CIRCLE OF LIFE LYRICS FULL
If these albums are the holy apex of the pyramid, then the supporting layers come in the form of numerous side projects, with the output on Lehtisalo's Ektro label and its sublabels Full Contact and Ruton Music stretching the base further out.
They have recorded folk, soft rock, avant garde, punk, post rock, chugging Kraut-ish jams, jazzy numbers and whatever other subgenres and distortions of rock and metal you can think of, across more than 50 albums since the mid-90s. Metal is rather more like their native language than any sort of genre they're committed to. They've called themselves pioneers of the NWOFHM (New Wave Of Finnish Heavy Metal) but it's debatable whether they're a metal band at all. Their line-up has shifted over the years but this is the least of a fan's worries when they rarely stick to the same genre from one album to the next.
They are a band that defiantly prod the rock band template, doing the work to discover what it still offers in the 21st century, and asking how it can be extended or pulled apart without becoming something else entirely. What Circle offer is a whole (Finnish) universe a spandex-clad safe place. It often feels as if they want to test how un-Circle they can become before it all explodes in a puff of dry ice, but in doing this, only ever become more Circle than before. (It is much easier to move on stage in spandex than jeans, Lehtisalo says.) Then there are the attempts to essentially ditch their own identity: Circle side project Pharaoh Overlord once released an album called Circle at the same time as Circle released an album called Pharaoh Overlord Circle once loaned out their name to a band called Falcon for a year, borrowing theirs and making an album, before swapping back at the end of a year-long contract. Secondly, they're all middle-aged men in spandex, which should pose its own issues for band and audience combined, but over the years it has become a celebratory signature outfit and a liberating sartorial marker that gives them all body confidence and a weirdly convincing rock god flair. Firstly, they already have a lead singer in bandy-legged Delphic warbler Mika Rättö, but luckily he plays keys too and is fine with the reshuffle (his cosmic crooning can still be heard on Henki).
Circle typically do things that would cause other bands a shit storm of problems, but they just call it being in Circle.