Tetsuo – Dots

Music fans, serious music fans love an obscure band. Here you go. Tetsuo, an Italian post-punk/hardcore quintet. Their 2024 Spring release is a six-song set titled, Dots. Interesting album art, intriguing band bio. Alright you got me interested.

Hailing from the Veneto region in Northeast Italy, the band is a tough one to describe their sound. It’s a meatgrinder of metal and punk. The vocals are in the sludge metal vein. Heavy is the one word that comes to mind. Another is original. Hundreds of albums in my mental metal catalog, this group is unique.

The fourth song, “Widening the Circle” opens with an odd sound effect. It sounds like a straw pulled up and down in a cup with a lid, with distortion if you know the sound, you know. The song is a nightmare spaghetti western lost track. Atmospheric, heavy, brutal, 90s post punk bridge, a smash of experimental, pyscho-surf and hardcore. The top track on the album is the finale, “Loneliness and Suffering”. It hits all the post-hardcore signatures. Slow then fast, fast then slow. Hearing influences ranging from Cave In to Neurosis.

After half a dozen listens to the album, I’m not sure how I feel about this one. It very well could be one of those rare songs set that in a year’s time will be a heavy rotation album. Unknown, much like their future. What’s in a name? Tetsuo is also the name of a late 80’s independent Japanese horror film. It fits.

There’s little information about the group, here’s a peak behind the collective musical minds in Tetsuo, in their words: ‘Tetsuo is born in a rehearsal room lost in Veneto countryside where chickens live on trees. Tetsuo is heavy, fat, noisy, sometimes fast, often slow, surely contaminated. Tetsuo is nerd, loves videogames, animes, comics, PCs and stompboxes. Tetsuo is not metal, Tetsuo is not punk, Tetsuo is not. Tetsuo is a band, one day Tetsuo won’t be a band anymore.’

And now you have an idea why this band is so interesting. If you are a metalhead, gamer, this will most likely be a top 10 album of the year for you. Envisioning blasting Dots, whilst slaying digital foes goes well together.

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