Reviews

ALBUM

CIRCUIT CIRCUIT Circuit Circuit EP

The Murfreesboro-area punk scene has been burgeoning all over the place with the arrival of several pissed-off, angsty young bands running through The Crossroads Punk House (cXr), with the help of Ethan Rose’s promotional work. It’s a youthful, DIY (apply niche)-core’s fertile stomping grounds around here.

Post-hardcore/glitch-metal/math-punk group Circuit Circuit released its four track debut, Circuit Circuit – EP, in 2021, capturing local spirit in thirteen and a half minutes of pure horror. It’s pretty sick.

The core duo on the album, Michael Zirnheld (guitars, bass, drum programming, vocals) and Casey Allison (guitars), pulled together at MTSU in 2020, recording the instrumental tracks in Zirnheld’s Scarlett Commons apartment and then taking a year to craft lyrics and record at MT’s Studio C, with Kade Hernandez tapped for additional vocals. The band has been as many as fi ve members strong at its live shows.

Instrumentally, “Type Face” teases an easy 8-bit synth intro, fi rst suggesting Horse the Band’s Nintendo-core before Zirnheld and Allison startle the shit out of everyone with shrieking, rapid mini-minor-scale runs up a guitar’s neck, then metal barre chords descending until they fi nd a home in the panic of a horror movie. Blasts of Zirnheld’s thrashing drum programming keep pace with the intensity. As quick as it is, “Type Face” resembles a zealous At the DriveIn feel with the controlled chaos of Atari Teenage Riot. Cracked-out digital oscillations mark transitions between short punk movements of Circuit Circuit’s hyperactive compositions (impressive axe work, sirs).

Lyrically and vocally, Zirnheln and Hernandez scream-and-respond the age-old saga of a new generation shoving aside the old, described as if the guys translated ancient Japanese proverbs literally: Strap bodies to the ceilings / Let children swat their chests / The man is old in a room of laughs the teenage made. . . . It’s sweet.

“Solve” runs a simple Magnus Hammersmith rhythm hard out of the gate, ending its measures in single-gunshot, grunge-fuzz guitar notes and sudden digital audio pauses. A faint, dissonant instrument sounds like another song’s guitar is playing in the background.

Lyrically, it’s a song of jealousy that provides a warning to a friend about her toxically masculine prom date.

The most popular, and most tampered with, track from Circuit Circuit – EP, “Words of Mouth,” drives out another speedy, multi-directional rhythm that can play you comfortably through a meth high with R2-D2 beeps, RC car suspension stress grinds and more fancy fi nger-bending. Zirnheld punk-calls and responds, almost scream-rapping at some points. It exhibits a fast-paced metal musicality, but with that “oy! oy!” vocal styling.

“Pray” opens even more instrumentally rabid than the rest, as if Circuit Circuit has something to prove, with two high-pitched guitars that never take a breath. Pig squeals (rapidly skritched guitar strings) punctuate the end of some measures, with computerized whirls, blips, glitches and sudden-stop audio pepper throughout. Circuit Circuit changes up this track mid-stream, working in a (And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead-esque) grooving bridge which connects to a climactic fi nal-mansion-fi ght-scene-score crescendo, still keeping the rhythmic guitar style of Incubus, P.O.D. or something you’d hear in the late ’90s.

Circuit Circuit – EP is packed and so insanely composed (there’s seriously a rock opera, or a Godspeed song, compressed in there, if you stretch out any given individual instrument’s audio track in the editor), the speed of Zirnheld and Allison’s guitar work deserves a nodding appreciation for their complex composition skills, completely necessary lightning fi nger work to execute it, and the memory and attentiveness to keep up with themselves.

Circuit Circuit’s Circuit Circuit – EP can be found streaming at circuitcircuitcircuit. bandcamp.com.

— BRYCE HARMON

MOVIE

SCREAM (2022)

DIRECTORS Matt Bettinelli-Olpin

and Tyler Gillett

STARRING Neve Campbell,

Courteney Cox, David Arquette

RATED R

Scream (2022) claims to be a return to, and reboot of, Scream (1996), when in theory and practice it is little more than Scream 5. Scream (1996) became a huge hit due to its charming, fi lm savvy characters who found themselves unable to avoid the very clichés they mocked. It was both a critique and an exemplar of the slasher genre, but most importantly, it was smart and it was fun. Scream (2022) on the other hand, fi nds itself mired down in the mythos of itself, sparing little time for real horror fi lms, and focusing instead on the meta franchise within the franchise, Stab, like some horror ouroboros, an infi nity loop where we watch Scream about characters who watch Stab about characters who watch Stab about characters who watch . . .

The fi lm opens with the classic (tired?) vignette: a teenage girl is home alone and gets a call from a stranger. It’s not mentioned enough how Scream (1996) was the fi rst movie to explore the horror of cell phones. It was no longer “the call is coming from inside the house,” but “the call could be coming from anywhere.” Technology not only made the teen victims smarter, but the killer smarter and scarier too. The only difference in the opening scene in Scream (2022) is that the teen doesn’t like slashers —she prefers what the fi lm mockingly refers to as “elevated” horror—and that she can lock her doors with a phone app. Of course, the killer, berobed in the same Ghostface costume of the previous four fi lms, has hacked the smart house to be able to control the locks too. Taking the Scream franchise into the 21st century would seem the logical next step, but this opening scene is the only use of such technology, and it’s never explored further. Her house doesn’t even have a doorbell camera for cryin’ out loud.

Instead, the killer uses the cell phone like, well, a phone. Scream 4 (2011) toyed with the nascent promise of live-streaming and the proliferation of web and security cams more and better than this movie. In a misguided attempt to get back to its roots (again, Scream 4 already did all of this), Scream (2022) goes back to where it all began, Woodsboro (see Scream 4) and introduces a new crop of young fodder with varying degrees of charisma (see Scream 4) who all have laughable relationships to the characters in the original Scream (1996), while also bringing back the original three: Sydney, Dewey and Gale (see Scream 4).

What results is a dour, overstuffed who’s-doin’-it that doesn’t give any of its characters enough time to rouse or disperse suspicion. What little time it does give our gen Z’ers is spent on them discussing the Stab sequels and all but explaining why the very movie you are watching is or is not a good idea, much like The Matrix Resurrections did, giving the fi lm a semblance of self-awareness which the fi lmmakers believe is justifi cation enough to make the movie (it isn’t). Calling out all the possible critiques that the internet could say about your fi lm does not make your fi lm immune to those critiques. For all the fi lm’s supposed cleverness, it’s not very smart. But it’s biggest crime, what the fi lmmakers forgot amidst all their reddit-savvy gotchas, is that Scream (2022) just isn’t that fun. — JAY SPIGHT