I always thought the trouble with math rock is that it remains an ambiguous genre to some extent. While it definitely manages to catch the audience's attention, it also has the problem of making a lasting impression -- 10 minutes after the album is over, when you try to pull things back together, you may realize you are incapable of remembering much of it. That makes it an unpretentious genre per se, but then again, almost any music genre has its own double-edged requisite. By the End of Tonight and Tera Melos decide to share the aforementioned genre tag and become split neighbours, coming up with Complex Full of Phantoms, a whim of an album that delves into both bands' similar structures.

When a 41 seconds track introduces a 3 minutes one, it is likely that you already know how the latter will develop. However, By the End of Tonight walked down on this capricious road and came up with  "Philty Collins,"  a crisp song that manages to drag you in but eventually loses focus. Rhythm break-ups may be a great thing to do, as it is almost always exciting not to know what the next minute has in store for your ears, but overdoing it can only generate frustration, and the band sure does know how to point that out throughout their half of the split.

Forget about that and bear with it. One minute into  " Jealous of a Ghost" and you might realize that it can be a gratifying experience, exploring realms one was not aware of. From post-punk to psych and back, everything seems perfectly possible.  "Cold Hands" makes it easier to take in the 6 tracks, which can unfold as a bit of a spaced out experience, like a less complex Attack of the Giant Squid (whom they share a passion of Phil Collins with), but benefiting from a tight composition, much in the vein of Don Caballero.

In the left corner we have Tera Melos, with the first effort to embody vocals. Their  "Party with Tina" certainly sounds like a good start, introducing the trumpet in their somewhat jazzy experimentation, but unfortunately it remains the only memorable track. The ambient/avant-prog melange pays for their tendency of staying out of focus, while the dynamic rhythms add a certain dimension to the otherwise  all-over-the-place music.

With By the End of Tonight and Tera Melos together we stand at the half an hour long point, and after a few spins we might still be unable to figure out what happened with our mind. If that could be somehow encompassed in an inexistent definition of math rock, I could almost say Complex Full of Phantoms makes a great impression.

-Diana Sitaru