Summoner’s Circle is a six-piece band of dark brooding personalities, channeling their darker, character selves into their music, creating music for the horror appreciating mind and outer cosmos. Live they’re a loud, ominous act, willing to sacrifice anything, moving, crawling or otherwise for a memorable evening. The Knoxville sons and daughters have paved their way changing and experimenting to get to the Chaos Vector. A H.P. Lovecraft inspired story told through extreme metal decibels.
They’ve done their own version of Lovecraft tale The Case of Charles Dexter Ward helmed by the narrative inner voice of vocalist Blind. This newest offering adds to 2019’s Become None LP, and the First Summoning EP. The original, indie release of Become None was called Tome and now only available through the band.
Vector weaves a world-destroying dark web of macabre magic when a man dabbling in the occult, gets too deep and entangled with forces way above his head and comprehension. It’s a story of ancient evil and vengeance by the old gods upon an unsuspecting modern world. An album musically and conceptually bigger and heavier than previous work considered a collective evolution by band members. A concept story told through lyrics and music about the diabolically sinister and unknown. With cover art by French artist Yoann Lossel.
The Circle bring forth six dark-cloaked individuals seduced by theatrical metal-blending elements of doom, death, black and progressive, forged into ‘Epic Metal.’ As Azra, Blind, Gog, Hex, Invictus and Y’Takt are the epic creators and players of this unique musical communion.
Concerning his stage name, guitarist Gog says it’s biblical. “Gog’s the leader of the wretched and outcasts, leads an uprising against Christianity, Old Testament stuff. I didn’t choose the name it was given. Our original keyboardist came up with that and myself and original guitar player were Gog and Magog from the bible. Old Testament, a god that liked to smite things, it’s some interesting reading for sure.”
Every tune’s a heavy incantation ritual spellbinding and mesmerizing the audience. Lyrics are inspired by horror, laying down a cosmic atmospheric lore, echoing against the murky, dark mirrored reflection.
To date they’ve received hails and praise from members of Pentagram, Place of Skulls, No Clean Singing, Metal Temple, and 94.3 WNFZ.
They’re also one of the few extreme metal bands with a promo pack including interests in the wet underworld of aquariums and caged predator-heavy zoos. “We’re all animal lovers,” Gog says. As metal as Blind is, he turns into a kid when around a cute critter.” When asked for ’interesting facts,’ they went the cute/honest route vs. graveyard strolls, collecting dead flowers or haunted location exploring.
Every horror fan knows the saw is family but in this brood so is the band. They’re bonded by blood and marriage, ceremonial, ritualistic or otherwise. A family affair performing under the dark skies by open flames as Blind is legally bonded to Gog’s daughter. “They were dating at that time.” Hopefully it stays nice and peaceful. “I believe it will. Seems like a good situation.” After you watch the videos, one might be intrigued or hard pressed to guess what their idea of romance is and how he popped the question.
The original concept musically and visually has mostly stayed the same. “The only thing that changed was, we started out more doom metal; more blackened sound and prog. We wanted to combine a lot of different styles. We wanted to be theatrical. The band was named after a riff from the original guitarist. He said, we’ll call that one Summoner’s Circle and I looked at him. No, let’s call the ‘band’ Summoner’s Circle and it filled our imaginations. We’ll make it crazy and mystical.” Through brainstorming they created a roadmap battle plan to storm the path ahead, leaving bleeding eyes and buzzing eardrums in their wake.
Theatrics have included robes, blindfolds, on stage sacrifices and eye stigmata makeup. “We knew we’d do some kind of face paint, corpse paint and blind effect. Blind said, I’m gonna wear the blindfold and I said, we’re kind of a cult. The stripe on our face represents us being with him as leader of the cult. We weren’t sure at the beginning what the look would be but knew it would have makeup and corpse paint.”
They’ve had a bloody, diabolical tale to tell with each release whether by song or overall concept. Chaos Vector is their most ambitious work to date.
Blind’s love of The Case of Charles Dexter Ward inspired the band to record companion music and if you read or already know it, you know, only death metal could tell this daring, damning narrative. “We’re big cosmic horror fans, especially H.P. Lovecraft. Blind’s had the story in his head for years wanting to write and tell with the main character of Joseph Alexander Winston.. His favorite Lovecraft story is Dexter Ward. We were gonna take the story in his mind and work it so the songs told the story.”
It’s a story of blood lust, occult sacrifice and stuff maybe even too evil for the dead, historically way before any cinematic necropages were opened in the woods.
Gog says Ward’s and Winston’s motivation’s to try and conjure supernatural forces are like anyone else dabbling in the occult. “Things they don’t understand getting too deep over their head before they know it. They’re not in control anymore with forces beyond manipulating the situation. He becomes this Vector of Chaos entering this realm.”
It’s a really tragic, messed up story, he never achieves his goal, “No, he never does and eventually a relative in the distant future ends up paying the consequences.”
The first video, title track, “Chaos Vector” lyrically and in storyline has Ward/Winston committed to an asylum, laughed at by other inmates for his maniacal ramblings experiencing his downward spiral into madness.
