Tetrafusion - Horizons (EP - 2012)

Artista: Tetrafusion
Álbum: Horizons EP
Año: 2012
Género: Metal progresivo
Duración: 30:13
Nacionalidad: EEUU

Lista de Temas:
01. Aerosolus
02. Impetus
03. Styrofoam Breath
04. Cloudless
05. Spider Silk
06. No One Sleeps
07. Look Away (Pt.1)
08. Look Away (Pt.2)

Alineación:
- Gary Tubbs / Vocals, Keyboards
- Brooks Tarkington / Guitars, Vocals
- Mark Michell / Bass
- J.C. Bryant / Drums

Yo conocí a esta banda en su primer trabajo, me impactó, un rock duro y muy técnico, pero al mismo tiempo fuertemente emocional y sin descuidar el lado melódico, aún cuando las canciones sean muy duras. No recuerdo si fue del 2007, pero para mí había sido uno de los mejores trabajos de ese año. Luego vino un segundo disco tan bueno como aquel o mejor aún. Ahora sacan este EP promocional del que parece será su próximo (gran) trabajo, a prepararse porque está bueno en serio.
Otro discazo (y es un discazo aunque solamente sea un EP) que nos brinda este excelente 2012 que pinta ser uno de las mejores cosechas desde aquellos añorados años de oro del prog en los 70's, con una brillante lista de grupos clásicos que sacan nuevos y excelentes discos (por ejemplo Anglagard o Citizen Cain, entre otros) y toda una camada de nuevos grupos que vienen empujando y haciendo mucha presión. Tenemos el "Dodecahedron" de Daal o el último de Anathema, o Storm Corrosion (aunque personalmente no lo encuentro a la altura de muchos otros trabajos)... bueno, se me ocurren muchos otros geniales trabajos de este año, acá tenemos otro.

Sobre el álbum, y si bien es un álbum de un grupo muy técnico en su ejecución donde varias veces las estructuras y composiciones se arman de acuerdo al desarrollo virtuosístico (¿existe esa palabra o la inventé?) de cada integrante, como visión general todo el álbum es una ráfaga de emociones bastante encontradas y muy bien organizadas y dramatizadas. Luego tenemos el derroche de virtuosismo al que ya estamos acostumbrados cuando escuchamos a este tipo de bandas, pero como ha veces digo, no importa la velocidad con que se toca, no importan la cantidad de notas ni la destreza, sino EL COMO se tocan. Estos muchachos saben como darle su sello a este estilo a veces tan frío, y lo hacen no justamente por el lado técnico sino por no descuidar ni por un minuto el aspecto compositivo / melódico, donde también se la hace lugar a la experimentación musical de amplios espectros de estilos. A veces este metal es clarisimo, en general el sonido es muy claro, y la fuerza no está puesta en el grado de distorción que tiene cada instrumento.
Y todo disponible gratuitamente a través de su espacio de Bandcamp.

