Vicious Circle (AUS) - Reflections (1986)^{Release ID: 55758}

The 1986 "Reflections" sophomore album from Melbourne hardcore punk crew Vicious Circle is another release that I picked up from the older skaters at my high school in the late 1980's & early 1990's along with several of the band's other releases. Those kids tended to gravitate towards thrash metal, crossover thrash & hardcore punk so I found myself pickup up some fairly underground shit from them but never spent much time in trying to genre tag most of it. We simply didn't give a fuck about that sort of thing back in the day & if it had good energy then I was generally up for it. Even if I maybe didn't know the technicalities of what defined those subgenres just yet, I could easily tell that the early Vicious Circle releases weren't exactly metal &, as with their 1985 debut album "The Price of Progress", I tended to toss "Reflections" aside fairly quickly in favour of the more metal releases of the time. With the discovery that other websites like RateYourMusic & Metal Archives deem Vicious Circle to be a metal band of some description though, I thought it was time to give "Reflections" another chance to win me over, this time with some more educated & experienced ears.

To be fair, the early Vicious Circle releases weren't terribly adventurous. Their sound tended to stick within the confines of the stock-standard hardcore punk model with little attempt to expand their sound being taken but 1986's "Hidden-Supervision?" single had seen the band starting to experiment a little. The A side "A Nightmare So Quick" took an acoustic guitar-driven post-punk direction while the B side "Viewing Time" qualifies as one of the very earliest Aussie crossover thrash tunes. "Reflections" saw Vicious Circle looking to continue to explore new territory while including enough of their classic hardcore material to keep their die-hard fans happy. This is perhaps its major weakness in many respects as it ends up satisfying neither camp & comes across as a little wishy washy when viewed holistically. The "Circle of the Doomed" & "Foolish Ideas" demo tapes & the debut album all offered enough aggression & youthful vitality to keep me interested throughout but "Reflections" tends to taint that strength with misguided attempts to do something fresh & new. The idea was admirable enough but I'm afraid the execution leaves a bit to be desired with front man Paul Lindsay making a meal of the tracks that required a little more nuance & subtlety.

It's an unusual album in some respects because the wins certainly outweigh the failures reasonably comfortably but the few duds included tend to be weak enough to taint the overall album. The obvious protagonist in bringing "Reflections" down is the lengthy post-punk centrepiece of a title track which is completely destroyed by Lindsay who fumbles his way through a strained & consistently pitchy performance over some quite interesting acoustic guitar work for far more time than was ever warranted. The more commercial hard rock sound of "Hope & Wait" didn't work for Vicious Circle either & there are a couple of conventional punk rock tunes included with mixed results too. "Under the Surface" simply sounds a bit flat to me while closer "Inside Operation" is actually a pretty reasonable way to finish the tracklisting. The material that offers me the most appeal can unsurprisingly be found in the more up-tempo & violent hardcore-oriented material with "Mass Confusion" being the clear highlight as far as I'm concerned.

"Reflections" isn't an awful record by any stretch of the imagination but it is a pretty forgettable one & I tend to think that it makes for better playlist material than it does an overall album. There are just too many flaws for it to work as an holistic package in my opinion & I definitely prefer "The Price of Progress" over it. In fact, I'd have to suggest that I'd take either of Vicious Circle's 1984 demo tapes over EITHER album to be honest. Is there any metal here though? Well... yeah, I'd suggest that opening track "Common Denominator" should qualify as speed metal interestingly enough. I don't think there's anything else here that sounds remotely metal though so I can't understand why anyone would be stretching the friendship far enough to drag "Reflections" into crossover thrash discussions. Give this one a miss & head back to Vicious Circle's 1984/85 releases if you're looking for some more than decent early Australian hardcore punk though gang.

For fans of early Depression, Condemned? & Permanent Damage.