Review Summary: Gone is the second guitarist, and Tera Melos is forced to expand their sound. Luckily, "Complex Full of Phantoms" finds them experimenting and refining their sound in an excellent way.
Slowly building a cult following, Tera Melos has become sort of a "legendary" math-rock band, whose insane technical abilities and impressive live shows dazzled those who didn't collapse into aural seizures. Their debut, which showcased their raw abilities and lack of creative song titles, was followed up by this split album (the first half belonging to the underwhelming By the End of Tonight), which finds Tera Melos with one less guitarist, and for the first time, vocals (or at least, prominent vocals).
Even more so than The Dillinger Escape Plan, Tera Melos takes math-rock/mathcore to new spastic directions. The drummer, while trained as a jazz drummer, plays these sort of busy, disjointed, yet precise pieces of whirlwind flourishing (check the hi-hat work on "Party With Tina"), while the guitarist weaves carefully through the chaos; finger tapping, exploding with feedback, playing clean licks, and sometimes, a few riffs. The magic kicks in though when the band finally show us what their trying to create. Where most songs start as disjointed pieces of "noise", as the notes fall into place, they somehow create actual melodies. Unique, confusing, melodies. I've never really heard a band that does this so well, transforming from an avant-noise group one second, into an indie pop group the next.
While this may not be their most prolific effort, I find Tera Melos and their contribution to this split album to be their best work yet. Not only does the absence of the second guitarist force the band to rely on new tools (wider variety of instruments and sounds, as well as actual vocals and lyrics), it also showcases guitarist Nick Reinhart's amazing guitar prowess. In simplified terms; the band is free from wading in a music genre with little that can be done with it. Though synth and guitar noise has always been a large part of this bands sound, Complex finds them incorporating trumpets ("Party With Tina", and the execution is perfect), Daft Punk shimmery techno pieces ("Last Smile For Jaron"), and sampling ("Melody 9") to break apart the monotony that their lengthy math-rock jam sessions sometimes created. The only song that seems unchanged from the bands past record, is "555-9676", yet it's only a minor track (under two minutes long), it's still an unnecessary track, consisting of nothing but simple melody, played underneath noise, ending in an electronic wank fest.
The most accomplished piece in Tera Melos's career is found here in "Last Smile For Jaron". Running over six minutes in length, it displays everything good about the band, and would be a perfect track for a first time listener. Opening with a messy display of drumming flourishes, lumbering bass, and guitar tapings, it soon shifts between pounding riffs, jazzy clean guitar breaks, and well crafted weaving of the drums, guitars, and keyboards that could hardly be criticized as being noise. Over its running course, the song slows to a spacey crawl, an epic crescendo, and the crest of the wave balancing the clearly audible line "If we swim to the top then we can see forever". And just to make things rewarding, the song bursts into joyous, lush, techno pop near the end (which for some reason reminds me of the music for the Rainbow Road course in Mario Kart).
While "Last Smile for Jaron" simply overshadows the rest of these songs, it by no means indicates that they're not good songs. From the hectic and oddly celebratory "Party With Tina", to the post-rock/ambient shifts of "Melody 9", "Complex Full of Phantoms" makes Tera Melos out to be one of the most promising bands to show up in recent times.
