Let’s make one thing clear – Skrat is one of the best rock bands India has ever produced. There are so many borderline iconic things about the Chennai's best: they’re a 3-piece (already cool by itself), they’ve been top-shelf for more than fifteen years now, 4 incredible albums, raging live gigs, huge riffs, some of the catchiest vocals in the scene, neck-breaking grooves, great rock tones… one could go on and on. Their last album until now, the high-concept ‘Bison’, came out eight whole years ago. So, all of us sat, and waited, and waited, and now, in the year of our lord 2025, we have ‘Circus Act’, a 5-song affair lasting 28 minutes that, well…

This EP was apparently recorded live in a garage without any modern touch-up tools or metronomes, and its general sound is absolutely its strongest aspect. Anyone who has seen Skrat live and lived to tell the tale knows that a direct playing environment is where the band shines the most, and ‘Circus Act’ is the closest they have come so far to accurately capturing that feeling. Sriram, Tapass and Jhanu all sound in their element as usual, and this recording’s relative looseness gives it a visual quality – you can vividly picture the three going ham on their instruments in a room while listening to it. So everything about this is good news for rock and indie music in general, so it would be logical to call it at this point and hail it as yet another 100% success.

However, that would be ignoring the elephant in the room, which are the five tracks on here. This is unfortunately the EP’s weak point, and that is, well, not ideal.

The songs on ‘Circus Act’ do not pop and sizzle with life the way their previous four albums always do. There is this intangible feeling of limited energy and general flatness in the writing that simply does not leave you, starting with ‘Flashbang’. This one has dance-able riffs and some nifty drumming, sure, but it simply doesn’t come together. The vocals sound like they were pasted onto a jam instead of a cohesive element, and when one instrument takes the stage (say the guitars in the bridge), it ends up getting into a fight with everything else instead of receiving support. ‘Slingscot’ (which is the character in Skrat’s fictional universe this thing follows the story of) is a slow-burn that constantly builds to moments that… have exactly as much energy as those that precede it. However, for fans who ‘think Skrat has changed their sound too much’ and don’t enjoy bands growing, this song is for you.

‘Circus Act’ is an attempt at rocking out with funhouse writing that only works on the surface. Skrat has done this many times before; tongue-in-cheek writing that goes into a very catchy chorus and then a high-voltage passage, and repeat. Here, the listening experience is very choreographed because it’s a bit too easy to know what’s coming next. ‘Radicade’ has interesting ideas but suffers from the previous song’s problems. There’s also a LOT of story exposition that really should have lived as a short interlude instead of being the intro to an 8-minute rock epic. Once this tune goes into its lead-whistle final third, it comes across as strange instead of fun, which was its intention. ‘X Human’ is the most complete and cohesive song of them all, and everything the band is trying to do comes together at last. Riffs are great, vocals exactly where they sound best, and all the instrumentation is in harmony. Even the writing absolutely shines here, with a truly amazing chorus and easily the best melodies on the whole EP. This track rules.

The trio have actually been playing songs from ‘Circus Act’ live for a few years now, and every single time they did, there was this feeling of ‘this is new and unreleased, so they’re just trying out some stuff, when they actually write the songs and record them, they will be complete and great fun’. Perhaps the only unfortunate thing about this is that this process has not really borne fruit. And let’s make another thing very clear – this EP is still up there with anything any newer rock band is trying to do these days. It’s still high-tier musicianship and the kind of writing other artists in the genre would give and arm and a leg to have.

This is a Skrat release, so it’s a great release. It’s just not the greatest Skrat release.