Genre : Post-metal, Post-hardcore, Art-metal
Released : February 4th, 2022
Label : MNRK Heavy
FFO : Oathbreaker, Svalbard, Ithaca
Rolo Tomassi occupy quite a unique spot in extreme music and have had an interesting evolution over the seventeen years of their career.
Even among an environment as diverse and prone to refreshing experimentation as the UK underground metal scene, Rolo Tomassi stand out as being this unclassifiable entity that has kept moving onwards; from the teenage days of nintendocore to their more mature and somber, cinematic sound that includes elements of post-metal, black metal and of course: their more mathy and technical roots.
"Where Myth Becomes Memory" feels like an appropriate continuation of 2018's critically acclaimed "Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It" both musically and thematically.
Where the band's previous full length carried a more positive and empowering drive (from my perspective at least) that allowed space to heal and look upon the future's horizon with renewed energy ; "Where Myth Becomes Memory" feels like the resolute acceptance of realizing that some cycles are bound to repeat themselves until they eventually die out and attempting to make peace with that knowledge.
Musically speaking, I think this could be Rolo Tomassi deploying their most masterful usage of contrasts within their compositions so far.
The techy riffs, vicious black-metal style vocals and chunky production are met with dreamy, soprano cleans and bedazzlling, cinematic synth arrangements in equal measure that are perfectly sequenced throughout the album's run time.
However, for me, the real backbone to this album, the glue that sticks it all together so well and brings such a crushing melancholia to the sound of "Where Myth Becomes Memory"... Is the piano.
That piano gives so much character to the music every time it appears in the songs and serves as a great musical and thematical golden link throughout the album that amplifies the contemplative emotions conveyed by those soundtrack-worthy synths.
"Where Myth Becomes Memory" is a bleak, dreamy, strongly cinematic and vicious journey into the anatomy of a band that has matured with time, both as musicians and individuals and who in doing so, have offered us yet another unique and memorable soundscape that is unmistakably theirs.
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