After keyboard wizard Diego Tejeida and Haken split ways in November 2021, lots of rumors were going around about new musical directions, collaborations, and where Tejeida would find “a new musical home”. The two parties developed different musical interests and decided to go their separate ways [sic] after six and a half glorious albums. While Haken reunited with their original keyboardist and founding member Peter Jones pretty quickly, Tejeida has been keeping us in suspense for almost two years now.
But the origins of this new project reach back much further. After Mike Portnoy recruited both Tejeida and Neal Morse Band multi-instrumentalist Eric Gillette for his Shattered Fortress tour in 2017, there has been talk of a project combining their talents with Leprous drummer Baard Kolstad. However, this was demented by the latter early on, instead indicating the involvement of Shining member and Kolstad’s friend Simen Sandnes. This Norwegian based drummer has been in the scene for quite a while now, played with Arkentype and Vola, and worked as a tech for both Mike Portnoy and Haken. It was Sandnes who suggested involving Maraton singer Fredrik Klemp to complete the core line up of the band. Lastly, Jacob Umansky was asked to contribute the lower frequencies to the group’s first studio effort as a guest. Please welcome, for the first time ever, TEMIC.
The new band’s name originates from the Nahuatl word for dream, which, according to Tejeida, is exactly what the project started out as. From the start, Tejeida and Gillette aimed to make progressive music with electronic influences and a focus on melody. Rationally, this description applies to many bands within the progressive cosmos. TEMIC was announced promptly as prog’s “most ambitious, most adrenaline-fueled act”. However, as the dedicated prog fan knows by now, almost every new album, project or collaboration nowadays is usually announced as the most [enter superlative adjective here] ever, so with as little presumptions as possible, let’s try to dive into TEMIC’s debut album “Terror Management Theory”.
As no particular explanation was given on the album’s name, the combination of the three words gives off the impression of the typical Mike Portnoy-approach, putting words together that just sound cool somehow (“Psychotic Symphony”, anyone?). However, this is nothing more than a cheeky allegation made by the reviewer. But combined with a rather ordinary artwork, expectations were damped a little. They were sparked again though, upon hearing Tejeida kicking “TMT” off with his signature apocalyptic-devastation keyboard sounds (think “Clear” or “affinity.exe”).
“Through The Sands Of Time” wastes no time and throws a groovy riff towards us, before singer Fredrik Klemp greets us with a soft-turning-epic verse. The “fly high”-chorus will make for a great sing-along part, while the tight but not overly complex rhythm section will likely move some hips during the hopefully upcoming live shows. Gillette provides one of this signature guitar solos, while Tejeida comps some tasty, slightly jazzy chords with a nice, 80s infused sound. The atmosphere is melancholic, kind of epic and the melodies are more accessible than one would expect from most prog(-metal) music these days.
And this is perhaps the biggest quality of the whole album. TEMIC manages to mostly maintain this quality during the next 50 minutes. “Terror Management Theory” proceeds to throw a number of tracks featuring similar trademarks towards the listener, each and every one of them containing similarly catchy hooklines. Yes, every song has a strong chorus. How many prog albums can claim this for themselves? There are times when these combined trademarks work “only” fine, resulting in good hard rock/heavy metal songs with a noticeable prog-influence. This includes the band’s first single “Count Your Losses” (it seems to be one of prog’s weirdest habits to always release one of the weaker tracks of the album as a first single), as well as “Paradigm” and “Once More”, two cuts featured during the last third of the album. All of these songs are good, but they don’t quite reach the level of the highpoints of “Terror Management Theory”. The second single “Falling Away”, for instance, manages to put the pieces into place with much more ease.
There are noticeably no 13 minute epics, overly long instrumental fiddling, growl parts, carnival keyboard sounds or tuba-solos. “Terror Management Theory” manages to avoid many modern prog-clichés and therefore remains consistent, slick, and straight forward at all times. One could say that the album has no need for any of these gimmicks and focuses on good old qualities instead: tightly constructed songs and strong melodies. For hardcore progheads, this might be a tad too much (or not enough). As many listeners have already pointed out, two of the three pre-released singles did not even include a guitar solo, begging the question if a guitarist of Gillette’s caliber is necessary to create this music. They might have forgotten that shredding awesome solos on the guitar is only one of Gillette’s many talents.
Besides, a few other tracks on the album do feature awesome guitar solos. “Skeletons” is one of these songs, featuring an intro reminiscent to both Journey’s indestructible “Separate Ways” and Rockwell’s “Somebody’s Watching Me” (no coincidence for sure, considering the song’s title), making it a potential staple at every proghead’s Halloween party (if such a thing even exists?).
“Terror Management Theory” does not contain any ballads, however, “Acts Of Violence” might be the track that comes closest to this description. It’s also probably the album’s pinnacle in the reviewer’s opinion. Mellow keyboards and brushed drums dominate the first few minutes of this cut, while during the second half, both Tejeida and Gillette get to prove why they rate among the best musicians the genre has to offer. Especially the latter catapults the song onto a whole different level during its dramatic finale. The high energy” is continued in “Friendly Fire”, a six-minute rollercoaster ride portraying each instrumentalist’s abilities. As shown many times in the prog-genre, mellow songs work well in combination with a crazy instrumental song. Furthermore, this tour-de-force functions as an instrumental, not giving off the impression of a song where someone just forgot to record a vocal track (again, as seen many times in the prog-genre).
“Terror Management Theory” closes with its longest (by a few seconds) and arguably most epic track, “Mothallah”. The dramatic half-time verses give off a slight “Between The Wheels”-vibe (by Rush, for the non-nerds) and the choir during the choruses finish the album on a high note. Finally, Gillette tops this track off with another soaring guitar solo.
Straight forward, dense, consistent (and consistently good), “Terror Management Theory” manages to combine the talents of these impressive musicians. It avoids over-the-top fiddling, showing-off skills and cleverly ships around the many icebergs the genre has put in their way. Instead, TEMIC created an album without too much fuss, where every song kind of sounds like “Separate Ways”, for prog fans to just rock out a little (that’s meant as a good thing though, who doesn’t like a little good old Journey?). However, the unfussy nature of the album raises the question if there is still more potential in this line-up. Therefore, we can only hope that this band is not just a short-lived side project. The chemistry is there. Each listener will decide for themselves if TEMIC really is today’s most adrenaline-fueled act of today’s prog scene. But they managed to record a damn good debut album.
Tracklist:
- TMT
- Through The Sands Of Time
- Falling Away
- Count Your Losses
- Skeletons
- Acts Of Violence
- Friendly Fire
- Paradigm
- Once More
- Mothallah
Order ‘Terror Management Theory’ here: https://shop.season-of-mist.com/list/temic-terror-management-theory
Download/stream here: https://orcd.co/tmtpresave
More info on Temic + a complete bio: https://season-of-mist.com/bands/temic/
Line-up:
Frederik Bergersen: Vocals
Eric Gillette: Guitars + backing vocals
Simen Sandnes: Drums
Diego Tejeida: Keyboards + Sound Design
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Jacob Umansky: Bass guitar
