MySpace Trawl – Rolo Tomassi

In an almost GMTV-esque gimmick, last week we asked you to try and work out the band we have lined up for you as part of our first trawl for 2008.

With literally zero responses coming in, we assume that people didn’t want to spoil the excitement in the little comment box thing below. Because it’s a new year and all that, we don’t really have any real reason as to why we are recommending this lot this week. It’s probably more down to the fact that they make us mosh a lot. So much so that we have now broken three tables, two chairs, a microwave and burst a bottle of bleach with our antics. The hecklerspray office is in a bad state. We blame Rolo Tomassi for this.

And yes, we did promise to bring you a band with a sweet in their name. That’s Rolo, not Tomassi for any non-UK people. 

This is not the first time that we've come across this Sheffield five-piece. We have seen them live before, but due to either being quite drunk or going to too many gigs, we can’t quite clearly pin point where we first saw them play.

All we can remember is that a friend told us they were “going to fucking rock the place.” Such comments always make that little more interested. If we’d been told they were going to come on and try to emulate Coldplay then we may not have been so enthusiastic towards them. As a support band they did this.

Not since seeing some band called Snow Patrol supporting Grandaddy were we taken in by not only a strong musical performance, but a group with a stage presence too. They didn’t just stand there and get through their set as quickly as possible; they seemed like they actually enjoyed it and jumped around a bit as well. This is always good in our book. 

Before seeing them we didn’t really know much about them apart from our friend's claim. With an average set-up of drums, guitar, bass and keyboards, we assumed it would be one of those lo-fi experimental sets. Never a bad thing. However, as the band gingerly entered the stage, they suddenly exploded into something like Film Noir from their MySpace page. A quite industrial electronic synth began before suddenly erupting into something loud and almost scarily exciting.

Throw in various members of the band coming close to wrestling with each other on stage and you've got quite an entertaining affair. With almost grindcore riffs, screamy and hard to understand vocals mixed in with off-the-cuff electronic synth, the short but exciting songs were rifled through for the audience to lap up like the dogs they were. 

Do you want to see what we mean? Well in February, the band are literally touring the entire country. Literally, the entire country. Go see them for an energetic night that might make you sweat a little bit. And get some bruises from the angry people in the mosh pit.

Read more:  

Rolo Tomassi MySpace page