My last and only post on this blog was probably around a year ago, and it was something about how I would start writing album reviews for the blog from then on. As you can probably tell, that didn't happen. Until now (dundun dun duuuun). Here's the first of a few more to come.

To-Mera - "Delusions"

I first heard of this prog band some time ago, back when Emperor was doing their reunion tour and they were the opening act. I checked them out since people kept praising them for their great live performance and musical creativity. I got their debut album, "Transcendental" and gave it a good listen. While it did not immediately grabbed me by the balls, I did hear some truly good stuff going on in this band. Further listening allowed me to truly appreciate the music, as "Transcendental" is not really the kind of album you can readily enjoy the first time through. Very heavy and indeed very creative, To-Mera's sound was truly fresh and distinctive enough to separate them from the rest of the prog pack. The only thing that kept it from reaching greatness was the lack of truly memorable themes. The entire album was entirely riff-driven and while there are some great moments there's nothing there that could drive the music that extra mile. I was pretty impressed nonetheless.

So when their second album was announced to be in the works, I was genuinely intrigued. Would they be able to maintain their sound but kick it up that extra notch or would they just fail miserably like many other of those one-album wonder bands? The result is neither: "Delusions" is more of the same ol' To-Mera and while it's not horrible is not really great either. Their sound, comprised mainly of heavy, chugging guitars accompanied by light/jazzy piano and synth elements all going crazy with some airy female vocals on top of it all is still here. They do kick it up a notch in terms of technicality and diversity; they certainly have expanded on their standard sound palette beyond distorted/clean/acoustic guitars and piano interludes. I do miss the old simple acoustic passages though, and while they are still here (in a more elaborate way), they don't have the same warmth or poignancy as before. But although the sheer display of musical pyrotechnics certainly makes for a pretty cool show, it fails to deliver some actual solid music. It seems To-Mera approaches their songwriting with a "let's prog the shit out of this bitch" mentality and in the process they forget the value of quality over quantity.

I loved the production on "Transcendental", it was very thick and blunt yet still precise; "Delusions" on the other hand sounds thin and plastic, like that "I Can't believe it's not butter" thing spread over too much bread. The rhythm guitars used to have this awesome chunky tone and now they sound fizzy and digital up the ass. The drums also seem to have taken a punch to the balls, since they lost that sledgehammer quality to them they had before. Synths and piano are less prominent in the mix and vocals sound thinner than before.

Overall "Delusions" is not a bad album, and while "Transcendental" was definitely better, you can still get some entertainment out of its technicality and ever changing songs, but it's certainly not something you'd want to listen to more than maybe once or twice.

7.8/10