They stumbled upon a perfect location to film such a video. “A place in Tennessee called the Fortress of Faith, which was interesting and ironic. There was this guy that apparently, God or Jesus told him to build this castle. He lives in the middle of nowhere and started constructing, for 25 years. He’s building it piece by piece, by himself with no help. It’s creepy and weird. We went out there one day after hearing about it. A friend of ours said you really should shoot a video out there.”
It was an ideal setting for the video’s visuals, “It was perfect. The atmosphere, the setting, the weirdness of the entire castle, it was great. The guy’s actually really nice. It was pretty funny.”
The owner tells the story of the band that came and shot a video there. Grog says the man’s reaction was amusing. “I think they were Satanists, he said. It’s funny, he’s a good dude. We made a donation to his cause for building so no harm done.” The structure has no roof, yet. Band members were taken in certain locations to film, though the majority is shot outside with the exterior lit up for spooky effect as fires burn outside while they played.
The shoot was a story of survival itself, “It was 13 degrees that night.” Freezing temperatures zapped the batteries in their ear-monitors to play along to the track. The construction heater they brought didn’t work. “Fortunately we wore robes and everything, there were extra layers on. We stood in front of this gas generator used to power everything because there’s no electricity out there. We’re dying of carbon monoxide poisoning while filming. It was a long evening, a lot of fun but man it was cold. You can see the condensation coming out as Blind’s singing. You can see the cold air smoke out of his mouth. It’s pretty cool.”
The lady spell-casting, fire dancing by the flames was a friend Chris Walker, a dancer/performer/actress. “Super talented lady, we asked her, we wanted to do something with this weird ritual dance. We asked her to come, she nailed it. It’s done for atmosphere. A lot of tribal rituals have had dancing and things like that; we wanted to incorporate that into it. She’s conjuring things, beckoning the old ones to come forth.” They also had help from other musicians in the local metal scene.
A video for “Apostacy” was recently released, showing the group lurking around a rock quarry, and the aftermath of a sacrifice, surrounded by ceremonial images and objects. It’s one of the more graphic tunes on the record, regarding the storyline. It’s not a full visual representation of the song rather referencing parts of the narrative when the main character’s forced to extract this thing from a pregnant woman’s belly as she’s hanging inverted on a cross. Gog said it’ll get the message across, and not for the timid.
In that universe, there’s no heaven or hell, no morning star as referenced in “Of Black Horizons.” “The King in Yellow’s a Lovecraftian reference to one of the deities,” Gog says.
Blind took inspiration for “The Vessel” from The Lesser Key of Solomon book about him capturing 77 demons in this urn.
The chaos opens with “The Message” incorporating several sounds from outer space to deep under the sea, including audio from Voyager. “It’s recording sounds from Jupiter as well. The sounds it captured from Saturn were really eerie. I heard those a long time ago and always been in the back of my mind. I wanted to incorporate for creepy effect, like in a horror movie. There’s even an alligator bellow towards the end. This message is us starting the process of the old gods to come back and wreak havoc on this universe.”
Blind does whispering on “Vessel.” Besides the female vocals he does all voices. “Live we have Hex and Y’Takt with backing vocals but in the studio he does all vocals.”
Lyrically in the “Apostacy,” “He’s been forced to do this and doesn’t know how to back out. He has nothing to do but resort to well, trying to do what they want.”
Gog says, the main character kills himself in a moment of utter desperation in hopes it will send the gods back to the other side. This doesn’t matter and in doing so damns all future generations of his family to the curse he started.
“Terminus Egress” features Gone In April vocalist Julie Bellanger Roy. “She plays in the Knoxville symphony orchestra, in addition to playing violin and vocals for Gone In April. We knew we wanted to do some classical or operational style vocals in that song. She laid down some violin tracks as well.”
It’s the most different track on the album, “I think it’s the most ambitious thing we’ve done musically, a bit of a departure. Sort of touching into all these influences we have.”
“The Beyond” closes the story going Star Trek and Star Wars combined, maybe even a bit Event Horizon with people floating in space into other dimensions, and sucked into black holes. There’s no horror like cosmic horror.
As a whole the records about evolution, in sound, lyrics and concepts, “If you listen to any band that stays around awhile, their sound evolves over time. Look at Priest. Where Judas Priest started and where they are now, evolved in lots of different directions. We’ve gotten a little heavier. We also have new members and with that the advantage of things that certain people do and skill sets they have. Our drummer is just crazy good and super fast feet. He’s very technical, we wanted to take advantage of that and write more to that style now.”
The Six refers to them in the story. “We are messengers and harbinger of what’s to come. We make an appearance in the story and referenced as The Six. We each have a role to play.” They wrote about what interested them musically trying to avoid familiar and similar formulas. “I always had a knack for writing something and saying, nah, 42 bands have done that before so what can I do to make it different.” He’s always pushing himself for something different and/or weird. “I don’t really try and write things in different time signatures but things come out. I enjoy doing that.”
