Circle Takes the Square is an American screamo band from Savannah, Georgia. It is composed of founding members Drew Speziale and Kathleen Stubelek, as well as Caleb Collins. Their debut release was a 6-track self-titled EP released in 2001, followed by a 7" split with Pg. 99 in 2002. In 2004, they released their debut studio album As the Roots Undo on Robotic Empire, which released the CD, and HyperRealist Records, which released the gatefold LP. The album gained them considerable acclaim and the band toured extensively to promote it during the year. This included a six-week east coast tour that took the band into Canada for the first time, supported by Arkata and Raise Them And Eat Them.[2] The band's second album, Decompositions: Volume Number One, was released after an 8-year silence on December 21, 2012, as a digital download; physical editions of the album were released in April 2013.
Ben Sailer of Noisey wrote that As the Roots Undo, which Drew Speziale describes as "just a punk rock record from 2004", has long garnered praise from both the press and fans alike for its forward-thinking blend of 90s screamo, fractured grindcore, and experimentalpost-rock.[3]Metal Injection described their style as a "blend of progressive experimentation and DIYhardcore, metal, and noise [...] characterized by a natural fusion of the off-the-wall structures of grindcore and the sweeping guitar dynamics of post-punk".[4] The band themselves have described the sound as "...a punk rock band with reverence for the Mystery."[5]
^Gotich, Lars (August 17, 2011). "pg. 99: A Document Revisited". NPR. Retrieved December 30, 2011. [...]there's a renewed interest in the emotional post-hardcore that bands like pg. 99, Orchid, Circle Takes the Square and Majority Rule pioneered, mostly by an audience that was far too young to hear it the first time around.
