UNTITLED

TERA MELOS has been one of the more innovative math rock bands of the 21st century displaying some of the most extreme attributes of the genre which incorporates highly complex time signature that are rich in instrumental interplay and had added various ambient electronic effects, unconventional and even bizarrely experimental song structures as well as exaggerated rhythmic patterns, start-stop dynamics, free improvisation and an extensive use of pedals and samplers.

The band formed as a result of the breakup of No Regard in the Sacramento, CA neighboring city of Roseville. After its demise, members Nick Reinhart (guitar, vocals, programming) and Nathan Latona (bass) started TERA MELOS in 2004 and soon recruited guitarist Jeff Worms and drummer Vince Rogers. While the band has existed as a trio in recent years, this debut album displays the more complex sound they wove together as a quartet before Worms jumped ship in 2006.

The band spent an entire year practicing before playing its first live gig and recorded this eponymously titled debut album during that time which consists of eight tracks simply and ironically titled "Melody," since the nerdy math rock presented here is about as non-melodic as you could ever desire. Despite the focus on the strangely displayed irregular drumbeats and the dangerous hyperactive syncopated guitars, the band excels in creating a varied stylistic approach that creates a knotty tapestry of strange sounds resulting in a rather pleasant sum of the parts.

TERA MELOS does a great job in showing how math rock is both related to hardcore punk as well as the ebbs and flows of post-rock. While the former is more reminiscent of the choppy antics of the Minutemen rather than the jaunty distortion of Discharge, the band succeeds in cranking out some seriously metallic cacophony from time to time through the jittery flow of the first seven tracks, however the post-apocalyptic soundtrack to hell resides at the end of the album with a 29 minute noise jam that is the musical equivalent of lava erupting from an angry volcano ready to lay waste to the world around. Comparisons to noise bands like Borbetomagus and Supersilent have been made.

The best word to describe TERA MELOS' debut offering is surreal. This album wends and winds all over the place but yet has a logical thread of continuity to it as well at least up til the final pyroclastic flow of sonic dystopia. The guitars are generally characterized by a clean vibrant sound that finds pleasant tones twisted and contorted into strange irregular shapes that somehow find themselves knotted up into tufts of sonic constipation but the band never stays put for too long and finds as many ways of releasing the tension as it does building them into crescendoes that occur at irregular intervals.

While the final "Melody" that swallows up half of the album's real estate may be a bit too much for most, even hardcore math rockers, the first half of the album is about as cool as a cucumber of a nerdfest as math rock can get. Personally i love the utter differences of the two halves of the album with the freeform noise rock antics of the second half creating a startlingly bizarre world of unpredictability.

I've truly never heard another math rock band that does it quite like TERA MELOS but then again there are many bands i've yet not encountered. For my money though, this eponymous debut album is quite the wild ride that keeps things stimulating through its entire demented run and if you're seeking a truly demanding and thoroughly exhausting musical workout that's not in the metal universe then this will satisfy those cravings for sure.