Tera Melos is a trio that’s fond of odd time signatures, the kind of metric hiccups and stagger-step phrasing that thwarts attempts to clap along. The California-based trio likes whiplash accents and crunchy dissonance, coupled with sinister, creeping intervallic movements, tritones and stuff like that. They’re math-minded art rockers, basically.
One senses a kinship with bands like Rush, King Crimson, Voivod, John Zorn’s Naked City, and Don Caballero. Tera Melos just released “Trash Generator,” its fourth record, which opens with a song that evokes the Beatles’ “Helter Skelter” with a lurching dystopian vibe. This music keeps you at arm’s length, undermining any inclination to settle in and feel at ease, with a spotlight on disjointedness, knotted guitar lines and spiky patterns. Still, the puzzlelike complexity of the music invites its own kind of focus and attention, even if it’s less of a warm-body feel and more of a clinical cerebral thrill.
Tera Melos with Speedy Ortiz will be at the Ballroom at the Outer Space, 295 Treadwell St., Hamden, on Wednesday, Nov. 1, at 8 p.m. $15. 203-288-6400, theouterspace.net
