Ah. The ever rare Circle Takes The Square and pg. 99 split, one of those amazingly great collaborations that were done in the infancy of one band and the high point of another. Circle Takes The Square recently has garnered a lot of attention do to their highly acclaimed release “As the Roots Undo” on Robotic Empire records, where as pg. 99 was always one of the more different hardcore bands during the late ‘90s. Both are passionate bands who try their hardest to represent pure emotion throughout all of their songs.
The CTTS side of this split is very interesting. You can really tell that it is the bridge between their more typical demo and the experimenting on their first LP. The first song “Patchwork Neurology” is a spazzy yet contained, and begins with one of CTTS’s chantings. It’s an interesting song that in the middle dissolves into off key cowbell based craziness. The second song by CTTS is “We're Sustained By The Corpse of a Fallen Constellation” which can be heard on their myspace page. It’s got a very post hardcore feel and is one of the lightest songs they have done. Both of these songs touch on some of the epic feel that will be implemented on CTTS’s future release “As the Roots Undo” as well as have some of the more typical ideas that were found on the demo. Overall they are two fine examples of Circle Takes The Square and their mission in the hardcore scene.
Pg. 99’s final officially released recordings starts off with “Goodbye Face” which is their typical screamo self. They don’t implement much of their two vocalists in the song but you can hear them singing the same Around 1:34 we get hit with the guitar riff that will be played for the next three minutes. The band changes the tempo of it and then finally the rest of the instruments cut out and we are left with the haunting riff repeated for close to a minute. “Calm Song” is anything but what it says; it’s a quick hard rocking scream fest about crashing planes.
Overall this is a good split to download, but really it is only a nostalgic thing if you want to buy it. The first pressing was only 100, so it costs 20 dollars and upwards-on Ebay and it’s only 4 tracks so it’s a major rip-off. The CTTS tracks in my opinion are much better than the Pg. 99 tracks, because they are so unique from the rest of their repertoire, where as the Pg. 99 tracks seem like they could’ve fit on one of their earlier releases. I recommend this for anyone that is a fan of either of the bands, but beyond that I think it’s not anything special.
