Tymo is a rather unknown oddly named Western Canadian Thrash Metal band that has been around off and on since `14. With several releases under their bullet belt, their newest album hit the streets yesterday. With an odd “Aliens meets zombie Bob Ross” art fetish, well, let’s see what these Canucks are all aboot, eh?
There’s the old yarn about “Don’t judge a book by its cover”. But hey, I’m sorry…, when it comes to music, I’m a’lookin’ and I’m a’judgin’. And I have to say it: I fucking hate the album artwork. I can’t tell if the Bob Ross-ish dude is supposed to Bob Ross, a zombied version of Bob Ross, or a yuk-yuk amalgam of Bob Ross and the ungainly looking namesake of the band (Tim Tymo, on guitars, vocals, and all lyrics). So I’m sorry, that’s one strike against ya Tymo, (pronounced tie-mo) from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
Strike two? Apparently Tymo is also the name of a much lauded heated brush used for straightening hair. In this digital age, when your band name or dedicated website doesn’t even show up on the first page of Google results — when your band branding is competing online with mainstream beauty products — it’s a bad band name. It’s no wonder there’s not a single review for this band on Metal Archives et al.
So to recap, this is a Canadian Thrash Metal band with a bad name and worse artwork. Is their newest release even worth investigating?
Well yes. Very much so, actually.
Tymo does know how to write solid Thrash – often without resorting to dead horse beating staples that have been stale as fuck in the Thrash Metal world since at least Y2K. I hear this and don’t visualize a kid with bad hygiene and worse grades sporting a flipped up ball cap with “MOSH!!” crudely MagicMarker’ed on the inside brim. I hear this and I don’t think, “Well, you know, `Among The Living’ sure hasn’t aged well…”. And so on, and so forth.
Rather, I’m hearing what could be roughly described as a mixing of the riffs of Municipal Waste and Tankard, the thrashier backline of Suicidal Tendencies, the lyrical nods to Acid Reign and Exodus, and Al Jourgensen-style vocals. There’s nothing really new and fresh here – but at the same time at least it doesn’t feel stale and time-warped from 1988. Well okay then, tell me more.
The obvious leader of Tymo is Tim Tymo, who has the balls to not only name the band after himself, but the album’s first song as well: a head down and horns up thrashy instrumental named “Tymocide”. Homeboy looks like he just died in your arms tonight in a Cutting Crew tribute band (“On tour now playing at truck stops, shopping malls, and nursing homes in the Greater Central Alberta area!”)…, but in reality he’s got shitloads of talent on display here. The lyrics are sharp and punchy, with some very Zetro-ish tongue in the cheek-isms here and there to make things interesting. And I assume the riffs – oh, so many riffs! – are also his in conjunction with fellow guitarist Nick Schwartz (who is in fact credited as the principle music author here).
The songs are all between 2:55 and 4:32 in length, and do what proper Thrash songs should be doing here: getting in, kicking a satisfactory amount of ass, then exiting stage left. No muss, no fuss, and with an appropriate amount of blood, sweat, and spilled Molson beer left over in the mosh pit. The fact that these songs are fairly quick means they don’t wear out their welcome. This is good “opening act” material here: to get the crowd a’moving with minimal convincing.
Tim Tymo mostly uses a very strict pentameter for his lyrics – most songs sticking with a four line stanza / two groups of two schema. For example:
“Flying fucking saucers from outer fucking space
Descend upon the earth to destroy the human race!
Grotesque psychotic martians with the brains the size of kegs
United to take the planet from these savage fucking apes!”
Mars Attacks
And speaking of lyrics…. Whenever I’m checking out a brand new band, I look to their merch, social media, and song lyrics for any red flags. And the song “Estrogenocide” did throw up a warning flag for me. My initial thought was “Oh, fuck me. Is this band of Canuckleheads a bunch of whiny self-hating incels?…” But actually, while their lyrics do talk of women rising up against oppression and kicking male ass and not even bothering to take down their names – I gotta say, I’m all for it:
“You kept us down for centuries
And we’re fed up with your shit!
We’ll see what kind of men you are
When we’ve cut off all your dicks!”
————
“The slaughter rages
As the women hack us all to bits
We could’ve seen it coming
If we weren’t staring at their tits”
Estrogenocide
I guess this is a song that could trigger some triggering with some folks – but I personally read the overall song as being rather pro-feminist and anti-douchebag. Yes, even as the Amazonian-esque women in the song effectively enslave the men only for their seed…, it’s just a fucking song. Any “hot takes” beyond that are destined to only come from fragile-as-fuck “manly man” Carhartt camo dorks who don their mirrored sunglasses to post stupid response videos from the cabs of their lifted “rolling coal” 4×4 trucks with the Gadsen yellow flag o’ cowardice a’flying, right after they finish jacking off to January 6th videos. But there’s no helping what those anally-cranially inverted douches think, so whatever.
Anyway, back on target. While the Tymo band name and artwork are annoyances, this is my only real issue: with pretty much each song lyrically and vocally in lock-step to that pentameter, and the riffs mostly killer but yet sounding a bit “samey” from song to song, there’s not a ton of variation within this album, start to finish. Rather old school Tankard-ish, in that regard. Not everything here sticks to either my ribs or in my head once the last song fades out, but I’ve no real complaints here.
All-in-all I’ve surely over-nit’ed and over-pick’ed the fuck out of this. There’s enough meaty thrashy goodness to fill you up here, if you’re not looking for anything too modern or too technical. Work your way past the dumb-ass artwork and give this a listen and see if it doesn’t doesn’t make you a bit Bob Ross-ish lol!