Hey everyone! Today I'll be reviewing Tetrafusion's new EP, "Horizons." This fan-funded album has been released under a "pay what you want" model; you can download the album for free (or, of course, pay them what you want) from Tetrafusion's Band Camp page. I'd highly recommend that you give them at least a little something for their troubles.
TL;DR: This album is amazing. Give these guys all of your money, good-guy-Greg style
Additionally, I'm going to be making an update to the New Metal Tuesday model. I've noticed that on the days that I'm doing these reviews, new music is still being added. Therefore, moving forward, I'll be picking a single album available on Tuesday and doing a review. On Monday evenings, I will be putting together the full playlist for the previous week. This means more updates and hopefully more quality content. However, for this week, it means there are still 6 more days until the Rdio playlist gets updated. Hopefully this Tetrafusion release will tide over all of my 80 readers. (Spread the word!)
"Horizons" is a progressive metal album incorporating influences from all genres into all present instruments (sometimes giving this album an almost fusion feel). Tetrafusion is an extremely talented band, and they pull off this feat readily.
The album starts off with a one minute long track, "Aerosolus," giving the feel of tuning into a broadcast. There's a bit of a space-age feel, given the content -- I almost have to think of this album as a Space Oddity-inspired saga, even though I don't think the actual underlying message is more of a cultural / social analysis than space-age / sci-fi, making any such references metaphorical.
We then transition into "Impetus," starting out with a heavy Dream Theater influence and migrating to something that sounds more like something that might come from Between The Buried and Me (who are obviously a major inspiration for this album, and almost to be expected, given that production happened at the same studio they use). Gary Tubbs' vocals throughout the album are crisp and clean, hitting and holding notes along with fantastic backing harmonies. Gary doesn't tend to make much use of vibrato, but this is OK for me. Others might find that it gives the vocals a "flat" feel; I don't think that it has much of a place in this sort of music (and Gary's sparing use of this technique is executed well when utilized). This track contains the lyric titling the album, "My mind is set on new horizons, but you're holding me back" and ties back into the message in Aerosolus, "If you are listening to this, then we have reached the other side. We've chosen the path that you so readily denied."
"Styrofoam Breath" opens with another major influence from Obfuscation, from BTBAM's The Great Misdirect. Please allow me to quickly digress here: I was not a huge fan of Obfuscation; I felt that it was essentially a remake of Colors and didn't explore much new. Don't get me wrong, the music is fantastic. But I felt like I was listening to the same album, given the almost 1:1 similarities in arrangement and sound. Therefore, it may seem odd that I don't mind that this album was a major influence for Horizons. The impetus is different. Styrofoam Breath closes with homage to the clean vocal part before the break in "Disease, Injury, Madness" and a transition into Cloudless. I don't mean to give the impression that this track is completely unoriginal -- to the contrary, it is well-composed; brilliantly and uniquely mixed. A group displaying heavy influence from a particular source certainly can't be classified as unoriginal. If they were producing the same thing, do you know what we'd call them? A cover band. That they certainly are not, and Styrofoam Breath is a great track.
"Cloudless" is a fun track, starting out with some neat time signature changes. This track has my favorite bass work by Tetrafusion's bassist Mark Michell, though perhaps not my favorite track on the album. Guitarist Brooks Tarkington inserts some great guitar work, reminiscent of influence by Protest the Hero and Gary has a quick key solo reminiscent of something Jordan Rudess might do. The lyrics here are powerful ("What gives you the right to take a life away?"), socially conscious, and especially applicable given the atrocities we've seen in even the past 20 years (the Serbian massacres in the mid-1990s, the continuing "Arab spring" that is resulting in countless murders in both Syria and Egypt, and wars waged, unprovoked, by the US).
"Spider Silk" is the first track that I think encompasses a unique Tetrafusion sound. This track has gorgeous collaborations between all instruments, and is perhaps the climax of the album. In this track, we get a really great feel of what "a Tetrafusion song" sounds like, and this unique sound continues through the rest of the album. Although we can hear some influences in this song, these last four songs are the baseline that will set Tetrafusion as a band that is able to influence upcoming progressive metal artists.
"No One Sleeps" is so, so close to being my favorite track on the album. The piano in the introduction is so subtle; I didn't hear it until it had been going for a few seconds already, and now listening to it, I can't not appreciate everything it adds. Several instrumental themes in this song reference Impetus, and it is a fantastic transition into the closing two tracks, a graceful descent from the pinnacle of Spider Silk, if you will. Again, we hear the pure artistic genius of Tetrafusion shine through in this track -- any influence in this track I can place comes from the late, great Frank Zappa. (By the way, if you are ever in Baltimore in September, come to the yearly Zappa Festival in Highlandtown -- it's seriously a work of art.)
I've managed to avoid mentioning Tetrafusion's drummer, J.C. Bryant, who is almost absent in the track "Look Away (Pt. 1)." If you had not noticed his skills by now, you have not been listening to the album. Absolutely fantastic work that I would have absolutely no hesitation in comparing to the works of Blake Richardson or even Mike Portnoy. Although not present in this track, we have a gorgeous plateau to recover from the almost relentless heavy attack of everything that has come before. The combination of vocals, strings, and piano in this song is almost unparalleled. I'm such a sucker for violins that I have to give this track my favorite status.
We then exit the album with "Look Away (Pt. 2)." A gorgeous song, continuing the theme from Pt. 1. These two songs are pure Tetrafusion. The baseline. The influence. This song makes use of some compression (for a single measure) on the drums and guitar, something that I think could be used effectively by more bands as a transitory feature of a song. The decision to use it here is key, and it happens *exactly* halfway through the song. I can't imagine that was unintentional. We finish on a low note, lyrically "Look away when you hit the ground." But take this into consideration: the direction is at those who would hold us back from setting our minds on new horizons, who deny the path, who think they have the right to take life. They will fall, and look away in shame. Perfect metaphor.
Rating for this album? 10/10. I'm biased, I know. But if you are a progressive metal fan, you will love it. I can't imagine someone giving this album less than a 7/10, and I think that would be a kind of crappy rating for it.

