: Volume Number One is the second studio album by American band Circle Takes the Square. The album was released digitally on December 21, 2012 through Gatepost Recordings. Decompositions: Volume Number One is the first studio album released from Circle Takes the Square since 2004's As the Roots Undo.
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