To-Mera - Delusions CD review

Not your ordinary snap-crackle-pop, this one; British pioneers To-Mera sail dangerously close to the jagged reefs at the end of the progressive metal universe with a bold new plan. Unlike your typical garden-variety prog-gnomes, these bounders bring big-voiced beauty Julie Kiss to the forefront of their syncopated slash-n-burn bacchanalian noisefest. The enchanting Ms. Kiss throws just the right amount of Goth-horror-sturm-un-drang and sultry jazz chanteuse swoon into the mix so that her vox are both frighteningly alluring and immensely invigorating.

In the meantime, the boys in the back are getting' jiggy with the instrumentation, pulling the kitchen sink out from the wall and tossing it into the mix with righteous glee. You name the prog and/or metal convention, and the odds are good that To-Mera has unconventionally brought the beast to bay, tied it up with a mic chord, and are prepared to bring the corpus delecti to slaughter. Rapid time changes, explosive blastbeats, haunting vocal interludes, monster riffs, overwhelming rhythms and squonky guitar lines hit your ears like many body-blows from some ragtag palooka with bricks in his gloves.

It takes a group of truly merry pranksters to pull off a musical coup like To-Mera has with Delusions, the band's impressive sophomore album, and a lot of credit has to go to the instrumentalists behind Kiss's sweet vocals. Guitarist Tom MacLean can thrash-and-burn with the best of them, or light up a freebase jazz line like Charlie Christian. Drummer Akos Pirisi is a master of both the African polyrhythmic and the Lousiville Slugger schools of thought, while bassist Lee Barrett offers up a bruising roar with every note. Classically-trained keyboard wiz Hugo Sheppard brings a multiple-personality style approach to his key-mangling and, as for Kiss, well, she's just so damn cute that you want to squeeze her…though methinks that you might get kicked for your efforts. The chemistry of the whole is undeniable, and the range of sound and fury that they coax from their instruments brightens up every song on Delusions like tracer rounds from an M-50 machinegun.

"The Glory of a New Day," for instance, pillages your ears with soaring vocals and galloping rhythms, an old-school Rick Wakeman-styled keyboard mugging and an old-fashioned six-string Breeko-block walloping, all within the space of eight minutes and change. A quiet piano intro masks the madness within "A Sorrow to Kill" before a blast of white heat/white light leads into Kiss's ethereal vocals. The song continues to run hot and cold, sweet and sour, you've got your chocolate in my peanut butter, before the squealing guitars come at you with a blade, and the crashing instrumentation lets go one last desperate howl beneath the grandeur of the vocals. The rest of Delusions runs a similar sort of gamut, providing the listener with an invigorating, maddening, challenging and, ultimately, entertaining musical experience.

Lump these hard-knockin' Brits in with fellow sonic adventurers King's X, Galactic Cowboys and Meshuggah for artistic imagination. The impact of To-Mera's Delusions may not be felt today, maybe not even next week. But the influence of this exciting and trailblazing album will certainly prove to be a catalyst, prompting some impressionable young teen to pick up an instrument at some point in the near future and bang away like there's no tomorrow. Delusions is that important, that unique and, yes, just that damn good…. (Candlelight Records)

(Click on the CD cover to buy Delusions from Amazon.com)