The Murfreesboro-area punk scene has been burgeoning all over the place with the arrival of several pissed-off, angsty young bands running through The Crossroads Punk House (cXr), with the help of Ethan Rose’s promotional work. It’s a youthful, DIY (apply niche)-core’s fertile stomping grounds around here.

Post-hardcore/glitch-metal/math-punk group Circuit Circuit released its four track debut, Circuit Circuit – EP, in 2021, capturing local spirit in thirteen and a half minutes of pure horror. It’s pretty sick.

The core duo on the album, Michael Zirnheld (guitars, bass, drum programming, vocals) and Casey Allison (guitars), pulled together at MTSU in 2020, recording the instrumental tracks in Zirnheld’s Scarlett Commons apartment and then taking a year to craft lyrics and record at MT’s Studio C, with Kade Hernandez tapped for additional vocals. The band has been as many as five members strong at its live shows.

Instrumentally, “Type Face” teases an easy 8-bit synth intro, first suggesting Horse the Band’s Nintendo-core before Zirnheld and Allison startle the shit out of everyone with shrieking, rapid mini-minor-scale runs up a guitar’s neck, then metal barre chords descending until they find a home in the panic of a horror movie. Blasts of Zirnheld’s thrashing drum programming keep pace with the intensity. As quick as it is, “Type Face” resembles a zealous At the Drive-In feel with the controlled chaos of Atari Teenage Riot. Cracked-out digital oscillations mark transitions between short punk movements of Circuit Circuit’s hyperactive compositions (impressive axe work, sirs). Hindsight reveals it’s a compressed rock opera, all along.

Lyrically and vocally, Zirnheln and Hernandez scream-and-respond the age-old saga of a new generation shoving aside the old, described as if the guys translated ancient Japanese proverbs literally: Strap bodies to the ceilings / Let children swat their chests / The man is old in a room of laughs the teenage made. . . . It’s sweet.

“Solve” runs a simple Magnus Hammersmith rhythm hard out of the gate, ending its measures in single-gunshot, grunge-fuzz guitar notes and sudden digital audio pauses. A faint, dissonant instrument sounds like another song’s guitar is playing in the background.

Lyrically, it’s a song of jealousy that provides a warning to a friend about her toxically masculine prom date.

The most popular, and most tampered with, track from Circuit Circuit – EP, “Words of Mouth,” drives out another speedy, multi-directional rhythm that can play you comfortably through a meth high with R2-D2 beeps, RC car suspension stress grinds and more fancy finger-bending. Zirnheld punk-calls and responds, almost scream-rapping at some points. It exhibits a fast-paced metal musicality, but with that “oy! oy!” vocal styling.

Lyrically, “Words of Mouth” lets listeners know they’re not the only ones who didn’t think of anything for Valentine’s Day. That sounds like a joke, but if you know anyone who immaturely self-deprecates as self-inflicted punishment to correct a relationship mess-up, it’s kind of not a joke. It’s inversely romantic, though.

And, holy hell, “Pray” opens even more instrumentally rabid than the rest, as if Circuit Circuit has something to prove, with two high-pitched guitars that never take a breath. Pig squeals (rapidly skritched guitar strings) punctuate the end of some measures, with computerized whirls, blips, glitches and sudden-stop audio pepper throughout. Circuit Circuit changes up this track mid-stream, working in a (And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead-esque) grooving bridge which connects to a climactic final-mansion-fight-scene-score crescendo, still keeping the rhythmic guitar style of Incubus, P.O.D. or something you’d hear in the late ’90s.

Circuit Circuit – EP is packed and so insanely composed (there’s seriously a rock opera, or a Godspeed song, compressed in there, if you stretch out any given individual instrument’s audio track in the editor), the speed of Zirnheld and Allison’s guitar work deserves a nodding appreciation for their complex composition skills, completely necessary lightning finger work to execute it, and the memory and attentiveness to keep up with themselves.

Circuit Circuit’s Circuit Circuit – EP can be found streaming at circuitcircuitcircuit.bandcamp.com.