Friday Full-Length: Black Skies, Circadian Meditations
Posted in Bootleg Theater on August 29th, 2025 by JJ KoczanCircadian Meditations was released in November 2013, which in hindsight feels part of a generational wave of bands and albums that set new parameters for what progressivism means in heavy music. For Carrboro, North Carolina, three-piece Black Skies, it was their second album, comprising six songs that run a still-deceptively-tidy 37 minutes in answer to their debut, 2011’s On the Wings of Time (discussed here), and prior short releases, 2008’s Hexagon and 2007’s self-titled EPs.
It wasn’t the last release the band would have, but it was the last full-length they’d do, and by the time it came out, they had already played their last show. I wrote a fair bit about them at the time, between the video for “Celestial Coronation”, an actual album review and various other hypings, because I thought the band had something to offer distinct from the post-Mastodonic hordes of angular riffers. Their sound wasn’t looking to dominate or oppress. While heavy as any of the rest and influenced by the crunch of the time — one can certainly hear a Kylesa influence in the interplay of bassist Michelle Temple and guitarist Kevin Clark‘s vocals on “Celestial Coronation” and amid the willful slog conveyed in nine-minute closer “The Dusk/Invisible Figures,” while Temple‘s patterning on bookending 10-minute opener “Lifeblood” seems to have more in common with Acid King — there was never any pretense from Black Skies.
Temple and Clark (the latter also did the album art and handled synth) were founding members and worked with a couple of drummers along the way. John Crouch plays on Circadian Meditations, and given the thud of “The Dusk/Invisible Figures,” the careening twists of the hooky four-minute “Black C,” let alone the tambourine adding playful movement to the push of the latter and the Kyle Spence (Harvey Milk) production that makes the snare sound no less thick than the bass, the amalgam of elements captured throughout is something special and unique in the lifetime of the band.
That span of eight years, from 2005-2013, is now dwarfed by the 12 years it’s been since Circadian Meditations first came out, and I guess that forces a bit of perspective. The brain’s filter makes it seem like simpler times, and the pastoralia in the two-minute guitar-led instrumental “The Dawn” — expressive like Pelican, but slower and aligned around measure-starts with crashes that feel duly punctuating. I suppose it’s a preface for the closer as well, which was something I don’t think I appreciated at the time. It turns out in revisiting that there’s a lot in these songs that remains vibrant and in their own place among the spheres of heavy rock then and now. I’d put Black Skies in league with onetime West Coast tourmates Caltrop among underrated neo-Southern heavy acts of the day, and that’s not a grouping I make lightly if you know how I feel about those Caltrop records.
The character of Circadian Meditations, as evidenced in the instrumental dynamic throughout as well as the vocal arrangements, the expressiveness of the songs — and
yeah, I’d include the penultimate instrumental “Time Lord” in that — and the outward looseness they convey remains its own, and while I’ve dropped a few names above already, it’s worth emphasizing that while Black Skies were undoubtedly inspired by what had come before them, what they made from that inspiration belonged and belongs to them alone.
As a result of the many horrors of this day — today, this week, month, year; ‘right now’ in time and place — I have been looking around me and trying to find reasons to be proud to be American. I feel disgusted when I see the naked corruption all around, from the highest of political offices to the three cops who live near me who all happen to be somehow able to afford Corvettes. This culture of war, rampant capitalist exploitation, rising costs and declining services, bigoted perspectives mainstreamed; if there was ever an optimistic future for this country, it has dissipated. I do not see any positive outcome from the direction the nation of my birth has taken, and I believe this century will be over before the ramifications of what’s happening now have fully panned out. The US will continue to exist in some way, but it is not the nation I’ve lived in my whole life anymore, and knowing that is gone has me likewise sad and fearful to continue to be here. I and my family are less safe in the United States than we’ve ever been, and I worry that we’re already too late to get out.
