“Right away, your brain goes into survival mode” how having all his gear stolen led to Russian Circles’ Mike Sullivan reinventing his approach to guitar
Two Les Paul Customs, three cabinets, 12 pedals, 13 microphones and a bicycle. When Russian Circles opened their U-haul truck outside of a California hotel in 2021, they found that all these things and more had been stolen from them overnight. As if that weren’t calamitous enough, they were about to start the biggest tour of their lives, supporting System of a Down and Korn in stadiums, and were 2,100 miles away from their then-base of Chicago. The only thing that could have been worse was if someone had died.
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“It was an ‘Oh, shit’ moment, obviously,” remembers guitarist Mike Sullivan, talking to me from his home in Los Angeles. “Right away, your brain goes into survival mode. We’re in fucking Bumblefuck, California! Who do we know around here? How do we get their gear? How do we reach out to these people? Despite being on a huge tour at the time, there weren’t many people looking to help us out in that world.”
The instru-metal trio took whatever they could to carry on. Chelsea Wolfe lent Sullivan her Dunable Gnarwahl guitar. Hiwatt, a company they’d never worked with before, let them borrow some amps. They overcame – playing the shows, crowd-sourcing $60,000 (£45,000) and getting some of their stuff back in 2024 – but the incident reinvented Sullivan’s rig. Five years later, Dunable and Hiwatt are his go-to manufacturers.
“I was desperate for anything that sounded like a Les Paul. Anything with humbuckers and a glued neck would have sufficed,” he recalls. “But the Gnarwahl was such a cool-looking instrument, which sounded and felt great, and I was hooked on it. It’s a fun guitar to play. You don’t feel weighed down: it’s so ergonomic for tapping.
“I was blown away by how good the Hiwatt sounded,” he adds. “It took pedals so well. All these pedals that I thought I needed no matter what, I started tossing them out of the pedal chain. Less is more. When your blueprint tone, your foundation, is that fucking good, then you don’t need as much garbage to polish the turd.”
Image: Press
Cutting The Chaff
Hearing Sullivan talk about discarding pedals is like hearing Father Christmas talk about laying off elves. Since he co-founded Russian Circles in 2004, the guitarist’s penchant for pedals has become a cornerstone of the band’s identity. Many of their songs are centred around his loops, which help the three-man lineup, completed by drummer Dave Turncrantz and bassist Brian Cook, build bulletproof walls of noise.
Their approach is so ear-grabbingly loud, and Sullivan’s playing so immediately melodic, that they’ve transcended the insular post-rock scene which ensnares most modern instrumental rockers. As well as Korn and System of a Down, they’ve toured with Tool and Mastodon. Gojira’s Christian Andreu sports their merch onstage, ex-Killswitch Engage singer Howard Jones has touted them in interviews and Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou produced their four latest albums, including their brand-new ninth, aptly titled Nine. The soft-spoken Sullivan almost sounds uncomfortable with the elite company.
“After doing the System of a Down/Korn tour, I’ve never been more proud to be part of the underground,” he says. “Some of the stories are jaw-dropping. I have a lot of good things to say about Korn. System of a Down? Next question.”
Certain fans have talked about Nine as if it’s Russian Circle’s mainstream moment, pointing out the increased synths and electronics on the single Eluvial. But Sullivan only leaned further into his underground proclivities, such as on the punishing Empath and Seventh Seal. After being inspired by metal bands Pantera and At the Gates for 2022’s Gnosis, he went even deeper, turning to cult UK death metal luminaries Bolt Thrower.
“Death metal tremolo picking can be very vocal,” he explains. “It’s very minimal as far as melody. It’s a hummable, simple melody. It’s similar to black metal, where you can hold the chord shape and keep different voice lines interweaving in a cool way. You can rub an open string against a fretted string and create tension, a breathing pulse to the melodies.”
Unconventional Sources
Sullivan’s a metalhead at heart: he has a vinyl copy of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath on the table next to him and a 1981 Dean ML on his wall, in tribute to Dimebag Darrell. To understand the essence of his guitar playing, though, you need to know about obscure math-rockers Don Caballero. Like Russian Circles, they were an instrumental three-piece whose guitarist, Ian Williams, used tapping and loops. Sullivan saw them in Chicago after moving there to study and was floored.
