Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It by Rolo Tomassi
Release date: March 2, 2018Label: Holy Roar Records
It’s an exciting time for the UK metal scene. After a long dormant period there seems to be a new exciting band exploding out from the woodwork as if they had all been biding their time. But before all of the Marmozets, Employed To Serves and Creepers of this world there was one band who quietly and doggedly set the blueprint for the new breed to grow from. That band was Rolo Tomassi and their newest album Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It is the release that their 13 year young career has been leading up to.
Even more so than Grievances before it, this is a tremendous leap forward than anything that has come before. Songs feel more expansive and nuanced when they want to be, and ferociously vicious when they don’t. Everything that makes up Rolo Tomassi is there, but stronger, but they haven’t stopped there. Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It shows a great amount of exploration, with more progressive sections, mathcore, dream pop and even black metal extremity all sliding neatly between the familiar tech edges. Making all this possible is the launch pad that is James Spence’s keyboards and atmospherics. Tracks like ‘A Flood Of Light’ and ‘Aftermath’ become futuristic celestial epics with long airy electronics before they are brought kicking and screaming back to earth with that familiar breakneck pace. As evident from their singles ‘Rituals’, ‘Balancing The Dark’ and ‘Aftermath’ this is the most diverse they have ever been, but with an added maturity and vision coercing everything together.
Not willing to be shown up by the increased range and dynamics of her bandmates, Eva Spence very confidently puts on her career best performance. Her growls and clean vocals have always been a mainstay in creating discord in Rolo Tomassi’s music, but never to such extremes. Her cleans soar above the music to create moments of ephemeral wonder before her earthy shredding growls bring everything crashing down. Rolo Tomassi have always had a spacey futuristic feel to them, but Eva’s new intensity injects that much needed raw humanity. Like the international space station crashing down into quiet meadows, you don’t know quite know when to stop standing in wonder and just run.
Grievances, in retrospect, feels like the end of an era for Rolo Tomassi whilst Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It seems like the start of Rolo Tomassi 2.0. To all of the old fans the new album should be a grand celebration of relentless determination and the coming of age of a band who have seemed to be the youngest band for the longest time. To new listeners, of which I’m sure there will be many, they have a great success story to discover for the first time. They have thoroughly solidified themselves as one of the UK’s most essential bands, and with these songs now primed their live shows are set to have more textures and dynamism than they have ever had. It’s funny to think that some 13 years ago Eva and James spent their time practicing screaming in their parents car to overcome their shyness – with Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It its difficult not to see a band at the height of their powers with the confidence to match.
