CIRKUS

I overlooked this album for a great number of years. Part of this was because, like many listeners, I couldn't help but note the very, very great debt that Sinkadus owed Anglagard when it came to the sound of their debut album, Aurum Nostrum, and the soundalike approach caused me to overlook some of the better qualities of that album, which has only grown on me after a great many listens. Surely the followup would be much the same, I assumed - or, failing that, a fumbling attempt to update their sound.

I could not have been more wrong. On Cirkus, Sinkadus truly come into their own sound - still rooted in 1970s prog, still with an approach not dissimilar to that of Anglagard or Landberk, but with a particular mood and atmosphere and aesthetic that is all their own. There's a haunting, foreboding quality to much of the material here, and a certain broadening of the prog influences they take on board; there's some segments, for instance, which genuinely wouldn't be out of place playing on the soundtrack of some forgotten 1970s giallo movie out of Italy.

Whilst the melancholy of Aurum Nostrum overlaps somewhat with the melancholy that Anglagard or Landberk have managed to capture in some of their own releases, nothing from that Swedish prog scene is quite as spine-chilling as the dread-inducing material here - not even the Morte Macabre supergroup project which covered all those Italian prog horror soundtrack classics from back in the day.

Come back, Sinkadus: all is forgiven. Whilst their debut may have had a mixed reception (perhaps with some small justification), Cirkus is an outright overlooked classic which doesn't deserve to languish in obscurity - nor do Sinkadus deserve to do the same. As I understand it, they've never formally announced a breakup, so perhaps we can hold out hope that one day this haunted circus will come back to down...