One thing about Lovecraft storytelling is that the more you know, basically, just leads to insanity. Your brain can’t handle the actual truth the way things really are. It ends in madness.” Similar to the reality of Lord of Illusions, though a horror movie never has the character ‘not’ open the book; avoid the basement, cellar or ignore the strange noise.
The video for “Become None” begins much differently then it ends. “It’s a long piece but we had fun making it.”
Full nudity is shown late in the footage, while Gog clarifies it has a parental warning on it, saying you must be 18 to view. “It’s artistic; there are movies on YouTube with nudity as well. We look at it like that.”
The house and library the main character explores has a very Anton LaVey vibe. “I’m not sure if that’s intentional or not. A friend of ours has this creepy old farmhouse and she collects a lot of interesting (things). We thought the father character that’d passed away would’ve lived in a place like that. She went to the house to go through things and clean up. That ended up being the perfect setup.” Again, don’t open books with occult symbols and pages with cryptic skeletal figures and illustrations of suffering.
They had four fire-trucks come out during the shoot. “The fog machine we used set the firm alarm off. It was crazy.”
The sacrificial basement scene was very hot, “We shot in June. We were sweating like mad. That was shot in the basement of a music venue that’s no longer around. They just closed. They sold it and there’s still the blood and pentagram magic circle drawn in the basement there.” Sure to have been a lovely surprise for new owners.
Live, sacrificing is part of what they do. “We’ll continue to do that, we’re always looking to add more things. Be bigger and better than before. When you do theatrics you have to change things up from time to time like everything else or people say, yeah, I saw that last week.”
They had a CD release show in August in Knoxville. Though the rest of the year looks sketchy depending on how things go down. “Lots of venues are cancelling and shutting back down. This Delta variant got everyone messed up again. It’s real and hard for all performers.” They lost two national tour opportunities because of Covid.
Gog is pro-vax and proof of negative test result, “Personally, I don’t mind. If that’s what allows us to get out there and do it and allows me, as a fan to see bands I love, I’m ok with it. There are people who think a lot differently. I think it’s a necessity if we don’t wanna have another complete shutdown. We all got vaxed, especially if we wanted to go to Europe or outside the country, in the future. We’d need it. As a band, we wanna do what we can to keep people healthy. We want to be the only ones sacrificing.”
Gog jokes they’ve never intentionally played shows without a crowd but have had shows where very few people showed up. Though he says, watching sports with no crowd was weird. “I’m one of those guys that get’s energy from the crowd. It’s not that easy to get yourself hyped into that mentally. Fortunately for us getting ready, putting on the makeup and everything helps get me in that mindset. It does that for all of us, like a Zen thing, helping us transform from daily people, our avatars into The Summoner’s escaping into that world.
They’ll go wherever. “Our first big shows were on the Children of Bodom tour. We went to Canada and Eastern U.S., it was amazing. We had 13 dates, the first of three bands. We were treated great. I can’t say enough about how awesome and what a great experience it was playing with not only Children of Bodom but what ended up being their last tour. Along with Swallow the Sun and Wolfheart. We were the only U.S. band, three Finnish bands. We got along with everybody. We did really well, everything went over, it was a big opportunity and we made the most of it.”
They have a pretty strong local/regional following, though they’re not as popular in the Bible Belt for some odd reason. “Some people are put off by it, scared by it. We were banned from a venue for a particular time. We’re not banned anymore. They realized its theatrics. Did you ever watch Alice Cooper when you were a kid? They said, well yeah, I loved Alice Cooper. You just have to put up with it but it’s worth it. We WANT protesters! More coverage for us, that’s a good thing.”
Though right now, most people in the U.S. and world would probably welcome back the satanic panic with open arms over the satanic pandemic.
Each shows different but there will always be a sacrifice on stage. “We mix it up, sometimes at the beginning or middle. We’ll just have to see what comes out. We’re not sure how many shows we’re gonna have. Time will tell. Sacrifice happens with a dagger, you can see some videos, watch the “Worm Tunnel” video. It was shot live during the Bodom tour. You’ll see one of the sacrifices. There’s a knife prop with blood coming out of it. We consider ourselves all ages but there’s a lot of blood.”
There might be some PG-13 content lyrically but there’s really nothing you won’t see in a PG-13 movie or Netflix.
New materials being worked on, “We’re writing and doing some scratch track recording, getting new tracks ready. We’re thinking about an EP next. We’ve got three or four songs we’re working on and progress is going well. It’ll be thematic and its own thing. Don’t wanna go into detail, nothings set in stone. There’s definitely a theme.”
They’ve already built an impressive touring resume. “If you wanna talk bucket list bands, Dimmu Borgir or Opeth for us would be it. We played with GWAR which was amazing. We’d love to go out with them again. Anyone, we just wanna play and do our thing. We’re excited to get out there. We have management working on possibilities for next year. Gone in April, we’ve been talking about dates with them. Pretty sure that’s gonna happen in some way.”
“We’re really thrilled with this record and happy it’s out. We had to sit on it for awhile. Trying to figure out what was gonna happen with all the Covid stuff so we’re excited to get it out there and think it’s gonna do real well for us.”
