David Hunter Of Melbourne Metal Group Circles: 'We Were Looking At The Sales And Going, This Will Be Horrible'

We were blown away when we caught Circles at Stay Gold earlier this year. The Melbourne progressive metal titans played their first hometown show in three years and were welcomed with open arms on a cold and wet winter evening.

They treated us to two brand new tunes, the single Sleepwalking and another new track entitled Bliss, from their The Stories We Are Afraid Of, Vol.1 EP, out today, both of which sounded immensely promising on the night.

When we catch up with drummer David Hunter, we get an exclusive look at his home studio, which includes an electric drum kit and other fantastic music gear. Hunter has directed and edited a bunch of Circles music videos, including Sleepwalking, Echo, and Dig, and they're just the most recent ones. In fact, the drummer has been running his own video production business, Band Factory Digital, for the last three to four years.

"That's my thing outside of the band, so it's handy when we need videos and artwork and all that sort of stuff. That's kind of what I look after," he shares. Of course, the job doesn't come without its challenges, especially when Hunter has to star in a video he's directing. "It's not my favourite thing to do; it's quite a stressful day when I'd rather either be in the band or making the video. 

"But we had a good team on [the Echo music video]; we had some help shooting it. It was great. The dancer, Bridget [Lyte], was phenomenal."

Hunter couldn't juggle all of his tasks without planning and help. "In some of the shots where I was playing, I gave Ben [Rechter], our singer, a camera and said, 'Stay here. This is where you focus. Don't move.' I just direct and get help where I can. We also had another shooter there on the day, which was a lot of weight off my shoulders."

While he's only been running Band Factory Digital for a few years, Hunter has been involved in filmmaking and design in some fashion for over twelve years. Since Circles have been around, Hunter has picked up filmmaking duties.

"When we started Circles, that pushed me to get into it because we'd say, 'Wow, this stuff's really expensive', and you need it," indeed, a band can't survive without some visual aesthetic. A band with members of many talents, guitarist Ted Furuhashi, turned to audio engineering to keep everything in-house.

"Ted's always produced, engineered, and mixed all of our stuff. Every release is going strength to strength, and this EP is no exception," Hunter says. "It's the best work that Ted's done as far as things go, production-wise. We feel like they're some of the best songs we've done, as well. It's exciting, and it's different, sonically and musically."

Circles blend heavy, djent metal music with electronic music very well. It's a conscious band decision, as the members listen to all sorts of music and have those distinct tastes represented somewhere.

"No one in the band really listens to a whole lot of metal which is pretty funny," Hunter laughs, adding that Furuhashi is a massive fan of boybands  - like the Backstreet Boys? - and pop music. "On the last album, [The Last One, released in 2018], the last album was a lot more organic and very 'band-y', I guess you could say because it was where we were at and what we wanted to write at the time. And now we're leaning back towards our earliest, more electronic fused stuff."

On Dig, Circles resemble garage rock bands like The White Stripes or The Libertines, but with a heavier spin heard on the guitar playing and Rechter's commanding vocal. "Dig kicked off with the first riff; Ted's a bit of a riff machine," Hunter laughs. 

The previously-mentioned shows in August and September were a thrill for the band, as they got to take new music out on the road. "The shows went surprisingly better than what we thought they were going to," he says, recalling the uneasiness Circles felt when they hadn't toured since December 2019. "What we did notice was a lot of people are waiting until the very last second to buy their tickets," Hunter begins, describing a pressing issue in the live music industry. 

"That was difficult for us to gauge. We were looking at the sales and going, oh God, this is going to be horrible. And then all of a sudden, there's this burst, I guess. People are waiting to buy tickets; I don't know. It's just how [ticket sales] have panned out after the pandemic, so we were waiting on that last-minute burst and tickets sold at the door."

During the time that Circles were away from touring due to COVID-19, the band wrote a ton of new music and learned how to record music remotely. "We used that time to actually plan the next phase of what we're doing, which is these two releases coming out. Volume Two is still a bit of a secret," he smiles.

So, what are the stories the band is afraid of and tackling in Volume One? "That's a heavy question," Hunter laughs, especially when we're catching up at 9 am. "The EP explores all sorts of inner demons, whether it's relationships, mental health stuff, or anything else people are afraid to talk about. [Volume One] isn't breaking boundaries with the sort of content that we're exploring. But it does differ in our personal experiences."

For the fans who missed out on the Circles shows earlier this year, a tour is on the horizon for mid-2023. "There will definitely be some Australian shows. We're not too sure about overseas gigs yet; touring overseas was already extremely hard pre-pandemic, but we still managed to get out there and do it. But now it's like that next level of the cost factor. We'd love to do Europe again or maybe some closer places like New Zealand; we've never been there before!" Hunter exclaims.

The Stories We Are Afraid Of | Vol. 1 is out now via Wild Thing Records. You can stream it or order a physical copy here.