Fires in the Distance – Circadian Promise
Release Date: 12th June 2026
Label: Prosthetic Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Melodic Death Doom, Melodic Death Metal.
FFO: Be’lakor, Dawn of Solace, Insomnium, Omnium Gatherum, Amorphis, Swallow the Sun.
Review By: Malte Brigge
Fires in the Distance impressed critics and fans with their doomy take on melodic death metal with both 2020s Echoes from Deep November and 2023’s Air Not Meant For Us. Their heavy, serpentine songs didn’t break many molds, but their beautifully orchestrated compositions captured many a heart and may or may not have loosed many a metal tear from many an eye. Consistent in their spacing, Fires return in 2026 not only with a new album, Circadian Promise, but also a new guitarist/vocalist, Obsidian Tongue’s Brendan Hayter, replacing Kristian Grimaldi. Changing a vocalist can change a band’s identity, but I will tell you now that with Hayter at the helm, Fires in the Distance have finally found theirs.
The brightly orchestrated keys, fluid basslines and blanketing guitars central to Fires’ sound remain firmly in place. The mournful, meandering structure of their songwriting is intact. Melodic riffs build songs with the atmospheric sway and shifty tone of Be’lakor on foundations reminiscent of Insomnium, Dawn of Solace and early Swallow the Sun. Piano sweeps and synthy orchestration sparkle like an intensely starry night sky, ever-present but never overwhelming. It approaches, at times, the almost sci-fi programming of out-there acts like Labyrinthus Stellarum (Once the Silence Takes Your Place) but never goes full spaceship. Yegor Savonin’s melodic guitar leads on top of tidal riffs, his pensive solos that harmonize with loneliness, bleed across the album, while Johann Reinholdz’s (Dark Tranquillity) guest solo on By This Time Tomorrow absolutely melts your bones. Even Alan Watts returns for his second appearance on a Fires album (and roughly ninetieth on a metal album since January).
Savonin continues to be a deeply introspective songwriter such that Circadian Promise is really one song broken into six parts. Climactic rises and gentle falls that strip away the instrumentation to build new edifices ebb and flow throughout the 49 captivating minutes. There’s a particular rapid, chirping, arpeggiated lead that repeats across rather than within songs, turning from a moment into a memory, from a memory to an echo. The piano, synths and violins (Randy Slaugh is credited as the “orchestration maestro”) enfold everything like a sky around a landscape, recalling songs to each other through melodic refrains while the guitars heave in circadian rhythm. Jordan Rippe’s drums pulse with heartbeat energy punctuated by deft, energetic fills (Once the Silence…). Craig Breitsprecher’s bass chains songs to the earth, sometimes carries them on broad shoulders, and sometimes creates whole wordless universes when everything else goes quiet (Of Radiance and Levitation). Lyrical themes ruminate on spiritual death, loss, and grief, exploring the individual’s relationship with life and death until the sudden, appropriately abrupt cutoff of closer Agonal Dreaming that is, in the words of a fren, “exactly how I wanted that to end. OOF.”
All of this is familiar, and comforting. But you will immediately notice Fires didn’t try to replace Grimaldi’s huge, spacious roars once endemic to their sound. Hayter brings a blazing energy and intimate, melodic crooning they always needed. He greets you a minute into Of Radiance and Levitation with a Joutsenesque roar of “LIGHT!” and emotes with similar passion you’ll find across Amorphis’ second-life discography, but he can whip into a blackened fury (Once the Silence…) when called for. At 4:50 on the opening track, you’ll be introduced to his intoxicating, baritone cleans, and realize that this is what Fires in the Distance is supposed to sound like. Knowing the power of this voice, it only appears at moments of affective apotheosis, to profound effect. Hayter’s diversity is exactly what Fires needed to capture the full visceral range of their sound. And when he bellows, “WHY CAN’T I REMEMBER? / WHEN I LOST IT ALL???” on Lightless Days of a Songless Bird, I tell you, reader, it cuts me open, every. single. time. The emptiness and pain in his voice is real, and I feel it.
Each song on Circadian Rhythm is languidly and carefully constructed around the strengths of each instrument and the emotional capacity of the writing itself, with a build-and-release structure that creates its own inescapable gravity. The sidereal orchestration and minimalist piano plucking (on keys and of strings) that embraces the thick guitars and cavernous rhythms picks up from Air Not Meant for Us and carries it confidently forward, led by Hayter’s magnificent voice. Circadian Promise is a complex, intense album that gets more poignant with each listen. I have no doubt Fires in the Distance will, once again, be at the top of many year-end lists, including mine.
(4.5 / 5)
