Tartaros
Review: Black metal's wicked melodrama found adherents worldwide in the gothic tradition of narrative melodrama as vital forces enact upon one another the combinations of their fate, only to plunge further into the blindness of existence and death. One could say Tartaros is that agency also in its creation of dream music, where the narrative winds through insane tunnels of logic and finally spins itself into nothingness.
Drifting keyboard riffs fill the most of the sound that will come from your CD player, followed by the crashing fire of guitars and the vibrating husk of bass warbling behind. Cymbal crashes punctuate otherwise mechanistic (heh) drumming as the journey permutates through melodic changes to riff, without really leading the melody anywhere - wandering lead keyboards overlay the droning guitar thrash and vocals play dominant rhythm instrument to counterpoint the monolithic river of sound. Song structures are closest to techno, with breaks and breakdowns and re-entry phases. It never loses intensity but winds through the passageways of the mad.
Calling idiot or idiot-savant will not help, most likely; where it is beautiful Tartaros builds exciting bends of melody inside otherwise repetitive ambient rock/metal cyclic structure, and where it is predictable it is more coherently assembled than most music. Aesthetically almost carnival gothic and rhythmically close to the waltzes of Graveland mixed with the pop throb from Ace of Base, this music is both ludicrous and intriguing through the clarity of its ability mixed with its deliberate obscurity.