Review Summary: We all strive to find that perfect balance in our lives…
Rolo Tomassi has become an enigma of sorts. Combining the clean progressive textures of ambient electronica with the indie-pop meets hardcore styling of a diverse array of melodious tones that figuratively float across your vision. Add to the post(ish) black metal screams from the band’s frontwoman, Eva Spence who brings this whole affair together. Despite the obvious chalk and cheese that this album portrays on paper, this album becomes everything but.
Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It is an audible form of true art, vivid and expansive. With each look something new can be discovered about the canvas, showcasing a mature record that brings forth emotion so raw it literally raises the hair on the back of necks, keeping them to attention for the entirety of the record’s duration.
At a glance it’s easy to see this full-length as anything but black and white, blurring the lines between colours, shapes and figures.
Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It splashes colour, lashing the listener with carved out cleans and visceral heaviness in equal measure, with perfect placement – each track is in an ideal order, creating maximum emotional effect. The album opener, “Towards Dawn” is a perfect mood setter; spacey electronica weaves in and out of a building introduction, instantly trapping the listener within
Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It’s atmosphere and yet never gives away the confident capabilities of the band’s members. It’s from there that the record’s “heavier” tracks bring listeners back to earth at speed; “Rituals” is like wet paint flicked at the portrait, rather than the sensual brushstrokes of “Aftermath”. The image is both violent and graceful, but remains ever graceful.
As beautiful as
Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It is during its opening moments, it’s momentum helps carry it in the best of ways. Retrospectively, looking back to the band’s other records with particular emphasis on
Grievances it’s easy to see just how much Rolo Tomassi has improved dynamically, keeping in mind that album wasn’t exactly short in that department either. This time around, it seems as Eva Spence has literally taken the band’s music to that next step, to the next level. “Balancing The Dark” is a quiet stand out, relying on an underlying melancholic atmosphere, which drags in from the minimalist tones before launching into a genre-splicing post metal fest. There may be quiet achievers peppered throughout the record, but almost nothing about the new album stays “quiet” for long, revelling in its refreshing take on some truly spectacular contrasts. “A Flood Of Light” also stands as a career defining track. Surpassing eight minutes, the entirety of Rolo Tomassi is on display. Musically speaking, it’s the most expansive track the band has ever released, showcasing quasi-marched beats and metallic based electronica that infectiously bangs heads on a grand scale. If the rest of the record wasn’t so damn good, most would say “A Flood Of Light” is a fluke – clearly,
Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It shows us that it’s not.
Like any great work of art, there’s an instant appreciation as you take in the medium quickly in order to absorb as much as possible in the shortest amount of time. At a glance,
Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It achieves that easily, but the album’s greater enjoyment comes in the long-term value as you drink in every inch of the portrait, enjoying every brush stroke and seeing the artist’s labour of love. In many ways, Rolo Tomassi’s newest offering replicates the same appreciation. As a whole there’s too much going on here to be understood on a single play. Clocking in at fifty-three minutes,
Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It walks a tight rope between expansive and unyielding. Too much weight on one side and the result would be disastrous if not for the safety net of winding electronica and ambient minimalism. However,
Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It’s runtime barely affects the album’s sheer enjoy ability with every moment managing to captivate, inspire and rejoice in its own being.
Time Will Die And Love Will Bury It could very well be Rolo Tomassi’s veritable
Mona Lisa (Leonardo da Vinci), but I’d rather it be an audible take on
Starry Night (Van Gogh). Whatever your take on the art at hand, one thing is for certain; Rolo Tomassi has turned heads in 2018, and will continue turning heads for years to come.