I don’t know why I’m surprised music is a salve for this, since for my brain it’s a salve for so much else, but I’ll tell you straight up that I hear more said about the nature of American freedom in the riff to “Time Lord” than I’ve ever heard come out of a politicians’ mouth on any side of any argument, whether it’s the eloquent but ultimately empty patter of an Obama or the rambling hateful-idiot bombast of the current head of the executive branch — and that’s not equivocating; one is vacuous, the other destructive; they’re not the same. In the character of that groove, the ease of movement, I can hear the promise of America’s open landscapes and the contribution to the world’s creative conversation that’s as much about shirking rules as declaring oneself in a place. I’ve never been a patriot and I think patriotism is both harmful and dumb — you were born in a place, you might as well be proud of breathing — but give me something, anything to hold onto as being worth preserving about the United States as it exists today. I guess, this week, Circadian Meditations is serving that function in some way. If we’re being honest with each other, and I hope we are, it’s probably not enough. But it’s something.
These are dark times here, increasingly isolated from the world outside with no real voices of dissent — Gavin Newsome memes are cute, his actual positions on issues aren’t — and it’s difficult to keep one’s head up while the worst among us dance on the bodies of the dead they’ve trampled. I wish for an ending but have little hope.
Wherever you are, I hope you and yours are safe. And as always, I hope you enjoy the record, whatever you get out of it.
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This weekend is Labor Day. A fucking joke. Someone will make a speech. It will be asinine. Half this country would still have slaves if it was legal.
The Patient Mrs. left yesterday morning to go to a wake in Maryland. It’s after 10AM — I know; I had Hungarian class at 8:30 this morning, and I slept until The Pecan got up a bit before 7AM, so it’s been kind of an upside-down day so far, writing-wise; ideally I’d be checked out by now — and she’s not home yet, but is expected sooner or later. The Pecan is watching Justin Bae stream Zelda games on YouTube, which I guess is how she’s going to learn all kinds of inappropriate shit for an almost-eight-year-old to say. I said “fuck” habitually at five. She to my knowledge has tried the word once, after hearing my mother say it. Could be worse.
School starts next week. I wish, I wish, I wish that I felt more positive about it. But the surest way to get her disregulated — which is what they call pissed off and/or out of bodily control now; I have language issues with it, unsurprisingly — is to put a demand on her, and at some point in second grade they’re going to tell her to sit down and do a thing. I don’t know yet if I’ll be going to the school to give her meds, if that’ll be necessary, but the principal emailed this week to ask. I said if we could get away with not I’d prefer, but she doesn’t eat at school, and at least when I was going at the end of last year to feed her medication in a mashed banana, I could know she’d eaten something throughout her six-hour day. I don’t know. I’m nervous. She started last year as pure genius fire and ended recovering from a trainwreck. We also found out yesterday she’ll have a different para, which is another potential failure point for the entire endeavor. The Pecan is nervous too, no doubt feeling the anxiety from her mom and dad. She refuses to talk about it, which is very much in-character.
So I’ll spend the long weekend being anxious about that — sounds super-productive, right? — and hopefully catching up somewhat on all the news I basically ignored this week while forcing myself to write less and spend more family time before everyone’s gone again. The Patient Mrs.’ semester has already started. It’ll be me and the dog soon enough. I was thinking about doing a Quarterly Review next week, because there isn’t anything else planned, but I’d basically just be doing it to hurt myself, and I don’t want to be two weeks behind on tour and album announcements, etc., since if a QR is happening, it’s basically all that’s happening. I’ll find a week. First full week of October. Starting the 6th. There. I just decided.
I have a butt-ton of homework for the weekend, but otherwise I’ll be back on Monday with more complaining about life under dictatorship and riffage. Be well, be as safe as you can.
R.I.P. Danny Kenyon (Thousand Vision Mist, etc.). I just heard. His courage in making his cancer battle as open as it was was inspiring, and I’m glad he’s someone who I got to see play guitar, because it was clear he lived for it.
FRM.
