Rolo Tomassi
Hysterics
Hassle
By Jose Fritz
There are in fact two bands named Rolo Tomassi. The other, with the slight spelling variation of Rollo Tomasi, had an EP out in 2000 on Divot Records, petering out in the later part of 2004. Since only one Rollo can exist at any one time our Rolo came into existence days later to fill that unnatural void. Rolo Tomassi (one L double S) is the one true and sole Rolo Tomassi today. Like Highlander, there can only be one.
They are the soundtrack to the Devil’s videogame. They deftly push the boundaries of mathy screamo into the arena of Nintendocore. Oh yes, Nintendocore When Nathan Winneke first uttered the word Nintendocore I don’t think he understood what he had done. Their numbers are few, but what they lack in legion they make up for in manic riffing: Sky Eats Airplane, Horse The Band, Chaos Con Queso and perhaps now Rolo Tomassi.
Rolo Tomassi avoids the unfiltered noise fury of Daughters but exceeds all expectations in terms of random time changes. It makes them both more intelligible but also more overwhelming. I see it as the difference between being knocked out with a blackjack from the front versus being clubbed unknowingly from the rear. They destroy coherence, and eat other bands singles for breakfast, ground up finely and sprinkled on raw veal.
So I had to take it one song at a time. I took to listen to each song individually but each time was eventually lost after a few dozen unrelated time changes. This band’s fury is unrelenting. If you accept the premise that music is math, then most bands are engaged in adding fractions. Rolo Tomassi scoffs at this simple math. They are calculating logarithms with transfinite numbers.
Collectively their music just overwhelms the senses. If you address one song, say the two-and-a-half minute long “Abraxas” you have to absorb eight major rhythmic changes, most with more than one major melodic change. This does not include breakdowns some of which are riff-worth on their own. The last minute of “Abraxas” is mostly one rhythm, though it too has major melodic changes. That means the other seven changes occur in less than 80 seconds or one approximately every 11 seconds. What the fuck.
Though the band is named for a non-existent character in the movie L.A. Confidential, the singer Eva Spence reminds me more of the movie the Exorcist. She’s petite, easily 6 inches shorter than the rest of the band. She grins wide, and rolls her head around her shoulders smiling when the band is at it’s most brutally crushing. It’s far more sinister looking that drooling blood or biting the heads off doves. With her bob haircut she looks like a hardcore Debbie Harry.
Female vocalists occupy only a small sliver of the rock cannon. In the subset of metal and hardcore we find an even thinner shaving populated by a few dozen deep throated fem-screamers. You could count them on your fingers: Otep Shamaya of Otep, Grace of Landmine Marathon, Angela Gossow of Arch Enemy, Candace Kucsulain from Walls Of Jericho, Rebecca of Flowers in the Attic, Nina Cislaghi of Bloodlined Calligraphy… maybe a handful of others on the ragged edge of CD-R obscurity. We’ve come a long way from the Donuts, but it’s a rarity and that lends a dangerous quality of novelty to it. But if the scrawny emo boys wear girl pants, it’s only fair the girls can scream their dainty guts out.
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