Rolo Tomassi - Rituals / Balancing The Dark

The eponymous Rolo Tomassi are returning with their fifth studio album in just a matter of weeks, the first in almost 3 years, and the Sheffield-born group are bringing their best material yet. For a band noted for their DIY efforts to continuously better themselves and grow in popularity certainly shows the strength and appreciation for this method from fans, it may have been difficult but the worth of bringing yourselves and the whole scene for chaotic, progressive hardcore up with them is a feat you cannot appreciate lightly. In the first part of my preview to Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It I look at the powerful pair of singles we were introduced to before the new year:

Rituals

As the first song we've seen in such a length of time from RT, it's unsurprising I suppose that they began with this. It seems to carry the weight and depth of an entire album, a perfect advertisement for the band; unrelenting from start to finish, you feel the intense nature of the group at its fullest.

Opening with doom-like keys and a slow war-like drumbeat before dropping into the almost thrash-like verse with it's smattering of discordant lead, giving it a dark and ominous feel (which I'm sure will continue throughout the record).

Lyrically speaking it talks of the difficulty in rebuilding oneself after mental and emotional hardship, the difficulty of leaving the negative energies and experiences of the past in the hope of finding new enterprise. We all know the struggle to forget bad experiences, as they linger in our minds so much heavier than the positive.

Balancing The Dark

Following Rituals, released just a couple of months after, this track instils a sense of fear from the off with it's atmospheric intro and outro; it breeds a sense of unsettled terror, one that I've rarely felt outside of bands like Meshuggah. Continued by the harrowing screams of vocalist Eva Spence, her ability to both scare and inspire at once is a true asset to the band and one of the many reasons why this band should command the respect they have attained.

It has a slightly different quality than the first, possibly for the heavier use of keys but I think this is the ability of the band to visualise the lyrical content of the song in musical form, imitating the intense search for understanding and recalling the pain that is caused when someone we loved turns on us and how that love can turn so quickly to hate and so quickly inflict pain on us.

Both of these tracks utilise the full breadth of the bands talents and influences. Powerfully packaged and delivered chaos from one of the UK's best and most unappreciated artists. They fall for me in to the same realm as bands like Palm Reader; in that for all the magnificent songwriting, the jarringly brilliant contrasts and progressive hooks that make these bands what they are, they deserve so much more appreciation.

I feel as though these may even be ahead of their time and will come to be seen as the forerunners of a new experimental age in hardcore, one day to be revered for starting off and inspiring a new generation of alternative music.

You can check out Rituals and Balancing The Dark via the links below:

Rituals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhcF-3wBlEw
Balancing The Dark: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fdyg8k5qZFM

Come back in a few days for my views on the third and most recent single from the upcoming album: Aftermath.