On 2019’s Blood Year, post-rock trio Russian Circles made some of the heaviest music of their lives. However, behind the scenes, guitarist Mike Sullivan was struggling to play through chronic hand pain. He tells Prog about his recovery – and how new album Gnosis contains his band’s loudest and most intricate work to date.

Words: Matt Mills

Russian Circles, L-R: Dave Turncrantz, Mike Sullivan, Brian Cook.

Images: Andrea Petrovic˘ová

From the outside looking in, Russian Circles’ seventh studio album, Blood Year, was a rapturous moment. The trio had spent 15 years at the pinnacle of the post-rock genre by the time it came out in August 2019, and it both honoured their time-tested conventions – looping riffs, fragile melodies, crescendoing song structures – and pushed them into new realms of angular prog metal. Plus, they played ArcTanGent and toured countries as far flung as Japan off the back of it.

For any other band, Blood Year would be a symbol of triumph. However, guitarist Mike Sullivan is far from jubilant when reflecting on it.

“It’s not my favourite record of ours,” he tells Prog over Zoom. “I don’t know if I should say that. Usually, when you release a record, you’re excited about certain songs, but I wasn’t mentally and physically in as good a shape as I am now. The minute we handed that continued further with a March European tour, but then the pandemic killed touring for almost 18 months. The guitarist tried to figure out the root cause of his pain during that time.