Video Review: “Circle of Doubt” by Rosetta West
GRAHAM- 24 hours ago
- 2 min read
By Graham Peters, May 2025
In the eerie hush between dusk and full dark, Rosetta West’s video for “Circle of Doubt” rises like a slow-burning ritual. This Chicago-based band—already known for their dense, philosophical sound—leans even further into their mystic, blues-rock ethos with a visual treatment that perfectly matches the song’s spiritual ache. From the moment Demagore’s blues guitar bends open the track like a cracked door to another realm, the video wraps the viewer in a fog of slow motion, flickering candlelight, and shadow-drenched stillness.
Shot between hazy live performances and haunting graveyard tableaux, the video’s visual duality captures the song’s tension between inertia and transcendence. The band’s presence on screen feels ghostlike, especially drummer Nathan Q. Scratch, whose almost spectral edits add to the dreamlike pacing. The gravestones and moonlit fog aren’t just backdrop, but are characters in the narrative, echoing the lyrics’ struggle to escape cycles of doubt and despair. The video shows a performance and conjures a haunted space, a liminal zone where music becomes exorcism.
Demagore’s vocals, part incantation and part unravelling prayer, are framed by the camera with an intimacy that borders on confrontational. His face, half-hidden in shadow, reflects the lyrical tension—worn by spiritual fatigue but never devoid of flickering resolve. Paired with Jason X’s serpentine basslines and Scratch’s slow, deliberate drumming, the band appears not as performers but as shamans, locked in a spell of their own making. The solos, visually suggested through stuttering cuts and overlay effects, flicker like visions—elusive and half-understood.
There’s an unmistakable sincerity in how the band approaches the audio and the visual here. Many bands might use graveyard imagery as a gimmick; Rosetta West uses it as an emotional landscape. This isn’t a Halloween set piece but a mourning ground, a symbol of the inner tomb where doubt buries clarity. And yet, through the cracks in that darkness, light manages to push through. There’s no triumph, but there’s presence. No resolution, but recognition. And in that, there’s power.
“Circle of Doubt” is a song with a full immersion into Rosetta West’s creative soul. The visuals deepen the track’s message rather than simply echoing it, creating a mirror maze of emotion and atmosphere. At a time when much of rock clings to bravado or pastiche, Rosetta West dares to kneel before the altar of the unknown and whisper its questions into the void. The result is a stunning, slow-burn vision that lingers long after the final chord fades.
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