ROLO TOMASSI — Where Myth Becomes Memory (review)

ROLO TOMASSI — Where Myth Becomes Memory album cover

Album · 2022 · Mathcore

3/5 · 2022-03-05
siLLy puPPy

When it comes to metal in 2022, it’s tempting to think we’ve just about heard of it all. Every genre and its branches, every possible hybrid with non-metal tones and timbres but then some band comes along and reminds you that you ain’t seen nothing yet. England’s ROLO TOMASSI is no stranger to twisting disparate strains of molten metal into bizarre new chimeric creations. Mostly residing in the already strange world of fusion that involves bombastic outbursts of mathcore with the more restrained processions of post-rock and post-metal, the band has dabbled in everything from blackgaze and post-hardcore to nintendocore.

But metal mixed with dream pop? Now that is a combo pack that i couldn’t quite believe exists until i set my ears to this bizarre mishmash of opposing forces. Turns out this is a rather new development in the metal universe with Boris having released an archival drone metal dream pop album in 2021 and Sun Addicted Family mixing dream pop with blackgaze in 2020, but dream pop with mathcore? WTF?!!!! Well after listening to ROLO TOMASSI’s seventh full-length release WHERE MYTH BECOMES MEMORY, it’s not quite as inventive as i had hoped but still a decent listen.

ROLO TOMASSI features the lovely Eva Korman as lead vocalist and can she ever display her Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde mood swings the drop of a hat by sweetly singing dreamy pop melodies in the vein of The Cranberries before lashing out the most wicked screams in full fury mathcore mode. Her chameleonesque powers of completely taking you from one extreme to the other are the highlights of WHERE MYTH BECOMES MEMORY which features ten average length tracks that add up to 48 minutes. It’s truly a bizarre choice of styles and almost sounds like two completely different bands simply taking turns, as if Beachhouse had joined forces with Cult of Luna and The Dillinger Escape Plan.

The album opens with serene dream pop track “Almost Ways” but becomes accompanied by quickened guitar chunks to provide a most surreal effect that could possible be called nightmare pop. The following “Cloaked” kicks into full mathcore mode with Eva’s complete transformation from sweet girl to raging bitch on the rampage! It soon becomes obvious that this band hadn’t really married the dream pop and mathcore elements at all and the gist of the album is to merely present one track with dream pop meets post-metal and then another in full mathcore fury. That is mostly true as tracks like “Prescience” actually work quite well in blending all the elements into a cohesive whole but by this time i feel like i’ve listened to an iTunes playlist rather than a continuous album flow.

No doubt ROLO TOMASSI has latched onto something with the disparate worlds of dream pop and mathcore duking it out in the same arena on WHERE MYTH BECOMES MEMORY but in the end it doesn’t seem like this cake is fully baked. While i love both dream pop and mathcore, in this situation they just don’t really work out together and the overall effect is like putting jalapeños on your ice cream, an interesting idea in theory but one that has its limited appeal. Nice try but i find this album more irritating than captivating. The dream pop melodies are sweet enough and the mathcore outbursts aren’t mathy enough. Everything feels watered down in an attempt to force two opposite musical forces into the same cage. Not a horrible album because some of the moments work quite well but just not as brilliantly crafted as i was expecting.