Rolo Tomassi have been criminally overlooked almost their entire career; it was only with 2015’s Grievances and 2018’s Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It that truly started to change. That was also a time of great upheaval for the band as their sound began a significant metamorphosis from glitchy, electronics-laden mathcore to a far more expansive, cinematic scope. Now at last to complete the unofficial trilogy, Where Myth Becomes Memory arrives to not insignificant hype and expectations – and surpasses all of them.
Softly, ‘Almost Always’ enters in a haze of guitars and Eva Korman’s ethereal voice glides in as she croons “It’s all returning / To the start / It could be different / But it’s not”. The effect is immediate; pulled from one world and into theirs. As the song progresses, a yearning piano melody enters before distorted guitars crash in; it’s not heavy, though, not in the typical sense. Instead they trade in an emotional weight that means the song is felt, not just heard, as it tugs at the heartstrings.
If Time Will Die… taught us anything, it’s that Rolo Tomassi are masters of their craft, able to turn on a dime and not only deliver emotion but devastating, crushing heaviness. The next two songs do exactly that; ‘Cloaked’ brings synths to bear to backdrop a churning post-metal riff and Korman switches between her airy cleans and skin-flaying screams. ‘Mutual Ruin’ brings the piano back around, single notes repeating in a tense pattern before being subsumed by the chaos. As it ebbs and flows between faster and slower passages, they unify the two sides of their sound – the brutal and the beautiful – into perhaps one of their finest ever songs. Similarly, ‘Labrynthine’ is built on a foundation of post-metal grandeur with a thick guitar tone that gives way to ethereal clean singing, capturing the essence of its title.
Arguably the centrepiece of the album, though, are the back to back ‘Closer’ and ‘Drip’; though at first they seem to be polar opposites, they’re two sides of the same coin. On ‘Closer’, Koman intones “Where to begin? / How to fathom this?”, as the song seems to explore themes of love and longing in a serene but no less emotionally raw way. ‘Drip’ is almost an album in its own right; though just shy of six minutes, it covers an entire spectrum of emotion and tone. Despite its name, it’s a churning sea of polyrhythmic drums, chugging guitars and visceral screams in part, while in others they slip into the calm eye of the storm, swirling guitars and soaring cleans juxtaposed against urgent drumming.
A more episodic journey than its predecessor, Where Myth Becomes Memory constantly finds new ways to explore and redefine what heaviness can be; ‘Prescience’ reaches a towering crescendo near its halfway mark, as a piano lends a sense of melody. Closer ‘The End of Eternity’ reaches an emotional zenith that’s truly gut-wrenching, a microcosm of what’s come before as it starts softly and builds gradually throughout.
The ebb and flow, the dynamics and track sequencing of the album are all critical elements; each moment feels carefully considered, from the most minimal piano melodies to the most crushing guitar such as on the glacial post-metal conclusion to ‘Prescience’. It bludgeons, not just with the distortion of the guitar tone but the sheer emotional weight behind Korman’s screams before ‘Stumbling’ induces whiplash in its minimalism and vulnerability.
Where Myth Becomes Memory will sound immediately familiar to fans, but at the same time it pushes their craft further and widens their already considerable range. It’s, quite simply, their best album to date and continues to redefine what heavy music can be. .