“I came from the world of [punk legends] Fugazi, where many people were like, ‘Pedals? We don’t need pedals! Do it with your fingers!’” he says. “So the first pedal I ever had that I used in a band was a looper, and then a friend showed me, ‘Hey, you ever mess with a delay pedal?’ I’m like, ‘Not really. Let me try it out. Oh, this is fucking awesome! Alright, what does a tremolo pedal do? Oh, reverb’s great! Oh, the volume pedal!’”
He admits that his approach to distortion is pedal-first, “not out of preference, but utility”: “If I had my way, I’d probably draw upon a distorted amp channel and then boost it if need be. But I switch between gain stages so much. I want the decay of delay to bleed through. If I change channels on-amp from clean to dirty, the delay trails will be bumped up to a distorted signal, and I don’t want that. I want the delay to be after distortion, always.”
Seeing What’s Important
By the 2021 robbery, his fixation had become a bit much. “I had a bunch of tone sweeteners, like Klon clones and shit, and EQ sculpting devices that I just didn’t need,” he laughs. “Too many things were taking up space and compromising the tone.”
But Sullivan’s setup has always revolved around the looper. Be it a Les Paul or a Gnarwahl, he uses instruments with humbucker pickups so he’s not stacking layer upon layer of feedback. The Hiwatt amps have plenty of headroom so the loops don’t “collapse”. Unfortunately, other drawbacks can’t be circumvented. Mistimed loops force drummer Turncrantz to adjust or improvise.
“It’s all on me if it fucks up,” the guitarist admits. “It’s more about, do I know how to cheat to get the loop or the phrase sampled? If a loop’s awful, I’ll find a way to bury it and do some work-around.”
While making Nine, Sullivan was in his element. He recorded guitars at Ballou’s own studio God City in Salem, Massachusetts, where he experimented with so many models and bits of gear that he can’t remember what was used where. What he can say for certain is that he wrote some of the album with his favourite guitar, the 1985 Les Paul Custom that was stolen in 2021 then returned to him.
“All Les Pauls are a little bit different, and that one looks like it saw action in the Civil War,” he grins. “It’s falling apart, there are stress cracks everywhere, but it’s the most resonant guitar I’ve ever played. It just shakes for you and you can really feel it respond.”
He also dabbled in a variety of tunings. “I’ve always hovered around DADGAD tunings or that relative setup. The lowest [on this album] is DADGAD but tuned down to A. Other ones are that same shape of DADGAD but in B.”
Get Low
Across Russian Circles’ career, as the guitar influences have grown heavier, the tunings have got lower. Although Sullivan’s always imbued his riffs with a Sabbath-esque sludge, the early albums were much higher, in D or C-sharp. It’s a bit of a pickle for a man who tells me “I don’t like changing guitars during a set”.
“There’s enough changing pedals and settings, so to change guitars and all that takes so much time, and I end up getting gum in my hair or something like that while I’m doing it,” he elaborates. “It’s a fucking trainwreck.”
Then why do you use so many different guitars and tunings in the studio?!
“Oh, I fuck myself over at every opportunity. If you only knew. If there’s a fork in the road, I seem to always take the more difficult route.”
He may self-deprecate, but the more difficult route clearly pays off. You don’t get to support Korn and System of a Down by not knowing what you’re doing. As our conversation turns towards the future, Sullivan tips his hat to Mastodon for gradually getting bigger without compromising their musical vision. Given he’s still attached to his extreme metal and math-rock touchstones, even after getting a taste of stadiums, surely he wants the same thing?
“If it happens, that’d be awesome, and I’d be happy to go that course our own way,” he answers. “But we’re proud to be on an independent label. I’ve had endorsees turn me down because we’re not on late-night talk shows and tell me I’m ‘not pushing the brand hard enough’. We’re not going to be on a late-night talk show, and if we are, I don’t want that to matter if I get an endorsement or not. I’m fortunate that I have the ability to play, I get to play and people care enough to hear our records. That’s a good spot to be in.”
Nine is out on 28 August via Sargent House.
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