Album Review: Rolo Tomassi – Where Myth Becomes Memory (MRNK)

Rolo Tomassi will release their huge, expansive, and ambitious, brand new album ‘Where Myth becomes Memory’ on February 4th, 2022 through MNRK.

Consistently one of the most unique bands out there, Rolo Tomassi have always done things their way. This new album serves as the final part in an unintended trilogy that began with 2015’s ‘Grievances’ and continued with 2018’s ‘Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It’, the most critically acclaimed album of the band’s career, up to now.

Regardless of if this is your first venture into the world of Rolo Tomassi or your latest go-round with the 5-piece, no-one will be disappointed by what they find here on Where Myth Becomes Memory. A cinematic and dramatic masterpiece that features a ton of progressive rock elements, experimental soundscapes, post-hardcore heaviness and so much more. It’s what Rolo Tomassi do but perhaps, nowhere as grand as they do here.

It’s not just the grandeur that makes this album such an accomplishment though. It’s the emotion, it’s the progressive detail, it’s the heavy punch of post-hardcore and so much more. Rolo Tomassi have dug down deep to produce this album and it is unlikely you won’t be touched by at least one track.

The melancholic and haunting piano-led beauty of Almost Always, the post-hardcore fire and melodramatic shifts of Cloaked and the powerful combination of heavy grit and melodic majesty that is Mutual Ruin. The first three tracks of this album are stunners in their own individual way.

Flexing their progressive and experimental muscles and delivering something far more scathing, Rolo Tomassi continue to excel with Labyrinthine. Before, we get something that oozes emotion in Closer, a track that can simply be called beautiful. It’s then followed by the stunning Drip. A (rightfully) lauded single release that sees Rolo Tomassi deliver a free-flowing belter that is up there as one of their most experimental tracks ever. Yet, it all seems so natural for them.

There’s plenty more to enjoy too. Prescience sees Rolo Tomassi reaching levels of wild ferocity not quite heard so far. A devastating display of just how much fire they have in their bellies, while layering it with melody and progressive desolation. Stumbling is a short slice of melancholic pie. The forlorn melody is sweet and effecting. Whereas To Resist Forgetting jumps between scorching aggression and heartfelt melody with unbelievable ease. Before this incredible release wraps up with one last glorious sounding cinematic and progressive epic called The End of Eternity.

A track that is every bit the ending it needed to be. Super-melodramatic and touching, Rolo Tomassi are signing off on this album but, as the latter half shows, this is no goodbye. Instead, they fire up and make sure we know that the inferno still burns so very brightly.

A brilliant release from a band who never fail to inspire.

Rolo Tomassi – Where Myth Becomes Memory Full Track Listing:

1. Almost Always
2. Cloaked
3. Mutual Ruin
4. Labyrinthine
5. Closer
6. Drip
7. Prescience
8. Stumbling
9. To Resist Forgetting
10. The End of Eternity

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