Review Summary: Rolo Tomassi are the favourite band you can now show to your colleagues. Adore.
With In the Echoes of All Dreams, Rolo Tomassi have cast off the barbed wire of their past extremities and slipped into something silken. This EP is not a labyrinth to be solved, it's a collection of songs so effortless they all but play themselves. It's the most accessible thing they’ve ever released, and just accessible like
Time Will Die and Love Will Bury It or
Where Myth Becomes Memory are accessible—this is on par with the way a Spiritbox single is accessible. You press play, and it happens to you. No effort required. No gymnastics. No mental excavation. Just vibes.
The first track. “Woodburn” opens like a fog lifting over a still lake. Synths shimmer like dew on glass, and Eva Korman’s voice floats above it like a wisp of incense. It’s calm to the point of sedation, and rather than demand attention, it simply exists like an ambient memory half-remembered and always untroubled.
Then come “Tempest” and “Dead Language” which are heavy in the most consumable sense. The guitars chug and twang through the weight of many cool expensive plug-ins, the vocals erupt with harshness, and the production is clean enough to eat off. It’s heavy music for people who don’t necessarily like heavy music, which is to say it sounds like Spiritbox. This is a good thing. Spiritbox are good at what they do, and Rolo Tomassi are smart to borrow their blueprint. These songs already sound timeless.
The closer “Unintending” is the only song that flirts with complexity, but this is okay because the listener should be ready to process something bold at this point. It has dynamics. It has movements and a structure that both imply someone thought intimately about how the song should unfold. But even here, the transitions are smooth, the emotional beats are familiar, and the payoff is immediate. It’s the kind of song that feels deep without actually being difficult, as easy and satisfying as a tide pulling in and out. The power of contrast is amazing and Rolo Tomassi have never harnessed it so efficiently.
What’s most remarkable is how little resistance this EP offers. It doesn’t challenge, provoke, or demand. It’s music as a warm bath, and who could say no to that? If this is Rolo Tomassi at their most commercially viable, then the industry had better take note and back the right horse. In a landscape full of maximalist noise and emotional overload, the path of least resistance is a welcome change.
In the Echoes of All Dreams is a metalcore reverie that asks nothing of you but to listen… and maybe not even that.
