Rolo Tomassi - Hysterics

One almighty heap of hype later and Sheffield's most frantic exports finally let rip with their debut album. From the outset it's apparent that Rolo Tomassi have taken the brave step of dramatically widening the scope of their sound on their first full-lengther. Aided in no small way by a sharp, crunchy recording, the musicianship on display is quite superb. Far from simply churning out a Locust-aping glut of “Nintendo-core” racket, there are huge doses of Mars Volta's jazzy, prog-inventiveness mixed in. The thing is, Bixler and Rodriguez have a decade and a half of serious substance abuse and tragedy fuelling their creative fires. Short of blood tests and perhaps cutting them in half to count the rings, its hard to imagine the same being true of the youthful Tomassi, making this record an outstanding achievement that thankfully lives up to the fervent media pressure being heaped upon them. [Chris Cusack]