Microscopic View of a Telescopic Realm

That albumcover. That albumcover looks ridiculous! So goofy with it’s childish colors trying to prove some important message. Yuck. Yet, Tourniquet is such an awesome band, so of course I had that cover on a TQT-longsleeve :-P However, as ridiculous as the cover is, and as much as it is trying to be a metaphore of the title-track of the album, it means something very different to me – do not judge a book by it’s cover! Or album for that matter.

Microscopic View of a Telescopic Realm starts of with ”Besprinkled in Scarlet Horror” and deals with Christians bashing other Christians/artists for having morbid imagery or obscene music that cannot glorify God. TQT says ”You say this pace beckons evil spirits/But I care not what you call it/To me it’s two hundred beats per minute/On tablature I scrawled it”. And that right there, is the essence of this minor masterpiece. As goofy as the cover is, don’t let it fool you! And as morbid and ”off” as some art can be, don’t judge it wrongly based on your own prejudice! And not only does TQT deal with this topic in the lyrics of the opening-track, they also do so with the music. Here, and throughout the whole record.

First of all, this is seen as a ”return to the roots” album, meaning that they play thrash metal again. For me, it is more of a continuation of those three utterly amazing songs that were the new songs on their best of ”The Collected Works” and acoustic album ”Acoustic Archives”. This means, that you can expect some utterly heavy and crunchy guitars and a lot of diversity in the vocal department! It also means longer songs that what was heard on Crawl to China. A lot of the songs here are between 5-7 minutes.

TQT has never been afraid of experimenting and mixing various ideas into their music. Microscopic is no different. There are bits of classical music here and there – I am pretty sure one part is a Bach composition. There are also a flute-solo on the instrumental ”Immunity Vector” and “Besprinkled in Scarlet Horror”, an organ-outro on “The Skeezix Dilemma part II” and a phone-call from a Japanese guy on ”Drinking from the Poisoned Well”… Besides all these oddities, the music can best be described as some of the thrashier feelings of the earlier records, the brutality of (already mentioned) newer songs and the playfulness of Crawl to China. I cannot compare it to any other band, as TQT are pretty much in their own league. They mix all of these elements and add a whole lot of neo-classic thrash riffing to it, and voila.

Diving more deeply into the music, I have to point out three elements. 1) The vocals are very diverse and fit the music well. Guitarist Aron Guerra is once again very active on the vocal front, and has some great yelling parts and trade offs with Luke Easter. And Easter both sings, hisses and yells throughout the whole record. There will be catchy parts that’ll make you sing along before the song is over. And there will be parts soooo fast you’ll have a hard time keeping up with these guys. 2) Riffs. Oh, those riffs. Especially the longer neo-classic parts on songs like ”Besprinkeld in Scarlet Horror” and ”The Skeezix Dilemma part II”. Fantastic stuff! There are plenty of other great riffs in pretty much every song. The whole intro and following riff of ”The Tomb of Gilgamesh” will be difficult not to hum along with and it is impossible to keep your headbanging still to the grooves of ”Erratic Palpitations of the Human Spirit”. By the way, yes, those death metal-sounding song titles are also back! Gone are titles like ”Bats” and ”Your Take”. And finally 3) Main-composer and founding-member Ted Kirkpatrick is all over his drumkit again!! It has been years since he’s sounded this vital and exciting. The sound is full and you get the feeling that he’s buried behind a massive kit. He has a ton of fills and odd drumbeats, and even has a cymbals-only beat in the verses of ”Erratic Palpitations of the Human Spirit” before he heads into full thrash-modus. He does a one minute drum solo on “Immunity Vector”, and as any instrumental track from TQT, this is amazing! Playful, exciting and something different than the rest of the record.

The album is over an hour long, but it is hard to point out filler songs. If forced to do so, I’d cut one of the Guerra/Easter songs like “Martyr’s Pose” or “Caixa De Raiva”, but every song has something, so it’s difficult. The Kirkpatrick songs stay for sure!

Microscopic View is a warm welcome back to a much more metal TQT. Many old school fans as well as newer ones will find a lot of great music here! And even though Metal Blade released this monster, it still didn’t get much attention out there – maybe because TQT hasn’t been much of a touring band the last many, many years. But give this a spin – it is a monster of an album that still holds up to this day!