TERA MELOS

Tera Melos is the third local band I’ve become intimately, freakishly, ridiculously, obsessively attached to since moving to the Sacramento valley in 2001. These are the other two, which I’ll justify in the future. By no means do these three bands limit my interest in the area’s talent pool, but they do form the barbed spears of Sacramento’s fiercest trident. If you’re like me, then these bands will reorganize your expectations.

Which is what Tera Melos accomplished twice last weekend. After a four-month hibernation the band returned to play a basement in Grass Valley, CA on Friday and then The Boardwalk in Orangevale, CA on Saturday (the first date of their week-and-a-half-long tour opening for The Fall Of Troy and Schoolyard Heroes). These were two of the finest shows I’ve seen the band play. There were over 200 kids the second night and they all acted like relapsing addicts, cheering and laughing as though they were enjoying The Museum of General Amazement with new eyes.

I first met Melos in August of 2004. They were familiarly gung-ho band dudes, explaining how they just wanted to play as many shows as they could. Unlike most gung-ho band dudes, they bought a van for $99 (it was $100 but they found $1 in the glove compartment), ran it into the ground, bought a nicer van, and proceeded to play over 200 shows in 18 months. Each show helped establish a religious following. Some part of that cult might swear to the spectacle of Tera Melos, the band that monkeys across ceilings, sends kids to the emergency room (after said kids buy merch), has fans with tattoos, and does all sorts of weird post-handstands, anti-cartwheels, and un-guitar twirls. But the spectacle wouldn’t exist without the music, which most appreciators—like Wayne and Garth before them—will kneel before.

Tera Melos make ambitious instrumental punk rock. Until late in August they were a four piece, when guitarist Jeff Worms left the group. Worms’ contributions to Tera Melos were profound and irreplaceable, but he was in a genius band, not a band with a single genius. Though it doesn’t directly relate to the band, I can’t resist mentioning that Worms built a motorcycle with his hands and his mind and that while he worked in his garage he kept track of time by listening to Mars Volta albums all the way though. (Four times through Frances The Mute means it’s time for lunch.) His legacy is sealed into the band’s self-titled debut and their handful of bootlegs, demos, and early recordings. (There is also a Youtube of Worms just after taking a bass tuning peg to the head; he plays ventriloquist with the gash, using it as a bloody dummy-mouth.)

The necessity of bootlegs speaks to the bands talent. The music tracking website Last.fm.com shows hundreds of user listens to the bands’ official release. There are also dozens of listens to unreleased and live tracks. The track titles have even been inputted in Japanese.

The band has lamented that the spectacle is too often the focus of reviews and promotional material. They may or may not be taking into account how complicated their music is and, consequently, how hard it is to describe. Perhaps they want people to try hard to describe it; perhaps they don’t understand what the big deal is. Tera Melos is a big deal, however, and that's largely because the music is so challenging. The band has little concern for compositional structure and frequently plays the most face-smelting riff you’ve ever heard for eight counts and then never looks back. They also don’t care for genre, though math-rock might please some pigeonholers. My favorite elements in the Tera Melos atmosphere remind me of jazz and, more specifically, the best Frank Zappa album I’ve heard, the Grammy winning Jazz From Hell. Tera Melos riffs are often long and solo-like, except with flushed out (non improvised) bass and drums that emphasize the smartest catch and release points of the guitar. The string-slinging is somehow conceived by Nick Reinhart, the only member of the band who I haven’t heard a nickname for (“Vince-anity” drums and “Mister Nathan,” a.k.a. “L Train” takes care of the bass, and Worms is often referred to as “The Worm” or “Youth Pastor Jeff”). I’m sweating my way back into vagueness with Reinhart’s guitar work, but it’s pretty wild. A prodigy with his fingers, Reinhart alters between squelching out neck-encompassing Dillinger Escape Plan-esque post-metal with two-handed, four or five fingered fretboard tapping. The rest of the band provides a Ritalin landscape for Reinhart to explore, emphasizing the shower of effects, notes, and strange samples with consistent virtuosity. That last sentence would be hyperbole in the hands of AP describing most of the bands AP might describe, which basically means it will be interesting to see what AP says when AP finally comes up for air and sees the Merry Melos dangling the coolest life preserver ever invented over AP’s floundering head.

Even without Worms Tera Melos are technically mystifying. Their set in the Grass Valley basement was well recorded by my roommate and supreme confidant, NAVE. I’ve endured a 48-hour personal struggle in an authentic tribal sweat lodge deciding which tracks to post here. It’s tempting to post the first song they played, but instead I’m going to keep that experience to myself and post the last song they played. As far as we can tell it’s called “Cosmetics.” For good measure, I’m also posting the track that just about made me cry, and it’s called “Driving To Mt. Hood.”

Click to download “Cosmetics” by Tera Melos.
Click to download “Driving To Mt. Hood” by Tera Melos.

Support Tera Melos. They tour a lot. They warm up to Hella songs. They eat dirty children without any seasoning. They will outlast your party and destroy your jam box at 5:30 a.m. the night before all your final exams. You’ll wake up with blisters on your eyes thinking the same thing as your roommates: We’re not worthy.

Visit Tera Melos on MYSPACE.
Visit Tera Melos on LAST.FM.
Visit Tera Melos’ WEBSITE (live mp3’s available).
Visit Tera Melos’ LABEL and get on the wagon already.