Hailing from St Petersburg, Russia, Tardigrade Inferno are set to be trailblazers as they continue to develop their unique sound they’ve called dark cabaret metal. Their second album, Burn The Circus has all the makings of a cult classic that is just bizarre enough to appeal to even the most snobby of metal elitists as well as the most casual newcomers to the genre.
Tardigrade Inferno prominently features keyboards which add this old-timey Vaudeville aesthetic to the chugging guitar work. The first track ‘Ringmaster Has To Die’ is probably the most chaotic as you enter this wild and maddening big top. Everything seems to hit at once from the breakneck double bass drumming, the wacky synth work, the crushing guitar work and the most bizarre vocals I’ve heard in a very long time.
‘Clockwork God’ is a crushing Meshuggah-style track that would fit perfectly on the Hazbin Hotel soundtrack. It’s a glorious winding nightmare of ever-shifting synths and theatrical vocal stylings from Darya Pavlovich. Tracks like ‘Rats’ and ‘Tick Tock’ are so camp and whimsical that you could easily be tricked into believing they’ve come from some obscure theatre production concocted by some bizarre travelling theatre troupe.
Most of the album presents as light-hearted and campy but there are heavy and dark elements like ‘Little Princess’ which makes use of Darya’s childlike voice – which makes for a really unsettling atmosphere tied in with the stomping drumming of Drew and Viktor Posohkin’s haunting synths.
The latter half of the album is where Burn The Circus really shines: The metal dance floor tracks like ‘Splinter In My Eye’ and ‘Nailed To The Ferris Wheel’ are so much fun and are sure to make a big impression once this cavalcade of weirdness inevitably breaks into the metal mainstream.
The album ends with ‘Burn The Circus,’ a downright creepy ballad about a circus acrobat falling in love with a clown. It’s strange to have a spoiler warning for a 4-minute long song but it genuinely is unsettling and invokes images of Tod Browning’s ‘Freaks’. It’s a sad tale that speaks to how emotive Tardigrade Inferno can be, they understand how to tell stories in an effective and engaging manner.
It’s hard to make something this strange sound appealing but Burn The Circus is definitely worth your time. Tardigrade Inferno is set to become the next step in the theatre kid-to-metalhead pipeline once they inevitably start to catch fire. It’s only a matter before the train arrives…
