MERONIA

I saw two early gigs of Circle in the early nineties. In the first one they had police car emergency lights circling round and strobo lights. The second one there was naked man standing sideways, in the middle of gig he sat down. Both gigs were really great shows, but music was really chaotic & noisy and I believed I would not like their e.p:s that had just come out. Then in my one friends place she put this album on, but soon decided to change some more cheerful album. I heard little bit of "Colere" and my interest woke, because it was absolutely opposite of the music in those gigs. Then few years later I saw videos of their "Valerian" and "Back To Pori" in the Oulu town video festival and thought I really must listen them more. But many years passed and lots of interesting music came to my way and I became Circle-fan just a few years ago.

If "Meronia" is a planet as "Kobaia" is in Magma´s world, it´s very gloomy place. The whole Meronia album is just very dark and cold, the Meronian-language singing with it´s very faraway and cold sounding also took everything away from all the warm. My favourites in this album are the title-song, already mentioned "Colere", "Staalo" and the final "Espirites". These all and also some other songs reminds me the early albums of the Cure. In Meronia Circle is closest to the indie-rock scene of that time, although there are already recognized Circle musical styles. Their "krautrock" based theme repetation is already in their first album, but cause their musical ideas are poorer, the one gets easily little bit bored listening the whole album through. Also you easily hear they weren´t then as skillful players as they were later.

So Meronia is like many bands first albums little bit adolescent. I haven´t heard their first e.p:s, but I believe mostly Meronia is musically in the same direction, on the other hand you can hear there seeds what is coming. Anyway album deserves three stars just it´s very sympathetic young men energy.