Devon O'Dell

I’m about to drop some knowledge, son. ACT LIKE YA HEARD.
OK, actually, this post is about a sweet free EP from a band called Tetrafusion, because I can’t stop fucking listening to it. Post begins . . . now.
The band I am about to tell you about goes against the very nature of this site.
Tetrafusion, a progressive/technical rock/metal band hailing from Shreveport, Louisiana, have clean vocals. In fact, they have exclusively clean vocals, with nary a guttural, shout, shriek, scream, or grunt to be found.
So, you may be wondering, why am I posting about them here? Well, my friends, Horizons (Tetrafusion’s recently-released EP, available for free and produced by Jamie King of Between The Buried And Me/The Human Abstract/Last Chance To Reason/White Arms Of Athena production fame) is fucking amazing, plain and simple.
It starts with ‘Aerosolus’, an intro track of distorted radio sounds and a voice asking, “Can anybody hear me? Are these messages coming through? If you’re listening to this then we have reached the other side.” This leads directly into ‘Impetus’, a song which echoes those words in its lyrics amid some intricate, Dream Theater-by-way-of-Cynic-by-way-of-Tool riffing. The vocals of singer/keyboardist Gary Tubbs are commanding, soaring, and powerful, accented by the backing vocals of guitarist Brooks Tarkington, as he sings about the “many worlds left to be discovered”. Tarkington’s guitar duels with the fantastic basswork of Mark Mitchell, as both instruments weave their complex patterns around the versatile drumming of J.C. Bryant.
‘Aerosolus’ leads directly into the following track, ‘Styrofoam Breath’, a song shaped by acoustic guitar and more lush vocals, ending with a circus-y sing-song section that would be right at home on a BTBAM album but at the same time doesn’t feel forced.
From there, the album flows immediately into ‘Cloudless’, a track filled with thumping bass, technical riffing, and some rather brilliant guitar leads, bookended by Tubbs’ fantastic singing. ‘Cloudless’ continues straight on into ‘Spider Silk’ with an uplifting melodic guitar/keyboard lead, followed by scads of technical riffing and drumming. ‘Cloudless’, of course, carries on to ‘No One Sleeps’, which features a more bellow, bass-oriented approach before launching into some vaguely Cynic-esque structures, complete with a vocoder section.
From here, we reach the conclusion of the album, ‘Look Away (Pt. 1)’ and ‘Look Away (Pt. 2)’. The first track is composed of piano and Tubbs’ emotion-laden voice, with some strings for emphasis, while the second part covers the same melodies and themes, only with the entire band participating. Both tracks are short, under three minutes apiece, with part 2 ending rather abruptly.
It’s a heady listen, clocking in at just a hair over a half hour but densely-packed and covering a lot of ground. The short run-time actually does Horizons a bit of a favor, keeping things memorable and preventing the band’s technicality from overstaying its welcome. King’s production is perfectly suited to the album’s sound, with the bass nicely audible in the mix (a must for a band with a bassist this talented). Prior to receiving the email about the release of Horizons, I had not heard of Tetrafusion, but discovered just recently that the band have two previous releases, 2009′s Altered State and 2008′s Absolute Zero, and you can bet that I am checking them out.
Oh, did I mention that Horizons is free? You can stream and acquire the whole damn thing from Bandcamp for absolutely nothing. Not a bad deal, especially considering just how good this EP is. See, sometimes some clean vocals aren’t that bad!

groverXIII

Un EP sorprendente, no dejen de escucharlo, esta es una de las promesas del metal progresivo y mejor ir conociéndolos desde ahora.

www.tetrafusion.net
www.facebook.com/Tetrafusion
www.myspace.com/tetrafusion